Download or read book Variation in the Grammar of Black South African English written by Verena Minow and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black South African English, the variety of English used by mother-tongue speakers of South Africa's indigenous languages, has received considerable attention during the last two decades. However, so far most of the accounts of this variety have been only qualitative in nature. This book reports on one of the first studies offering extensive quantitative analyses of four typical features of Black South African English grammar: omission of past tense marking, extended use of the progressive aspect, article omission, and use of left dislocation. Drawing on a corpus of spoken data, the study's focus lies on the investigation of the stability of the selected features and hence aims to ascertain which of these are characteristic of Black South African English as a whole. Speakers exhibiting differing levels of competence in English are compared. It is shown that the analysed features are used by speakers of Black South African English regardless of their proficiency level, but, at the same time, there are considerable differences concerning the frequency of occurrence of these features.

Download or read book English in South Africa written by Hildegard Schnell and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2010 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examination Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1.3, University of Duisburg-Essen, language: English, abstract: Due to the spread of English to so many parts of the world which was triggered during the colonial era and by migration of English-speaking people, the importance of English not only as a language of commerce, science and technology but also as an international language of communication has been realized (Platt, Weber, Ho 1984:1). This world-wide expansion of English means that it is now one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, with well over four hundred million native speakers and roughly the same number who speak it as a second language (Barber 2000:236). Consequently, many varieties of English evolved which also means that English is used for many different purposes in varying social contexts. Whereas in North America, Australia and New Zealand the native English-language speakers outnumbered the original inhabitants (Amerindians, Australian Aborigines, Maoris), the native English-speaking community in South Africa is small with a vast majority of the population speaking Afrikaans and indigenous Bantu languages such as Zulu or Xhosa. In spite of this, South African English has undergone relatively little influence from the other languages of the country due to the long period of British domination and the cultural prestige of English (237). Therefore, social variations in the English language in South Africa are extant with very little regional variation.

Download or read book Re assessing the Present Perfect written by Valentin Werner and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a well-known fact that the area of the present perfect has always been a hotly contested ground, but recent corpus analyses have shown that grammatical variation in this realm in English is far more pervasive than previously assumed. This volume is the first ever book-length treatment dedicated to corpus-based work on the present perfect. It offers fresh theoretical insights resting on a solid empirical footing and investigates central aspects of language contact and change, grammaticalization, typology, and dialect formation. It sheds light on this morphosyntactic area from different angles, as it comprises both diachronic and synchronic viewpoints. Contributions explore variation in the expression of perfect meaning and the multifunctionality of perfect forms in a number of native and non-native varieties, thus going beyond the traditional British/American English paradigm, while a second focus lies on cross-variety comparisons. Bringing together the knowledge of leading experts in the field, this book represents the state of the art in data-driven research on the present perfect and will be of interest for those working in the fields of language variation and change, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, and typology.

Download or read book Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes written by Alexandra U. Esimaje and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corpus linguistics has become one of the most widely used methodologies across the different linguistic subdisciplines; especially the study of world-wide varieties of English uses corpus-based investigations as one of the chief methodologies. This volume comprises descriptions of the many new corpus initiatives both within and outside Africa that aim to compile various corpora of African Englishes. Moreover, it contains cutting-edge corpus-based research on African Englishes and the use of corpora in pedagogic contexts within African institutions. This volume thus serves both as a practical introduction to corpus compilation (Part I of the book), corpus-based research (Part II) and the application of corpora in language teaching (Part III), and is intended both for those researchers not yet familiar with corpus linguistics and as a reference work for all international researchers investigating the linguistic properties of African Englishes.

Download or read book Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings written by Bertus van Rooy and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2024-07-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings explores an innovative proposal: that linguistic similarities identified in different forms of contact-influenced varieties of language use (including translation, native and non-native varieties of English, and language use of bilinguals more generally) can be accounted for in a coherent framework grounded in the notion of ‘constrained communication’. These varieties have hitherto been studied in independent scholarly traditions, especially translation studies and world Englishes, leaving the potential underlying unity underexplored, both conceptually and empirically. The chapters collected in this volume aim to develop such a unified perspective by drawing on corpus data across a range of languages and language varieties, with a focus on written language, a neglected data source in research on multilingual contact settings. The findings point to shared general characteristics across individual contact settings, which result from (probabilistically conditioned) manifestations of the same deeper regularities – constraints – present in diverse language-contact settings.

Download or read book Universal or Diverse Paths to English Phonology written by Ulrike Gut and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is concerned with the acquisition of English phonology, both segmental and suprasegmental, by learners of English as a second language, as a third language and by speakers of a postcolonial (“new”) variety of English. It focuses on the acquisition process and factors influencing it, based on insights from all three disciplines.

Download or read book English in Multilingual South Africa written by Raymond Hickey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative and insightful exploration of varieties of English in contemporary South Africa.

