scholarly journals Request Realisations in Cameroon Pidgin English

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Kouega

Pragmatic investigations into Cameroon Pidgin English are rare and works on requests are non-existent. This study sets out to outline the rules that underlie requests in this language and the lexical and structural features that realise them. The informants were 30 fluent Pidgin English speakers who were found communicating in Pidgin in public settings like bars and who were willing to join in a writing exercise. The instrument used was a collection of ten request fragments that had occurred in natural Pidgin conversation. These informants were asked to compose a possible conversation between two familiar equals in which one of these fragments like “Put the potatoes in the bucket” could fit squarely. The frame adopted for data analysis was Blum-Kulka and Olshtain’s 1984 research on requests and apologies, whose aim was to specify the particular pragmatic rules of use for a number of languages including English and German. The analysis revealed that the constituents of a request utterance were the same as previous researchers had identified. Besides the most frequent request strategy type used was “reference to preparatory conditions” (31.57% of 38 utterances) followed by “hedged performatives” (26.31%).

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 877-887
Author(s):  
Leffi Noviyenty ◽  
Fakhruddin ◽  
Taqiyuddin ◽  
Bukman Lian

Purpose of the study: This study aimed at finding out the Islamic terms used as well as translated by English lecturers in English conversations, the strategies used by English lecturers in translating the Islamic terms in English conversations, the reasons why they use the strategies, and the contexts when they use and translate the Islamic terms in English conversations. Methodology: This research applied a qualitative study by involving seven English lecturers at State Islamic Institute of Curup, Bengkulu, Indonesia. The data were garnered from interviews and observations. The data were analyzed using an interactive model of data analysis. Main Findings: This research has found that the English lecturers used, and to some extent translated nineteen Islamic terms during English conversations. Those terms subsumed Assalammu’alaikum Warahmatullahi wa barakaatuh, InshaAllah, Bismillahirrohmannirrohiiim, Alhamdulillah, Adzan, Aamiiin, Allahuakbar, Haram, Halal, Ka’bah, Munkar, Subhanallah, Al-Qur’an, Iman, Sholat, hajj, Saum, Allah, and Masjidil Haram. Most of the lecturers used borrowed or loan words and general word-use or synonymous word strategies in translating the Islamic terms. There were some reasons for the uses of borrowing or general word-use strategies. For the use of borrowing strategy, the reasons were: first they had limited vocabularies for Islamic terms. Second, they borrowed the Islamic terms because such terms had already been common to be used in their original forms. Third, they lacked of knowledge on the translation of Islamic terms in English. Fourth, they wanted to Maintain Moslem’s identity. Subsequently, for the use of general word-use strategy or synonym, the lecturer applying this strategy had a reason that in English speaking the Islamic terms should be translated into English albeit using words with similar meanings in a general sense. Furthermore, the Islamic terms were mostly used in the classrooms and in the opening as well as closing of teaching and learning processes. Applications of this study: This research will be useful for universities, lecturers, students, and non-native English speakers that are common to be engaged in English conversations framed by Islamic discourses. Novelty/Originality of this study: Many studies as regards the English translation of Islamic terms have been conducted in the field of a written mode of translation. However, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, very few studies have been oriented towards translation strategies of Islamic terms in a spoken mode, or in this regard, English conversations. This case is worth researching, and this research seeks to fulfill this gap.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 219
Author(s):  
Mahwish Farooq ◽  
Asim Mahmood

The current research is done for the verification of two different claims. According to Kachru, (2005) that Punjabi English speakers are unable to create distinction between /Ɛ/ and /æ/ front vowels but Bilal et al. (2011) has refused this claim after verifying it in the speech of Punjabi speakers of Sargodha, Pakistan. If Bilal is right than there is a big need to study this claim in broader perspective. Therefore, in the current research, 9720 utterances (of 72 native Punjabi speakers from 12 districts of Punjab, Pakistan) are recorded and analyzed in PRAAT software. Data analysis is done in two steps i.e., (i) auditory analysis is done by listening wave files and (ii) acoustic analysis is based on the measurement of first three formant values (F1, F2, F3) and vowels’ duration. The results clarify that Pakistani Punjabi English speakers have maintained difference in short and long, stressed and unstressed articulation at word initial and medial positions. But the limited number of Lahori Punjabians could not maintain this difference at word medial position only. Consequently, this research highly supports Bilal’s claim in broader perspective but we cannot totally deny Kachru’s claim. Because we have also find traces of /Ɛ/ and /æ/ merger in our data as well and the reason might be the selection of research sample. 


2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anita Anita

This study aims to examine and elaborate the factors that contribute to the success and failure of English speakers as the second language in the pursuit of this language in three aspects of the language: fluency, language structure and pronunciation. Data for this study was obtained by conducting semi structured interviews with two students at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. Qualitative data analysis shows that factors such as second language learning in the pre-trial period, in the second language environment, exposure to the second language, the ability to acculturate, the motivation and the learning strategies impact on the mastery of the languages in the three areas mentioned above. Data analysis also shows that the existence and absence of such factors in the second language learning period significantly affect the mastery of language in the three areas.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 2806
Author(s):  
Katherine Tu ◽  
Clemente Ibarra-Castanedo ◽  
Stefano Sfarra ◽  
Yuan Yao ◽  
Xavier P. V. Maldague

Infrared thermography has been widely adopted in many applications for material structure inspection, where data analysis methods are often implemented to elaborate raw thermal data and to characterize material structural properties. Herein, a multiscale thermographic data analysis framework is proposed and applied to building structure inspection. In detail, thermograms are first collected by conducting solar loading thermography, which are then decomposed into several intrinsic mode functions under different spatial scales by multidimensional ensemble empirical mode decomposition. At each scale, principal component analysis (PCA) is implemented for feature extraction. By visualizing the loading vectors of PCA, the important building structures are highlighted. Compared with principal component thermography that applies PCA directly to raw thermal data, the proposed multiscale analysis method is able to zoom in on different types of structural features.


