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UTASCILT 18

The 18th

Annual UT Arlington Student Conference in Linguistics and TESOL

March 3-4, 2011, The University of Texas at Arlington

Presentation Abstracts

Sa'a Event Structures: Variations on a 'Thematic' C

Karen Ashley, GIAL

Typological Rara (and Rarissima) in Khevsur and Tush

Thomas Wier, University of Chicago

Syntactic Deviation in Partially Schematic Constructions: A corpus-based

approach to COME/GET to V2 constructions in English

Nicholas Lester, UNT

A corpus-based examination of repluralized pronouns in Tuvan

Vitaly Voinov, UT Arlington

First Conjunct Agreement: A Feature-Driven Analysis (Withdrawn)

Feras Saeed, English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad

The Role of Givenness in Swahili Reciprocal Constructions

Mohamed Mwamzandi, UT Arlington

The Problem of the Second Person Plural Pronoun in English

Elizabeth Weinrich, BaylorUniversity

Circumscribing Matched Guise Technique‘s potential: geographical origin

as a prejudice trigger

Laura Di Ferrante & Sergio Pizziconi, Texas A&M Commerce

Speech Acts or the prototypes of speech acts. An application of the Total

Cognitive Response (ToCoRe) to TESOL

Sergio Pizziconi, Texas A&M Commerce

From knowing ―one‖ to ―two‖: evidence for self-initiated early correct use

of ―two‖

Felix Wang, Dartmouth College

The Acquisition of English Past Tense by Junior High School Students in

Taiwan (Withdrawn)

Kuan-Ming Edward Teng, National Tsing Hua University

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The Aspect Hypothesis and the Acquisition of L2 Japanese Tense and

Aspect by English Native Speakers (Withdrawn)

Kyoko Tomikura, CSU Northridge

The effect of computer-mediated communication (CMC) interaction on

L2 vocabulary acquisition: A comparison study of CMC interaction and

face-to-face interaction

Ju-Young Lee, UT Arlington

Investigating the Missing of the Indefinite Article and Copula be in the

production skills of Iraqi Learners of English

Inam Ismael Taher Al-Shaibani, Diyala University

Poster Abstracts

Wh-domains and optional wh-movement in Jarai

Joshua Jensen, UT Arlington

The Intonation of Declarative and Interrogative Sentences in Akan

Charlotte Fofo Lomotey, Texas A&M Commerce

Nonnative Speakers and Conventional Expressions within the Apology

Speech Act

Toni Taherzadeh, Texas A&M Commerce

Orthographic choices for Lamkang

Ryan Hamilton, UNT

―A shroe! A shroe! My dingkome for a shroe!‖: Compensation strategies

for comprehension in an unconventional speech of Monty Python

Audrey C. Adams, Texas A&M Commerce

‗Doing Gender‘ for Laughs: Discourse Analysis of Comedic Sketches

of Gender Performance from 1970 – 2010

Katherine Bell, Tulane University

The Proto-form of Bagobo (Tagabawa), Mandaya, Manobo, Sama and

Davao Sebuano (Withdrawn)

Peter Jon L. Mendoza, Mindanao State University

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Sa'a Event Structures: Variations on a 'Thematic' C

Karen Ashley

Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics

ABSTRACT

Many Oceanic languages have two suffixes which attach to transitive verbs before an object

marker is added: -(C)i and -(C)akini, where C is a variable consonant chosen from a limited set.

Historical studies refer to these consonants as 'thematic', explaining the variation as a reanalysis

of original root-final consonants. However, such an explanation does not adequately account for

roots occurring with more than one C variant in the same language. These examples indicate that

the consonants are more than just empty fossils. Several attempts have been made to explain the

variants in terms of semantic groupings, but the proposed groups are limited in scope and do not

serve to explain why close synonyms can occur in different semantic groups with different

consonants. While there is evidence in Polynesian languages that the consonants are gradually

shifting towards a single default consonant, other Oceanic languages have no single consonant

that is statistically dominant.

In the Sa'a language the consonants also occur in nominalizers with the form -Ca. In the

nominalizer environment there are many sets of minimal pairs and even triplets which allow

clear meaning differences to be discerned. I show that while these differences are subtle, they

carry over to the verbal environments, where they often distinguish changes in the structure or

lexical aspect of the event from what is indicated by the bare root. The resulting derived verbs

are frequently applied in culturally specific ways, which may result in glosses which do not seem

to overtly indicate a change in event structure or aspect.

In this paper I show that the consonants should be considered as separate morphemes, each with

a unique meaning indicating event structure, aspect, and/or participant involvement. If the

consonants are morphemes in their own right, both of the so-called suffixes should more properly

be called suffix sequences. The Sa'a consonant meanings have explanatory value for

constructions cognate to puzzling examples from other Oceanic languages. Perhaps the results

found in Sa'a will prompt other researchers in the Oceanic family to consider aspectual and event

structure functions for the 'thematic' consonants in the verbal suffix sequences.

Examples

(1) Caused achievement: ha'a-siho 'to cause to descend

Oto kire dau huni ha'a-siho=a iiola aa-na haka,

then 3PL do to CAUS-descend=3S canoe PREP-3S ship

'Then they tried to lower the ship's canoe.'

(2) Caused activity: ha'-siho-l=i 'to do the activity of causing something to descend

Oto ko ha'a-siho-l=i=e mola mwala na mo ola ikire

then IMPV CAUS-descend-ACT=LOC=3s merely people and PL.ART things

3PL.POSS

'So it (the ship) was just unloading the people and their things.'

(3) Activity: uusu-l-e-'i-n=i 'to do the activity of pushing to'

E uusu-l-e-'i-n=i=e mola iiola ingeie.

3S push-ACT-NMLZ-ATTR-APPL=LOC=3S merely canoe 3SG.POSS

‗He just poled his canoe.‘

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(4) Achievement: uusu-ng-e-'i-n=i 'to do a pushing event to'

Pwaapwaa e uusu-ng-e-'i-n=i=e kele mwela huni toli

dunge.

Grandma 3S push-EV-NMLZ-ATTR-APPL=LOC=3S DIM child to bring fire

‗Grandma sent a little child to bring fire.‘

References

Arms, David. 1973. Whence the Fijian transitive endings? Oceanic Linguistics 12.503-58.

Clark, Ross. 1977. Eastern Oceanic transitive suffixes and the genesis of rules. Paper presented

at the Austronesian Symposium, Linguistic Society of America Institute, University of

Hawaii.

Evans, Bethwyn. 2003. A study of valency-changing devices in Proto Oceanic. No. 539.

Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Hale, Kenneth. 1973. Deep-surface canonical disparities in relation to analysis and change: An

Australian example. Current trends in linguistics, ed. by Thomas Sebeok. Vol. 11. The

Hague: Mouton.

Lichtenberk, Frantisek. 2001. On the morphological status of thematic consonants in two

Oceanic languages. Issues in Austronesian morphology: A focusschrift for Byron W.

Bender, ed. by Joel Bradshaw and Kenneth L. Rehg, 123-147. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross and Terry Crowley. 2002. The Oceanic languages. Richmond:

Curzon Press.

Pawley, Andrew. 1973. Some problems in Proto-Oceanic grammar. Oceanic Linguistics 12.103-

188.

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Typological Rara (and Rarissima) in Khevsur and Tush

Thomas Wier

University of Chicago

ABSTRACT

Khevsur and Tush are endangered highly divergent dialects (perhaps separate languages)

of Georgian spoken in eastern Georgia near the border with Chechnya and Ingushetia in the

Russian Federation. They are interesting for a number of reasons, not least among which the

intimate and not fully understood contact they have long had with Nakh-Daghestanian languages

that lie north of the Caucasus Mountains. However, in this talk we will show from a new

dialectological corpus being produced that this question of language contact is also connected to

a number of highly unusual grammatical features: unusual forms of question formation, ditropic

(aka Klavans type five) clitics, degrammaticalization and case-stacking.

In terms of question formation, Standard Georgian [SG] is relatively well-behaved: a

dedicated preverbal focus position operates for both single (1a) and multiple (1b) wh-questions.

Also unexceptional is the animacy restriction in (1c): animates usually precede inanimates

(Harris 1981). It has been claimed (e.g. Chomsky 1973 and many in that tradition) that question

formation is subject to a .superiority condition., under which this generalization is a hard and

fast rule. Khevsur and Tush texts show this is only a statistical truth even within Kartvelian: as

in (2), taken from a corpus, inanimates can indeed precede animates even in triple wh-formations

Much more interesting than statistical rara are true rarissima such as ditropic clitics

(Cysouw to appear) which have actually degrammaticalized from their original word internal

position as prefixes situated between the preverb and verb root and now can freely suffix to

preceding material serving as focal particles, even though they grammatical modify the

following material, as in (3). Because we have access to Old Georgian texts, we know exactly

what was possible in the ancestral dialect of Khevsur and Tush: as with modern SG, the prefixes

could not separate from the verb. What is most interesting is that these clitics show similarities

to Udi endoclitics (Harris 2002) and some constructions in Chechen (Good 2003) and Ingush

(Peterson 2001). Such constructions have also been claimed not to exist (Marantz 1988) and are

certainly cross-linguistically much harder to find. This fact suggests that the local clustering of

ditropicity might be an areal feature.

