scholarly journals 'O li'ili'I 'o lisega 'o le fanaa'e: Missionary and government influences on Samoan language change 1906-2014

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sadat Muaiava
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Word List ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Empirical Method ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Mission Church ◽  
Over Time

<p>The arrival of the missionaries and foreign administrations¹ in Sāmoa in 1830 and 1900, respectively, initiated a surge in the integration of foreign types (words) in the gagana Sāmoa (Samoan language). To date, research regarding changes to the gagana as a result of this contact has largely been observational (Pratt 1862, Cain 1986, Mosel and Hovdhaugen 1992, Allardice 2000, Lāmeta 2005, Tamasese 2005, Ma‘ia‘i 2010, Macpherson 2010, Kruse-Vā‘ai 2011, Ma‘ilo 2016). While these studies are valuable, this study seeks to enhance current research through a systematic and empirical examination of changes to the gagana. As a result, this research is guided by three research questions:  1. What can a diachronic analysis of the lexicons of lāuga fa‘amatai and lāuga fa‘alelotu tell us about language change in gagana Sāmoa since the arrival of the missionaries in 1830?  2. What has been the nature of language contact between lāuga fa‘amatai and lāuga fa‘alelotu?  3. To what extent can changes in the gagana Sāmoa be attributed to social change?  Fa‘afaletui and Corpus methodologies were used. The Fa‘afaletui methodology is a Samoan methodology used to obtain the perceptions of insider informants about changes to the gagana. The corpus methodology was used as an empirical method to also analyse changes to the gagana.  To investigate changes to the gagana over time and at specific periods, four indicator years were used for the corpus to represent a significant period of social contact in Sāmoa. These are: 1906, 1944, 1977 and 2014. From the corpus of Sulu Sāmoa and Sāvali texts from 1906-2014, a combined word list consisting of 1,475 foreign types was identified.  The perceptions of insider informants point to the profound influence of the missions on the gagana, and how the written word, particularly the translation of the Bible, aided religious conversion and formalised new ideologies and vocabularies. Their perceptions also point to the considerable influence of government on the gagana in the areas of government divisions and education. In addition, the lack of gagana standardisation and the increase in Samoan population movement and growth in metropolitan centres have intensified language change.  The fa‘afaletui sessions were enhanced by the corpus findings which indicate that over time, the evolution of foreign words into the gagana was integrated using five different lexical constructions and demonstrate the Samoan language has changed considerably between 1906-2014.  The implementation of the fa‘afaletui and corpus methodologies meets the Pacific research aims of this research in that it values the use of both Pacific and non-Pacific methodologies for Pacific language research.  This research offers a platform for examining changes to gagana Sāmoa over time that draws on the perspectives of insider informants and data from newspaper texts. The examination is an in-depth discussion and overview of the influences of the mission Church and Westminster State on changes to the gagana and provides a holistic approach and appreciation of the correlations between language and the social environment. Finally, this research values the call by Teaiwa (2009) for more Pacific-related research that values and incorporates both Pacific and non-Pacific methodologies.  ¹ Foreign administrations here refer to the formal establishment of the German and New Zealand administrations in 1900 and 1914 respectively. It does not include consulates that were in place in Sāmoa prior to 1900.</p>

scholarly journals 'O li'ili'I 'o lisega 'o le fanaa'e: Missionary and government influences on Samoan language change 1906-2014

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sadat Muaiava
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Word List ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Empirical Method ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Mission Church ◽  
Over Time

