scholarly journals Сашко-lect: The translanguaged grammar of a hyper multilingual global nomad. Part 1 – Methodological considerations

2020 ◽  
Vol 137 (4) ◽  
pp. 229-243
Author(s):  
Alexander Andrason

This study examines the idiolect of Сашко – a hyper-multilingual global nomad whose language repertoire draws on forty languages, ten of which he speaks with native or native-like proficiency. By analyzing grammatical and lexical features typifying Сашко’s translanguaging practices (code-switches, code-borrowings, and code-mixes), as docu­mented in the corpus of reflexive notes that span the last twenty-five years, the author designs Сашко’s translanguaged grammar. Instead of being a passive additive plurali­zation of separated, autonomous, and static monolects, Сашко’s grammar emerges as a deeply orchestrated, unitary, and dynamic strategy. From Сашко’s perspective, this grammar constitutes a tool to express his rebellious and defiant identity; a tool that – while aiming to combat Western mono-culturalisms, compartmented multilingualisms, and nationalisms – ultimately leads to Сашко’s linguistic and cultural homelessness. This paper – the first in the series of three articles – is dedicated to methodological is­sues: the frameworks that are adopted in the different parts of the study, the method with which the description and analysis of Сашко’s idiolect is developed, and the corpus that underlies the empirical research of Сашко-lect.

Author(s):  
Alexander Andrason

This study examines the idiolect of Сашко – a hyper-multilingual global nomad whose language repertoire draws on forty languages, ten of which he speaks with native or native-like proficiency. By analyzing grammatical and lexical features typifying Сашко’s translanguaging practices (code-switches, code-borrowings, and code-mixes), as documented in the corpus of reflexive notes that span the last twenty-five years, the author designs Сашко’s translanguaged grammar. Instead of being a passive additive pluralization of separated, autonomous, and static monolects, Сашко’s grammar emerges as a deeply orchestrated, unitary, and dynamic strategy. From Сашко’s perspective, this grammar constitutes a tool to express his rebellious and defiant identity; a tool that – while aiming to combat Western mono-culturalisms, compartmented multilingualisms, and nationalisms – ultimately leads to Сашко’s linguistic and cultural homelessness. This paper – the second in a series of three – is dedicated to language-contact mechanisms operating in Сашко-lect: code-switching and borrowing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 138 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-133
Author(s):  
Alexander Andrason

This study examines the idiolect of Сашко – a hyper-multilingual global nomad whose language repertoire draws on forty languages, ten of which he speaks with native or native-like proficiency. By analyzing grammatical and lexical features typifying Сашко’s translanguaging practices (code-switches, code-borrowings, and code-mixes), as documented in the corpus of reflexive notes that span the last twenty-five years, the author designs Сашко’s translanguaged grammar. Instead of being a passive additive pluralization of separated, autonomous, and static monolects, Сашко’s grammar emerges as a deeply orchestrated, unitary, and dynamic strategy. From Сашко’s perspective, this grammar constitutes a tool to express his rebellious and defiant identity; a tool that – while aiming to combat Western mono-culturalisms, compartmented multilingualisms, and nationalisms – ultimately leads to Сашко’s linguistic and cultural homelessness. This paper – the last in a series of three articles – is dedicated to Сашко’s mixed languages and translanguaged grammar typifying Сашко-lect in its integrity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (10) ◽  
pp. 1198-1215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Terkourafi

Empirically capturing sociocultural interpretations—situated interpretations of linguistic expressions shared among members of a group—can be difficult for two reasons: First, the interpretations themselves cannot be directly observed and, second, the contexts that enable these interpretations cannot be defined independently of them. Yet, the reality of such interpretations attested in piece after piece of empirical research calls for an explanation. This article outlines a bottom-up methodology that seeks to extract context-sensitive definitions of, on one hand, sociocultural interpretations and, on the other hand, the context variables that covary with them, from the data itself. Uptake-based definitions of sociocultural interpretations are empirically verifiable and include speaker, context, and addressee contributions to the bringing about of a certain sociocultural interpretation. Dynamic definitions of macro-social variables (gender, age, class, ethnicity, region, etc.) can emerge by gradually abstracting over the minimal contexts that are found to enable particular sociocultural interpretations. The article outlines with examples how this methodology can be applied to spoken conversational data, as well as some of its limitations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-192
Author(s):  
P. K. Viswanathan ◽  
K. Kavya ◽  
Chandra Sekhar Bahinipati

Globally, climate change impacts are manifold, severely affecting the agriculture sector. Climate-resilient agriculture (CRA) is viewed as a panacea for overcoming the adverse effects of climate change on agriculture. This article critically reviews the literature on CRA to delineate the emerging patterns of climate-resilient agriculture. It explores multiple dimensions of CRA as related to practices, technologies, policies, innovations and interventions across different parts of the world. In the end, a schematic approach towards undertaking empirical research on CRA in the Indian context is presented. The review finds that, globally, CRA practices mainly include systematic strategies for management of critical inputs, namely, land and water, cropping systems and livelihood management. It emerges that innovations and institutions have a crucial role in accelerating the rate of adoption of CRA practices. The article highlights the need for undertaking more empirical research to get a deeper understanding of the emerging patterns of CRA in the Indian context.