Another construction that shows possible influence from Nakh-Daghestanian languages

is the particular kind of case-stacking seen in Khevsur and Tush is as in (4). Although Old (and

to a limited extent modern) Georgian did show Suffixaufnahme in which genitival nouns must

agree with their head noun, such genitives rarely if ever functioned as arguments of verbs. In

Khevsur and Tush, on the other hand, Suffixaufnahme properly speaking has been lost, but

instead semantically recipient arguments may be marked with both genitive and adverbial case.

The interest here lies in the fact that Nakh-Daghestanian languages often build oblique cases on

particular oblique stems of the form [ROOT]-[OBL]-[CASE] . the .obliqueness. can actually be

segmented out, as in Lak. This talk will argue that centuries of bilingualism resulted in rather

deep contact of ND languages on Khevsur and Tush using indigenous morphological resources.

(1) a. ra-s a-k.et-eb-s (*ras)

what-DAT PRV-do-TH-3SG

b. vin ra-s a-k.et-eb-s

who.NOM what-DAT PRV-do-TH-3SG

―Who is doing what?‖

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c. *ra-s vin a-k.et-eb-s

what-DAT who.NOM PRV-do-TH-3SG

―Who is doing what?‖

(2) .em-tan-it ro c.a-xv-av, rom ra-s vin vis

1SG-with-INST if PVB-roll.up-TH that what-DAT who.NOM who.DAT

s-tx-ov-d-as=av

3-ask-TH-IMPF-3SG=QUOT

―If you will roll it up for me so that whatever anyone asks of anyone…‖

(3) .em-s ga-mdidr-eb-ul-eb-s m-txov-ar-a-eb-s=tana=.

my-DAT PVB-rich-TH-PART-PL-DAT PART-ask-PART-?-PL-DAT=at=2

c.a-vid-a=v

PVB-go.OPT-OPT2=QUOT

―You should come to those who have asked [to be?] among those made wealthy.‖

(4) peqh-t ra-s .a-v-i-c-om-d-i=v?‖ u-tkv-am-is

foot-DAT.PL what-DAT PVB-1-PRV-fall-TH-IMPF-1/2IMPF=QUOT PRV-say-TH-3SG

memcxvar-is-ad

shepherd-GEN-ADV

―How could I fall flat on my feet?‖ he says to the shepherd.‖

References

Chomsky, Noam. 1973. .Conditions on transformations.. In Anderson, Stephen R. & Kiparsky,

Paul (eds.). A festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston. 287-307.

Cysouw, Michael. To appear. .Morphology in the wrong place . a survey of preposed enclitics..

Dressler, Wolfgang U. (ed.) Morphology and its Demarcations. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Good, Jeff. 2003. Strong linearity: Three case studies towards a theory of morphological

templatic constructions. Ph.D. thesis, University of California at Berkeley.

Harris, Alice. 1981. Georgian syntax. Cambridge: CUP.

Harris, Alice. 2002. Endoclitics and the Origins of Udi Morphosyntax. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Marantz, A. 1988. ―Clitics, morphological merger, and the mapping to phonological structure‖.

In Theoretical Morphology: Approaches in Modern Linguistics, M.

Hammond and M. Noonan (eds.), 253-270. San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press.

Peterson, D. A. 2001. ―Ingush .a: The elusive Type 5 clitic?‖ Language 77 (1): 144-155.

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Syntactic Deviation in Partially Schematic Constructions: A corpus-based approach to

COME/GET to V2 constructions in English

Nicholas Lester

University of North Texas, Denton

ABSTRACT

This paper examines two English polyverbal constructions, COME to V2 and GET to V2, as

exemplified in (1) and (2), respectively.

(1) The senator came to know thousands of his constituents

(2) Little Johnny got to eat ice cream after every little league game

Previous studies considered these types of constructions (though come and get as used here have

not been sufficiently studied) as belonging to a special class of complement constructions, in

which the infinitive is regarded as having what may be termed OBJ status (in the sense that it

heads an embedded predicate hierarchically subordinate to the matrix verb, whose null subject

PRO is an anaphor of the matrix NPSUB or NPDO, and which as a whole behaves similarly to NPs)

(e.g. Rudanko, 2002; McCawley, 1988), or alternatively, as being instances of RAISING (e.g.

McCawley, 1988). These constructions in particular are of interest because they represent

atypical instances of complementation -- neither come nor get is construed as a paradigmatically

centric example of complement taking verbs (as perhaps say or expect might be). The present

paper examines these constructions more closely from an ultra-fine-grained, quantitative corpus-

linguistic approach . Using the concordance software AntConc, 1126 examples of GET to V2

and 975 of COME to V2 were retrieved with regular expressions from the American National

Corpus, 2nd

edition. Manual weeding-out of false hits yielded 597 and 478 true hits,

respectively. For the purpose of statistically comparing these data sets to a reference sample, an

additional 82,427 examples of V1 to V2 were retrieved (where V = any lemmatized verb,

including COME and GET), of which 68,982 (reduced later to a random sample of 1000) were

identified as true hits. These results were then cleaned up with R (a programming and statistics

environment) and manually coded for V1 and V2 lemmas, tense/mood/person/number of V1,

aspect/voice of V2, and separately labeled for clause type (whether V1 is a complement,

infinitive, or the object of a modal, and if so, of what species). In order to discover the

productivity of these partially filled constructions, the distinctive, determinant morpho-syntactic

elements of COME/GET and V1 to V2 were identified using a logistic regression. Preliminary

results indicate that both constructions exhibit non-compositonal semantic features, which in turn

correlate with morphological and lexico-syntactic choices statistically associated with their

realization.

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References

McCawley, J. D. (1988). The Syntactic Phenomena of English. Chicago: U of C Press.

Rudanko, J. (2002). Complements and Constructions: Corpus-based Studies on Sentential

Complements in English in Recent Centuries. Lanham: University Press of America.

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A corpus-based examination of repluralized pronouns in Tuvan

Vitaly Voinov

The University of Texas at Arlington

ABSTRACT

In the Tuvan language of south Siberia, certain personal and demonstrative plural

pronouns can be marked with an extra plural morpheme /LAr/ and are therefore called

repluarlized pronouns (RPs).

Table 1: Tuvan plural and repluralized pronouns

plural DPP

1 ‗we‘ bis, bis-ter bis-ter-ler

2 ‗you‘ siler siler-ler

3 ‗they olar olar-lar

DEM ‗these‘ bo-lar bolar-lar

Pronominal repluralization as a cross-linguistic phenomenon was first noted by Head

(1978), who proposed that RPs function as extra-honorifics, i.e., speakers use RPs to indicate a

greater degree of respect for hearers or a greater degree of social distance from them than that

which is indicated by normal honorific plural pronouns. Thus, RPs supplement Brown and

Gilman‘s (1960) original division of pronouns into T and V forms with a ‗super V‘ category (as

designated by Brown and Levinson (1987)).

While at first glance, this seems to be an accurate generalization of Tuvan RPs, one can

also find Tuvan utterances in which the RP forms do not easily fit as honorifics. This paper

describes how an electronic corpus of Tuvan texts was constructed in order to research the

possible functions of Tuvan RPs, and how corpus findings were assessed by native speakers of

Tuvan. The tentative conclusion is that besides serving as extra-honorifics, Tuvan RPs can also

have two functions that are not directly related to social deixis: 1) to ascribe a special status to

referents, and 2) to characterize plural referents as constituted by a plurality of internal

subgroups. These findings show that some of Head‘s (1978) proposed universals dealing with

social deixis in pronominal reference need to be tweaked in order to be able to account for the

Tuvan pronominal system.

References

Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language

usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, Roger & Albert Gilman. 1960. The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Thomas

Sebeok (ed.), Style in language, 253-276. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Head, Brian F. 1978. Respect degrees in pronominal reference. In Joseph H. Greenberg

(ed.), Universals of human language, vol.3: Word structure, 151-212. Stanford:

Stanford University Press.

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First Conjunct Agreement: A Feature-Driven Analysis

Feras Saeed

The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India

Abstract

In this paper, I investigate the phenomenon of First Conjunct Agreement, with the aim of

devising a mechanism by which this agreement discrepancy can be accounted for under a

uniform theory of agreement in natural language grammar. The proposed analysis is based on the

relation between availability of unvalued features and locality of domains.

First Conjunct Agreement (FCA) poses a challenge to a uniform theory of agreement in

Minimalist syntax. The verb tends to display different patterns of agreement with a conjunction

phrase depending on two factors: i) word order, i.e. whether the conjunction phrase precedes or

follows the verb; and ii) the type of DPs that are conjoined, i.e. whether they are pronominal or

non-pronominal.

There have been efforts to devise a mechanism through which FCA facts can be accounted for,

starting with clausal coordination with gapping and across-the-board extraction (Aoun,

Benmamoun, and Sportiche, 1994, 1999), late-merge (Soltan, 2006), and government (Munn,

1999). However, no adequate and satisfactory mechanism has been proposed to account for the

FCA facts in Standard Arabic.