<p>The arrival of the missionaries and foreign administrations¹ in Sāmoa in 1830 and 1900, respectively, initiated a surge in the integration of foreign types (words) in the gagana Sāmoa (Samoan language). To date, research regarding changes to the gagana as a result of this contact has largely been observational (Pratt 1862, Cain 1986, Mosel and Hovdhaugen 1992, Allardice 2000, Lāmeta 2005, Tamasese 2005, Ma‘ia‘i 2010, Macpherson 2010, Kruse-Vā‘ai 2011, Ma‘ilo 2016). While these studies are valuable, this study seeks to enhance current research through a systematic and empirical examination of changes to the gagana. As a result, this research is guided by three research questions:  1. What can a diachronic analysis of the lexicons of lāuga fa‘amatai and lāuga fa‘alelotu tell us about language change in gagana Sāmoa since the arrival of the missionaries in 1830?  2. What has been the nature of language contact between lāuga fa‘amatai and lāuga fa‘alelotu?  3. To what extent can changes in the gagana Sāmoa be attributed to social change?  Fa‘afaletui and Corpus methodologies were used. The Fa‘afaletui methodology is a Samoan methodology used to obtain the perceptions of insider informants about changes to the gagana. The corpus methodology was used as an empirical method to also analyse changes to the gagana.  To investigate changes to the gagana over time and at specific periods, four indicator years were used for the corpus to represent a significant period of social contact in Sāmoa. These are: 1906, 1944, 1977 and 2014. From the corpus of Sulu Sāmoa and Sāvali texts from 1906-2014, a combined word list consisting of 1,475 foreign types was identified.  The perceptions of insider informants point to the profound influence of the missions on the gagana, and how the written word, particularly the translation of the Bible, aided religious conversion and formalised new ideologies and vocabularies. Their perceptions also point to the considerable influence of government on the gagana in the areas of government divisions and education. In addition, the lack of gagana standardisation and the increase in Samoan population movement and growth in metropolitan centres have intensified language change.  The fa‘afaletui sessions were enhanced by the corpus findings which indicate that over time, the evolution of foreign words into the gagana was integrated using five different lexical constructions and demonstrate the Samoan language has changed considerably between 1906-2014.  The implementation of the fa‘afaletui and corpus methodologies meets the Pacific research aims of this research in that it values the use of both Pacific and non-Pacific methodologies for Pacific language research.  This research offers a platform for examining changes to gagana Sāmoa over time that draws on the perspectives of insider informants and data from newspaper texts. The examination is an in-depth discussion and overview of the influences of the mission Church and Westminster State on changes to the gagana and provides a holistic approach and appreciation of the correlations between language and the social environment. Finally, this research values the call by Teaiwa (2009) for more Pacific-related research that values and incorporates both Pacific and non-Pacific methodologies.  ¹ Foreign administrations here refer to the formal establishment of the German and New Zealand administrations in 1900 and 1914 respectively. It does not include consulates that were in place in Sāmoa prior to 1900.</p>

Language Change and Movement as Seen by Historical Linguistics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Nurse
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Language Boundaries ◽  
Over Time

The focus of this chapter is on how languages move and change over time and space. The perceptions of historical linguists have been shaped by what they were observing. During the flowering of comparative linguistics, from the late 19th into the 20th century, the dominant view was that in earlier times when people moved, their languages moved with them, often over long distances, sometimes fast, and that language change was largely internal. That changed in the second half of the 20th century. We now recognize that in recent centuries and millennia, most movements of communities and individuals have been local and shorter. Constant contact between communities resulted in features flowing across language boundaries, especially in crowded and long-settled locations such as most of Central and West Africa. Although communities did mix and people did cross borders, it became clear that language and linguistic features could also move without communities moving.

scholarly journals INTERNET USE AND LONELINESS OF OLDER ADULTS OVER TIME: THE MEDIATION EFFECT OF SOCIAL CONTACT

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S194-S194
Author(s):  
Kexin Yu ◽  
Kexin Yu ◽  
Shinyi Wu ◽  
Iris Chi
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Older People ◽  
Internet Use ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Total Effect ◽  
Mediation Effect ◽  
Health And Retirement Study ◽  
Longitudinal Association ◽  
Retirement Study ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Internet is increasingly popular among older adults and have changed interpersonal interactions. However, it remains controversial whether older people are more or less lonely with internet use. This paper tests the longitudinal association of internet use and loneliness among older people. One pathway that explains the association, the mediation effect of social contact, was examined. Data from the 2006, 2010 and 2014 waves of Health and Retirement Study was used. Hierarchical liner modeling results showed internet use was related to decreased loneliness over 12-year period of time (b=-0.044, p&lt;.001). Internet use was associated with more social contact with family and friends overtime (b=0.261, p&lt;.001), social contact was related to less perceived loneliness longitudinally (b=0.097, p&lt;.001). The total effect of internet use on loneliness is -0.054 and the mediated effect is -0.025. The findings imply that online activities can be effective for reducing loneliness for older people through increased social contact.

