Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Coffee, Please?: Sociolinguistic Influences On Politeness Strategies In Making Requests, Amy Burbee

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

In this paper I look at the extent to which factors of gender and context influence linguistic features such as hedging and syntax in indirect requests. I analyzed different features of indirect speech used by participants. I selected a few scenarios that focused on different social aspects where requests would be needed. Responses from men and women were compared to see if the gender of the speaker had any effect on the linguistic features used.

The Postposition 'Bok' In The Arara Language, Shirley De 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 que escaseaban de …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

Syntactic Underspecification In Riau Indonesian, Brendon Yoder

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

Indonesian is known for having a relatively simple morphological and syntactic structure. This is especially true of local varieties of the language, where contrast between categories found in Standard Indonesian is neutralized. In the Indonesian variety spoken in Riau Province, there is almost no morphological marking of grammatical categories and there is relatively free word order. Gil (1994, 2003, 2005b) develops a theory of Riau Indonesian grammar that has only one open grammatical category, which he calls S (Sentence). This means that there are no distinctions between categories like noun, verb, and adjective and no basic word order. In this …

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 …

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.

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.

Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Homeschoolers: Sociocultural Motivation And Approach, Elizabeth S. Parks

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

Research on the education of deaf and hard of hearing students has largely ignored homeschooling as an option that parents are choosing, yet thousands of parents across America are pulling their children from more traditional school placements to educate their children at home. This is a pilot study of 21 parents, investigating through questionnaires their backgrounds, motivations for homeschooling, methods of constructing their school environment, communication preferences, and the socialization that occurs for their children. Results show that while homeschooler demographics and approaches vary, there are similarities among their motivations and approaches to providing their children with socialization and interaction …

The Implications Of Language Documentation For An Endangered But Vibrant Language Community: A Historical Perspective, Stephen A. Marlett

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

Documentation of an endangered language may be a short project that is carried out with urgency and with primarily academic benefits because the speakers are not passing on the language to others. This paper presents historical perspective on a quite different kind of situation. The documentation of the Seri language has taken place over a considerable period of time and with goals that were primarily community-focused. It documents some of the challenges that have been present during those years and also the benefits of that documentation that are just now beginning to be felt by the speakers of that language.

Do The Talysh And Tat Languages Have A Future In Azerbaijan?, John M. Clifton

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

Tat and Talysh are two less-widely-used Iranian languages indigenous to Azerbaijan. Sociolinguistic research revealed that both languages are being displaced in some communities but coexist with Azerbaijani in others. Factors contributing to these differences include isolation, ethnic diversity, and economic opportunity. One other factor contributing to displacement is a desire to see children excel in school. This could well be the most important factor breaking transmission from one generation to the next. In light of this, it is important to document the language and culture while they are vital.

Issues In Sign Language Translation, With Special Reference To Bible Translation, Mark Penner

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

Sign Language (SL) translation is a field of growing interest to major groups involved in translation, but many SL translation projects are encountering difficulties. In examining these, I argue that the Deaf community occupies a unique sociolinguistic context as it relates to translation, and that this makes Deaf ownership of translation projects and training of Deaf people a high priority. I then look at three other salient issues in SL translation: personnel, exegesis, and the question of signing style, offering tentative solutions. In addition, I suggest that projects might benefit from: 1) engaging in discourse studies early in the SL …

Optimality Theory And Ethical Decision Making, Steve Parker, Mónica Parker

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

Optimality Theory (OT) is a formal linguistic model in which grammars consist of a universal set of violable constraints that are ranked in a language-particular hierarchy. Lower-ranked constraints are often forcibly violated in order to improve satisfaction of higher-ranked constraints. The optimal or most harmonic pronunciation of a given word is that output candidate which best fulfills the language-specific ranking for a selected input form.

In this paper we show how OT can be invoked and efficaciously applied to the task of moral decision making in those situations when two or more principles conflict. For example, Christians are expected to …

Names Of Plants In Kalam Kohistani (Pakistan), Joan L.G. Baart, Esther L. Baart-Bremer, Muhammad Zaman Sagar

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

This paper presents a preliminary ethnobotanical lexicon of plant names in the Kalam Kohistani language, spoken in the mountainous north of Pakistan. The list includes 203 Kalam Kohistani plant lexemes, with their English and Urdu glosses; 137 of these are tentatively identified with their Latin scientific names. Many of the glosses include brief notes on the occurrence and local uses of the plants. The paper ends with an index of 116 English common plant names with their Kalam Kohistani equivalents, followed by an index of scientific names.

