Ethnolects Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Following recent work showing that adolescent peer culture affiliation correlates with phonological variation, our research explores the effect of peer identities and national heritages on the English of Latino students in a New York City... more

Following recent work showing that adolescent peer culture affiliation correlates with phonological variation, our research explores the effect of peer identities and national heritages on the English of Latino students in a New York City high school. Data were gathered in sociolinguistic interviews embedded in a two-year ethnography. The peer groups investigated for Spanish-English contact effects include Hip-Hoppers, Skaters, Geeks, and non-participants in high school peer cultures. Our data show that New York ...

The article presents the current state of discussion on the status of indigenous language varieties of Poland which strive to gain more prestige and a certain level of independence. In sociolinguistic literature, they are described with... more

The article presents the current state of discussion on the status of indigenous language varieties of Poland which strive to gain more prestige and a certain level of independence. In sociolinguistic literature, they are described with multiple specialised terms, while traditional dialectology considers them (or did so until recently) as dialects or subdialects (gwary) of the Polish language. The selected languages/ethnolects are: Kashubian (recognized by the Polish law as a regional language), Silesian (attempts are being made to give it a similar status) and Masurian. For the purposes of non-Slavic comparison, the article refers to the Vilamovian language. Paying attention to the difference between the scientific, political/legal, and colloquial discourses, the author attempts to answer the question of whether it is possible to describe newly emerging languages in an objective and unbiased way, and whether specialized terms such as ethnolect or collateral language may be useful outside strictly scientific debate.

This article discusses German phrases of the type Gemma Kino '[let's] go [to the] cinema'. Previous studies have often dealt with them as "syntactic reductions" or "headless prepositional phrases" and considered them as characteristic of... more

This article discusses German phrases of the type Gemma Kino '[let's] go [to the] cinema'. Previous studies have often dealt with them as "syntactic reductions" or "headless prepositional phrases" and considered them as characteristic of so-called "ethnolectal varieties" spoken by urban youth with migration backgrounds. Evidence presented here, however, shows that this type of non-occurrence of prepositions is not restricted to young urban (migrant) speakers but is also found in several Southern Bavarian dialectal varieties in Austria. Therefore, these constructions should be described not simply as ethnolectal markers or elliptic phrases but rather as diatopic and/or stylistic variables. Phrases of the type Gemma-X are discussed here as "compact constructions" that follow specific formal, lexical and pragmatic restrictions, but also carry indexical social meaning as evidence from media discourses shows.

In this paper, the /r/ production of adolescent Anglo-English and Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers in West Yorkshire was analysed from speech data collected in 2000. A clear difference was found between Anglo-English speakers who used... more

In this paper, the /r/ production of adolescent Anglo-English and Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers in West Yorkshire was analysed from speech data collected in 2000. A clear difference was found between Anglo-English speakers who used the standard British rhotic, the postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠], exclusively, and the Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers who used both British rhotics and a number of different variants influenced by the Punjabi retroflex flap [ɽ]. The influence of the retroflex flap [ɽ] was proven by formant and duration results, as well as qualitative observations of the speaker spectrograms. It is predicted that Punjabi-English speaker preference for either Punjabi influenced rhotics or British rhotics depended on if they identify as culturally integrated “British Asians” or culturally alienated “Asians”. This study also considers the possibility of a progression in rhotic production of West Yorkshire Punjabi-English speakers over the last fifteen years.

Aims and objectives/purposes/research questions: The aim of the article is to describe what language contact phenomena are present. The research questions are as follows: (a) what types of code-switching (CS) are at work; (b) is there any... more