The visual-gestural modality and beyond

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Mohr
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Deaf Community ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
Modal Language ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Native Signers

The article analyses cross-modal language contact between signed and spoken languages with special reference to the Irish Deaf community. This is exemplified by an examination of the phenomenon of mouthings in Irish Sign Language including its origins, dynamics, forms and functions. Initially, the setup of language contact with respect to Deaf communities and the sociolinguistics of the Irish Deaf community are discussed, and in the main part the article analyses elicited data in the form of personal stories by twelve native signers from the Republic of Ireland. The major aim of the investigation is to determine whether mouthings are yet fully integrated into ISL and if so, whether this integration has ultimately caused language change. Finally, it is asked whether traditional sociolinguistic frameworks of language contact can actually tackle issues of cross-modal language contact occurring between signed and spoken languages.

scholarly journals Introduction to language acquisition, bilingualism and copula choice in Spanish

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
PEDRO GUIJARRO-FUENTES ◽  
KIMBERLY L. GEESLIN
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Language Attrition ◽  
Areas Of Interest

In several of the most widely read Spanish grammars an entire chapter is devoted to the two copular verbs in Spanish, ser “to be” and estar “to be”, and their many contexts of use (Bull, 1965; Solé and Solé, 1977; Whitley, 1986; Bosque and Demonte, 1999; King and Suñer, 1999; Butt and Benjamin, 2000). For some, the interest in this structure stems from the range of meanings that can be expressed with these two forms, whereas for others it is the variability in the use of these verbs with adjectives, existing between groups, individuals and particular social contexts, that generates inquiry. The combination of these two traits makes the contrast difficult to acquire and likely to be lost or weakened in contexts of language attrition or language contact (Silva-Corvalán, 1986; Geeslin, 2002) and this complexity makes the copula contrast in Spanish an excellent mechanism for exploring broader issues such as theories of acquisition and language change, which are of value to a readership well beyond those working directly on Spanish. After a brief description of the distribution of ser and estar, we provide an overview of the various theoretical descriptions of the copula contrast that exist and their implications for research on bilingualism. Next, we provide a description of the papers in this volume, and outline the areas of interest for readers whose research extends beyond Spanish grammar.

Generating realistic Arabic handwriting dataset

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 460
Author(s):  
Mahmoud I. Abdalla ◽  
Mohsen A. Rashwan ◽  
Mohamed A. Elserafy
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Word List ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Gaussian Mixture ◽  
Normalization Method ◽  
Gaussian Component ◽  
Efficient System ◽  
Mixture Regression ◽  
Word Generation ◽  
Input Text

During the previous year's holistic approach showing satisfactory results to solve ‎the ‎problem of Arabic handwriting word  recognition instead of word letters ‎‎segmentation.‎ ‎In this paper, we present an efficient system for ‎ generation realistic Arabic handwriting dataset from ASCII input ‎text. We carefully selected simple word list that contains most Arabic ‎letters normal and ligature connection cases. To improve the ‎performance of new letters reproduction we developed our ‎normalization method that adapt its clustering action according to ‎created Arabic letters families. We enhanced  Gaussian Mixture ‎Model process to learn letters template by detecting the ‎number and position of Gaussian component by implementing ‎Ramer-Douglas-Peucker‎ algorithm which improve the new letters ‎shapes reproduced by using and Gaussian Mixture Regression. ‎‎We learn the translation distance between word-part to achieve ‎real handwriting word generation shape.‎ Using combination of LSTM and CTC layer as a recognizer to validate the ‎efficiency of our approach in generating new realistic Arabic handwriting words inherit user handwriting style as shown by the experimental results.‎ 