In this language, when conjoined DPs precede the verb in SV order, no instance of First

Conjunct Agreement (FCA) arises and the verb fully agrees with the conjunction phrase:

(1) at-tullaab-u wa t-taalebaat-u jaa?-uu

the-students-m-nom and the-students-f-nom came-3.p.m

‗The (male) students and the (female) students came‘

FCA context arises when the conjoined subjects follow the verb, i.e. in VS order:

(2) jaa?-a t-tullaab-u wa t-taalebaat-u

came-3.s.m the-students-m-nom and the-students-f-nom

‗The (male) students and the (female) students came‘

(3) jaa?-at at-taalebaat-u wa t-tullaab-u

came-3.s.f the-students-f-nom and the-students-m-nom

‗The (female) students and the (male) students came‘

In FCA contexts, the verb partially agrees with the first conjunct in (person) and (gender) if the

first conjunct is a non-pronominal DP. The (number) feature is usually set to a default singular

value. However, if the first conjunct is a pronominal DP, full agreement is established with the

verb:

(4) Je?-na hunna wa aabaa-u-hunna

came-3.p.f they-f and fathers-nom-their

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‗They/f and their fathers came‘

In this paper, I argue against the clausal analysis of conjunction and claim that it is phrasal.

Further, I argue for a certain structure for conjunction phrases in Standard Arabic; one in which

both conjuncts are in the local domain of the head T. Furthermore, I take AGREE to be the right

syntactic relation for establishing agreement and propose a feature-driven mechanism for First

Conjunct Agreement in Standard Arabic and similar languages.

Selected references

Aoun, J., Benmamoun, E., & Sportiche, D. (1994). Agreement, word order, and conjunction

in some varieties of Arabic. Linguistic Inquiry, 25, 195-220.

Aoun, J., Benmamoun, E., & Sportiche, D. (1999). Further remarks on first conjunct agreement.

Linguistic Inquiry, 30, 669-681.

Benmamoun, E., & Lorimor, H. (2006). Featureless expressions: When morphophonological

markers are absent. Linguistic Inquiry, 37, 1-23.

Chomsky, N. (2000). Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In R. Martin, D. Micheals & J.

Uriagereka (Eds.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik

(pp. 89-156). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Munn, A. (1999). First conjunct agreement: Against a clausal analysis. Linguistic Inquiry, 30,

643-668.

Citko, B. (2005). Agreement asymmetries in coordinate structures, Formal Approaches to Slavic

Linguistics: the Ottawa Meeting. Ottawa: Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications.

Corbett, G. G. (2000). Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Soltan, U. (2006). Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited in an agree-

based minimalist syntax. In C. Boeckx (Ed.), Agreement systems (pp. 239-265).

Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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The Role of Givenness in Swahili Reciprocal Constructions

Mohamed Mwamzandi

The University of Texas at Arlington

ABSTRACT

This paper demonstrates how pragmatic factors of given versus new information help

language users determine syntactic structures that best represent the rhetoric value of their

utterances (Prince 1981). In Swahili the participants of Reciprocal verbs are expressed via two

different syntactic frames namely, the Simple Reciprocal (SR), and the Discontinuous

Construction (DC). In SR, the participants occur as a conjoined subject NP while participants of

a DC occur in different syntactic positions: one participant in subject position and the other

participant in a postverbal position after the preposition na ‗with‘.

(1) Simple Reciprocal (2) Discontinuous Construction

a. NP1 conj NP2 [Vrec] a. [NP1] [Vrec] [PP [Pna] [NP2]]

b. NP2 conj NP1 [Vrec] b. [NP2] [Vrec] [PP[Pna] [NP1]]

Notice that the participants can be reordered in terms of which participant precedes the other in

both the SR and DC, hence, the (a) and (b) variants for each.

I present evidence to demonstrate that the syntactic positions of the participants in the

four variants of reciprocal constructions can be best explained in terms of which referent ranks

higher in the scale of givenness as demonstrated by (3) (sentences adopted from Said 1976: 93).

(3) a. Na-i-tafuta nyumba ya bwana mmoja aitwaye Sulubu.

1Sg,PRT-9ObjM-look for 9house of man one named Sulubu

‗I am looking for the house of a man named Sulubu.‘

b. [NP1 Sulubu Ngufumali] [V a-me-kosana] [PP[P na] [NP2 tajiri mwenye shamba]] 1Sulubu Ngufumali 1Agr-Perf-disagree with richman owner field

―Sulubu Ngufumali disagreed with the landlord.‖

c. #[NP2 tajiri mwenye shamba] [V a-me-kosana] [PP[P na] [NP1 Sulubu Ngufumali]]

―The landlord has disagreed with Sulubu Ngufumali.‖

(3a) is a request for information about the whereabouts of a character in the source novel, Sulubu

Ngufumali. Notice that Sulubu is explicitly mentioned in (3a). (3b) is the hearer response

implicating that Sulubu had disagreed with his landlord and therefore had moved. While it is

syntactically possible to have either the NP Sulubu Ngufumali or tajiri mwenye shamba, or both

occupy the subject position, the discourse-given NP, Sulubu Ngufumali, is preferred, hence, the

infelicity of (3c).

To explore the role of participants‘ information asymmetry in the choice of reciprocal

constructions by language users in a coherent manner, two verb categories have been selected:

conversation verbs, and marry verbs (Levin 1993). Sentences involving reciprocal conversation

verbs and marry verbs from eight Swahili pieces of literature and five newspaper articles, as well

as the Helsinki Corpus of Swahili are analyzed based on the ‗given/new principle‘ (Birner

&Ward 2009). Earlier studies have discussed derivation of the SR and DC (Vitale 1981, and

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Dimitriadis & Seidl 2002). This paper, thus, presents a different perspective on the understanding

of the semantically equivalent but pragmatically distinct variants of reciprocal constructions in

Swahili.

References

Birner, Betty J. & Ward, Gregory. 2009. Information structure and syntactic structure. Language

and Linguistics Compass, 3(4), 1167-1187.

Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations. The University of Chicago: Chicago.

Dimitriadis, Alexis & Seidl, Amanda. 2002. ―Statives and reciprocal morphology in Swahili.‖ In

Sauzet P. & Zribi-Hertz A.(eds.). Typologie des langues d'Afrique et universaux de la

grammaire. L'Harmattan: Paris.

Prince, Ellen. 1981. ―Towards a taxonomy of given-new information‖. In Cole, P. (ed.) Radical

pragmatics. NY: academic Press. Pp. 223-56.

Said, Mohamed M. 1976. Nyota ya Rehema. Oxford University Press, East Africa Ltd: Nairobi,

Kenya

Vitale, Anthony. 1981. Swahili Syntax. Foris Publications: Cinnaminson N.J

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The Problem of the Second Person Plural Pronoun in English

Elizabeth Weinrich

Baylor University, Texas

ABSTRACT

This presentation explores the syntax of substitutions for the second-person-plural

pronoun (abbreviated here as [2plu;pro]) in English. Specifically, it focuses on the substitution

―you all‖ ―all of you‖ and ―ya‘ll.‖ I test whether or not these substitutions act as phrases or as

phrasal pronouns through the use of constituency tests. Thus, I explore the possibility that these

substitutions behave as true [2plu;pro] or that these are only constructions of independent words

used together to convey the meaning of [2plu;pro].

In the presentation, I compare these constructions in English to a language with a regular

[2plu;pro], Russian. I also compare English to a language with a semi-regular [2plu;pro],

Spanish. Spanish is interesting in that it allows for multiple ways to convey a [2plu;pro]

depending on the speaker‘s relationship to those addressed. Though it has a regular [2plu;pro],

the presence of a respectful form in Russian also adds this complication.

I have consulted five style manuals listed below of which two recommend the use of

―you‖ as both the second-person-singular pronoun and the [2plu;pro]. These were

Understanding English Grammar and The Writer’s Harbrace Handbook, both of which are

specifically about grammar. The remaining three do not comment on the issue at all. However,

this allows for ambiguity and the use of ―you all‖ and ―you guys‖ in discourse indicates the need

for a regular [2plu;pro]. My research, therefore, has the potential to make ―you all‖ ―all of you‖

and ―ya‘ll‖ more acceptable as regular [2plu;pro]s.

Bibliography

Bobaljik, Jonathan David. ―Floating Quantifiers: Handle With Care.‖ uconn.edu. 2001. Web. 16

January 2010.

Garcia, Erica C. The Role of Theory in Linguistic Analysis: the Spanish Pronoun System.

Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1975. Print.

Glenn, Cheryl and Loretta Gray. The Writer’s Harbrace Handbook. 3rd edition. Boston:

Thomson Wadsworth, 2007. Print.

Kolln, Martha and Robert Funk. Understanding English Grammar. 7th edition. New York:

Pearson Education, 2006. Print.

Modern Language Association. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th edition.

New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2009. Print.

Strunk Jr., William and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. 4th edition. New York: Longman,

2000. Print.

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 7th

edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Print.

15 | P a g e

Circumscribing Matched Guise Technique‟s potential:

geographical origin as a prejudice trigger

Laura Di Ferrante & Sergio Pizziconi

Texas A&M University, Commerce

ABSTRACT

The matched guise technique (MGT), in its prototypical form, as established by Lambert

and colleagues in 1960, and in various modifications (see, for example, Graff, Labov, and Harris

1986), has allowed researchers to collect underlying reactions to different languages and

varieties of the same language. It is substantially aimed at investigating linguistic attitudes of

individuals toward a given social group.

Typically, the participants in the experimental group express evaluations of the socio-

economic, cultural, and personality characteristics of other people, only on the basis of listening

to their recorded voices. In other words, the informants assess people whom they have never

seen either in person, or in a photograph, or on video; about whom they have no information; the

only available element for the assessment is their voice recorded while reading a text.

