Volume 19, 1995
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P R M R P L fi 19 PRPERS FROM THE NINETEENTH RNNURL MEETING OF THE RTLRNTIC PROUINCES LINGUISTIC ASSOCIATION Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island Nouember IB - 11, 1995 R C H L P H 19 ACTES DU DIH-NEUUIEME COLLOQUE ANNUEL DE L’RSSOCIRTION DE LINGUISTIQUE DES PROUINCES RTLRNTIQUES Charlottetown, Isle-du-Prince-Edouard le 16-11 novembre 1995 Edited by / Rédaction DONNA L. LILLIAN ■ t o Æ b , PRMRPLR 19 PRPERS FROM THE NINETEENTH RNNURL MEETING OF THE ATLANTIC PROVINCES LINGUISTIC ASSOCIATION Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island November IB - 11, 1995 RCRLPH 19 ACTES DU DIH-NEUUIEME COLLOQUE ANNUEL DE L’ASSOCIATION DE LINGUISTIQUE DES PROUINCES ATLANTIQUES Charlottetown, Isle-du-Prince-Edouard le 10 -7 1 novembre 1995 Edited by / Rédaction DONNR L. LILLIAN r ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association acknowledges the generosity of The University of Prince Edward Island in providing a grant towards the publication of this volume. The Association gives special thanks to Dr. Elizabeth Epperly, President of the University of Prince Edward Island, for her enthusiastic support. REMERCIMENTS U Association de Linguistiques des Provinces Atlantiques veut bien exprimer sa reconnaissance à l’Université de l’îsle-du-Prince- Édouard pour la subvention qu’elle a bien voulu accorder permettant la publication des présents actes. L’Association tient surtout à remercier la présidente de l’université, Elizabeth Epperly, de son soutien enthousiaste. TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE DES MATIÈRES Madeleine ALLARD Is the disorder in the House really disorder? 1 ElissaASP Making Sense 9 WilliamDAVEY A Report on the Dictionary of Cape Breton English 21 JaneGADSBY Stall Wars: A Slice of Latrinalia at York University 35 W. Terrence GORDON Making Saussure Accessible 51 Michael GREGORY Remarks on a Theory of Grammar for a Socio- 67 Cognitive Linguistics Maya HONDA & On making linguistics useful for teachers: 81 Wayne O’NEIL What can you learn from plural nouns and R? Greg JACOBS “Homosexual”, “Gay”, or “Queer”: The Struggle 93 Over Naming and its Real-world Effects Fusa KATADA On the Nature of Agglutination 115 Ruth KING & La puissance des pronoms faibles en français 129 Terry NADASDI terre-neuvien Sue LEVESQUE The Effects of Sexist Language on Perceptions of 139 Sexual Harassment Donna L. LILLIAN Ms. Revisited: She’s Still a Bitch, Only Now She’s 149 Older Anthony C. LISTER Agency, Adversity and Animacy in the Chinese 163 Passive Construction Waiching Enid MOK The Phonology of Cantonese Onomatopoeia 173 Valentina SKIBINA On Nucleus Vocabulary of English 187 OTHER PAPERS PRESENTED AUTRES COMMUNICATIONS PRÉSENTÉES Rose Mary BAB ITCH Fishing-Gear Word Formations: A Conceptual Analysis. Patricia BALCOM Making linguistics Accessible: Towards a Pedagogical Grammar of Unaccusativity. Katherine BARBER SIN and Jambusters: What makes a Canadian Dictionary (guest speaker/ Canadian? conférencière invitée) Catherine BODIN Français cadi en ou français louisianais? Karen CMPMAN The Identification of Human Vocal Emotion as a Function of Age. Sandra CLARKE Historical Evidence and the Verb System of Newfoundland Vernacular English. Annabel COHEN Drawing Connections Between Language and Him Music. Pierre CORMIER, La relation entre l’analyse auditive et la lecture chez des enfants D. LACROIX, & en immersion. L.COMEAU Lilian FALK The Case of Yiddish: Preservation or Revival. T errence GORDON Is McLuhan a Linguist? Patti GRAHAM & A Test of Auditory Sequential Processing in Children with Annabel COHEN Specific Language Impairment. Ruth KING & Sorting Out Morphosyntactic Variation in Prince Edward Terry NADASDI Island French: llie Importance of the linguistic Marketplace. David SCHMIDT Script Switching in Written Japanese. Carol STANLEY-THORNE Of What Use Linguistics Anyway? LézlôSZABÔ More Coincidental Similarities in Maliseet and Hungarian Grammar. There was also a round table discussion led by I II y a eu aussi une table ronde, animée par Patricia Balcom: “Linguistics Applied to Language Teaching”. Is the disorder in the House really disorder? Madeleine Allard Université Laval Is the disorder in the House really disorder? To answer this question, we must first discuss small talk - i.e., everyday discourse among a small number of interactants - and parliamentary discourse, which is based on a set agenda and involves a large number of interactants. Only then may the issue of disorder be addressed. Data and Methodology This paper is a byproduct of research on affiliation and disaffiliation markers such as desk-thumping and interjections. These serve to indicate not only the degree of listenership, but also agreement or disagreement We chose to study the proceedings of December 4, 1992 in the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick using the hypothesis that the number of disaffiliation markers would be high in a setting involving four parties and debate on a controversial language motion. The motion was introduced by the Liberal government, and proposes the inclusion in the