Selected Papers from NWAV 39
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09/13/2011
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Now showing 1 - 10 of 19
Publication A Study of Rhythm in London: Is Syllable-timing a Feature of Multicultural London English?(2011-01-01) Torgersen, Eivind; Szakay, AnitaRecent work on London English has found innovation in inner city areas, most likely as the outcome of dialect contact. These innovations are shared by speakers of different ethnic backgrounds, and have been identified as features of Multicultural London English (MLE). This study examines whether syllable timing is a feature of MLE, as work on rhythm shows that dialect and language contact may lead to varieties of English becoming more syllable-timed. We hypothesized that MLE speakers would also show suprasegmental innovations, having more syllable-timed rhythm than what has been reported for British English. Narratives as told by teenagers of different ethnic backgrounds, elderly speakers born between 1920 and 1935 and speakers born between 1874 and 1895 were extracted from interviews. The speech was segmented into consonantal and vocalic elements by forced phonemic alignment. Measurements of vocalic nPVI, as an indicator of rhythmic patterns, were calculated. Overall, the inner-London speakers were more syllable-timed than what has been found for British English. The results revealed that young speakers of non-Anglo background were significantly more syllable-timed than young Anglo speakers. The relatively low nPVI for all inner-London speaker groups may indicate the capital’s status as a centre of linguistic innovation and long-standing migration. The results of the present study combined with work on other varieties reinforces the idea that the tendency for English to become more syllable-timed is a global phenomenon fuelled by language and dialect contact.Publication Verbal -s in Vernacular Newfoundland English: A Combined Variationist and Formal Account of Grammatical Change(2011-01-01) Comeau, PhilipWhile most studies of generalised verbal –s report the effects of the Northern Subject Rule (subject type and adjacency between the subject and the verb condition verbal –s), work on this feature in Vernacular Newfoundland English (VNE) report a lack of NSR effects. Instead, verbal –s in VNE is associated with habitual aspect and verb stativity. This paper integrates generative and variationist approaches to account for variation and change in the VNE aspect system. Quantitative results confirm a change in progress: there is a decrease in overall rate of verbal –s and a change in constraints across apparent time. Older consultants’ use of verbal –s is constrained by both habituality and stativity while the middle-aged cohort’s system involves only verb stativity. Younger consultants show a different system within which particular adverbials favor verbal –s. Formally, since both habituals and statives are imperfective, I posit that verbal –s is an imperfective marker in this variety. The linguistic change can be accounted for under Minimalism by positing a change in the featural specification of the Aspect head from one which is intrinsically specified for the imperfective feature prior to syntax to one which must be bound by an operator, in this case, quantificational adverbials.Publication Back to Back: The Trajectory of an Old Borrowing(2011-01-01) King, RuthIn this paper I explore changes in varieties of North American French resulting from a) loss in productivity of the re- prefix in French; and b) availability of the English particle back in contact varieties. We see that addition of back to speakers’ repertoires is dependent upon social factors while its integration into the grammar of vernacular varieties may involve both semantic and syntactic reanalysis of the English lexical item. Under the right social conditions, back becomes a French aspectual adverb.Publication Wh-interrogatives in Brazilian Portuguese: The Influence of Common Ground(2011-01-01) Oushiro, LiviaThis paper analyzes the influence of common ground (Clark 1996, Stalnaker 2002) on the variable use of Wh-interrogatives in Brazilian Portuguese, in which four different structures are employed with semantic-pragmatic equivalence: (1) Onde você mora? (Where you live?); (2) Onde que você mora? (Where that you live?); (3) Onde é que você mora? (Where is-it that you live?); and (4) Você mora onde? (You live where?) ‘Where do you live?’