Our hypothesis is that in a MGT survey, once an informant connects the voice s/he hears

to a geographical origin, it is on this last attribution that the assessments on the other dimensions

(social, cultural, and economic status and personality features) are based.

We have conducted a meta-analysis of two different surveys carried out in Italy (Di

Ferrante 2007) and Switzerland (Catricalà and Di Ferrante 2010)—expanding a previous

investigation in Italy (Volkart Rey 1990). The objective was to identify the variable that triggers

informants‘ evaluations and their implicit or explicit prejudices. On one hand, we statistically

confirmed that the MGT is a valuable tool to measure listener skills in connecting a voice to a

specific geographical origin. On the other hand, using Rank Correlation Tests of some of the

scales of assessment, we also statistically demonstrated that once an informant attributes a

geographical origin to a voice, the trigger of the prejudice switches from the voice to the

attributed geographical origin.

These results suggest that MGT is still a formidable and, in this new perspective, ever

more powerful methodological tool to elicit attitudes and prejudices towards different geographic

groups. However, its power to measure linguistic attitude and prejudice is subordinate to the

effect of other dimensions, namely geographic origin. In this sense the necessity to rethink the

techniques and methodologies to measure linguistic attitudes emerges.

16 | P a g e

References

CATRICALÀ, Maria, DI FERRANTE, Laura. 2011 (forthcoming). «Pregiudizi in movimento e

lingua italiana: un'inchiesta di matched guise nel Canton Ticino e la questione dei diritti

linguistici.» [Moving prejudices and Italian language: a matched guise survey in Canton Ticino

and the linguistic rights issue]. Proceeding of the OLSI, Vitality of a minority language. Aspects

and methodological proposals. Bellinzona, 15 - 16 October, 2010.

DI FERRANTE, Laura. 2007. Spazi linguistici in cambiamento. Una nuova inchiesta di matched

guise a Milano, Napoli e Roma [Linguistic Spaces in the move. A new matched guise survey in

Milan, Naples, and Rome], Ph.D. dissertation in Linguistics and Teaching Italian to Speakers of

Other Languages, Università per Stranieri di Siena.

GRAFF, David, LABOV, William, HARRIS Wendell A. 1986. «Testing listeners‘ reactions to

phonological markers of ethnic identity: a new method for sociolinguistic research», in

SANKOFF David (ed)., Diversity and Diachrony, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

LAMBERT, William E., et alii. 1960. «Evaluational Reactions to Spoken Languages», Journal

of Abnormal and Social Psycology, 60 (1), pp. 44-51.

VOLKART-REY, Ramon. 1990. Atteggiamenti linguistici e stratificazione sociale. La

percezione dello status scociale attraverso la pronuncia. Indagine empirica a Catania e a Roma,

Roma: Bonacci.

17 | P a g e

Speech Acts or the prototypes of speech acts. An application of the Total Cognitive

Response (ToCoRe) to TESOL

Sergio Pizziconi

Texas A&M University, Commerce

ABSTRACT

Speech Act theory, in the way it was unfolded by Austin and Searle, proved to have several

general theoretical weaknesses, as demonstrated in the short discussion in Levinson (1983, pp.

246-82). Moreover, the literature about the use of speech acts in language teaching/learning

(Nelson et al., 2002; Beebe & Cummings, 1995; Boxer & Pickering, 1995) has demonstrated

practical hardships in collecting genuine, authentic forms to be ascribed to each speech act and in

using them in the classroom.

Nevertheless, the theory is retained as an underlying theoretical framework in all the SL or FL

teaching/learning methodologies that work with functional curricula. Not only is the use of terms

like request, apology, promise a direct legacy of the theory, but also the opposition between

direct and indirect speech acts, on one hand, and the relevance given to context and co-text

information, on the other, make clear reference to the distinction between locutionary,

illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts and to the felicity conditions, respectively.

A prototypical approach to the definition of each speech act type is presented here to configure

an alternative approach to the teaching/learning of speech acts and confine the quest for the

genuine spontaneous forms to a marginal relevance in the issue. At the same time, the

methodological suggestion can shed a different light onto the dim theoretical areas of the general

theory of speech acts.

This theoretical framing has been tested in a pilot survey in which native speakers were asked to

recognize some possible formulations of the speech act of bragging/showing-off. The results of

this survey tend to confirm the plausibility of the proposal. A synthetic representation of the

variables affecting the modifications to the central prototype to generate different realizations of

the speech act is then presented through a functional equation. A more or less extended version

of the functional equation becomes the object of study of the specific speech act.

The method presented here is aligned to a teaching methodological constellation that I have

dubbed Total Cognitive Response (ToCoRe), according to which teaching/learning materials and

activities are designed to activate a widespread interaction within and between different

cognitive and perceptual areas.

18 | P a g e

References

Beebe, L. M. & Cummings, M.C. (1995). Natural Speech Act Data Versus Written

Questionnaire Data: How Data Collection Method Affects Speech Act Performance. In S. A.

Gass, Speech Acts Across Cultures: Challenges to Communication in a Second Language (pp.

65-85). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Boxer, D. & Pickering, L. (1995). Problems in the presentation of speech acts in ELT materials:

The case of complaints. ELT Journal: English Language Teachers Journal , 49 (1), 44-57.

Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nelson, G. C. et alii. (2002). Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: STrategy Use in Egyptian Arabic and

American English Refusals. Applied Linguistics , 23 (2), 163-89.

19 | P a g e

From knowing “one” to “two”: evidence for self-initiated early correct use of “two”

Felix Wang

Dartmouth College, NH

In early number development, it is a slow and mysterious process for a one-knower

child to become a two-knower, a process that takes an entire 6 months (e.g., Wynn, 1992). These

findings represent a gap between the experimental results and the diary studies (e.g., Mix, 2009),

which suggest that children are able to produce correct uses of ―two‖ much younger than the

typical two-knower age (36 months). In order to examine this discrepancy, we look at when

exactly children become able to use two correctly in daily uses. Furthermore, are such early

correct uses merely coincidental (Clark & Nikitina, 2009)?

We analyzed the CHILDES corpus Manchester (Theakston et al., 2002). In this corpus,

twelve children were recorded twice every month between ages two and three. The word ―two‖

was searched using CLAN (MacWhinney, 2000), and five sentences before and after each

utterance were included for analysis. We looked for cardinal two uses, which could mean ―exact

two‖, or ―more than two‖. Only uses of two explicitly confirmed or corrected by parents were

included. Any two appeared in a counting list was excluded, so were repetitions from the

preceding five sentences and uses without confirmation from parents. Age information was

eliminated during coding, and a second coder coded 20% of the data with 93% agreement.

We found 224 cardinal uses of two under such stringent inclusion criterion, 190 of

which are correct uses (85%). Eleven children had more than three correct uses (Figure 1). The

onset of correct use was determined by the age of first use (26.2 months) and age of repeated use

(27.5 months), and two measures highly correlate (r=.91, p<.001) (Stromswold, 1989). The

frequency of correct use of two is very much significantly predicted by age of the child (Figure

2).

Some children never over-generalize two as more than two, while other children

infrequently over-generalize, which happen with and without plural markings (p>.05, Fisher‘s

exact test). Some children started correct use of two with no plural markings, similar to Spence

(Mix, 2009), and other children started to use two with pluralized nouns. For most children,

cardinal uses occur with a pluralized noun in a NP (86.6%).

Interestingly, correct uses are predominately spontaneous. Production of correct use is

not limited to nouns that often come with pairs (e.g., eyes, shoes), indicating uses are

novel/productive. In contrast, children almost never respond an NP construction alone to a ―how

many‖ question from parents. A preliminary examination of 67 answers from two children of

this sample for ―how many‖ questions shows that children either recite the count list in whole or

in part (24%), or they simply do not answer with numbers (39%), indicating that they have no

idea what the question means. When they do answer with a number word or an NP, the answer is

mostly wrong (88%). Together, these results have implications for how we should elicit ―two‖

uses from toddlers in the future, and how this trajectory of correct use foreshadows the

conceptual leap from one-knower to two-knower.

20 | P a g e

Figures

Figure 1. Total number of cardinal uses of two between two and three years of age

Figure 2.1 Relations between number of correct uses of two and age (in months)

References

Clark, Eve V. & Nikitina, Tatiana. (2009). One vs. more than one: Antecedents to plurality in

early language acquisition. Linguistics 47(1): 103-39.

MacWhinney, Brian. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Third Edition.

Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Mix, Kelly. (2009). How Spencer made number: first uses of the number words. Journal of

Experimental Child Psychology, 102(4), 427-444.

Stromswold, Karin. (1989). Using naturalistic data: methodological and theoretical issues (or

how to lie with naturalistic data. Paper presented at the14th Annual Boston University

Child Language Conference, October 13-15, 1989.

Theakston, Anna, Leven, Elena, Pine, Julian, & Rowland, Caroline (2001). The Role of

Performance Limitations in the Acquisition of Verb-Argument Structure: An Alternative

Account. Journal of Child Language, 28(01), 127-152.

Wynn, Karen. (1992). Children‘s acquisition of the number words and the counting system.

