analysis of adaptation of the Loanwords in Kikuyu technological Words

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
GACHAU ELENA NYAGUTHII ◽  
ANASHIA NANCY ONG’ONDA

This paper examines loanwords adopted by native Gikuyu speakers to nativise English technological words using the theoretical framework of Optimality Theory as initiated by Prince and Smolensky (1993). Loanword adaptation is a linguistic phenomenon that occurs cross linguistically whenever one language interacts with another language. However, there are stipulations to borrowing because loanwords must be adapted to fit the second language’s Phonology system. Drawing from a sample of 80 words collected from the domain of technology, medicine, education and agriculture, the study found that Gikuyu speakers use processes such as insertion, deletion, vowel substitution and preservation to nativist borrowed word from English. The study also found out that this process occurs because of the tolerance threshold to segment preservation within a given constraint domain and due to distinctive features in English language and Gikuyu language.

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena K. Kuzmina ◽  
Gulnara G. Nazarova ◽  
Lilia R. Nizameeva ◽  
Gérard Broussois

The comprehension of admirativeness as an independent category took place relatively recently – at the end of the 20th century. Until now, some scholars have not recognized an independent character of admirative. However, in recent years there has been an increasingly noticeable tendency to recognize the separate role of admirativeness and to indicate that the expression of surprise evoked by unexpected information cannot be combined with similar meanings. At the same time, the ways and degree of expression of admirativeness in different language systems vary significantly. The introduction of such grammatical category as admirativeness and the term “admirative” refers to the second half of the 19th century. In 1879, O. Dozon coined the term in his works on the Albanian language. The choice of this name (Fr. admiratif comes from the verb “to admire”) is determined by the fact that the linguist interpreted the concept as a certain sense of admiration or surprise, often having an ironic character. Further the development of this direction showed that admirative had the meaning of surprise rather than admiration. In this connection, in 1997, S. de Lancey first singled out this concept into a separate grammatical category. The scholar substantiates it by the fact that in a number of languages, such as Korean, Turkish, Tibetan, Dardic, Sanvar, etc., admirative has a separate grammatical expression. The identification of admirativeness as a separate linguistic phenomenon with a number of specific features has been still the subject of controversy among the researchers. Characteristics and distinctive features of admirativeness, allowing for the separation it from other similar categories will be considered later in the paper (Davletbaeva et al., 2013). In his writings, S. de Lancey uses the term “mirative”, thereby excluding its correlation with admiration introduced by O. Dozon from the meaning of the concept, and indicating that its primary function is to convey the subject’s astonishment. To date, the term “mirative” is widely used in English-language grammar. V.A. Plugnyan notes that the use of this term is more grounded from a typological point of view, however, the use of the concept “admirative” is often retained in domestic works (Smagina, 1996).


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Alberto Morales ◽  
Bexi Perdomo ◽  
Daniel Cassany ◽  
Rosa María Tovar ◽  
Élix Izarra

AbstractTitles play an important role in genre analysis. Cross-genre studies show that research paper and thesis titles have distinctive features. However, thesis and dissertation titles in the field of dentistry have thus far received little attention. Objective: To analyze the syntactic structures and their functions in English-language thesis and dissertation titles in dentistry. Methodology: We randomly chose 413 titles of English-language dentistry theses or dissertations presented at universities in 12 countries between January 2000 and June 2019. The resulting corpus of 5,540 running words was then analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, the two complementary focuses being grammatical structures and their functions. Results: The average title length was 13.4 words. Over half of the titles did not include any punctuation marks. For compound titles, we found that colons, dashes, commas, and question marks were used to separate the different components, colons being the most frequent. Four syntactic structures (nominal phrase, gerund phrase, full-sentence, and prepositional phrase) were identified for single-unit titles. Single-unit nominal phrase titles constituted the most frequent structure in the corpus, followed by compound titles. Four particular rhetorical combinations of compound title components were found to be present throughout the corpus. Conclusions: Titles of dentistry theses and dissertation in English echo the content of the text body and make an important contribution to fulfilling the text’s communicative purposes. Thus, teaching research students about the linguistic features of thesis titles would be beneficial to help them write effective titles and also facilitate assessment by teachers.


