Linguistics Commons^™

Generative Linguistics And Neural Networks At 60: Foundation, Friction, And Fusion, Joe Pater

Joe Pater

Slurs And Register: A Case Study In Meaning Pluralism, Justina Diaz-Legaspe, Chang Liu, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

Transnational Vietnamese: Language Practices, New Literacies, And Redefinition Of The ‘American Dream’, Nguyen Dao

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

The research focuses on the transnational literacy and language practices of a Vietnamese immigrant family in Midwestern United States. Drawing upon multiple bodies of contemporary research and conceptual frameworks, this investigation intends to go beyond transnational movements to indicate the complex nature of bi-literate, bilingual and bi-cultural development and the role of national and supranational ideologies in such process, as well as to describe how the Vietnamese diaspora have mobilized their identities and in so doing, redefined the provoking term ‘the American Dream’.

Multilingualism In Counselor Education And Human Services Professionals: Implications For A New Training Paradigm, Roberto Swazo, Dorota Celinska

Michigan Journal of Counseling: Research, Theory and Practice

This study analyzes the relationships among the three distinct levels of language and cultural-linguistic professional competences. A total of 483 participants from three U.S. and one Central American university representing the fields of counseling, social work, family services, and psychology were surveyed. The results suggest that there is a large multilingual training deficit among human service providers in the U.S. Training programs need to make curricular revisions to include bi/multilingual training consistent with multilingual clientele. Recommendations for culturally-embedded and non-native language use are provided to increase cultural-linguistic competences among counselor education trainees.

Gendered Identity And Investment In Language Learning: A Case Study Of Heritage Spanish Speakers, Farah Ali

Friday Forum

Much of the existing research in second and heritage language acquisition (S/HLA) takes a traditional approach of focusing on the cognitive processes involved in S/HLA, as well as the resulting outcomes. A relatively recent approach that has emerged in S/HLA scholarship, however, relates the learner to the social world in terms of how sociocultural contexts may shape an individual’s language learning experiences and their personal investment in the process. This emergent approach also challenges traditional categorical conceptions of identity, positing that it is dynamic, fluid, constructed, and negotiated in social contexts. Following this approach, my objective ...

Troping The Enemy: Metaphor, Culture, And The Big Data Black Boxes Of National Security, Robert Albro

Secrecy and Society

This article considers how cultural understanding is being brought into the work of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), through an analysis of its Metaphor program. It examines the type of social science underwriting this program, unpacks implications of the agency’s conception of metaphor for understanding so-called cultures of interest, and compares IARPA’s to competing accounts of how metaphor works to create cultural meaning. The article highlights some risks posed by key deficits in the Intelligence Community's (IC) approach to culture, which relies on the cognitive linguistic theories of George Lakoff and colleagues. It also explores ...

The Postposition Bok In The Arara Language, Shirley Souza

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

In languages, the category of adpositions typically comprises a small class of morphemes that serve to locate one entity, the 'trajector', with reference to another entity, the 'landmark' within three-dimensional space. Adpositions tend to be highly polysemous. In this paper I consider the postposition bok in the Arara language. This postposition has a variety of disparate usages. My goal is to show how the meanings illustrated by these usages are related within a network.

Indus Kohistani Dictionary: Body Parts, Bodily Processes, Sickness And Medicine, Beate Lubberger

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

This paper contributes to the description of the Indus Kohistani language of Pakistan by presenting a list of terms—along with their English glosses—that are used in this language to refer to body parts, bodily processes, sickness and medicine.

Hiding Your Emotions In Plain Sight: Differences Between Real Anger And Feigned Anger In Japanese Girls' Speech, Aidan Aannestad

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

This paper demonstrates the use of non-denotative meaning markers as a way of indicating a speaker’s emotional state. Japanese has a number of such markers, and they pattern differently according to the speaker’s emotion; creating distinctions between speech acts under various emotional circumstances. This paper examines the dialogue of three fictional characters from Japanese television and demonstrates visible differences in their speech patterns between real anger and feigned anger.

Un Viaje En Cayuco Para Pedir Ayuda: Presentación De Un Texto En Fa D’Ambô, Jaime Raúl Calderón Calderón, Alfonsina Gómez Martínez, Stephen A. Marlett, Nydia Morales Castillo, Kristian Roncero Toledo, Bernardino Tomé Catalán, Rubén Van Bemmelen

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Se presenta un texto en la lengua fa d’Ambô, ISO 639-3 [fab], lengua criolla basada en el portugués con muy poca documentación, originaria de la isla de Annobón. Situada en el Golfo de Guinea, la isla pertenece a Guinea Ecuatorial. El texto es el resumen de la crónica de un viaje riesgoso hecho a principios de los años setenta del siglo XX. Se relata cómo unos hombres decidieron hacerse a la mar para poder llegar a la costa continental africana, así como la odisea que vivieron. El motivo de este viaje era la urgencia de conseguir alimentos ...