. Two discourse-pragmatic factor groups are discussed, Type of Question (information, rhetorical, and semi-rhetorical) and Givenness of the Presupposition (when last activated in the conversation, if at all). Results of multivariate analyses contrasting wh-in-situ (4) with all other structures (1−3) show that wh-in-situ is favored by semi-rhetorical questions (.68), for which the current speaker provides an answer, which suggests that they may be part of a strategy for turn-keeping. Further, the more activated the presupposition (in one of the first two preceding clauses), the greater the tendency to employ wh-in-situ (.66). The main argument is that variation in the position of the wh-word is sensitive to the hic et nunc of conversation, as speakers make their conversational contributions and common ground is updated.Publication Discourse Like in Quebec English(2011-01-01) Kastronic, LauraThis study considers the spread of discourse like in Quebec English. Although several previous studies have examined the pragmatic functions and rate of use of like as a discourse marker, few consider its interaction with the syntactic structure and most focus solely on English-dominant communities. Thus, while D’Arcy (2005) has shown that this discourse feature is spreading systematically throughout the syntactic structure in apparent time in Toronto, it is unknown whether its evolution is as advanced in communities such as Quebec, where English is a minority language, isolated from mainstream varieties. We analyze the rate of use of discourse like in three distinct structural contexts (CP, DP, and vP) by 39 native English speakers from the Quebec English Corpus (Poplack, et al., 2006). Speakers from both Montreal and Quebec City were included in this study since the degree of isolation from mainstream English is arguably greater in the latter. Internal grammatical factors and external factors are also analyzed. The results show that while both Quebec City and Montreal speakers exhibit substantially lower rates than Toronto speakers in their use of like in each of the structural contexts examined, the internal conditioning of like in Quebec English is practically identical to that in Toronto English. These findings only partially support the hypothesis that these speakers’ isolation from mainstream English causes them to lag behind in ongoing change and highlight the complexity involved in the exploration of such a widespread and multifaceted phenomenon.Publication I Might Not Would Say That: A Sociolinguistic Study of Double Modal Acceptance(2011-01-01) Hasty, J. DanielWhile the double modal (e.g., I might could go to the store) is a well know feature of Southern United States English, most previous studies have focused mainly on explaining the double modal’s syntactic structure. With this focus on syntax these studies generally have used small and/or socially homogeneous samples; thus there we have little information about what social constraints might exist on double modal usage. Because the double modal is a relatively infrequently occurring syntactic form that does not alternate with another easily identifiable form, sociolinguistic methods of counting occurrences and non-occurrences in spontaneous speech are not adequate. In light of this, the present study utilized syntactic acceptability judgments to examine the effect of social factors on double modal acceptance in Northeast Tennessee. Age, gender, and educational level were found to significantly constrain respondents’ acceptance of double modal sentences. Age was the strongest predictor of acceptance with the youngest respondents the most accepting of double modal forms, followed by the oldest, and then the middle aged suggestive of possible age grading. Furthermore, men and respondents with less education were more likely to accept double modals than were women and respondents with more education; however, the gender and education effects hold only for the middle and old age groups. Thus, the young respondents are the most accepting and the most homogeneous group. This distribution supports a hypothesis that double modals are avoided by those who most value unmarked forms: adults in the prime years for employment. Planned future work including language attitude data will be beneficial in fully understanding the social distribution and perception of double modals.Publication Preface(2011-01-01) Tamminga, MeredithThe University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL) is an occasional series published by the Penn Linguistics Club. The series has included volumes of previously unpublished work, or work in progress, by linguists with an ongoing affiliation with the Department, as well as volumes of papers from NWAV and the Penn Linguistics Colloquium. This volume contains selected papers from NWAV 39, held from November 4-6, 2010 in San Antonio, TX at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Alphabetic thanks go to Claire Crawford, Aaron Ecay, Lauren Friedman, Kyle Gorman, Soohyun Kwon, Marielle Lerner, Laurel MacKenzie, and Hilary Prichard for help in editing. Since Vol. 14.2, PWPL has been an internet-only publication. Since Vol. 13.2, PWPL has been published both in print and online gratis via ScholarlyCommons@Penn. Due to the large number of hits these online papers have received, and the time and expense of managing a back catalog of PWPL volumes, the editorial committee decided in 2008 to cease print publication in favor of wider-scale free online dissemination. Please continue citing PWPL papers or issues as you would a print journal article, though you may also provide the URL of the manuscript. An example is below: Acton, Eric K. 2011. On Gender Differences in the Distribution of um and uh. U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 17.2: Selected Papers from NWAV 39, ed. M. Tamminga, 1-9. http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol17/iss2/2 Ultimately, the entire back catalog will be digitized and made available on ScholarlyCommons@Penn. Publication