Babel ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 377-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Evelyne Le Poder

The linguistic loan is a social phenomenon which reflects the cultural influence exercised by a society on the other one. The economic, political and cultural relations that weave between communities contribute to the linguistic exchange between States, in particular through cultural exchanges of every type which, in turn, pull the incorporation of elements of a language in the other one. Spanish takes more and more words and forms from the English language; this is true in a lot of domains, of which the domain of the economy. From a terminological perspective, this article treats loans of the English language in the economic language in Spanish. We realize a work of observation, analysis and description of the lexical loans in a corpus of articles published in the economic section of the daily paper El Pais over the period included between January 2007 and December 2010. The theoretical framework of our study deals, on the one hand, with the category of loans which, broadly speaking, conform to units from other linguistic codes, and secondly, we approach this linguistic phenomenon from the perspective of sociolinguistic language that is interested in the relationship between language and society. We then present our objectives (main and specific), and the methodology we have followed throughout our investigation. Finally, we discuss the results. Résumé L’emprunt est un phenomene social qui reflete l’influence culturelle exercee par une societe sur une autre. Les relations d’ordre economique, politique et culturelle qui se tissent entre les communautes contribuent aux echanges linguistiques entre les Etats, notamment au travers d’echanges culturels de tout type lesquels, a leur tour, entrainent l’incorporation d’elements d’une langue dans une autre. L’espagnol emprunte de plus en plus de mots et de tournures a la langue anglaise ; ceci est vrai dans bon nombre de domaines, dont le domaine de l’economie. Depuis une perspective terminologique, cet article traite des emprunts de la langue anglaise dans le langage economique en espagnol. Nous realisons un travail d’observation, d’analyse et de description des emprunts lexicaux presents dans un corpus d’articles publies dans la section economique du quotidien El Pais sur la periode entre janvier 2007 et decembre 2010. Le cadre theorique de notre etude traite, d’une part, la categorie des emprunts qui, au sens large, conforment aux unites provenant d’autres codes linguistiques et, d’autre part, nous abordons ce phenomene linguistique par la perspective sociolinguistique qui s’interesse aux rapports entre le langage et la societe. Nous presentons ensuite nos objectifs (principaux et specifiques), puis la methodologie que nous avons suivie tout au long de notre investigation. Enfin, nous discutons des resultats obtenus.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Katarina Damjanić

The main goal of this paper is to indicate the importance of the issues of vagueness and dissociation in discourse interpretation. The discourse that is taken into consideration is the discourse of political news written in the English language. This particular discourse is widely available to readers and deals with important political issues, which is why the choice of words and phrases should ideally be unbiased and accurate. If not, the readers may misinterpret the discourse and have a wrong impression of the political issue. In this research, newspaper articles are taken as an example of political news discourse. All articles analyzed were written in online British and American broadsheet and tabloid newspapers and they all dealt with the migrant crisis and 2019 Hong Kong protests. By taking into consideration the political context and the theoretical framework used in this research, 44 instances considered to be examples of vagueness and dissociation were identified, which were found in 14 newspaper articles.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-12
Author(s):  
Evgeniya Bolshakova

Although a variety of the English language written olympiads (language competitions) exist, fairly little is known about how they are different from traditional forms of language assessment.  In Russia, olympiads in the English language are now gaining currency because they provide an opportunity to reveal creative thinking and intellectual abilities of pupils.  The present study examined major differences between language olympiads and traditional forms of language assessment.  A comparison of five main olympiads in the English language in terms of their levels, assessed skills and task types is made and their distinctive features are outlined.  The results of a testing of a new written olympiad of the Higher School of Economics “Vysshaya proba” (Highest Degree) in the English language are analyzed.  A set of test items was developed for 120 secondary school pupils in Moscow to find out whether they can easily cope with non-traditional form of assessment, which is language olympiad.  The results indicate that language competition as a form of alternative assessment may be introduced at schools to encourage better learning.


