scholarly journals Mexican slang ese “dude, buddy” and its Iberian Caló-Romani antecedents

2021 ◽  
Vol 138 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-143
Author(s):  
William Sayers
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Demonstrative Pronoun ◽  
Conversational Partner ◽  
American Spanish

Use of the demonstrative pronoun ese “that, that man” in familiar North American Spanish speech is traced to Andalusian Spanish and the influence of Caló, the cryptolect of the Iberian Roma. In early para-Romani, the inherited four-term deictic system (situational/contextual, general/specific) yields to the very differently organized Romance three-part paradigm (este, ese, aquel), as, concurrently, Caló locative adverbs often replace personal pronouns. Yet, even after the wholesale replacement of Caló demonstratives by Spanish forms, the function of an earlier deictic vocative phrasing is maintained in ese, to be understood as you, right there, my conversational partner.

scholarly journals The timing of prominence information during the resolution of German personal and demonstrative pronouns

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Clare Patterson ◽  
Petra Schumacher
Keyword(s):  
Strong Preference ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Processing Conditions ◽  
Deep Processing ◽  
Strategic Control ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Demonstrative Pronoun ◽  
Additional Processing ◽  
Demonstrative Pronouns

German personal and demonstrative pronouns have distinct preferences in their interpretation; personal pronouns are more flexible in their interpretation but tend to resolve to a prominent antecedent, while demonstratives have a strong preference for a non-prominent antecedent. However, less is known about how prominence information is used during the process of resolution, particularly in the light of two- stage processing models which assume that reference will normally be to the most accessible candidate. We conducted three experiments investigating how prominence information is used during the resolution of gender-disambiguated personal and demonstrative pronouns in German. While the demonstrative pronoun required additional processing compared to the personal pronoun, prominence information did not affect resolution in shallow conditions. It did, however, affect resolution under deep processing conditions. We conclude that prominence information is not ruled out by the presence of stronger resolution cues such as gender. However, the deployment of prominence information in the evaluation of candidate antecedents is under strategic control.

scholarly journals Pronouns in Lotha

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-66
Author(s):  
Yantsubeni Ngullie
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Negative Particle ◽  
Demonstrative Pronoun ◽  
Demonstrative Pronouns ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Cultural Entity ◽  
Case Markers

The paper gives an account of pronouns in Lotha, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nagaland, India. Lotha is a generic name and refers to both the linguistic group and the ethno-cultural entity. Lothas are racially Mongoloid and linguistically, it has been classified under the Central Naga group of the Naga sub-branch of the Tibeto-Burman languages. Pronouns in Lotha are free forms which can function solely to fill the position of a noun phrase in a clause. Personal pronouns are typically deixis to the speech participants for each of the three grammatical person i.e. first person, second person and third person. In annex to person, numbers i.e. singular, dual and plural are also distinguished on pronouns. Personal pronouns in Lotha are independent and free-standing and for that matter it takes case-markers and postposition in similar ways as full noun phrase. The first, second and third personal pronouns take case marking only when it serves as a subject and does not take any case markers when it serves as an object. Demonstrative pronouns function in several ways based on proximity and distance in time. Lotha has three-way distinction of identifying demonstrative pronoun i.e. proximate, distance and remote marked by ʃi ‘this’ (near the speaker), ci ‘that’(near the hearer) and o-ci ‘over there’( far away from both the speaker and hearer). The interrogative pronouns kvə, ndo and otʃɔ are attached to the bound nominal suffixes. Indefinite pronouns can be formed from the question words which can change to affirmative by attaching the indefinite suffix -sana and its negative particle counterpart mek. Reflexive pronoun in Lotha is expressed by the reflexive lexeme bɔbɔ ‘self’ which is a free morpheme.

scholarly journals Translating the Symptom Screening in Paediatrics Tool (SSPedi) into North American Spanish and Among Spanish-speaking children receiving cancer treatments: evaluating understandability and cultural relevance in a multiple-phase descriptive study

BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. e037406
Author(s):  
Erin Plenert ◽  
Allison Grimes ◽  
Aaron Sugalski ◽  
Anne-Marie Langevin ◽  
Dominica Nieto ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Likert Scale ◽  
Cultural Relevance ◽  
Cognitive Interviews ◽  
Cancer Treatments ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Symptom Screening ◽  
American Spanish

ObjectivesSymptom screening is important to achieving symptom control. Symptom Screening in Paediatrics Tool (SSPedi) is validated for English-speaking children. Objectives were to translate SSPedi into Spanish, and to evaluate the understandability and cultural relevance of the translated version among Spanish-speaking children with cancer and paediatric haematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients.MethodsWe conducted a multiphase, descriptive study to translate SSPedi into Spanish. The first step was to determine whether one Spanish version would be appropriate for both North America and Argentina. Once this decision was made, forward and backward translations were performed. The translated version was evaluated by Spanish-speaking children 8–18 years of age receiving cancer treatments.Primary and secondary outcome measuresPrimary outcome was child self-reported difficulty with understanding of the entire instrument and each symptom using a 5-point Likert scale. Secondary outcomes were incorrect understanding of SSPedi items identified by cognitive interviews with the children using a 4-point Likert scale and cultural relevance, which was assessed qualitatively.ResultsThis report focuses on North American Spanish as a separate version will be required for Argentinian Spanish SSPedi based on different common vocabulary and grammatical structure. There were 20 children from Toronto and San Antonio included in cognitive interviews. The most common types of Spanish spoken were Mexican (13, 65%), Central American (2, 10%) and South American (2, 10%). No child reported that it was hard or very hard to complete Spanish SSPedi. Changes to the instrument itself were not required based on understanding or cultural relevance.ConclusionsWe translated and finalised Spanish SSPedi appropriate for use in North America. Future research will translate and evaluate SSPedi for use in Argentina and other Spanish-speaking countries.

Adaptation of the Connected Speech Test: Rerecording and Passage Equivalency

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hasan K. Saleh ◽  
Paula Folkeard ◽  
Ewan Macpherson ◽  
Susan Scollie
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
North American ◽  
First Language ◽  
Intraclass Correlation ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Connected Speech ◽  
Internal Reliability ◽  
Speech Test ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Unit Standard

Purpose The original Connected Speech Test (CST; Cox et al., 1987) is a well-regarded and often utilized speech perception test. The aim of this study was to develop a new version of the CST using a neutral North American accent and to assess the use of this updated CST on participants with normal hearing. Method A female English speaker was recruited to read the original CST passages, which were recorded as the new CST stimuli. A study was designed to assess the newly recorded CST passages' equivalence and conduct normalization. The study included 19 Western University students (11 females and eight males) with normal hearing and with English as a first language. Results Raw scores for the 48 tested passages were converted to rationalized arcsine units, and average passage scores more than 1 rationalized arcsine unit standard deviation from the mean were excluded. The internal reliability of the 32 remaining passages was assessed, and the two-way random effects intraclass correlation was .944. Conclusion The aim of our study was to create new CST stimuli with a more general North American accent in order to minimize accent effects on the speech perception scores. The study resulted in 32 passages of equivalent difficulty for listeners with normal hearing.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document