scholarly journals Information-Seeking Question Intonation in Basque Spanish and Its Correlation with Degree of Contact and Language Attitudes

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Magdalena Romera ◽  
Gorka Elordieta

The present study analyzes the prosodic characteristics of the variety of Spanish in contact with Basque (in the Basque Country, Spain). We focus on information-seeking yes/no questions, which present different intonation contours in Spanish and Basque. In Castilian Spanish, these sentences end in a rising contour, whereas in Basque, they end in a falling or rising–falling circumflex contour. In our previous work, this topic was investigated among the urban populations of Bilbao and San Sebastian. The results were that 79% of information-seeking yes/no questions had final falling intonational configurations. All the speakers presented a substantial presence of final falls regardless of their linguistic profile, but there were differences among speakers in the degree of presence of such features. A correlation was observed between the dependent variable of ‘frequency of occurrence of final falls in absolute interrogatives’ and social factors, such as ‘degree of contact with Basque’ and ‘attitudes towards Basque and the Basque ethnolinguistic group’. The correlation was that the higher the degree of contact with Basque and the more positive the attitudes towards Basque and the Basque ethnolinguistic group, the greater the frequency of occurrence of final falling intonational contours in information-seeking absolute interrogatives. The interpretation of this correlation was that the adoption of the characteristic Basque prosody allows speakers to be recognized as members of the Basque community. In the present study, we focused on rural areas. Falling intonational contours at the end of information-seeking absolute interrogatives were even more common than in urban areas (93.4%), and no correlation was found with degree of contact with Basque and with attitudes towards Basque. Our interpretation is that in rural areas the presence of Basque in daily life is stronger, and that there is a consolidated variety of Spanish used by all speakers regardless of their attitudes. Thus, the adoption of intonating features of this language is not the only indicator belonging to the Basque ethnolinguistic group. Our study reveals the great relevance of subjective social factors, such as language attitudes, in the degree of convergence between two languages.

2020 ◽  
pp. 136700692095286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gorka Elordieta ◽  
Magdalena Romera

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The main goal of this paper is to analyse how social factors determine the degree of occurrence of intonational features of Basque in Spanish in the Basque Country (i.e. Basque Spanish). Design/methodology/approach: We concentrate on information-seeking yes/no questions. In Castilian Spanish, these end in a rising contour, whereas in Basque they end in a rising–falling contour. The data were gathered through sociolinguistic interviews with 12 speakers of Basque Spanish with different linguistic profiles: monolingual Spanish; first language Spanish–second language Basque; and L1 Basque–L2 Spanish. Data and analysis: 172 information-seeking yes/no interrogatives were obtained from conversational speech. Their final intonational contours were annotated in the Spanish Tone and Break Index model of intonational analysis. Findings/conclusions: 79% of all information-seeking yes/no questions had final configurations with a rising–falling circumflex contour. Only 21% had the final rising contour of Castilian Spanish. Speakers differed in their frequency of occurrence of falling contours, but the differences did not correlate with the speakers’ linguistic profile (monolingual vs bilingual). Rather, higher percentages of yes/no questions ending in a falling contour were found among speakers who had (a) a higher degree of contact with the Basque ethnolinguistic group, and (b) more positive attitudes towards the Basque language and the Basque ethnolinguistic group. Originality: Methodologically, this study is original because the intonational analysis is carried out on natural speech rather than on read or elicited speech. This study is also original from a theoretical point of view because it is the first one to underline the role that subjective factors such as linguistic attitudes play in the adoption of features of a language variety from another contact variety. Significance/implications: Our research opens up a path to continue investigating the weight of subjective social factors such as linguistic attitudes in explaining the variation in the influence of one language variety over another.