Cognitive Psychology, 24(2), 220-251.

y = 1.2308x - 19.859

R² = 0.4775

0

10

20

30

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Nu

mb

er

of

co

rrect

use

s

age (months)

Correct uses with age

21 | P a g e

The Acquisition of English Past Tense by Junior High School Students in Taiwan

Kuan-Ming Edward Teng

National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

ABSTRACT

The aim of this current study is to investigate the effect of lexical aspect on L2 acquisition

of English past tense by junior high school students in Taiwan in terms of the Aspect Hypothesis

proposed by Andersen and Shirai (1996). The subjects in this study were 113 ninth graders (36

for Low group, 39 for Mid group, and 38 for High group) at a junior high school in the middle of

Taiwan. The study employed a cloze test to elicit data from the subjects‘ responses and explored

the research topics: (1) the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis on simple past, (2) L1 influence

on the use of simple past, and (3) the relation between learners‘ L2 proficiency and their simple

past use among the categories of lexical aspect. Based on the statistic outcomes, the results of the

study supported the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis on simple past. That is, simple past

initially associated with telic verbs, then spread to activities, and finally extended to states.

Meanwhile, the present study found the perfective marking –le in Mandarin Chinese might result

in a positive transfer effect on the use of simple past in English. In addition, as learners‘ general

English proficiency increases, the effect of the Aspect Hypothesis will become weakened on

learners‘ use of simple past. At last, through the study, the researcher provided some suggestions

and implications for future directions of studies and English instruction.

Keywords: the Aspect Hypothesis, lexical aspect, simple past, L2 acquisition

Selected References

Andersen, R. W., & Shirai, Y. (1996). The primacy of aspect in first and second language

acquisition: The pidgin-creole connection. In W. C. Ritchie and T. K. Bhatia (Eds.),

Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 527-570). San Diego, CA: Academic.

Collins, L. (2002). The roles of L1 influence and Lexical aspect in the acquisition of temporal

morphology. Language Learning, 52(1), 43-94.

Shirai, Y., & Andersen, R. W. (1995). The acquisition of tense-aspect morphology: A prototype

account. Language, 71, 743-762.

22 | P a g e

The Aspect Hypothesis and the Acquisition of L2 Japanese Tense and Aspect by English

Native Speakers

Kyoko Tomikura

California State University at Northridge

ABSTRACT

This study examined the research question how English speakers acquire tense and aspect in

L2 Japanese. It reports on findings on how native speakers of American English produced and

processed, under various experimental conditions, the Japanese imperfective –te iru- tense and

aspect markers in verbs of different classes.

The Aspect Hypothesis, as formulated Baldovi-Harlig (2000), states that lexical aspectual

classes (e.g., stative, active) influence the distribution of verbal inflections and the way the

bound morphemes are acquired. Two specific predictions were tested in the study: (a) Learners

initially use past tense with achievements and accomplishments and then extend it to activity

verbs at a later developmental stage; (b) Progressive morpheme starts with activities and is then

extended to accomplishments and achievements. Research on the Aspect Hypothesis has

adduced conflicting results. Klein (2004), for example, found that the difficulties second-

language learners of L2 English were confronted with in acquiring tense and aspect systems lie

beyond syntax. In this study I followed Klein‘s reasoning and examined a combination of

morphosyntactic and semantic variables in influencing the acquisition of Japanese tense and

aspect by American high school students and the way positive evidence affected the acquisition

process. The primary investigation was English native speakers‘ acquisitions of the Japanese

aspect marker, –te iru- form, which denotes both progressive meaning and resultative meaning.

Resultatvie meaning is often captured by the English present perfect form, have V-ed as it refers

to a state resulting from an event.

The participants of the current thesis project are 16 high school students who are taking

Japanese classes as a foreign language at private high school in Los Angeles. Five of the 16

subjects were in their fourth year and the rest (11 students) were in their third year. All subjects

were between the ages of 15 and 18. Data will be collected through two tasks: a cloze test and a

truth-value judgment test. In order to measure the L2 learners‘ present knowledge of Japanese

tense and aspect, a pre-test was administered to the subjects prior to the input. The input

consisted of sentences that include the –te iru- form with resultative meaning. Finally, several

weeks after the instruction, a post-test was administered. Data collected from both tests was

analyzed to ascertain the extent to which verb classes control the development patterns of

Japanese tense and aspect of English learners.

In conclusion, we have not found evidence that indiscriminately confirms the validity of the

Aspect Hypothesis. But we found that the proficiency levels of the learners have played a

significant role, such that those at the intermediate level behaved more akin to the native

controls. In addition, we also found that subjects attended more to the proper use of verbs or

predicates rather than to aspect. The present study suggests that instructional input and

lexical/semantic cues of verbs aids English-speaking learners in interpreting the -te

iru construction.

23 | P a g e

References

Andersen, W. R. & Shirai, Y. (1994). Discourse motivations for some cognitive acquisition

principles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 16. 133-156.

Andersen, W. R. & Shirai, Y. (1995). The acquisition of tense-aspect morphology: A prototype

account. Language, 71 (4). 743-762.

Andersen, W. R. & Shirai, Y. (1996). The primacy of aspect in first and second language

acquisition: The pidgin-creole connection. In W. Ritchie & T. Bahita (Eds.), Handbook of

Second Language Acquisition (pp 527-570). San Diego, CA: Academic Press, Inc.

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (2000). The Aspect Hypothesis. In K. Bardovi-Harlig (Ed.),

Tense and Aspect in Second Language Acquisition (pp 191-275). Oxford, U.K.:

Blackwell.

Collins, L. (2004). The particulars on universals: A comparison of the acquisition of

tense-aspect morphology among Japanese- and French-speaking learners of English. The

Canadian Modern Language Review, 61 (2), 251-274.

Comajoan, L. (2005). The early L2 acquisition of past morphology: Perfective morphology as an

aspectual marker or default Tense marker? In D. Eddington (Ed.), Selected Proceedings

of the 6th

Conference of the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second

Languages (pp. 31-43). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Hinkel, E. (1997). The past tense and temporal verb meanings in a contextual frame. TESOL

Quarterly, 31 (2), 289-313.

Ishida, M. (2004). Effects of recasts on the acquisition of the aspectual form –te i–(ru) by

learners of Japanese as a foreign language. Language Learning, 54 (2), 311-394.

Klein, E., C. (2004). Beyond Syntax: Performance Factors in L2 Behavior. In B.

VanPattern, J. Williams, S. Rott, & M. Overstreet (eds.), Form-Meaning Connections in

Second Language Acquisition (pp. 155-177). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,

Publisher.

Koyama, S. (2004). Nihongo no tensu asupekuto no Shuutoku niokeru fuhensei to tobetsusei

[Universality and individuality in the acquisition of tense and aspect in Japanese]. In S.

Koyama, K. Ootomo & M. Nohara (Eds.), Gengo to Kyooiku

(pp. 415-440). Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan

Labeau, E. (2005). Beyond the aspect hypothesis: Tense-aspect development in advanced L2

French. EUROSLA Yearbook, 5, 77-101.

Lee, J. F., Cadierno, T., Glass, W. R., &VanPatten, B. (1997). The effect of lexical and

grammatical cues on processing past temporal reference in second language input.

Applied Language Learning, 8 (1), 1-21.

Rohde, A. (1996). The aspect hypothesis and the emergence of tense distinctions in

naturalistic L2 acquisition. Linguistics, 34, 1115-1137.

Salaberry, M. R. (1999). The development of past tense verbal morphology in

classroom L 2 Spanish. Applied Linguistics 20 (2), 151-178.

Salaberry, R. (2000). The Acquisition of English past tense in an instructional

setting. System, 28, 135-152.

24 | P a g e

The effect of computer-mediated communication (CMC) interaction on L2 vocabulary

acquisition: A comparison study of CMC interaction and face-to-face interaction

Ju-Young Lee

The University of Texas at Arlington

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the differential effects of CMC interaction (both text-chat and voice-chat)

and face-to-face interactions on university level of ESL students‘ vocabulary acquisition. More

specifically, this study examines (a) whether learners engage in negotiated interaction when they

encounter new lexical items, (b) whether CMC interaction help learners acquire new lexical

items productively, (c) whether there are any special features related to negotiation routines in

the most acquired words and the least acquired words, and (d) whether ESL students find CMC

interaction helpful for their English learning.

The participants consisted of 12 (6 male, 6 female) international students and visiting scholars at

Iowa State University. The research design included a pre-test, a treatment activity, an immediate

post-test, and a 1 week delayed post-test. The pre-test containing 24 vocabulary whose referents

were auto parts items was given to choose the target lexical items. The type of treatment activity

used in this study was an information-gap activity in which the students were required to request

and obtain information from each other to complete the task. Two post-tests (immediate and

delayed) were administered to assess the acquisition of new lexical items. The immediate and

delayed post-tests were offered to students on the treatment day and 1 week after the initial

treatment. Finally, a follow-up survey from each participant in CMC interaction group was also

used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of computer-assisted language learning (CALL)

task and the drawbacks or advantages of using such activities for language learning.

The results showed that all ESL learners in both CMC and face-to-face interaction negotiated to

complete their tasks, and all of the twelve target lexical items prompted negotiation for all of the

dyads. Moreover, the results revealed that the students in all three groups recalled more than half

of the previously unknown target lexical items in the immediate post-test and delayed post-test.

For both productive oral and written acquisition, the results revealed that all three conditions

seem to facilitate the acquisition of L2 words, as well as to ensure a good level of retention.

However, there were no statistically significant differences between groups and posttests. Thus,

meaning negotiation during computer-mediated and face-to-face interaction seems to promote

both oral and written acquisition of L2 vocabulary.