The Abd Of Orthography Testing: Practical Guidelines, Elke Karan

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Developing an orthography for a previously unwritten language may prove to be more of a challenge than anticipated. Orthography testing can help field workers and the speech community identify issues which warrant special attention. Subsequent testing will reveal whether or not various factors have been taken into consideration and challenges overcome. Findings might indicate that the orthography functions well or that it requires additional thought, revision, and /or additional testing.

Few how-to helps on orthography testing exist. Drawing from various resources, the author provides practical guidelines and resources for field workers who are planning to engage in orthography testing activities.

The Minimal Word In Seri, Stephen A. Marlett

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Data are presented in support of the claim that the minimal word and minimal root in Seri must be bimoraic. The bimoraicity condition may be met by rhymes that are heavy in more than one way.

The Abd Of Orthography Testing: Integrating Formal Or Informal Testing Into The Orthography Development Process, Elke Karan

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Developing an orthography for a previously unwritten language or reforming an existing writing system is a complex process. It calls for consideration of all the factors that play into the process and sensitivity to stakeholder expectations. The desired outcomes are acceptance of the orthography by intended users, ease of learning, and general efficiency. Integrating evaluation processes and testing events into the orthography development process and making appropriate adjustments based on the findings will maximize chances of attaining those outcomes.

This article provides a rationale for orthography testing and recommendations for what to test and who to test. It includes a ...

Dialects, Orthography And Society, John M. Clifton

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

While there is broad consensus that both linguistic and non-linguistic factors play a role in orthography, there is disagreement as to the relative weight played by the two sets of factors. In this paper, I present case studies from four languages, two from Papua New Guinea and two from Bangladesh, in which orthography interacts with dialectal differences. In two of the studies, orthography is used to show the unity of the communities, while in the other two it is used to establish separate identities. This interaction of orthography and group identity follows naturally from the claim that orthography is primarily ...

A Relevance-Based Analysis Of Two Multifunctional Discourse Particles: Indus Kohistani Hum And –Ãĩ, Beate Lubberger

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Relevance theory claims that words encode different types of meaning: concepts or procedures. Within this framework, discourse connectors are understood as encoding procedural instructions for the inferential part of utterance comprehension. This analysis allows for a unitary account of particles with seemingly diverse functions. Following Blass (1990) in her study of Sissala ma, English also and German auch, I examine the two discourse particles hum and –ãĩ of Indus Kohistani, a language spoken in Northern Pakistan. Both of them encode procedural meaning in that they exclude backwards contradiction as a possible way of utterance interpretation, but allow backwards confirmation and ...

Corrections To And Clarifications Of The Seri Data In Greenberg & Ruhlen's An Amerind Etymological Dictionary, Stephen A. Marlett

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Seri data have been included in comparative studies of Native American languages of North America, especially those that relate to the putative Hokan family and the putative Amerind family. Since the publication in recent years of much more analyzed Seri data, including those found in the 2005 dictionary, it is important to reassess the data that has been used in earlier comparative studies. This paper examines the data included in Greenberg & Ruhlen's (2007) An Amerind Etymological Dictionary, corrects mistakes and clarifies the data generally.

The Seris And The Comcaac: Sifting Fact From Fiction About The Names And Relationships, Stephen A. Marlett

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

This paper discusses the names that have been used in the literature for the Seri people and the language that they speak, including meanings of those names. It also sorts through proposals that have been made for the relationship of their language to other languages. These topics are presented from a historical perspective so that a non-specialist can understand the facts and see the reasons for the confusion.

Isthmus Zapotec Vowel Formants, Julie Martin

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

This paper addresses several questions regarding the acoustic properties of Isthmus Zapotec vowels. Based on earlier recordings of a female, mother-tongue speaker of the language, average formant frequencies for each of the five phonemic vowels are determined for this speaker. I then look at differences in formant frequencies between stressed and unstressed modal vowels. Finally, I compare modal, laryngealized and checked productions of the vowels, to see if there are systematic differences between these three phonation types.

Prenasalization And Trilled Release Of Two Consonants In Nias, Brendon Yoder

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

This paper presents an acoustic study of the phonetic realization of two consonants in Nias (Indonesia), orthographically represented as mb and ndr. These consonants have been analyzed by Catford (1988) and Brown (2001, 2005) as a bilabial trill and an apical trill, respectively. My own cross-dialectal observations indicate that these consonants have multiple realizations in each dialect. This paper presents evidence for four broad phonetic realizations of both mb and ndr: most commonly a plain stop, but also a prenasalized stop, a stop with trilled release, and stop with fricated release. It seems that the variable character of the two ...

Round Vowel And Dorsal Consonant Epenthesis In Seri, Stephen A. Marlett

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Recent work on markedness has claimed that round vowels and dorsal consonants are never epenthesized. However, Seri seems to present exactly these types of epenthesis. Relevant data are presented and discussed, and it is claimed that these rules are valid counterexamples that need to be taken into consideration more seriously.