Author(s):  
Anju Abraham ◽  
R. Arunachalam

Even though the urbanisation is considered as a development indicator, the tremendous migration from rural areas to urban areas leads to serious environmental, health and economic issues. Due to the space and time constraints, the urban entity used to depend on rural community for their food products.  But in the same time, highly priced demand for land and the lesser profit from farming results in withdrawal of rural farmers from farming. And these above mentioned factors contributed to a gap in supply and demand for food. This gap leads to the non-availability of nutritious food and thereby, made difficult for urban dwellers  to access it due the high price. And the result was seen as a double burden in the form of malnutrition and obesity among urban dwellers. The concept of Urban Farming can bring back the traditional homestead farming culture and more than that, a nutritionally secured and environmentally sustainable society. As most of the urban dwellers are new to this setup, they need information and assistance for bring it in a successful way. Hence, there is a necessity for understanding their information needs, and the sources currently they are depending. The present study focuses on the information seeking behaviour and its utilisation constraints experienced by the farmers in an urban community. The study was carried out in the period from December 2020 to March 2021 in Ernakulam and Calicut districts which ranks first and third in degree of urbanisation in Kerala respectively. From the findings of the study it is understood that, their information needs varies from the selection of nutritious food crop to marketing of surplus quantity produced. The constraints analysis could give suggestions for improvement and it can narrow down the gap between farmers - extension system. Based on this, an integrated urban farming extension model has been designed for the effective information dissemination to the farmers. This can save time of farmers and efforts of extension agents, and it will motivate them towards potential adoption of more technologies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (02) ◽  
pp. 194-197
Author(s):  
N. K. Singh ◽  
Kshitij Parmar

Rural India is yet a larder of problems like malnourishment, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, sottishness and lack of basic infrastructure like schools/colleges, hospitals, sanitation, etc. This has pushed to rural youth moving out of villages to work in cities. Present study entitled “A study on factors responsible for rural urban migration” was conducted to explore the causes behind migration. The study was conducted in two industrially backward districts of Uttar Pradesh viz. Fatehpur and Banda. From each district one block, from each block four villages and from each village 10 respondents were selected through purposive random sampling from the list of families of rural migrants. Thus the total sample size was of 80 respondents. The data were collected by personal interview through structured schedule and simply analyzed through mean score and rank order. After making an exhaustive list of factors with the consultation of local people, causes were categorized in to five categories viz. economic factors, social factors, natural factors, good facilities of cities and other factors. Results of the study revealed that the major economic factors of migration are employment opportunities, poverty, low agriculture productivity, fragmentation of holding and Indebtedness. Prominent social factors encouraging migration were large size of family, desire to overcome of poverty, better educational opportunities, attraction towards better ways of living and loss of social prestige. Among natural factors exhaustion of natural resources was reported of highest importance. Important good facilities attracting to people are more avenue for earning better livelihood, educational facilities, medical facilities, communication facilities and good electric supply etc. Some other factors reported important by the respondents were lack of basic amenities in rural areas, better working conditions in the urban areas and hope of bright future. At the end, investigators felt that there is much more scope to conduct micro studies on migration process and its consequences to the urban as well as rural areas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Marcelo Pereira de Barros ◽  
Ana Paula Lima da Silveira ◽  
Bruna Reis Ferreira

As aves destacam-se dentro dos vertebrados por serem um grupo diverso e adaptado a diferentes ambientes, a composição da comunidade de aves de um determinado local é um importante bioindicador ambiental, pois ela reflete alterações recentes ou pretéritas de determinada área. Na Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio dos Sinos, as pressões sobre os remanescentes de ecossistemas naturais são intensas em decorrência da urbanização crescente, do estabelecimento de indústrias e da ampliação das fronteiras agrícolas, esses fatores associados geram a redução e fragmentação de habitats, com impactos irrecuperáveis para a flora e a fauna. Devido à escassez de dados sobre a avifauna do município de Taquara, o presente estudo teve como objetivo levantar informações sobre o grupo, listando as espécies de aves locais. Entre agosto de 2016 e junho de 2017 foram realizadas quatro amostragens mensais em duas áreas rurais do município, totalizando 44 campanhas de observação e 132 horas de esforço amostral. As espécies foram identificadas e classificadas conforme sua frequência de ocorrência mensal, em espécies comuns e raras. Foram registradas 133 espécies distribuídas em 47 famílias, o que representa mais de 20% das espécies ocorrentes para o estado. Ao longo do período amostrado, 90 espécies foram classificadas como comuns e 47 consideradas raras para as áreas pesquisadas.Palavras-chave: Aves. Bacia hidrográfica do Rio dos Sinos. Preservação.ABSTRACTBirds stand out within vertebrates because they are a diverse group adapted to different environments. The composition of the bird community of a certain place is an important environmental bioindicator since it reflects recent or previous environmental disturbances of a certain area. In the Sinos River Basin, environmental pressures on the remnants of natural ecosystems are intense as a result of increasing urbanization, the establishment of industries and expansion of agricultural frontiers which generate habitat reduction and fragmentation with irrecoverable damages on flora and fauna. Due to the scarcity of data on the avifauna of the municipality of Taquara, the present study aimed to gather information and list the species of local birds. Between August 2016 and June 2017, four monthly samplings were carried out in two rural areas of the municipality, totaling 44 observation campaigns and 132 hours of sample effort. The species were identified and classified as common and rare according to their frequency of occurrence. There were 133 species distributed in 47 families, representing more than 20% of the species that occurred in the state. During the sampled period, 90 species were classified as common and 47 were considered rare for the areas surveyed.Keywords: Birds. Hydrographic basin of Sinos River. Preservation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (01) ◽  
pp. 39-45
Author(s):  
Suad Shallal Shahatha