In addition, the results indicated that students tended to acquire new lexical items when they had

some background knowledge about the target words or they were negotiating both form and

meaning with their partners. A follow-up survey data showed that most of the students in both

text-chat and voice-chat CMC interaction group had a positive attitude towards this type of

activity in online, and they found synchronous chat as an interesting and helpful way of English

learning.

25 | P a g e

References

Blake, R. (2000). Computer-mediated communication: A window on L2 Spanish

interlanguage. Language Learning and Technology, 4, 120-136.

De la Fuente, M. (2002). Negotiation and oral acquisition of L2 vocabulary. Studies in

Second Language Acquisition, 24, 81-112.

De la Fuente, M. J. (2003). Is SLA interactionist theory relevant to CALL? A study on

the effects of computer-mediated interaction in L2 vocabulary acquisition. Computer Assisted

Language Learning, 16, 47-81.

Ellis, R., Tanaka, Y., & Yamazaki, A. (1994). Classroom interaction, comprehension, and

the acquisition of L2 word meanings. Language Learning, 44, 449-491.

Ellis, R., & He, X. (1999). The role of modified input and output in the incidental

acquisition of word meanings. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21, 285-301.

Fernandez-Garcia, M., & Martinez-Arbelaiz, A. (2002). Negotiation of meaning in non-

native speaker non-native speaker synchronous discussions. CALICO Journal, 19, 279-294.

Fernandez-Garcia, M., & Arbelaiz, A. M. (2003). Learners‘ interactions: A comparison

of oral and computer-assisted written conversations. ReCALL,15(1), 113-136.

Jepson, K. (2005). Conversations-and negotiated interaction-in text and voice chat rooms.

Language Learning & Technology, 9(3), 79-98.

Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language

acquisition. In W.C. Ritchie & T.K. Bathia (Eds.), Handbook of research on second language (pp.

413-468). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Pelletieri, J.L. (2000). Negotiation in cyberspace: The role of chatting in the development

of grammatical competence. In M. Warschauer & R. Kern (Eds.), Network-based language

teaching: Concepts and practice (pp. 59-86). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sauro, S. (2001). The success of task type in facilitating oral language production in

online computer mediated collaborative projects. Unpublished master‘s thesis, Iowa State

University, Ames.

Smith, B. (2003a). Computer-mediated negotiated interaction: An expanded model. The

Modern Language Journal, 87, 38-58.

Smith, B. (2004). Computer-mediated negotiated interaction and lexical acquisition.

Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26, 365-398.

Smith, B. (2005). The relationship between negotiated interaction, learner uptake, and

lexical acquisition in task-based computer-mediated communication. TESOL Quarterly 39 (1),

33-58.

Sykes, J. M. (2005). Synchronous CMC and pragmatic development: Effects of oral and

written chat. CALICO Journal, 22 (3), 399-431.

Varonis, E.M., & Gass, S. (1985). Non-native/non-native conversations: A model for

negotiation of meaning. Applied Linguistics, 6, 71-90.

26 | P a g e

Investigating the Missing of the Indefinite Article

and Copula be in the production skills

of Iraqi Learners of English

Inam Ismael Taher Al-Shaibani

Diyala University, Iraq

ABSTRACT

There is no one - to - one relation between English and Arabic so areas where the two languages

differ are expected to constitute problems to the non - native speaker The concentration in this

paper is on using the indefinite article a /an and the copula be .

The researcher finds out through her teaching English as a foreign language that a great number

of Iraqi learners of English make a grammatical mistake by missing the indefinite article and the

copula be in uttering such a sentence: Ahmed teacher instead of : Ahmad is a teacher . Such

mistakes are made because there is no one- to- one relationship between English and Arabic. The

interference of Arabic is behind the production of such a sentence because Arabic does not have

an indefinite article or a copula be corresponding to them in English. Indefiniteness and

copula be are expressed in Arabic in different ways.

At early stages of language acquisition, English children produce sentences like Here book and

Paula good girl (Cook and Newson , 1997 : 274-277) . So, Iraqi learners of English and English

children express their ideas through the choice and order of vocabulary rather than through

syntax. Their sentences may be acceptable but ungrammatical.

The articles have no lexical meaning nor function independently of the noun they precede.

They are used solely to give grammatical status to the following noun which needs this status

(Quirk et al., 1987:255). Yet, the articles are considered separate words because, as Hall

(1960:98-99) thinks, English grammars use writing not spoken language as their point of

departure. He suggests that the articles should be counted as bound forms like prefixes and

suffixes. For example, the indefinite article a/an and the suffix –s in the following nouns have

the same grammatical role a book, books. The indefinite article a is used with the singular count

noun to individualize the object book, so it indicates singularity, whereas the suffix –s is used to

indicate plurality. This point emphasizes the historical origin of the indefinite article in English.

It is derived from the numeral one (Strang 1970: 272; Halliday & Hassan 1987: 70).

Articles are only needed for structural and grammatical purposes not semantic ones. The noun

itself carries the feature of indefiniteness in the deep structure, and the article is introduced in the

intermediate syntactic structure (Postal 1966; cited in Master 1987: 167).

Copulative is a term used in grammatical description to refer to a linking verb i.e. a verb which

has little independent meaning , and whose main function is to relate other elements of clause

structure , especially subject and complement . In English the main copulative verb is be as: she

is a doctor (Crystal, 1998 copula (tive) ).

27 | P a g e

It can be concluded that:

1. The physical linguistic manifestation that exists in the surface structure of a language cannot

be considered a ground to make comparison between languages because there is no one –to –

one relation between them. So, the further one abstracts from the physical aspect of language

towards its conceptual content, the nearer one gets to a common core of linguistic universal

(Leech 1978: 232).

2. Missing the words which have no independent meaning such as the indefinite article and the

copula be does not affect acceptability but grammaticality.

References

Abboud, Peter F. & Ernest N. McCarns (Eds.).(1987). Elementry Modern Standard Arabic

Pronunciation and Writing .Part1.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Bishir, Kamaal Mohammad , tran. (1975). Ulmanns' Words and their Use . Egypt: Al-

Shabaab.. Maktabat

Bloomfield, Leonard .( 1963) . Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Cook , V.J. and Mark Newson .( 1997 ).Chomsky' University Grammar. Oxford : Blackwell.

Crystal, David.( 1998). A Dictionary of Linguistic and Phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell.

Dik, Simo C. (1979). Functional Grammar. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company.

Hall, Robert A., Jr. (1960). Linguistics and your Language.New York : Anchor Books. Revised

edition of Leave Your Language Alone ! by the Linguistic Press in 1950.

Halliday, M. A. K. & Ruqaiya Hasan.( 1987).Cohesin in English . London : Longman.

Leech, Geoffery.( 1978 ).Semantics .Harmondsworth : Penguin Books.

Master, Peter.(1987). ―Generic The in Scientific American.‖ English for specific Purposes . 6.3:

165-185.

Postal, P. M. (1966). ―On So-called ‗ Pronouns‘ in English‖. 19 th

Monograph on Language and

Linguistics (201-224). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Institute of Languages

and Linguistics.

Pyles, Thomas & John Alego. (1971). The Origins and Developments of English Language.

New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech , and J. Svartvic (1987). A Comprehensive Grammar of the

English Language. London: Longman.

Strang, Barbara M. H. (1974). A History of English. Harper & Row Publishers.

Ziadeh, Farhat J., and R. Bayly Winder. (1957). An Introduction to Modern Arabic. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

28 | P a g e

Wh-domains and optional wh-movement in Jarai

Joshua Jensen

The University of Texas at Arlington

ABSTRACT

Overview & Goals: This study investigates the prosody of wh-questions in Jarai

(Austronesian, Vietnam; SVO) in light of Richards‘s (2010) proposal that wh-in-situ is licensed

in just those languages that are able to create a wh-domain, a prosodic constituent which extends

from the complementizer (null or overt) to the wh-phrase. Languages that cannot create wh-

domains resort to wh-movement to place the wh-phrase as close as possible to the

complementizer. I argue that Jarai, an optional movement language, does create wh-domains,

thus licensing wh-in-situ; however, movement in Jarai cannot be motivated by a need to place the

wh-phrase next to the complementizer.

Background on Jarai Prosody: Phonological phrases (φ) in Jarai typically correspond to

syntactic phrases, and like syntactic phrases, they can be recursive. Every φ that is not dominated

by another φ (a φmax, Selkirk 2009) is the domain for the distribution of a high pitch accent. Thus,

a typical clause with a DP subject and VP predicate will have two φmax‘s, with a high pitch (H*)

in each, as in Figure 1.

Evidence for Wh-Domain: Figure 2 shows a wh-question derived from a ditransitive

declarative clause (S-V-DO-IO; see Figure 1). In this question, the final constituent, the indirect

object, is questioned and remains in situ. Although there is a slight high pitch on the wh-word,

the basic prosody of the clause is unchanged: the clause‘s two highest pitches—both to the left of

the wh-word—indicate that the prosodic constituency of two φmax‘s is still in place. However,

when the wh-phrase fronts, as in Figure 3, the words that previously had the highest pitches show

pitch compression, and the wh-phrase has the only high pitch accent in the clause. This

redistribution of the high pitches suggests a change in the prosodic structure: instead of two

φmax‘s, there is now only one, extending from the wh-phrase to the end of the clause. Thus the

following generalizations hold, not just for questioning the indirect object, but for any questioned

argument:

i. Boundary erasure: If a wh-phrase occurs in a non-final φmax, any φmax boundaries between

the wh-phrase and the end of the clause are erased, creating a single φmax.

ii. Pitch accent attraction: A wh-phrase attracts the pitch accent of its φmax just in case that

pitch accent would not otherwise occur to the left of the wh-phrase.

