Clefts in Naija, a Nigerian pidgincreole

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-182
Author(s):  
Bernard Caron
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
West African ◽  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Annotation Scheme ◽  
Geographic Origins ◽  
The Social ◽  
Education Levels

Abstract This paper is a corpus-based study of the various forms and uses of clefts in Naija, the largest West-African English lexifier pidgincreole, spoken in Nigeria and its diaspora as a second language by close to 100 million speakers. The data on which this paper is based is taken from the 500,000 word ANR-NaijaSynCor corpus, consisting of 300 samples of spontaneous speech, recorded in 2017 in 13 different locations in Nigeria, from 330 different speakers of both sexes, of various ages, education levels, and geographic origins. The quantitative data is taken from a sub-section of 9,621 sentences (almost 150,000 tokens) that constitute a syntactic treebank mirroring the social and geographic sampling of the full corpus. Clefts, pseudo-clefts and reverse pseudo- clefts are examined. Four types of clefts are described: wey-clefts, bare clefts, double clefts and zero-copula clefts. The properties of those clefting patterns are represented using a UD-type annotation scheme named SUD for Surface-Syntactic Universal Dependencies. The quantitative analysis of the data and comparison with former descriptions of the language underline the massive domination of bare clefts, and the emergence, among these various patterns, of a relative pronoun nãĩ “who/which” used only with cleft constructions, while the relativiser wey is being abandoned and specialises as relative clause operator.

scholarly journals YouTubers' social functions and their influence on pre-adolescence

Comunicar ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (57) ◽  
pp. 71-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Aran-Ramspott ◽  
Maddalena Fedele ◽  
Anna Tarragó
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This study focuses on the relationship between preadolescents and youtubers, with the objective of observing how tweens integrate youtubers as referents of a teen digital culture. From a socio-psychological and communicological perspective, a mixed methodological design was applied to carry out the audience study, which was divided into two parts: a quantitative analysis of the audience via a survey administered to 1,406 eleven-twelve year old students of Catalan Secondary Schools, and a qualitative analysis of the preadolescence audience using three focus groups. The quantitative data was analysed with SPSS and the qualitative data with the help of the Atlas.ti software. The results demonstrate that tweens consider youtubers as referents for entertainment and for closeness to a teen digital culture, but not really as a role models or bearers of values as influencers. Also, preadolescents show some dimensions of Media Literacy, since they recognise youtubers’ commercial strategies and their role as actors and professionals. The study notes gender bias in some aspects, and is an introduction to observation of the social functions of youtubers amongst teenagers, individuals who are in the process of constructing their identity and on the point of becoming young adults. El presente estudio se centra en la relación entre preadolescentes y youtubers, con el objetivo de observar cómo los primeros integran a los youtubers como referentes de una cultura digital juvenil. Desde una perspectiva sociopsicológica y comunicativa, se aplicó un diseño metodológico mixto para llevar a cabo el estudio de audiencia, organizado en dos partes: un análisis cuantitativo de la audiencia a través de un cuestionario administrado a 1.406 estudiantes de once-doce años de institutos en Cataluña, y un análisis cualitativo de la audiencia preadolescente a partir de tres «focus group». Los datos cuantitativos se analizaron con SPSS y los cualitativos con la ayuda del programa Atlas.ti. Los resultados demuestran que los preadolescentes consideran a los youtubers como referentes para el entretenimiento y por su proximidad a una cultura digital juvenil, pero no realmente como modelos o portadores de valores en tanto que «influencers». Además, los preadolescentes muestran alguna dimensión de Alfabetización Mediática, al identificar las estrategias comerciales de los youtubers y sus roles profesionales. El estudio da cuenta de un sesgo de género en algunos aspectos, y resulta una introducción a la observación sobre las funciones sociales de los youtubers entre los adolescentes, personas que están en pleno proceso de construcción de sus identidades y a punto de convertirse en jóvenes adultos.

Effects of Sentence Structure on Sentence Elicited Imitation Responses

1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 809-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Carol Hudgins ◽  
Walter L. Cullinan
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Female College Students ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Response Accuracy ◽  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Elicited Imitation ◽  
Sentence Repetition ◽  
Repetition Task

This study investigates the effects of sentence structure on the number of error sentences and response latency in a sentence-repetition task. Forty female college students repeated short and long test sentences containing either a single self-embedded or right-branching subject-focus or object-focus relative clause. Sentences were also controlled for deletion of the relative pronoun of the relative clause. Sentence structure was found to affect sentence elicited imitation response accuracy and latency in a manner similar to the effects of structure on ease of comprehension. The findings are consistent with a canonical-sentoid strategy explanation of sentence processing during sentence imitation.