2010 ◽  
Vol 365 (1559) ◽  
pp. 3923-3933 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell D. Gray ◽  
David Bryant ◽  
Simon J. Greenhill

In this paper we outline two debates about the nature of human cultural history. The first focuses on the extent to which human history is tree-like (its shape), and the second on the unity of that history (its fabric). Proponents of cultural phylogenetics are often accused of assuming that human history has been both highly tree-like and consisting of tightly linked lineages. Critics have pointed out obvious exceptions to these assumptions. Instead of a priori dichotomous disputes about the validity of cultural phylogenetics, we suggest that the debate is better conceptualized as involving positions along continuous dimensions. The challenge for empirical research is, therefore, to determine where particular aspects of culture lie on these dimensions. We discuss the ability of current computational methods derived from evolutionary biology to address these questions. These methods are then used to compare the extent to which lexical evolution is tree-like in different parts of the world and to evaluate the coherence of cultural and linguistic lineages.


1981 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 701-724
Author(s):  
Léon Dion

It is generally recognized that the theoretical status of studies on political culture is precarious. But the importance of the latter as a dimension of political societies is such that, despite its gaps, we must continue to use it as an analytical concept. After establishing the elements of a conceptual schema of culture and showing the interaction of political culture and social and political structures, this article offers a number of methodological considerations capable of strengthening empirical research against the biases inherent in functionalism.


Author(s):  
Jasper Van Vught ◽  
René Glas

This paper deals with play as an important methodological issue when studying games as texts, and is intended as a practical methodological guide. After considering text as both the structuring object as well as its plural processual activations, we argue that different methodological considerations can turn the focus towards one of the two (without completely excluding the other). After outlining and synthesizing a broad range of existing research we move beyond the more general advice to be reflective about the type of players that we are, and explore two methodological considerations more concretely. First of all, we discuss the various considerations to have regarding the different choices to make when playing a game. Here we show how different instrumental and free strategies lay bare different parts of the game as object and/or process. Secondly, we consider how different contexts in which the game and the player exist, can function as different reference points for meaning construction and the way they can put limitations on the claims we can make about our object of analysis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Nicole Pescuma ◽  
Chiara Zanini ◽  
Davide Crepaldi ◽  
Francesca Franzon

Inflectional values, such as singular and plural, sustain agreement relations between constituents in sentences, allowing sentence parsing and prediction in online processing. Ideally, these processes would be facilitated by a consistent and transparent correspondence between the inflectional values and their form: for example, the value of plural should always be expressed by the same ending, and that ending should only express plural. Experimental research reports higher processing costs in the presence of a non-transparent relation between forms and values. While this effect was found in several languages, and typological research shows that consistency is far from common in morphological paradigms, it is still somewhat difficult to precisely quantify the transparency degree of the inflected forms. Furthermore, to date, no accounts have quantified the transparency in inflection with regard to the declensional classes and the extent to which it is expressed across different parts of speech, depending on whether these act as controllers of the agreement (e.g., nouns) or as targets (e.g., adjectives). We present a case study on Italian, a language that marks gender and number features in nouns and adjectives. This work provides measures of the distribution of forms in the noun and adjective inflection in Italian, and quantifies the degree of form-value transparency with respect to inflectional endings and declensional classes. In order to obtain these measures, we built Flex It, a dedicated large-scale database of inflectional morphology of Italian, and made it available, in order to sustain further theoretical and empirical research.


2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-24
Author(s):  
Erin C. Schafer

Children who use cochlear implants experience significant difficulty hearing speech in the presence of background noise, such as in the classroom. To address these difficulties, audiologists often recommend frequency-modulated (FM) systems for children with cochlear implants. The purpose of this article is to examine current empirical research in the area of FM systems and cochlear implants. Discussion topics will include selecting the optimal type of FM receiver, benefits of binaural FM-system input, importance of DAI receiver-gain settings, and effects of speech-processor programming on speech recognition. FM systems significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio at the child's ear through the use of three types of FM receivers: mounted speakers, desktop speakers, or direct-audio input (DAI). This discussion will aid audiologists in making evidence-based recommendations for children using cochlear implants and FM systems.


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