Analysis & Conclusion: As we have seen, the phonological impact of the wh-phrase

does not extend leftwards; it only extends rightwards. If this rightward pitch compression is

taken as evidence of a new prosodic constituency—a wh-domain—then Jarai wh-domains extend

from the wh-phrase to the end of the clause. Under Richards‘s account of wh-domains, this is

evidence that Jarai is complementizer-final. However, this leaves wh-movement in Jarai

unmotivated from a prosodic standpoint: by fronting, the wh-phrase moves away from rather

than toward the complementizer.

Jarai is consistent with one of Richards‘s central claims: because Jarai can create wh-

domains, wh-in-situ should be (and is) possible. But Jarai constituent questions leave open the

question of why wh-movement is also possible. Thus, Richards‘s proposal, while providing a

prosodic account of wh-in-situ, leaves open the question of what motivates wh-movement.

29 | P a g e

Figures

FIGURE 1: Declarative Clause

FIGURE 2: Questioning the Indirect Object, in situ

FIGURE 3: Questioning the Indirect Object, moved

References

Richards, Norvin. 2010. Beyond strength and weakness. In Uttering Trees. MIT Press,

Cambridge, MA.

Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2009. They syntax-phonology interface. In J. Goldsmith, et al., eds., The

Handbook of Phonological Theory, 2nd Edition.

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The Intonation of Declarative and Interrogative Sentences in Akan1

Charlotte Fofo Lomotey

Texas A&M University, Commerce

ABSTRACT

Intonation is an indispensable part of the utterances of every spoken language in the world. It can

provide cues to both linguistic and paralinguistic meanings in communication in our daily lives.

This means that when we communicate with people, intonation helps us to identify the speaker's

message, their emotional state or their communicative intent. Once the intonation of the

utterance is changed, the meaning of the utterance is also changed. This paper looks at the

intonation of declarative and interrogative sentences in Akan. It seeks, among other things, to

identify differences and similarities between the intonation of declarative and interrogative

sentences.

Results from majority of studies in intonation have shown that the F0

curve of question intonation

is higher than that of statement intonation (Haan, 2002; Ho, 1977; Shen 1990; Yuan et al., 2002).

These studies are all on tone languages, and thus are relevant to Akan, which is a tone language.

Intonation studies in Akan have not received any attention as far as instrumental work is

concerned. As such, this paper aims to be the first step at the acoustic analyses of intonation in

Akan. It also aimed at helping readers to be able to interpret the intention of the people they

communicate with.

A corpus of 10 pairs of sentences was designed. The two sentences in each pair were identical

except that one ends with a period, which indicates declarative intonation, and the other with a

question mark, indicating interrogative intonation. The 20 sentences were written one by one on

a card and presented to every speaker. These speakers are five males and five females from the

two main dialect areas of Akan in Ghana.

The speakers were asked to read the sentences five times in a very quiet environment, paying

attention to naturalness and the intonation of their utterances. Only the last three sentences of the

recordings in each case were used. The recordings were then transferred onto the Computerized

Speech Laboratory (CSL) Model 4500 and analysed. F0 curves of the sentences were extracted.

The syllabic boundaries as well as the tone category of each syllable were also labelled. Discussion, conclusions and suggestions regarding both the structure and teaching of Akan are

made based on the results of the study.

1

Akan is a Kwa language of the Niger-Congo family, spoken in Ghana. It is spoken by almost

50% of the Ghanaian population both as a first and as a second language, and also spoken by

some ethnic groups in Cote d‘Ivoire. Akan has two main dialects; namely Twi and Fante. It has

attained literary status and is the most widely researched and most studied language in Ghana. It

has two tone levels; low and high.

31 | P a g e

References

Asu, E. L. (2001). Comparison of the intonation of two question types in Estonian.

Delattre, P. et al. (1962). A Comparative Study of Declarative Intonation in American English

and Spanish. Hispania, Vol. (45) 2

Esser, J. (1978). Contrastive intonation of German and English. Phonetica (35) 41-55

Face, T. L. (2003). Intonation in Spanish declaratives: differences between lab speech and

spontaneous speech.

Fajobi, E. The nature of Yoruba intonation: a new Experimental Study.

(www.sussex.ac.uk/linguistics/documents/ef_yoruba_intonation.pdf)

Gandour, J. et. al. (2004). Hemispheric roles in the perception of speech prosody.

Gårding, Eva, (1984). Comparing Intonation. Working Papers (27) Dept. of Linguistics, Lund

University, 75-96.

Haan, J. (2002): Speaking of questions. Utrecht: LOT.

Ho, A. T. (1977). Intonation Variation in a Mandarin Sentence for Three Expressions:

Interrogative, Exclamatory and Declarative. Phonetica (34) 446-457

Ladd, R. (1996). Cross-language comparison of intonation. Intonational Phonology, 113-159,

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Manolescu, A. Declarative and Interrogative Intonation in Romanian.

(www.utexas.edu/courses/lin393p/manolescu.pdf)

Shen, X.-N. S. (1990). The prosody of Mandarin Chinese. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Swerts, M. and Geluykens, R. (1994). Prosody as a Marker of Information Flow In Spoken

Discourse. Language and Speech, 37( 1), 21-43

Yuan, J., Chih-lin, S. and Kochanski, G. P. (2002). Comparison of Declarative and Interrogative

Intonation in Chinese. Proceedings of the Speech Prosody 2002 Conference. Bel, B. and Marlien

I. (Eds). Aix-en-Provence. Laboratoire Parole et Langage. pp.711-714.

Zeng. X, Philippe. M, Georges, B. Tones and Intonation in Declarative and Interrogative

Sentences in Mandarin. Paper presented at the International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of

Languages: With Emphasis on Tone Languages Beijing, China, March 28-31, 2004

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Nonnative Speakers and Conventional Expressions within the Apology Speech Act

Toni Taherzadeh

Texas A&M University, Commerce

ABSTRACT

It is generally accepted that pragmatic considerations effect speech act realization among both

native and non-native speaker communication (Coulmas, 1981; Granger, 1998). Cross-cultural

comparisons have also been emphasized in the body of research focusing on the importance of

sociopragmatic speech act conventions and second language learning and usage. Specifically,

Bardovi-Harlig, Marda, & Edelmira (2008) researched cultural conventions and speech acts of

differing illocutionary forces (apologies, refusal, and thanking) in order to investigate the

conventional expressions by comparing L2 learner‘s output (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 2008). This

study replicates the Bardovi-Harlig et al. (2008) example on a smaller scale in order to test the

conclusions, and also to examine the effects in another NNS population. Their methodology

utilized to gather sample speech acts, a computer-delivered aural DCT, is administered to various

proficiency levels of the NNSs. The transcribed responses are analyzed to determine appropriate

assessment by the NNS of the sociopragmatic identification of the speech act as an apology, and

the NS conventions expected. The purpose of this study is to further explore the potential

correlation between higher L2 proficiency and the frequency of association with pragmatic

conventions. With this data, conclusions regarding what the inclusion of apology conventions

for a more effective speech act and possible avoidance of pragmatic misfires are discussed, along

with the suggestion this information be made available when teaching speech acts to English

language learners. In the classroom, the current trend is to ignore the pragmatic contexts, yet

research is showing with increased frequency how remiss this policy is when preparing NNSs for

interaction among inner-circle NSs.

References

Bardovi-Harlig, K., Marda R., & Edelmira L. N. (2008). The use of conventional xxpressions of

thanking, apologizing, and refusing. Selected Proceedings of the 2007 Second Language

Research Forum, ed. Melissa Bowles et al., 113-130. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla

Proceedings Project.

Coulmas, F. (1981). ―Poison to your soul:‖ Thanks and apologies contrastively viewed. In F.

Coulmas (Ed.), Conversational routine: Explorations in standardized communication

situations and prepatterned speech (pp. 69-91). The Hague: Mouton.

Granger, S. (1998). Prefabricated patterns in advanced EFL writing: Collocations and formulae.

In A.P. Cowie (Ed.), Phraseology: Theory, analysis, and application (pp. 145-160).

Oxford: Clarendon.

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Orthographic choices for Lamkang

Ryan Hamilton

University of North Texas, Denton

ABSTRACT

The Lamkang of northeast India (3,000 to 6,000 speakers) want to encourage younger speakers to

read and write in their native language Lamkang instead of only in English and/or other local

vernaculars. A few speakers write Lamkang using the Roman alphabet but spelling rules differ

from writer to writer (Thounaojam and Chelliah 2007). Speakers need a standardized writing

system and dictionary to encourage literacy. This poster illustrates some of the practical problems

in devising a standardized writing system for Lamkang. Comparing three different written

instances of the same text, I will illustrate four particular problems:

1. There are several consonant clusters in word initial position in normal speech which

make the language look quite different from English, e.g. kb,kt,kp,tl,dl. Speakers tell us

that early missionaries recommended breaking these clusters up by representing them

with vowels, so that the words wouldn‘t look quite so ―odd‖ in writing. So, for example,

kb would be written as kab. Older translations of the New Testament are written with no

clusters at all. This convention is confusing since the clusters are pronounced.