Rewriting the Body: Aida Overton Walker and the Social Formation of Cakewalking

1996 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Krasner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
West African ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anna Julia Cooper ◽  
And Gender

Although Aida Overton Walker (1880–1914) belonged to the same generation of turn-of-the-century African American performers as did Bob Cole, J. Rosamond Johnson, Bert Williams, and George Walker, she had a rather different view of how best to represent her race and gender in the performing arts. Walker taught white society in New York City how to do the Cakewalk, a celebratory dance with links to West African festival dance. In Walker's choreography of it, it was reconfigured with some ingenuity to accommodate race, gender, and class identities in an era in which all three were in flux. Her strategy depended on being flexible, on being able to make the transition from one cultural milieu to another, and on adjusting to new patterns of thinking. Walker had to elaborate her choreography as hybrid, merging her interpretation of cakewalking with the preconceptions of a white culture that became captivated by its form. To complicate matters, Walker's choreography developed during a particularly unstable and volatile period. As Anna Julia Cooper remarked in 1892.

Again on relative clause and subordination in Latin

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gualtiero Calboli
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Central Point ◽  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Case Theory ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

AbstractI started from the relative clause which occurs in Hittite, and in particular with the enclitic position of the relative pronoun. This is connected with the OV position and this position seems to have been prevailing in Hittite and PIE. The syntactic structure usually employed in Hittite between different clauses is the parataxis. Nevertheless, also the hypotaxis begins to be employed and the best occasion to use it was the diptych as suggested by Haudry, though he didn't consider the most natural and usual diptych: the law, where the crime and the sanction build a natural diptych already in old Hittite. Then I used Justus' and Boley's discussion on the structure of Hittite sentence and found a similarity with Latin, namely the use of an animate subject as central point of a sentence. With verbs of action in ancient languages the subject was normally an animate being, whereas also inanimate subject is employed in modern languages. This seems to be the major difference between ancient and modern structure of a sentence, or, better to say, in Hittite and PIE the subject was an animate being and this persisted a long time, and remained as a tendency in Latin, while in following languages and in classical grammar the subject became a simple nominal “entity” to be predicated and precised with verb and other linguistic instruments. A glance has been cast also to pronouns and particles (sometimes linked together) as instruments of linking nominal variants of coordinate or subordinate clauses and to the development of demonstrative/deictic pronouns. Also in ancient case theory a prevailing position was assured to the nominative case, the case of the subject.

#GomorraLaSerie: Converging audience and enhanced authorship on twenty-first-century Italian screens

Modern Italy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierluigi Erbaggio
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Young People ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Organised Crime ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Screen Viewing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform

Based on Roberto Saviano's book Gomorra (2006), production of the TV series Gomorra – La serie (2014) was met with scepticism as many feared it would glamorise organised crime and, consequently, attract young people toward Camorra affiliation. The series' bleak portrayal of criminals and criminality was offered as a response to such concerns. Despite the preoccupations, Gomorra – La serie was hugely successful and, because of its quality, was sold to other countries. In Italy, the series' success can be measured by the popularity of its Twitter hashtag #GomorraLaSerie. Engaged with Henry Jenkins' theories of media convergence and based on a corpus of tweets bearing this official hashtag, this article proposes a quantitative analysis and advances conclusions regarding the Italian TV audience and second-screen viewing practices. Additionally, through a qualitative study of Saviano's tweets about the series, it examines the writer's use of the social media platform as a tool of narrative continuity. Finally, the article highlights a few examples of fan-generated media and concludes with remarks regarding Saviano's problematic position at the centre of a transmedia object.

REVIEW OF SOCIAL RESEARCH IN POLAND ON THE SARS-CoV-2 PANDEMIC IN THE LIGHT OF THE FUZZY REASONING PARADIGM

2021 ◽  
Vol 563 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Stochmal ◽  
Jan Maciejewski ◽  
Andrzej Jarynowski
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
Fuzzy Reasoning ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions

The article presents the results of the secondary analysis of qualitative and quantitative data in relation to social research conducted in Poland during the pandemic. The research results were introduced on the basis of analyzes of 180 projects carried out by scientific and commercial institutions in the period from January to May 2020. The aim of the project is to present a standard way of conducting empirical research for social researchers who undertake the challenge of identifying the phenomena accompanying the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We are interested in the possibility of drawing conclusions that go beyond individual research projects carried out in the social field. The conclusions recommended by us concern the following issues: mitigating the polarization of social attitudes dynamically changing during a pandemic, practical solving – and not only diagnosing – problems revealed in COVID reality and supplementing the deficiencies of theoretical assumptions accompanying research works.

scholarly journals Lexicalized structural priming in second language online sentence comprehension

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hang Wei ◽  
Julie E. Boland ◽  
Jonathan Brennan ◽  
Fang Yuan ◽  
Min Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
First Language ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Chinese Adult ◽  
Education Levels ◽  
L1 And L2