Download or read book English in South Africa written by Joachim von Meien and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-01-11 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,5, University of Hannover (Philosophische Fakultät), course: Hauptseminar: English in Africa, 23 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: English came to South Africa through colonization by the end of the 18th century. Around 200 years later it is widely spoken in Africa’s most southern country although it is not the sole official language. It equally shares that status together with Afrikaans and nine African indigenous languages – at least in theory. This paper is supposed to characterize the development and current status of the English language in South Africa. The multicultural state has an eventful and dramatic history. It is important to outline and explain that varied history in this linguistic paper because it had a major effect on language spread and development in South Africa, which has since the arrival of the Europeans never been completely linguistically homogenous. English in South Africa can not be understood without taking a closer look at more than 300 years of eventful history. Chapter two is going to give an overview of that history referring thereby to different recognized historians and their works. After that there will be a closer look at the status of English in today’s South African society. The next chapter has three different focuses. It will take a closer look at the governmental policy of multilingualism and its outcomes in practice. Also the role of the English language in the media and education system of South Africa will be examined. The question needs to be answered, which trends for the future are becoming obvious concerning the role of English in South Africa. Will it be extended in the future or rather suffer from competition through other languages? What is today’s image of English in comparison to the other “imported” language, namely Afrikaans? After having finished the general description of SAE there will be a closer look at its linguistic features. Two major kinds of South African Englishes will thereby be distinguished: White South African English (WSAFE) and Black South African English (BSAFE). Both will be examined in chapters four and five. The theoretical knowledge gained in chapters four and five will then be applied in a phonological analysis of a Black South African speaker of English, namely a 17 year old girl with Zulu background.

Download or read book A Bibliography of South African Languages 2008 2017 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise bibliography on South-African Languages and Linguistics was compiled on the occasion of the 20th International Congress of Linguists in Cape Town, South Africa, July 2018. The selection of titles is drawn from the Linguistic Bibliography and gives an overview of scholarship on South African language studies over the past 10 years. The introduction written by Menán du Plessis (Stellenbosch University) discusses the most recent developments in the field. The Linguistic Bibliography is compiled under the editorial management of Eline van der Veken, René Genis and Anne Aarssen in Leiden, The Netherlands. Linguistic Bibliography Online is the most comprehensive bibliography for scholarship on languages and theoretical linguistics available. Updated monthly with a total of more than 20,000 records annually, it enables users to trace recent publications and provides overviews of older material. For more information on Linguistic Bibliography and Linguistic Bibliography Online, please visit brill.com/lbo and linguisticbibliography.com. The e-book version of this bibliography is available in Open Access.

Download or read book Rethinking Linguistic Creativity in Non native Englishes written by Sandra C. Deshors and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-07-19 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when the paradigm gap (Sridhar & Sridhar 1986) between the EFL and ESL research areas is attracting much scholarly attention, the contributions in the current volume explore this gap from the perspective of linguistic innovations across the two different types of non-native Englishes. In this endeavour, this volume unveils the many facets of linguistic innovations in non-native English varieties and explores the fine line between learners’ erroneous versus creative use of a target language. Adopting empirical, corpus-based approaches to portray linguistic innovations characteristic of EFL and ESL varieties, the contributions show how the interaction of linguistic and social forces influences the development of novel linguistic forms in both endonormative ESL contexts and exonormative EFL contexts. This volume is of relevance to linguists who are interested in the features of non-native English and who wish to gain a better understanding of the nature of innovations along the EFL – ESL continuum.Originally published as a special issue of International Journal of Learner Corpora Research 2:2 (2016).

Download or read book New Englishes New Methods written by Guyanne Wilson and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2023-04-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is an ever-growing body of work on New Englishes, and the time has come to take stock of how research on varieties of English is carried out. The contributions in this volume critically explore the gamut of familiar and unfamiliar methods applied in data collection and analysis in order to improve upon old methods and develop new methods for the study of English around the world. The authors present novel approaches to the use of the International Corpus of English, critical insights into phonological analyses of New Englishes, applications of linguistic dialectology in territories in which New Englishes are used, improvements on attitudinal research, and an array of mixed-methods approaches. The contributions in this volume also include a range of Englishes, considered not only in situ but also in online and diaspora settings, and thus question received understandings of what counts as New Englishes.

Download or read book Urban Panamanian English written by Catherine Laliberté and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2023-08-21 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban Panamanian English presents the first detailed account of the English used by the descendants of the Afro-Caribbean builders of the Panama Canal. It offers an up-to-date sociolinguistic account of the Panamanian West Indian community of Panama City and Colón, including empirical coverage of the advanced state of language shift taking place among bilinguals. The book also showcases spoken interview data and takes stock of the variety’s grammatical features. In particular, it provides an advanced quantitative study of variation in the use of verbal -s which contributes to longstanding discussions regarding the principles constraining this variable in Englishes world-wide. This work of documentation and description richly complements existing research on Panamanian Creole English and spotlights Panama as part and parcel of the English-speaking Caribbean. As such, this book is of interest to all scholars and students of language contact, variation, and change.