Aims and objectives/purposes/research questions: The aim of the article is to describe what language contact phenomena are present. The research questions are as follows: (a) what types of code-switching (CS) are at work; (b) is there any preference for any particular type of CS; and (c) what Jewish (seemingly) monolingual songs in Slavic languages can tell us about contact varieties of Slavic used by Jews. Design/methodology/approach: Collecting texts of Yiddish-Slavic and Jewish folk songs in Slavic languages; and qualitative analysis of CS and structural change. Data and analysis: Sixty-two Slavic-Yiddish texts were chosen from Jewish songs' collections and CS instances analysed. Findings/conclusions: Both insertions and alternations are present but alternations are preferred. There is an asymmetry between Yiddish insertions into Slavic (nouns) and Slavic insertions into Yiddish (all parts of speech). Alternations may be just renditions of the same meaning in another language but most often they play the same role as in naturalistic speech described in the literature on multilingual communication (change of topic, addressee, etc.). Originality: Previous research on multilingual Jewish songs concentrated on the choice of languages and interpretation of the symbolic role that each language plays but not structural analysis of multilingual texts. Significance/implications: Now that some tendencies are identified, it remains to be seen whether naturalistic Yiddish-Slavic speech exhibits the same patterns of CS.

This paper presents findings from a quantitative analysis of inter- and intraspeaker phonetic variability in the realization of /t/ and /d/ from second and third generation Lebanese American speakers from Dearborn, Michigan. The... more

This paper presents findings from a quantitative analysis of inter- and intraspeaker phonetic variability in the realization of /t/ and /d/ from second and third generation Lebanese American speakers from Dearborn, Michigan. The realization of /t/ and /d/ as either alveolar or dental (a substrate feature from Lebanese Arabic) is the focus of the analysis. The data, which come from 2006 corpus recordings, are also subject to diagnostics for a focused ethnolect i.e. the retention of distinctive features into the third and later generations of a speech community. These diagnostics are derived from Trudgill’s (2004) new-dialect formation model and Thomas’ (2019) ethnolect formation model. Evidence is found for a focused Lebanese American English ethnolect in Dearborn though the findings are tentative due to a small dataset. The results of the study lay the foundation for my dissertation, which will seek to confirm the findings of a focused ethnolect and contribute to a sparse literature on models for ethnolect genesis and formation.

Characters in Arnoldo Palacios’ novel Las estrellas son negras are characterized according to their way of speaking. In so doing, they are classified according to biological and cultural criteria and therefore divided into Blacks, Whites... more

Characters in Arnoldo Palacios’ novel Las estrellas son negras are characterized according to their way of speaking. In so doing, they are classified according to biological and cultural criteria and therefore divided into Blacks, Whites or Mestizos (‘mulatos’), i.e. into one of the main groups that consituted Chocoano society at the time when the novel takes place (mid-20th century). Such a characterization allows to portray stereotypes well-ingrained in an unequal culture, in which ethnicity turns out to be a synonym of socioeconomic status. Nevertheless, the lines uttered by the main character (the negro Irra) are rendered in a speech variety that corresponds to standard Spanish (and therefore presupposes literacy), what reflects his attempt to reject his own ethnicity and escape from poverty.

Previous research has shown that in densely populated multicultural areas of London, a new dialect has emerged amongst young speakers referred to as Multicultural London English (MLE), the result of language contact between different... more

Previous research has shown that in densely populated multicultural areas of London, a new dialect has emerged amongst young speakers referred to as Multicultural London English (MLE), the result of language contact between different ethnicities. This study investigates the differences in vowel quality between younger and older speakers in the London Borough of Newham, the most multiethnic borough of London, to see if MLE is gaining territory over the traditional Cockney accent that has existed there for a long period of time. Participants were recorded using a monitored and a spontaneous speech style. Results showed significant differences between the older Cockney speakers and the younger speakers. One speaker showed several traits of MLE while the other displayed a more Cockney accent. It suggests that despite the growth of MLE in Newham, Cockney still has a significant influence on the speech style of the younger community.

In this paper, the /r/ production of adolescent Anglo-English and Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers in West Yorkshire was analysed from speech data collected in 2000. A clear difference was found between Anglo-English speakers who used... more

In this paper, the /r/ production of adolescent Anglo-English and Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers in West Yorkshire was analysed from speech data collected in 2000. A clear difference was found between Anglo-English speakers who used the standard British rhotic, the postalveolar approximant [ ], exclusively, and the Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers who used both British rhotics and a number of different variants influenced by the Punjabi retroflex flap /ɽ/. The influence of the retroflex flap /ɽ/ was proven by formant and duration results, as well as qualitative observations of the speaker spectrograms. It is predicted that Punjabi-English speaker preference for either Punjabi influenced rhotics or British rhotics depended on if they identify as culturally integrated " British Asians " or culturally alienated " Asians ". This study also considers the possibility of a progression in rhotic production of West Yorkshire Punjabi-English speakers over the last fifteen years.