Canadian Constitution of certain sections of “Bill 88” which recognizes the equality of status of both French and English communities. Several events led to the introduction of the motion: constitutional negotiations which reached an impasse following the Charlottetown Accord referendum in 1992, the rising popularity of the Confederation of Regions party (COR) and its subsequent status as Official Opposition, and the pressures exerted by the francophone community, which feared that a future COR government would repeal legislation. Before submission to the federal government, the motion had to be ratified provincially. The Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic parties, which together held fifty seats in the Legislative Assembly supported the motion, while eight COR members opposed it The views of all parties were known prior to the debate and it was public knowledge that the motion would pass. During a sitting of the Legislature, a number of items with specific interactional dynamics appear on the Order Paper. Each item is referred to as a speech event, “Oral questions” being the one most familiar to the general public. The speech events for the day in question fall into two major categories, those dealing with events that recur daily and involve a wide array of issues, with a total duration of two and a half hours, and those dealing solely with debate on the controversial language motion with a total duration of five and a half hours. Th study of interactions in a parliamentary setting applies the findings and approach of conversational analysis, with the help of audiovisual recordings and the Journal o f Debates (Hansard). Oral discourse Whatever the type of discourse, its basis is interaction, described by Goflman (19S9) as “the reciprocal influence of individuals upon one another’s actions when in one another’s imm^iat» physical presence” (p. IS). Communication is thus an interactional process whose construction and interpretation are based on the rules that apply to a given speech event, an event eliciting specific discourse of a semiotic nature, which encompasses verbal, non-veibal and paraverbal variables. Turn-taking The study of conversation involves an examination of its external structure, or turns at talking. Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) suggested that the turn-taking model is "locally managed, party- administered, interactionally controlled, and sensitive to recipient design” (p. 696). In essence, this means a single turn at a time, with a transition-relevance place - a juncture in the discourse where the hearer may take the floor - marking the beginning of the next turn. Turn size is dependent on the course of the current turn and the next one, with the parties in the conversation determining both turn order and turn size. Verbal discourse is conditional upon interactants, the topic at hand, ordering and obligations. The speech-tum model has three basic rules for what occurs at a transition-relevance place: the speaker may choose to keep his or her speech-tum, the speaker may select the next speaker, or the hearer may self-select The model highlights characteristics applicable to all speech events: there is only one speaker at the time, and mishaps, such as overlapping and interruptions, are normal occurrences. Small talk and parliamentary discourse both involve a number of constraints such as attention, or listenership, and speech-turas. The fewer the number of interactants, the higher the probability of their having to take the floor at some point. Thus, the hearer has to pay attention to what is being said, analyze the discourse and be ready to follow it up. This is in contrast to a situation where the probability of taking the floor is remote or inexistent, as at a religious ceremony or a political maartng, where the consequences of inattention are less noticeable and damaging as far as saving fece is concerned. (Goffinan, 1967). With a large number of interactants, the one who has the floor may find it difficult to assess the degree of listenership. (The usual term for this interactant is speaker, but since the term also refers to the member chairing the proceedings of the New Brunswick Legislature, we have deliberately avoided it). Reactions or markers provide cues to the interactant who has the floor and sensitivity to them may guide his of her choice to keep to the same tack or change course. The interactant who has the floor and the hearer as well must adopt specific interactional strategies germane to the setting, the former to sustain attention, the latter to show listenership. Smalltalk The turn-taking model which applies to small talk is a probabilistic one. While at the outset, all interactants are on an equal footing with respect to the allocation of potential speech-turns and their' duration, it is likely that some interactants will be favoured, discursively speaking Theoretically, one interactant has the floor and then relinquishes it or is “robbed” of his or her potential next turn. Other interactants are actively involved through the production of signals demonstrating that the oral discourse is being received and evaluated.