This study was carried out to investigate the epidemiology of Giardia lamblia parasites in patients who visited some of the hospitals in Anbar province, which included (Fallujah Teaching Hospital, Ramadi Teaching Hospital, Ramadi Teaching Hospital for Women and Children and Hit Hospital) during by examining 864 stool samples in a direct examination method, The results revealed the infection rate was 41.7 % and the percentage of infection among males 47.8% is higher than that of females 35.4% with significant differences (p≤0.05). The age groups (1-9) years recorded the highest rates 55.4% and the lowest rate 13.6% in the age group (40-49) years. The highest rate of infection was 62.5% during the month of June, while the month of October was the lowest rate 5% and significant differences. The incidence rate in rural areas was 50.6% higher than in the urban areas 32.5%. The study also included the effect of Teucrium polium L. on the parasite in the culture media HSP-1, the concentrations of 0.5-3 mg / mL significantly affected Giardia, it was noted whenever the greater the concentration, the greater the effect during different treatment periods (1-4) days, as the highest concentration 3 mg/ml killed all Giardia parasites on the fourth day of treatment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (8) ◽  
pp. 142-151
Author(s):  
Dr. Udayagiri Raghunath ◽  
Dr. V.Venkateswara Rao

The corporate companies dealing with FMCG products have started focusing on rural markets as the urban markets have become saturated and highly competitive. Capturing the rural markets brings forth a whole new set of challenges as it is laborious to break in. This market presents the companies with gamut challenges on a new dimension which demand entirely different strategies as compared to the ones used in urban areas. Studying the rural markets for rural markets has become crucial more than ever. It is an objective learning, psychiatry of dispersion, impact of the FMCG in rural areas. This research uses diverse utensils, procedure toward analyze composed records. Several of the features used in analyzing the data are the consumer characteristics like educational qualifications, professions they are in, and the income levels. The role of TV media advertising is also analyzed. Many deals and promotions advertised on TV are investigated. The scope of authority wield by publicity happening customer choice production has looked into. The different levels of media exposure and preferable TV watching times and their favorite programs considered while analyzing the data. The spending prototype of rural clients on FMCG is examined and further categorized based on their income levels, educational qualifications, and legal awareness of consumer act. All the analyzed data, results, and suggestions presented in the visual formats.


Author(s):  
Remus Runcan

According to Romania’s National Rural Development Programme, the socio-economic situation of the rural environment has a large number of weaknesses – among which low access to financial resources for small entrepreneurs and new business initiatives in rural areas and poorly developed entrepreneurial culture, characterized by a lack of basic managerial knowledge – but also a large number of opportunities – among which access of the rural population to lifelong learning and entrepreneurial skills development programmes and entrepreneurs’ access to financial instruments. The population in rural areas depends mainly on agricultural activities which give them subsistence living conditions. The gap between rural and urban areas is due to low income levels and employment rates, hence the need to obtain additional income for the population employed in subsistence and semi-subsistence farming, especially in the context of the depopulation trend. At the same time, the need to stimulate entrepreneurship in rural areas is high and is at a resonance with the need to increase the potential of rural communities from the perspective of landscape, culture, traditional activities and local resources. A solution could be to turn vegetal and / or animal farms into social farms – farms on which people with disabilities (but also adolescents and young people with anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide, and alexithymia issues) might find a “foster” family, bed and meals in a natural, healthy environment, and share the farm’s activities with the farmer and the farmer’s family: “committing to a regular day / days and times for a mutually agreed period involves complying with any required health and safety practices (including use of protective clothing and equipment), engaging socially with the farm family members and other people working on and around the farm, and taking on tasks which would include working on the land, taking care of animals, or helping out with maintenance and other physical work”