Ethnic and ethnolectal variation in migrant communities have received much attention, but the manifestation and longevity of this variation is not yet well understood. Capitalising on Barbara Horvath's foundational study of social... more

Ethnic and ethnolectal variation in migrant communities have received much attention, but the manifestation and longevity of this variation is not yet well understood. Capitalising on Barbara Horvath's foundational study of social variation in Australian English, and a comparable, recent corpus of sociolinguistic interviews (Sydney Speaks 2010s), we present a real-time test of ethnic variation in the speech of approximately 170 Australians over a 40-year period. We examine the speech of Anglo-, Italian-and Chinese-Australians, focusing on five diphthongs considered to be characteristic of Australian English. Analyses of over 20,000 tokens reveal no wholesale differences among ethnic groups, but they do reveal some differences in the progression and social conditioning of changes over time, which we argue are best understood in relation to the social nature of the changes undergone.

Increased global migration to international urban centres has motivated a growing interest in ethnolects and the role migrant communities play in language variation and change. Here, we consider ethnolectal variation in real and apparent... more

Increased global migration to international urban centres has motivated a growing interest in ethnolects and the role migrant communities play in language variation and change. Here, we consider ethnolectal variation in real and apparent time, by examining the realization of word-final (er) (e.g. teacher, remember) in Australian English. We capitalize on sociolinguistic interview data collected by Barbara Horvath in Sydney in the 1970s as a benchmark against which to compare newly collected
recordings with Sydneysiders in the 2010s. Approximately 15,000 tokens of word-final (er) were extracted from the speech of nearly 200 people, including Anglo-Australians, and second-generation migrants of Italian, Greek and Chinese background. Acoustic analyses of vowel duration and position in the vowel space reveal incremental lengthening with concomitant lowering and backing over time for (er), though only in prosodically final position. This change was led by Greek and Italian teenagers in the 1970s, then taken up by working class women, and today, has been adopted across the community. Tracking this change in real and apparent time provides evidence that ethnolectal features may be adopted by the wider community, with ethnic minorities playing a leading role in language change.

In this paper, the /r/ production of adolescent Anglo-English and Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers in West Yorkshire was analysed from speech data collected in 2000. A clear difference was found between Anglo-English speakers who used... more

In this paper, the /r/ production of adolescent Anglo-English and Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers in West Yorkshire was analysed from speech data collected in 2000. A clear difference was found between Anglo-English speakers who used the standard British rhotic, the postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠ ], exclusively, and the Punjabi-English Bilingual speakers who used both British rhotics and a number of different variants influenced by the Punjabi retroflex flap [ɽ]. The influence of the retroflex flap [ɽ] was proven by formant and duration results, as well as qualitative observations of the speaker spectrograms. It is predicted that Punjabi-English speaker preference for either Punjabi influenced rhotics or British rhotics depended on if they identified as culturally integrated “British Asians” or culturally alienated “Asians”. This study also considers the possibility of a progression in the rhotic production of West Yorkshire Punjabi-English speakers over the last 15 years. As well as expanding on the findings of West Yorkshire Asian English, the findings implicate that social identity is a key aspect affecting the speech of bilingual speakers who are often part of more than one culture.

This study applies the methodology described by Gries & Deshors (2014) within the framework of the Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 1996) to the partitive genitive inflection in post-quantifier adjectives in the Moroccan Dutch... more

This study applies the methodology described by Gries & Deshors (2014) within the framework of the Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger, 1996) to the partitive genitive inflection in post-quantifier adjectives in the Moroccan Dutch ethnolect. This implies fitting a logistic regression model on data from the complementary ConDiv and Moroccorp corpora to investigate the differences between the L1 variety and the (early L2/2L1) ethnolect variety. It was found that the Moroccan Dutch language users do not differ from 'ordinary' Dutch language users in the realisation of the partitive genitives suffix, neither through an outspoken preference for one of the inflectional variants, nor in the factors determining the alternation. This is considered a rather surprising result, as such differences do exist for a number of other grammatical phenomena (Cornips and Rooij, 2003; Van de Velde and Weer-man, 2014). This finding can tell us something about the inflectional status of the partitive genitive. It appears that it is less non-transparent than other quirks in adjectival inflection.