Thirty Endangered Languages In The Philippines, Thomas N. Headland

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

There are 6,809 languages spoken in the world today. Conservative estimates are that the world's languages are currently dying at the rate of at least two languages each month, and linguists predict that most of today's languages will die out in the next 100 years. Since 1962, the author has been gathering field data on some of the smallest language groups in the world-the Philippine Negritos. This paper will explain why the thirty-plus Negrito languages in the Philippines are endangered, and what the projected future is for these numerically tiny post-foraging societies in the 21st century. The argument will be …

Lexical Comparisons Of Signed Languages And The Effects Of Iconicity, Stephen J. Parkhurst, Dianne Parkhurst

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

Lexical comparisons of signed languages present new methodological challenges not found in comparisons of spoken languages. Two standards for comparing wordlists are examined using a sample of four European sign languages that are not known to be related to each other and a second sample of different dialects of the signed languages of Spain. The use of different standards is shown to affect the numerical results; comparing signs on the basis of probable historical relatedness typically yields percentages that are 5-10% greater than comparisons on the basis of similarity. The amount of iconicity inherent in signed languages affects the wordlist …

Evidence That Demands A Verdict?, David J. Weber

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

Source—Meaning—Receptor (SMR) theories of translation, such as "dynamic equivalence" and "meaning-based" theories, shifted focus from the equivalence of FORM to the equivalence of MEANING. SMR theories were a significant advance and have been the basis for many modern English translations.

However, SMR theories were formulated when the dominant theory of communication was the code model. Consequently they presumed that meaning was determined almost entirely by a text (utterance) itself. This theory is now rejected in favor of theories that understand interpretation as the inferential product of the interaction of the text with (mind-mediated) context. These newer theories shift the focus …

An Analysis Of It-Clefts Within A Role And Reference Grammar Framework, Emma Pavey

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

The it-cleft construction (e.g. "It was Bill that I saw") is generally accepted to be a marked syntactic bi-clausal option which expresses a simple semantic proposition; in terms of information structure, the construction places an element in focus position, within a copular matrix clause. This element receives an exhaustive interpretation; that is, in the case of (1), it is Bill, and only Bill, that was seen. These clefts lack a straightforward mapping between their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic structures and as a result are a prime construction to illustrate the advantages of Role and Reference Grammar which is able to …

Positive Orientation Towards The Vernacular Among The Talysh Of Sumgayit, Calvin F. Tiessen

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

This thesis looks at the identification of positive vernacular orientation in the Talysh community of the city of Sumgayit, Azerbaijan, for the purpose of gaining a greater understanding of its causes. Positive vernacular orientation is described in three areas of sociolinguistic behaviour: patterns of vernacular language use, vernacular language proficiency and frequency of vernacular-speaking individuals in social networks. Variation in vernacular orientation is shown to pattern itself according to differences in generation and time of arrival or birth in Sumgayit.

Can [Sonorant] Spread?, Kenneth S. Olson, Paul H. Schultz

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

This paper presents empirical evidence for the spread of the feature [sonorant], based on data from Bilaala (Nilo-Saharan, Chad). The analysis assumes that this feature is a dependent of the root node rather than part of the root node (as previously assumed). An alternative analysis, involving the spread of the feature [nasal], is shown to be inferior to one in which [sonorant] spreads.

The Structural Status Of Bora Classifiers, David J. Weber

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

I claim that Bora classifiers have the structural status of (bound) nouns, based on facts like the following:

• Some classifiers also occur as independent nouns (possibly with minor phonological differences).
• Classifiers have the referential properties typical of nouns. Like typical nominals, they denote classes of objects and may refer to a member of the class they denote. They are never used to attribute properties to another referring expresssion.
• Classifiers have the distribution typical of nouns: they may be a clausal subject, they may be modified by a relative clause, they may have a prepositional complement, and so forth.

And classifiers …

Writing Gojri: Linguistic And Sociolinguistic Constraints On A Standardized Orthography For The Gujars Of South Asia, Wayne E. Losey

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

This study presents descriptions of the phonology and morphology of the two major dialects of Gojri spoken in Pakistan, and compares them with the Gojri spoken in Punch District of Indian-administered Kashmir. In light of this comparative data and the implications for Gojri-to- Urdu literacy, it evaluates various orthographic conventions currently used by leading writers and institutions. It explores Urdu-based spellings which are linguistically sound and otherwise conducive to transitional literacy, and which lend themselves to orthographic standardization across the east-west dialect continuum. It also includes an extended treatment of the challenge of representing Gojri tone.

This study will provide …