Author(s):  
Wawan Dhewanto ◽  
Salma Azzahra ◽  
Vania NR Rhommadhonni ◽  
Fera Yunita

The young generation has a very important role as the nation's next generation, so it needs special attention to make them strong and independent figures. The young age phase is also a determining gate for the future after completing education (United Nation, 2013). Unfortunately, in Indonesia the number of young unemployed reaches 22.48% (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2018). Under these conditions, one of the efforts that can be done to reduce the unemployment rate is through an entrepreneurial program (Fatoki, 2014). This is a challenge for all parties because Rahmatiah et al (2019) states that currently the young generation of Indonesia is still difficult to become entrepreneurs. Moreover, competition in the 4.0 industrial revolution era is getting tougher. For entrepreneurs in rural areas, the challenges faced are greater than those who live in urban areas (Azzahra & Dhewanto, 2017), however by utilizing digital technology and becoming digital entrepreneurs, rural residents are able to compete, minimize social inequalities and accelerate economic growth (Ratten, 2018 ). Only a few young people have the talent and interest to run a business (Ceptureanu & Ceptueanu, 2015). Therefore an in-depth study of the interests and entrepreneurial processes for rural youth to become a digital entrepreneur is needed. This research was conducted in order to have young digital entrepreneurs who came from rural areas to be able to compete in this 4.0 industry era. Thus, the research questions in this study are: (1). Why does rural youth want to be a digital entrepreneur? How is the entrepreneurial process of rural youth to become digital entrepreneurs? Keywords: Digital Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Process, Rural Youth


1992 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Ripl

Abstract Densely populated urban areas, which have developed over the last century, depend heavily on centralized water supply, sewage treatment plants, and hydroelectric or thermal power generation with vast demand of cooling water. Considerable areas have been drained or sealed, and the short-circuited water cycle has been distorted. Large rivers have been converted to shipping canals with the permanent risk of accidental pollution. Technical means such as sewage treatment, air filters, emission control and lake and soil restoration measures have contributed to correct the environmental damage. However, a balance sheet for irreversible matter losses (mainly base cation charges) from the urbanized areas and the surrounding landscape into the sea shows ever-increasing trends. These losses are destabilizing the ecosystems. In this paper, management of the water cycle in urban areas, together with the coupled matter cycles, is discussed. Particular reference is given to Metropolitan Berlin, with a network of shipping canals, which move biologically treated waste, containing base cations and nutrients to the surrounding rural areas. This could create manageable productive wetlands and re-establish soil fertility. At the same time, the natural cooling system close to the urban areas will be improved by providing more areas with permanent vegetation. In addition, reduction of the present large oscillations of the groundwater table, resulting from groundwater pumping and its recharge with less polluted surface water, is contemplated. The widely used shoreline infiltration of the Havel River should then be eliminated and the severe damage of the littoral vegetation in large sections of the Havel River system be avoided.


1998 ◽  
Vol 38 (11) ◽  
pp. 87-95
Author(s):  
R. Fenz ◽  
M. Zessner ◽  
N. Kreuzinger ◽  
H. Kroiss

In Austria approximately 70% of the population is connected to sewerage and to biological waste water treatment plants. Whereas the urban areas are already provided with these facilities to a very high extent, effort is still needed in rural areas to meet the requirements of the Austrian legislation. The way, this task should be solved has provoked much controversy. It is mainly the question, whether centralised or decentralised sewage disposal systems are preferable from the ecological and economical point of view, that became a political issue during the last 5 years. The Institute for Water Quality and Waste Management was asked to elaborate a waste water management concept for the Lainsitz River Basin, a mainly rural area in the north of Austria discharging to the Elbe river. Both ecological and economical aspects should be considered. This paper presents the methodology that was applied and the criteria which were decisive for the selection of the final solution.


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