in the University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL) does not preclude submission of papers elsewhere; copyright is retained by the author(s) of individual papers. The PWPL editors can be contacted at: U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 619 Williams Hall, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104–6305 working-papers@ling.upenn.edu http://ling.upenn.edu/papers/pwpl.html Meredith Tamminga Issue EditorPublication Variation in the voseo and tuteo Negative Imperatives in Argentine Spanish(2011-01-01) Johnson, Mary; Grinstead, JohnAmong the many voseante countries in the Spanish-speaking world, there is much variation in the verb forms affected. Despite the use of the pronoun vos, some verb inflections may remain in the tu form, while others take the vos form. Argentine Spanish is a dialect that is mostly voseante, but includes an alternation between the negative imperative that comes from the tuteo and the voseo negative imperative. Previous studies have indicated that these alternating imperatives are accompanied by a difference in pragmatic meaning. The present study expands on the work that has already been done on the alternation found among these imperatives. Data is presented from an online survey with 151 native speakers of Argentine Spanish, and a multivariate analysis using Rbrul explores the degree to which the pragmatic difference is manifested through a variety of social variables including gender, age and geography. Results indicate that along with speaker effects, gender is the most relevant social factor governing the choice between negative imperatives in this variety.Publication Meaningful Variation and Bidirectional Change in Rural Child and Adolescent Language(2011-01-01) Habib, RaniaThis study investigates the spread of two urban features used in Syrian urban centers such as Damascus and Hims to the vernacular Arabic of non-migrant, rural children and adolescents who are residing in the Syrian village of Oyoun Al-Wadi. The first of the two features is the spread of the urban glottal stop in place of the rural voiceless uvular stop. The second is the spread of the low back vowel [a] in place of the rural mid front vowel [e]. The study shows that linguistic change in this village is moving in two opposing directions. Girls continue to use their initially acquired mothers’ urban features in their adolescent years, whereas boys who initially acquired and used their mothers’ urban features start to switch to the village features around the age of eight and increase their use of these features with age. The study also shows that the observed variation and changes result from the different meanings associated with the urban and rural sounds under investigation, and that these variation and changes are gender- and age-related. In addition, the study shows that the youth’s emotional involvement in building a social identity starts in pre-adolescence, which indicates early sociolinguistic maturity and competence in kids.Publication On Gender Differences in the Distribution of um and uh(2011-01-01) Acton, Eric K.While the so-called “fillers” um and uh share a great deal in the way of interpretation, association, and usage, they are far from perfect substitutes. Previous corpus research, focusing primarily on British English, has identified a number of social and discursive factors with which filler usage can vary, including pause length and position in an utterance and speaker age, gender, and social class (Rayson et al. 1997, Clark and Fox Tree 2002, Tottie 2011, inter alia). Building on such research, the present paper investigates social variation in the use of um and uh in the United States. In particular, the paper documents the results of two corpus-based investigations of women’s and men’s usage of um and uh demonstrating that, among the speakers represented in the corpora, women on the aggregate had a far higher ratio of um tokens to uh tokens (um/uh ratio) than did men. The first of the two corpora examined is a collection of 992 transcripts from three speed-dating events held for graduate students at an American university in 2005. In this corpus, women’s average um/uh ratio is more than 3.5 times that of men. An analysis of gendered filler usage in the Switchboard Corpus (SWBC) yields a similar result: women’s average um/uh ratio in the SWBC is more than 2.5 times that of men. Data from the SWBC likewise suggest that this general trend persists across age groups and major U.S. dialect regions and, furthermore, tends to hold for speakers regardless of the gender of their interlocutors. The SWBC also provides evidence suggesting that um is gaining currency relative to uh; i.e., that there is a linguistic change in progress whereby the use of um relative to uh is on the rise. It is noted that not all men and women in the corpora exhibit filler usage in line with the aggregate-level trends, and that gendered linguistic differentiation should not be assumed to be a direct reflection of gender per se (Eckert 1989). A thorough understanding of the dynamics of gender and filler usage calls for an examination of the meanings and associations of um and uh and of speakers’ stances, objectives, and relation to their social world.