Это первая публикация перевода и транскрипции текста классической библейской поэмы о любви, а также таргума, то есть её арамейского переложения. В книге: о Песни Песней крымчаков транскрипция текста перевод на русский язык об истории... more

Это первая публикация перевода и транскрипции текста классической библейской поэмы о любви, а также таргума, то есть её арамейского переложения.
В книге:
о Песни Песней крымчаков
транскрипция текста
перевод на русский язык
об истории крымчаков
о языке крымчаков
факсимиле оригинала

Increased global migration to international urban centres has motivated a growing interest in ethnolects and the role migrant communities play in language variation and change. Here, we consider ethnolectal variation in real and apparent... more

Increased global migration to international urban centres has motivated a growing interest in ethnolects and the role migrant communities play in language variation and change. Here, we consider ethnolectal variation in real and apparent time, by examining the realization of word-final (er) (e.g. teacher, remember) in Australian English. We capitalize on sociolinguistic interview data collected by Barbara Horvath in Sydney in the 1970s as a benchmark against which to compare newly collected recordings with Sydneysiders in the 2010s. Approximately 15,000 tokens of word-final (er) were extracted from the speech of nearly 200 people, including Anglo-Australians, and second-generation migrants of Italian, Greek and Chinese background. Acoustic analyses of vowel duration and position in the vowel space reveal incremental lengthening with concomitant lowering and backing over time for (er), though only in prosodically final position. This change was led by Greek and Italian teenagers in the 1970s, then taken up by working class women, and today, has been adopted across the community. Tracking this change in real and apparent time provides evidence that ethnolectal features may be adopted by the wider community, with ethnic minorities playing a leading role in language change.

Aims and objectives/purposes/research questions: The aim of the article is to describe what language contact phenomena are present. The research questions are as follows: (a) what types of code-switching (CS) are at work; (b) is there any... more

Aims and objectives/purposes/research questions: The aim of the article is to describe what language contact phenomena are present. The research questions are as follows: (a) what types of code-switching (CS) are at work; (b) is there any preference for any particular type of CS; and (c) what Jewish (seemingly) monolingual songs in Slavic languages can tell us about contact varieties of Slavic used by Jews. Design/methodology/approach: Collecting texts of Yiddish–Slavic and Jewish folk songs in Slavic languages; and qualitative analysis of CS and structural change. Data and analysis: Sixty-two Slavic–Yiddish texts were chosen from Jewish songs’ collections and CS instances analysed. Findings/conclusions: Both insertions and alternations are present but alternations are preferred. There is an asymmetry between Yiddish insertions into Slavic (nouns) and Slavic insertions into Yiddish (all parts of speech). Alternations may be just renditions of the same meaning in another language but...

"Актуальные проблемы лингвистики и лингвокультурологии 9", "Прометей" Moscow, 2013 - paginæ 89-103

This study presents findings from a quantitative analysis of interand intraspeaker phonetic variability in the realization of /t/ and /d/ from secondand thirdgeneration Lebanese American speakers from Dearborn, Michigan. The realization... more

This study presents findings from a quantitative analysis of interand intraspeaker phonetic variability in the realization of /t/ and /d/ from secondand thirdgeneration Lebanese American speakers from Dearborn, Michigan. The realization of /t/ and /d/ as either alveolar or dental (a substrate feature from Lebanese Arabic) is the focus of the analysis. The data, which come from 2006 corpus recordings, are also subject to diagnostics for a focused ethnolect i.e. the retention of distinctive features into the third and later generations of a speech community. These diagnostics are derived from new-dialect formation and ethnolect formation models. Evidence is found for a focused Lebanese American English ethnolect in Dearborn though the findings are tentative due to a small dataset. The results of the study lay the foundation for future work, which will seek to confirm these findings in greater detail.