2. Since there is no detailed grammatical description of Lamkang, speakers are not clear and

have not been taught about word boundaries. It is not clear for the Lamkang where to

make breaks in words. For example, the word avathungbingngi ‗and then‘ is written in

the following ways:

av thung bing ngi

ava thung bingi

av thung bing -i

ava thungbi ngi

Also, since English does not have such long words or doubled consonant sequences such as

ngng, the Lamkang have been taught to avoid long words and not represent doubled

consonants. They, therefore, break words up at arbitrary points.

3. Lamkang has a retroflex [t] sound (produced with the tongue curled to the roof of the

mouth). This should be written with a dot under the t but that diacritic is often omitted.

4. Words in Lamkang change meaning depending on the tone of the word or syllable in a

word. Tone is not always indicated although sometimes a final h is added to show falling

tone.

References

Thounaojam, Harimohon and Shobhana Chelliah. 2007. The Lamkang Language:

Grammatical Sketch, Texts and Lexicon. Published as a special issue of the Linguistics of the

Tibeto-Burman Area, Volume Vol. 30.1.1-212.

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“A shroe! A shroe! My dingkome for a shroe!”:

Compensation strategies for comprehension in an unconventional speech of Monty Python

Audrey C. Adams

Texas A&M University, Commerce

ABSTRACT

In an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a guest appearing on a talk show speaks entirely

in anagrammed and scrambled speech. To further complicate comprehension, the language itself

was scrambled based on the orthographic constituents rather than phonetic, but presented orally.

For example, the word that is pronounced as if the written word were taht, which is scrambling

the order of the graphic letters, hence, losing the interdental phoneme present in the original

word. Based on the assumption that the meaning of the scrambled speech still comes across,

regardless of disruptions, this analysis aims to identify the clues that allow for comprehension,

and consider the compensation strategies used by the listener on levels of context, prosody,

syntax, and morphology. The results indicate that prosodic cues are working as the framework of

each utterance, and are most heavily relied upon to obtain a meaningful understanding of the

language. When the prosodic information is insufficient, the listener is able to compensate by

processing additional clues on levels of morphology and syntax. The results of this analysis,

along with studies of other types of strains, can be used to define the extreme terms of a

benchmark against which we can describe the processes of language comprehension in normal,

natural situations. Such a benchmark would allow the assessment of the degree of resiliency of

language comprehension and processing strategies used to compensate multiple inferences.

Additionally, an adjustment to this benchmark can also provide insights about the way non-

native English speakers would compensate for the differences in prosodic systems between their

L1 and English, and in what ways they may compensate when those differences interfere with

comprehension.

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„Doing Gender‟ for Laughs: Discourse Analysis of Comedic Sketches of Gender

Performance from 1970 – 2010

Katherine Bell

Tulane University, New Orleans

ABSTRACT

An interest in gender arose in the 1960‘s; fields such as sociolinguistics, psychology, and

anthropology were saturated with gender discussion throughout the 1970‘s and 1980‘s. The

interest in understanding the ‗other‘ spread outside of academia, appearing in such pop

psychology books as Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (Gray 1992), intended for

readers in the larger culture. As a result, members of today‘s mainstream Western society are

accustomed to a more candid discussion of gender roles, norms, differences, similarities and

performances than the society that existed before the rise of feminism and the aforementioned

interest in gender construction. Over the years, this societal awareness has been attested in

numerous comedy sketches; generally, it is men performing women.

This article uses discourse analysis to compare indexical features of four comedy

sketches in which men are parodying the performance of the female gender, beginning in 1970

with Monty Python‘s depiction of the ‗Pepperpots‘ and ending with Harvard Sailing Team‘s

‗Boys Will Be Girls‘ sketch released in 2010. It is important to note that these skits all involve 2,

3 or 4 ‗women‘ speaking to each other; there are no male interlocutors. The focus will be on

paralinguistic features such as facial expressions, body language and prosodic features such as

intonation and vocal pitch range. Indicators of politeness such as agreement, cooperative speech

and turn taking (as opposed to disagreement and insult in stereotypical male speech) are

examined, as well as the use of standard (or close-to-standard) English and the avoidance of

cursing. The earliest sketches examined indicate all of the features which have been attributed to

feminine discourse yet in the comedy sketches of the last twenty years, the performance is

increasingly nuanced and lacking some of these supposedly feminine attributes – for example, no

more dressing in drag and speaking in high pitched voices.

By examining examples of gender performance in its most exaggerated form – comedic parody -

perspectives regarding gender can be examined in varying socio-historical contexts to reveal

possible change over time. There is no way for these men to ‗be‘ women outside of performing

practices that the culture in which they live define as ‗womanly‘ or feminine in the socio-

historical time period in which they are performing.

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References

Colston, Herbert L. and O‘Brien, Jennifer. 2000. Contrast of Kind Versus contrast of

Magnitude: The Pragmatic Accomplishments of Irony and Hyperbole. Discourse Processes 30

(2), 179-199.

Crawford, Mary. 2003. Gender and humor in social context. Journal of Pragmatics 35, 1413 –

1430.

Gregerson, Edgar A. 1979. Sexual Linguistics. Annals New York Academy of Sciences.

Holmes, Janet. 1999. Women, Men and Politeness: Agreeable and Disagreeable Responses. In:

Jawaorski, Adam (Ed.), The Discourse Reader. p. 324 – 333. Routledge, Taylor and Francis

Group. London.

Kendall, Shari. 2008. The balancing act: Framing gendered parental identities at dinnertime.

Language in Society, 37, 539-568. Cambridge University Press.

Kiesling, Scott Fabious. 2001. Now I Gotta Watch What I Say: Shifting constructions of

Masculinity in discourse. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 11: 250-273.

Kreuz, Roger J. and Roberts, Richard M. 1995. Two cures for Verbal Irony: hyperbole and the

Ironic tone of Voice. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10.(1) 21 – 31, Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates.

Levon, Erez. 2007. Sexuality in context: Variation and the sociolinguistic perception of identity.

Language in Society 36: 533-554.

Tannen, Deborah. 1990. You Just Don‘t Understand. Ballantine, New York.

Todd, Alexandra, Fisher, Sue (Eds.), 1988. Gender and Discourse: The Power of Talk. Anlex,

Norwood, NJ.

West, Candace, Zimmerman, Donald H. 1987. Doing Gender. Gender and Society Vol. 1, 125-

151.

37 | P a g e

The Proto-form of Bagobo (Tagabawa), Mandaya, Manobo, Sama and Davao Sebuano

Peter Jon L. Mendoza

Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology, The Philippines

ABSTRACT

This paper rationally shows the relationship of languages and the degree of their affinities.

Through intellectual guess, this paper attempted to explicate the changes the morphemes of the

five studied languages underwent---from their proposed proto-forms to their respective present

forms. All these are shown or presented in phonetic notations that proposed rationalized

environments or condition to account for the changes that took place.

This study presents the proto-form of the five studied languages having four common vowels

namely [α], [Ι], [o], and [u]. This study used 100 commonly used words from the Swadesh list

comprising of the 200-word list which was formulated by the Swiss linguist Morris Swadesh.

These words, which were subjected to translation in the five studied languages, include the five

senses, weathers in the Philippines and other common words.

The study limited in the comparative reconstruction, pursuing the technique on subgrouping of

the languages being studied.

Arriving with the proto-forms through comparative reconstruction was done through the

employment of two known strategies namely: Phonetic Plausibility Strategy (PPS) and Majority

Rules Strategy (MRS). The reconstruction of the morphemes was the heart of the study as it tries

to propose the proto-form behind plausible and possible paths of their evolution that considers

dimensions of sound changes and geographical location, and careful respondent selection.

Further, lexico statistics was employed to quantify the relationships among and between the

studied languages. The results showed Bagobo having the most number of shared lexemes (based

on core vocabularies shared) with the four other languages, and is further closest to Manobo. In

addition, there were other clusters of languages proposed that showed certain degree of affinity

(based on their shared core vocabularies) such as Davao Sebuano and Mandaya, and distant

relationships as well, since peripheral vocabulary was seen strong among the studied languages –

such in the case of the language Sama. Though the percentage of their affinity may seem too

small, it is never rational to conclude that there is no relationship among these languages.

Finally, the correspondences exhibited by the sample lexemes among the languages could not be

just ignored.

(Please refer to the figure on the next page)

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Figure 4.2

Manobo Bagobo Davao-Sebuano Mandaya Sama

Though the percentage of their affinity may seem too small, it is never rational to conclude that

there is no relationship among these languages.

Finally, the correspondences exhibited by the sample lexemes among the languages could not be

just ignored.

References

O‘Grady, William, et. al.(1997). Contemporary linguistics, An Introduction. 90 To Henman

Court Road, London.

Hyman, Larry M.(1975). Phonology: theory and analysis. Holt, Rinehart and Winston

Crowley, Terry.(1992). An introduction to historical linguistics. Oxford University Press.

Finegan, Edward.(1999). Language-its structure and use. (Third ed.) New York: Harcourt Brace

College Publishers.

Websites:

www.linguistics.org/issues/10/10-1329.htm/

www.sanrokan.com

Term paper:

The Proto-form of Bagobo, Manobo, Mandaya and Sama

By: Peter Jon L. Mendoza (March 2003) University of Southeastern Philippines

PROTO-LANGUAGE