Author(s):  
Adane L. Mamuye ◽  
Matteo Rucco ◽  
Luca Tesei ◽  
Emanuela Merelli

AbstractTopological data analysis has been recently used to extract meaningful information frombiomolecules. Here we introduce the application of persistent homology, a topological data analysis tool, for computing persistent features (loops) of the RNA folding space. The scaffold of the RNA folding space is a complex graph from which the global features are extracted by completing the graph to a simplicial complex via the notion of clique and Vietoris-Rips complexes. The resulting simplicial complexes are characterised in terms of topological invariants, such as the number of holes in any dimension, i.e. Betti numbers. Our approach discovers persistent structural features, which are the set of smallest components to which the RNA folding space can be reduced. Thanks to this discovery, which in terms of data mining can be considered as a space dimension reduction, it is possible to extract a new insight that is crucial for understanding the mechanism of the RNA folding towards the optimal secondary structure. This structure is composed by the components discovered during the reduction step of the RNA folding space and is characterized by minimum free energy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keita Koseki ◽  
Hiroshi Kawasaki ◽  
Toru Atsugi ◽  
Miki Nakanishi ◽  
Makoto Mizuno ◽  
...  

AbstractRecent developments of molecular biology have revealed diverse mechanisms of skin diseases, and precision medicine considering these mechanisms requires the frequent objective evaluation of skin phenotypes. Transepidermal water loss (TEWL) is commonly used for evaluating skin barrier function; however, direct measurement of TEWL is time-consuming and is not convenient for daily clinical practice. Here, we propose a new skin barrier assessment method using skin images with topological data analysis (TDA). TDA enabled efficient identification of structural features from a skin image taken by a microscope. These features reflected the regularity of the skin texture. We found a significant correlation between the topological features and TEWL. Moreover, using the features as input, we trained machine-learning models to predict TEWL and obtained good accuracy (R2 = 0.524). Our results suggest that assessment of skin barrier function by topological image analysis is promising.


Author(s):  
Mtra. Ma. De los Ágneles Silva Mar ◽  
Dra. María Luisa Hernández Maldonado ◽  
Lic. Areli Sosa Mora

Este trabajo es parte del resultado del análisis textual realizado a las respuestas libres contenidas en la encuesta sobre “Búsqueda de la personalidad de los estudiantes” que la Universidad Veracruzana aplicó a parte de su comunidad estudiantil. Entre los objetivos que se plantean se encuentra el estudio sobre el autoconocimiento que los estudiantes manifiestan tener. Este trabajo contribuye a la labor del Tutor Académico y al quehacer del Orientador Educativo que, entre otras, tienen como finalidad el reforzar y apoyar a los estudiantes en sus requerimientos para mejorar su rendimiento escolar. Para el tratamiento de este instrumento, cuyas variables son de naturaleza textual, se ha realizado un análisis estadístico de textos. Este análisis ha integrado distintas técnicas y métodos (combina el análisis multidimensional de datos y la lexicometría) que facilitan la tarea en el análisis de encuestas que contienen preguntas de respuesta libre. En una primea etapa, se aplican procedimientos que permiten obtener el número de ocurrencias de las unidades verbales básicas (generalmente palabras); posteriormente, a partir de esos recuentos es posible realizar un análisis factorial de correspondencias que muestre los rasgos estructurales que los individuos manifiestan a través de sus respuestas.AbstractThis work is part of the result of textual analysis made to the free responses contained in the survey on "Finding the personality of students" that the Universidad Veracruzana applied to part of their student community. Study about self-knowledge, that students say they have, is one of the objectives studied. This work contributes to the work of Tutor Academic and Educational counsellor’s task that, among others, are aimed at strengthening and supporting students in their requirements to improve school performance. Treatment of this tool -whose variables are textual nature-, consists in a statistical analysis of texts. This analysis has integrated various techniques and methods (combining multidimensional data analysis and lexicometry) facilitating the analysis of survey with open questions. The first step is to apply procedures that obtain the number of occurrences of basic verbal units (usually words); then, from these counts, it is possible to perform a correspondence analysis that shows the structural features that individuals manifest through their responses.Recibido: 11 de enero de 2010 Aceptado: 30 de marzo de 2010


Author(s):  
O.C. de Hodgins ◽  
K. R. Lawless ◽  
R. Anderson

Commercial polyimide films have shown to be homogeneous on a scale of 5 to 200 nm. The observation of Skybond (SKB) 705 and PI5878 was carried out by using a Philips 400, 120 KeV STEM. The objective was to elucidate the structural features of the polymeric samples. The specimens were spun and cured at stepped temperatures in an inert atmosphere and cooled slowly for eight hours. TEM micrographs showed heterogeneities (or nodular structures) generally on a scale of 100 nm for PI5878 and approximately 40 nm for SKB 705, present in large volume fractions of both specimens. See Figures 1 and 2. It is possible that the nodulus observed may be associated with surface effects and the structure of the polymers be regarded as random amorphous arrays. Diffraction patterns of the matrix and the nodular areas showed different amorphous ring patterns in both materials. The specimens were viewed in both bright and dark fields using a high resolution electron microscope which provided magnifications of 100,000X or more on the photographic plates if desired.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document