Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Language Description and Documentation Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Language Description and Documentation

Redefining Nairobi's Streets: Study Of Slang, Marginalization, And Identity, Mungai Mutonya Jun 2010

Redefining Nairobi's Streets: Study Of Slang, Marginalization, And Identity, Mungai Mutonya

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

This study attempts an analysis of a restructured Swahili variety spoken by Nairobi's street community: Kinoki. Adapting tools of sociolinguistic inquiry and focusing on Kinoki's divergence from the dominant urban slang, Sheng, the study discusses attitudes toward divergent terms referencing the street community, street activities, and law enforcement officials. Results indicate that street children, unlike their school-going peers living in the city's low-income neighborhoods, redefine pejoratives that devalue and stigmatize street people and their lifestyle. Instead, Kinoki empowers the marginalized community to construct a positive identity, to ameliorate representations of street lifestyle, and to redefine neologisms that reference in-group ( …


Avatime Noun Classes, Ronny C. Watkins May 2010

Avatime Noun Classes, Ronny C. Watkins

Linguistics Honors Projects

Like many African languages, particularly Bantu languages, the Ghanaian language of Avatime organizes its nouns into a class system. Noun classes use affixes to indicate semantic category. For example, many languages with noun classes have a class for ‘people’ nouns, such as ‘child’ and ‘stranger.’ Previous research on Avatime has postulated between seven and nine classes. The current study is based on original field work done in the village of Vane in Ghana. The new data show that Avatime has seven noun classes, distinguished by singular and plural prefixes, definite article suffixes, and semantic similarities.


Language Choice Of Bidayuh Graduates In Kuching-Samarahan Division., Norazuna Norahim Apr 2010

Language Choice Of Bidayuh Graduates In Kuching-Samarahan Division., Norazuna Norahim

Student Works (2010-2019)

This dissertation describes the language choice patterns of Bidayuh graduates in an urban setting. It demonstrates the interaction between macro-sociological modifications with changes in language choice patterns of the Bidayuh community, an ethnic minority located in East Malaysia. The motivation for the study is driven by the need to ascertain the direction of the changing language choice patterns of its community members, and the extent to which it is threatening the position of the mother tongue. Despite having a population of approximately 170,000 speakers, the Bidayuh language displays characteristics of a “threatened” language. The proximity of the Bidayuh speech community …


Perbandingan Pengujaran Kata-Kata Dua Subdialek Terengganu., Rusidah Abdul Wahab Mar 2010

Perbandingan Pengujaran Kata-Kata Dua Subdialek Terengganu., Rusidah Abdul Wahab

Student Works (2010-2019)

This is a study on the variation at utterances of residents in Kampung Surau Panjang and Kampung Atas Tol in Mukim Pengadang Buluh, located in Daerah Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, and effects of social interaction on the sound change of their utterances using comparative approach. It is found that final vowel phoneme /a/ in Terengganu dialect (or /au/ in Standard Malay) corresponds with /ɔ/ in Kampung Surau Panjang and /a/ in Kampung Atas Tol. The difference can be attributed to social interaction from the aspects of age, education and economic status of respondents. Sound shift was observed to be predominant in …


Applicative Constructions In Shipibo-Konibo (Panoan), Pilar Valenzuela Jan 2010

Applicative Constructions In Shipibo-Konibo (Panoan), Pilar Valenzuela

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

This article provides a detailed, typologically informed treatment of applicative constructions in Shipibo-Konibo, a Panoan language from Peruvian Amazonia. Shipibo-Konibo has three applicative suffixes: affective (i.e., benefactive or malefactive), dedicated malefactive, and associative. These applicative types are rather common cross-linguistically and hence the language cannot be said to be particularly rich either in terms of number or kinds of applicative constructions. Nevertheless, the Shipibo-Konibo system exhibits certain points of special interest such as the interplay between transitivity and the different applicative construction types, which include a restriction on the dedicated malefactive to combine with transitive verbs only, and the almost …