2020 ◽  
pp. 145-165
Author(s):  
Inmaculada Garnes-Tarazona

Second language teaching and learning has experienced a change towards the use of mobile technologies inside and outside the classroom. The goal of this article is twofold: to compare and evaluate three different commercial English language learning apps (Duolingo, Babbel, and Busuu) that cover the four skills (speaking, writing, listening, and reading), and to analyze the learning theory supporting their design. These applications include in their homepage the option of interactive learning with friends. However, as this article shows, each app offers a different level of interaction and collaboration. The theoretical framework for this analysis is grounded on Vygotsky's Socio-cultural theory.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Christina Lima

This study is an investigation of readers’ posts to an online discussion forum devoted to the discussion of short stories and poems. It was conducted in an online reading group, which is an electronic version of a face-to-face reading circle. The ELT Online Reading Group (ORG) aimed at promoting the development of reading skills and the reading of literature among teachers, trainee teachers and other professionals in the field of English language teaching (ELT). This paper focuses on the multi-layered relationships between readers in the group by looking at the distinctive features of participants’ posts. Results suggest that there is a dialogical orientation in the communicative strategies participants employ in the forum and that factors that contribute to successful discussions include the selection of texts, a range of different opinions in the group, and the diversity of background contexts and information that participants brought to the discussions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parthena Charalampidou

Abstract Non-governmental organisations set different goals than for-profit corporations. However, they need to be advertised in order to keep working. One of the basic means NGOs use in order to attract volunteers and donators is their website. Although the English language is considered as the lingua franca of the internet it seems to be inadequate when a global audience is aimed at. NGOs seem to have realized the need to communicate with potential donators or volunteers in their native language and have started providing localized versions of their websites. In this paper we are going to examine the persuasive discourse adopted by NGOs in their English, French and Greek website versions. According to Aristotle (Rhetoric, 1356a) (2002) the three persuasive techniques used to change the audience’s beliefs are (a) pathos, which appeals to the audience’s emotions, (b) ethos, which establishes the good “character” and credibility of the author and (c) logos, which uses logic and evidence to convince the audience. Our aim is to examine both the use and the multisemiotic realization of the above mentioned techniques in different cultural contexts. For the needs of our analysis we will adopt methodological tools from the field of social semiotics (image and text relation (Barthes 2007) and the grammar of visual design and of colours (Kress and Van Leeuwen 1996, 2002). Translational theories such as Skopos theory (Reiss and Vermeer 1984; Nord 1997) will provide the theoretical framework for the study of the adaptation techniques and strategies adopted when the Greek audience is addressed.


2004 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 25-54
Author(s):  
David J. Silva

Abstract. In an attempt to understand the variable nature of phonological phrasing in Korean, this study analyzes intuitional judgments of 53 native speakers of Korean who evaluated possible phonological phrasings of simple Subject-Object-Verb sentences: [S]-[OV], [SO]-[V], [SOV], and [S]-[O]-[V]. Analysis of the quantified rating data reveals a strong preference for a subject-predicate phrasing ([S]-[OV]) and a distinct dispreference for the phrasing in which the subject and object were grouped into a single phonological constituent ([SO]-[V]). These preferences are then analyzed in the context of a constraint-based theoretical framework; by extending the Optimality Theory (OT) notion of "ranking" to include not only constraints but also candidates, we corroborate the existence of preference patterns in native-speaker intuitions regarding the phrasing of [SOV]. These patterns are explained by referencing three putatively universal constraints that govern the phonological phrase formation: one that aligns phonological phrases with syntactic phrases, a second that requires phonological phrases to be binary branching, and a third that limits the weight of phonological phrases to five syllables. Although the quantitative data and the proposed OT account are not in complete agreement, the account put forward should encourage further research into a more comprehensive integration of variation studies and OT.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 463
Author(s):  
Bassey Ufot ◽  
Idara E. Thomas

This paper studies the discourse strategies and communicative potential of the English language in a selection of Afro Saxon prose passages. The term ‘Afro Saxons’ was first coined by Kenyan scholar, Ali Mazrui, in 1975, by analogy with ‘Anglo Saxons’, to refer to the linguistic phenomenon in which the English language is increasingly becoming the ‘first language’ functionally of a great many black and African people. This study, therefore, enlarges upon this concept and undertakes to elaborate on the ways in which the communicative and expressive possibilities of English are exemplified in a selection of some of the most lyrical and dramatic prose extracts by some African writers. Mounted upon the theoretical platforms of Mazrui, and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar (SFG) with its contextual parameters of the ideational (field), interpersonal (tenor) and textual (mode) metafunctions, the research appraises the attitudes to the increasing global status of English. Then employing two Anglo Saxon prose passages as the control, it investigates in some detail the organic configurations of discourse such as transitivity, mood, thematic structure, cohesion and coherence in passages from Armah, Achebe and Soyinka, and concludes that, based on the effective use of the figurative and expressive metafunctions of the language, these authors may indeed be referred to as Afro Saxons.


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