Prior work has shown intriguing differences between first language (L1) and second language (L2) comprehension priming of relative clauses. We investigated English reduced relative clause priming in Chinese adult learners of English. Participants of different education levels read sentences in a self-paced, moving window paradigm. Critical sentences had a temporarily ambiguous reduced relative clause. Across lists, critical sentences were rotated, so that they occurred either as prime or as target, and had either the same or different verb as the critical sentence with which they were paired. Prime/target pairs were separated by several filler sentences, which never contained a relative clause. Mean reading times for the disambiguating region in the target sentences were faster than in the prime sentences, but only in the same-verb condition, not in the different-verb condition. This pattern of results is consistent with L1 comprehension priming research, suggesting that similar lexically specific mechanisms are involved in L1 and L2 comprehension priming of reduced relative clauses. These findings are in line with lexicalist accounts of sentence comprehension (e.g. MacDonald et al., 1994), according to which syntactic information is bound to specific words. In addition, these findings argue against theories that postulate fundamental differences in processing of L1 and L2 (e.g. Clahsen and Felser, 2006a, 2006b).

scholarly journals Komunikacja międzypokoleniowa w  polskiej kulturze. Wyniki badań empirycznych

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 29-43
Author(s):  
Patrycja Kochanek
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Intergenerational Communication ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Generation Problem

Intergenerational communication in Polish cultureThe object of this paper is to verify the structure of communication in cultural discourse in Poland. It is analyzed if this discourse sees differences between the next generations and if it personalizes communication for them. Pilot research CAWI was done in May 2017. Twenty one responders answered 7 opened and 5 closed questions in an online survey. All of the responders were working in cultural institutions. The categorization of the answers gave an image of the social groups that have some specific and unique characteristics and values. The quantitative analysis of the answers verified the hypotheses: cultural discourse creates communication according to the audience — which is generation specific. Cultural institutions see this generation problem in Poland and they attribute this change to the activities that have been created for people. This research is only an opening to further investigations on this topic.

scholarly journals Current Aspects of Speech Disfluency Research: Scientific Review of the International Workshop DiSS 19 (Budapest) Issues

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-74
Author(s):  
Tatiana Sineokova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Information Transfer ◽  
International Workshop ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Speech Technology ◽  
Scientific Review ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Speech Disfluency ◽  
Working Out

Disfluency in spontaneous speech is currently a subject of study of specialists working in different fields of knowledge. Different external manifestations of disfluency (hesitation pauses, sound prolongations, pause fillers, articulatory perseverations and lexico-grammatical repetitions, self-corrections, breaks, nonverbal means of information transfer, etc.) are being investigated. They turn out to be a convenient tool for revealing and monitoring the peculiarities of cognitive processes with the help of explicit clearly registered signals occurring in speech under the influence of a number of extralinguistic factors such as the communicative situation, the type of speech (monologic or dialogic), the language of communication (L1 or L2), the emotional state of the speaker, the age, the social status, the diseases impairing speech and mental activity, and others. Further investigation of disfluency makes it possible to solve both a number of fundamental problems connected with modeling of cognitive coding and decoding speech processes and applied tasks connected with adoption of research findings in such fields as developmental pedagogy, psychology, medicine, foreign language training, translation, automatic recognition of speech signal, etc. Up to now, a sufficient number of empirical investigations have been carried out providing a basis for working out particular models which will make it possible, in the long run, to create the overall model of disfluency in spontaneous speech. Conferences and workshops undoubtedly play an important role in uniting the efforts of specialists in this sphere. One of them is the international workshop “Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS)” that was first held in 1999. The current problems that were discussed by the participants of the workshop (production and perception speech models, age and clinical factors of disfluency, special difficulties in foreign speech production, including translation, speech technology) may be a useful reference point for researchers working on the issue.

scholarly journals The Sociability of West African Migrants among Russians in Moscow

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-156
Author(s):  
Исаак Олумайова Они
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
West African ◽  
Host Community ◽  
Host Society ◽  
African Migrants ◽  
The Social ◽  
African Community ◽  
Research Show

This paper focuses on the social relationships of West African migrants living in Moscow. It investigates the factors to which West African migrants are exposed that promote or limit their social involvement in the new environment in which they find themselves. Although the African community in Russia is rather small, it is gradually increasing. It is, therefore, the aim of this research to examine the effect of the host environment on their perception of the society and how they try to blend in, or not, with social activities there. The article is based on qualitative methods, namely eleven interviews and participant observation of West African migrants. This research revolves around themes such as their communicative language skills, formation of networks among the host community, and sociability. Findings from the research show that West African migrants in Moscow have been attached to their ethnic landscapes, which has limited their sociability in their host society. Since sociability is not mono-directional, the state needs to do more to create both public awareness of the need to recognize and accept the presence of other races and also to create regulations that will guide the smooth integration of migrants in the country.

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