Introduction: Multicultural youth vernaculars in Paris and urban France

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNY CHESHIRE ◽  
PENELOPE GARDNER-CHLOROS
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Nursery School ◽  
Peer Groups ◽  
Recent Immigrant ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds

The papers in this Special Issue present some of the results of theMulticultural London English/Multicultural Paris Frenchproject, supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) from October 2010 to December 2014 and by the FrenchAgence Nationale de la Recherche(ANR) from 2010–2012. The project compared language variation and change in multilingual areas of London and Paris, focusing on the language of young people of recent immigrant origin as well as that of young people whose families had lived in London or Paris for many generations. Similar projects in other European cities have documented the emergence of new ways of speaking and rapid language change in the dominant ‘host’ language, which are attributed to the direct and indirect effects of language contact; see, for example, Wiese 2009 on young people's language in Berlin, Quist 2008 on youth language in Copenhagen, and Svendsen and Røyneland 2008 on Norwegian). In London, young children from diverse linguistic backgrounds tend to acquire English in their peer groups at nursery school rather than from their parents, many of whom do not speak English or are in the early stages of learning English. Since their peers speak a wide range of different languages, the only language the young children have in common is English; and since many of their friends are also acquiring English, there is no clear target model, a high tolerance of linguistic variation, and plenty of scope for linguistic innovation. By the time they reach adolescence, young people's English has stabilized, and many innovations have become part of a new London dialect, now known as Multicultural London English (Cheshire et al., 2013). New urban dialects and language practices such as these have been termed ‘multiethnolects’: they contain a variable repertoire of innovative phonetic, grammatical, and discourse-pragmatic features. In multiethnic peer groups, where local children from many different linguistic backgrounds grow up together, the innovative features are used by speakers of all ethnicities, including those of local descent such as, in London, young monolingual English speakers from Cockney families. Nevertheless they tend to be more frequent in the speech of bilingual young people of recent immigrant origin, and by young speakers with highly multiethnic friendship groups (see further Quist 2008 for an account of the use of features associated with a multiethnolect in conjunction with nonlinguistic ‘markers’ of style, such as tastes in music and preferred ways of dressing). Our project aimed to determine whether a similar outcome had occurred in multicultural areas of Paris.

Sources of auxiliation in the perfects of Europe

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Drinka
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Peripheral Areas ◽  
Explanatory Mechanism ◽  
Scribal Tradition

This paper explores the complex role of language contact in the development of be and have auxiliation in the periphrastic perfects of Europe. Beginning with the influence of Ancient Greek on Latin, it traces the spread of the category across western Europe and identifies the Carolingian scribal tradition as largely responsible for extending the use of the be perfect alongside the have perfect across Charlemagne’s realm. Outside that territory, by contrast, in “peripheral” areas like Iberia, Southern Italy, and England, have came to be used as the only perfect auxiliary. Within the innovating core area, a further innovation began in Paris in the 12th century and spread to contiguous areas in France, Southern Germany, and northern Italy: the semantic shift in the perfects from anterior to preterital meaning. What can be concluded from these three successive instances of diffusion in the history of the perfect is that contact should be regarded as one of the essential “multiple sources” of innovation, and as a fundamental explanatory mechanism for language change.

scholarly journals Studying Contact without Detailed Studies of the Languages Involved: A Non-Philological Approach to Language Contact

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Mark Donohue
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Database Analysis ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Language Data ◽  
The Right ◽  
Detailed Work

<p>Studies of contact have revealed that all kinds of language material can, in the right circumstances, be borrowed from one language to another. Detecting, describing, and analyzing such situations typically involve the detailed study of at least two languages. An alternative involves detecting contact situations through database analysis. This cannot supplant the detailed work that requires detailed descriptive work in particular fields, but can allow us to examine large enough samples of languages that we can start to better understand, through calibration against known histories and other non-linguistic data types, likelihoods of different ‘social contact’ scenarios resulting in different kinds of linguistic traces, and also allow for the more targeted investigation of specific areas and language-to-language interactions. I shall describe the method, and illustrate its application in a number of case studies in regions for which we have good samples of language data.</p>

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