Download or read book Oxford Companion to the English Language written by Tom McArthur and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-14 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Companion to the English Language provides an authoritative single-volume source of information about the English language. It is intended both for reference and for browsing. The first edition of this landmark Companion, published in 1998, adopted a strong international perspective, covering topics from Cockney to Creole, Aboriginal English to Caribbean English and a historical range from Chaucer to Chomsky, Latin to the World Wide Web. It succinctly described and discussed the English language at the end of the twentieth century, including its distribution and varieties, its cultural, political, and educational impact worldwide, its nature, origins, and prospects, and its pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, word-formation, and usage. This new edition notably focuses on World Englishes, English language teaching, English as an international language, and the effect of technological advances on the English language. More than 130 new entries include African American English, British Sign Language, China English, digital literacy, multimodality, social networking, superdiversity, and text messaging, among many others. It also includes new biographical entries on key individuals who have had an impact on the English language in recent decades, including Beryl (Sue) Atkins, Adam Kilgariff, and John Sinclair. It is an invaluable reference for English Language students, and fascinating reading for any general reader with an interest in language.

Download or read book African American English written by Salikoko S. Mufwene and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was the first to provide a comprehensive survey of linguistic research into African-American English and is widely recognised as a classic in the field. It covers both the main linguistic features, in particular the grammar, phonology, and lexicon as well as the sociological, political and educational issues connected with African-American English. The editors have played key roles in the development of African-American English and Black Linguistics as overlapping academic fields of study. Along with other leading figures, notably Geneva Smitherman, William Labov and Walt Wolfram, they provide an authoritative diverse guide to these vitally important subject areas. Drawing on key moments of cultural significance from the Ebonics controversy to the rap of Ice-T, the contributors cover the state of the art in scholarship on African-American English, and actively dispel misconceptions, address new questions and explore new approaches. This classic edition has a new foreword by Sonja Lanehart, setting the book in context and celebrating its influence. This is an essential text for courses on African-American English, key reading for Varieties of English and World Englishes modules and an important reference for students of linguistics, black studies and anthropology at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Download or read book English as a Contact Language written by Daniel Schreier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent developments in contact linguistics suggest considerable overlap of branches such as historical linguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, pidgin/creole linguistics, language acquisition, etc. This book highlights the complexity of contact-induced language change throughout the history of English by bringing together cutting-edge research from these fields. Special focus is on recent debates surrounding substratal influence in earlier forms of English (particularly Celtic influence in Old English), on language shift processes (the formation of Irish and overseas varieties) but also on dialects in contact, the contact origins of Standard English, the notion of new epicentres in World English, the role of children and adults in language change as well as transfer and language learning. With contributions from leading experts, the book offers fresh and exciting perspectives for research and is at the same time an up-to-date overview of the state of the art in the respective fields.

Download or read book Social and Regional Variation in World Englishes written by Paula Rautionaho and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection charts the evolution of grammatical variation in Englishes from Late Middle English to the present, using corpus linguistic tools to address divergence and convergence in local and global perspectives. The book considers both diachronic and synchronic perspectives in grammatical variation across varieties of English across the UK, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The volume reflects on the questions of whether patterns of variation diverge or converge and to what extent catalysts for change are shared in time and space. Chapters look at different factors in grammatical variation at both the macro and micro level, investigating specific linguistic and grammatical features but also at wider phenomena in contact linguistics, social patterns, social networks, and media-based corpora. Chapters progress from the local to the global, all with an eye towards using the latest methodological approaches from corpus linguistics to shed light on the affordances of data-informed methods to study grammatical change and the possibilities for future research. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and World Englishes.

Download or read book Middle Class African American English written by Tracey L. Weldon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African American English (AAE) is a major area of research in linguistics, but until now, work has primarily been focused on AAE as it is spoken amongst the working classes. From its historical development to its contemporary context, this is the first full-length overview of the use and evaluation of AAE by middle class speakers, giving voice to this relatively neglected segment of the African American speech community. Weldon offers a unique first-person account of middle class AAE, and highlights distinguishing elements such as codeswitching, camouflaged feature usage, Standard AAE, and talking/sounding 'Black' vs. 'Proper'. Readers can hear authentic excerpts and audio prompts of the language described through a wide range of audio files, which can be accessed directly from the book's page using QR technology or through the book's online Resource Tab. Engaging and accessible, it will help students and researchers gain a broader understanding of both the African American speech community and the AAE continuum.