ABSTRACT Increased global migration to international urban centres has motivated a growing interest in ethnolects and the role migrant communities play in language variation and change. Here, we consider ethnolectal variation in real and... more

ABSTRACT Increased global migration to international urban centres has motivated a growing interest in ethnolects and the role migrant communities play in language variation and change. Here, we consider ethnolectal variation in real and apparent time, by examining the realization of word-final (er) (e.g. teacher, remember) in Australian English. We capitalize on sociolinguistic interview data collected by Barbara Horvath in Sydney in the 1970s as a benchmark against which to compare newly collected recordings with Sydneysiders in the 2010s. Approximately 15,000 tokens of word-final (er) were extracted from the speech of nearly 200 people, including Anglo-Australians, and second-generation migrants of Italian, Greek and Chinese background. Acoustic analyses of vowel duration and position in the vowel space reveal incremental lengthening with concomitant lowering and backing over time for (er), though only in prosodically final position. This change was led by Greek and Italian teenagers in the 1970s, then taken up by working class women, and today, has been adopted across the community. Tracking this change in real and apparent time provides evidence that ethnolectal features may be adopted by the wider community, with ethnic minorities playing a leading role in language change.

Use of an ethnolect/ a minor language - not only in public discourse but also in literature (and literary translation) can be considered as a political act; it also plays a significant role in creating, reinforcing and enhancing regional... more

Use of an ethnolect/ a minor language - not only in public discourse but also in literature (and literary translation) can be considered as a political act; it also plays a significant role in creating, reinforcing and enhancing regional communities. The paper focuses on main features of regional literatures in contemporary Poland, especially on those written in ethnolects and/or regional languages (e.g. Kashubian, Upper Silesian, Vilamovian/Wilamowicean, Prussian). The Author also discusses the most important issues regarding writing in ethnolects: low status of etnolects/dialects in comparison to national/literary languages, fluent identity, multilingualism, status of a regional culture.

This study presents findings from a quantitative analysis of inter-and intraspeaker phonetic variability in the realization of /t/ and /d/ from second-and third-generation Lebanese American speakers from Dearborn, Michigan. The... more

This study presents findings from a quantitative analysis of inter-and intraspeaker phonetic variability in the realization of /t/ and /d/ from second-and third-generation Lebanese American speakers from Dearborn, Michigan. The realization of /t/ and /d/ as either alveolar or dental (a substrate feature from Lebanese Arabic) is the focus of the analysis. The data, which come from 2006 corpus recordings, are also subject to diagnostics for a focused ethnolect i.e. the retention of distinctive features into the third and later generations of a speech community. These diagnostics are derived from new-dialect formation and ethnolect formation models. Evidence is found for a focused Lebanese American English ethnolect in Dearborn though the findings are tentative due to a small dataset. The results of the study lay the foundation for future work, which will seek to confirm these findings in greater detail.

Codeswitching (CS) in computer-mediated communication (CMC) and language use of the descendants of Moroccan ‘guest-workers’ in Germany are two under-researched areas. This paper contributes to these areas by investigating the language... more

Codeswitching (CS) in computer-mediated communication (CMC) and
language use of the descendants of Moroccan ‘guest-workers’ in Germany are
two under-researched areas. This paper contributes to these areas by investigating
the language use by female German-Moroccans on a Facebook group. The
data illustrate that these female German-Moroccans use German as language
of interaction and code-switch to their language of origin. CS is restricted to
pragmatically delimitable constituents and codemixing does not occur in the
data. It seems that the way bilinguals with Moroccan descent employ their
language of origin differs from that of bilinguals with Turkish background.
Bilinguals with Turkish background display a preference for codemixing. It is
assumed that the ethnic/linguistic heterogeneity of the Moroccan group plays
a crucial role in the choice of the language of interaction and the type of language
alternation. CS has an identity-related function. In diasporic context, CS
is a way by which Moroccan bilinguals construct their identities.