scholarly journals Assessing (a)symmetry in multilingualism: The case of Mano and Kpelle in Guinea

2021 ◽  
pp. 136700692110231
Author(s):  
Maria Khachaturyan ◽  
Maria Konoshenko
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Proficiency Tests ◽  
Relative Population ◽  
Marriage Patterns ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
L1 And L2

Aims and objectives: The paper studies Kpelle–Mano bilingualism in the broader context of local multilingual repertoires and assesses symmetry in the patterns of language use. Methodology: We combine natural speech sampling with ethnographic observations, interviews, sociolinguistic surveys and elicitation tasks. Data and analysis: The data analyzed includes 88 questionnaire responses, targeted elicitation with 21 individuals, as well as corpus collection and ethnographic observations over the course of fieldwork from 2008 onwards. Findings: Neither Mano nor Kpelle has an overt prestige value. Marriage patterns and economic activity are symmetrical, and both languages can be in certain cases chosen as a means of interethnic communication. However, bilingualism is typically unreciprocated, and the Mano speak Kpelle more often than the other way round. Contact-induced change is almost exclusively unidirectional, with Kpelle influencing Mano. We suggest relative population size as the main explanatory factor. In contrast, both Mano and Kpelle are in an asymmetric relationship with Maninka, which is frequently used by urban Mano and Kpelle speakers. Even if some Maninka claim to speak Kpelle to a certain extent, they rarely use it in real life. Originality: This paper is a report on a previously unstudied multilingual setting. We stress the theoretical and the empirical importance of the patrilect. In addition to its being the defining identity feature, the patrilect is also the main predictor defining the language choice in communication and the volume of the repertoire. Significance: We applied long-term participant observation in various social settings to obtain a fine-grained account of the rules governing language choice, which a typical background questionnaire would overlook. We also sampled natural and elicited speech of L1 and L2 speakers of Mano and Kpelle, a method that yields better results than proficiency tests because it captures interference in grammar, which has far-reaching consequences for contacting languages.

Crafting Masculine Selves

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Chiovenda
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
Select Group ◽  
Ethnographic Methodology ◽  
The Individual

Crafting Masculine Selves represents a journey into the culture and psychological dynamics of a select group of Afghan Pashtun men. The book is based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a volatile area of Afghanistan, adjoining the border with Pakistan, carried out between 2009 and 2013. In addition to participant observation, the author employed a person-centered ethnographic methodology, wherein he conducted long-term, one-on-one interview sessions with four male individuals, and analyzed four additional life trajectories. The book unveils and chronicles how the creation and use of multiple subjectivities, and the unconscious, dissociative interplay that the individual maintains between them, is one of the “stratagems” with which individuals manage to make sense of what happens to them in real life, and to pragmatically inhabit personal circumstances that are often marred by conflict and violence, both at the interpersonal and at the political level. The main cultural thread the book investigates is that of masculinity, a crucial idiom in a very androcentric Pashtun society. Virtually all the interlocutors the book presents have to navigate deep private conflicts and contradictions related to how society expects them to be appropriate, proper men, against the backdrop of a sociopolitical Afghan context heavily impacted by almost forty years of uninterrupted war. Feeling constrained by the strict norms about a severe and honor-bound masculinity in a quickly changing Afghanistan, but equally striving to be culturally validated by their own peers, these men struggle to create and publicly legitimize their own, idiosyncratic way of being appropriate men. While they suffer at times the stern rebuke of their social environment, all the same they represent the seeds for a change of those very cultural norms.

Themes, Diction, and Prosodic Systems in Yoruba Lullabies

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olusanmi Babarinde ◽  
Elizabeth Babarinde
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Survey Method ◽  
World Views ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
Long Term Consequences ◽  
Analyse Data ◽  
Descriptive Survey ◽  
Future Learning

Lullabies are essentially sung for their soothing nature but, as this article shows, they have other important functions. One of the most important of these is that lullabies may provide much-needed language stimulation with important long-term consequences for future learning. This paper begins the work of addressing the dearth of scholarly research on lullabies, especially in the Yoruba (Nigeria: Niger-Congo) culture. It looks at the range of themes, dictions, and prosody that are intertwined to reveal Yoruba beliefs and world-views about children, starting with their time in the womb. The study uses a descriptive survey method to analyse data collected through participant observation. It shows that Yoruba lullabies not only offer insights into Yoruba cultural beliefs but also depend greatly on figurative expression and prosodic systems. These rich literary qualities identify lullabies as the earliest sub-genre of children's poetry.

Treated exudative CNV: short-term and long-term real-life evolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Lumbroso ◽  
Marco Rispoli ◽  
M. Cristina Savastano
Keyword(s):  
Real Life ◽  
Short Term

scholarly journals Domain randomization-enhanced deep learning models for bird detection

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Mao ◽  
Jun Kang Chow ◽  
Pin Siang Tan ◽  
Kuan-fu Liu ◽  
Jimmy Wu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Continuous Monitoring ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Learning Models ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Bird Detection ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractAutomatic bird detection in ornithological analyses is limited by the accuracy of existing models, due to the lack of training data and the difficulties in extracting the fine-grained features required to distinguish bird species. Here we apply the domain randomization strategy to enhance the accuracy of the deep learning models in bird detection. Trained with virtual birds of sufficient variations in different environments, the model tends to focus on the fine-grained features of birds and achieves higher accuracies. Based on the 100 terabytes of 2-month continuous monitoring data of egrets, our results cover the findings using conventional manual observations, e.g., vertical stratification of egrets according to body size, and also open up opportunities of long-term bird surveys requiring intensive monitoring that is impractical using conventional methods, e.g., the weather influences on egrets, and the relationship of the migration schedules between the great egrets and little egrets.

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