Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics

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Open Access
The Dance of Conversation: Gender and Language in Metaphors for West Coast Swing Partnership
(Canadian Linguistics Association Annual Conference, 2021-06-07) O'Neill, Brittney
Social partner dance communities have traditionally constrained participation by gender, permitting only men to lead and only women to follow. However, West Coast Swing (WCS), a modern swing dance, is currently in the midst of degendering the roles of leader and follower, and the gendered terms traditionally used to refer to them, such that all dancers may participate in their preferred role regardless of their gender. In some ways, degendering is an extension of WCS’s relatively egalitarian partnership structure. Unlike in many partner dances, in WCS both the leader and the follower can influence movement choices for the couple. One of the most prevalent metaphors for conveying this conception of partnership is that of a conversation. This metaphor is typically understood as liberatory, suggesting an open exchange of ideas between leader and follower (e.g. Callahan, 2005; Cox, 2012), one that is broadly in line with the egalitarian motives of the degendering movement overall. However, in practice the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor often reveals criteria for appropriate “talk” that differ significantly by role and, in doing so, continues to draw on gendered social expectations. Using Koller’s (2004) Critical Cognitive Framework, this project investigates the use of the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor in an episode of The Naked Truth, a podcast made by and for the WCS community. The 92 minute episode, “Leading and Following” (2019), presents a discussion of WCS partnership dynamics featuring a male-identifying host who publicly endorses degendering and a female-identifying host who appears ambivalent about the issue. During the episode, the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor is frequently invoked and often co-constructed by the speakers. In the hosts’ deployments of the metaphor, the only way leaders were found to be at fault was if they “talked” constantly and never gave the follower room to contribute: “[they] should not be dictating…a hundred percent…of the dance”. In contrast, followers’ behaviour was much more heavily policed. They were cautioned against “interrupting” or “ignor[ing the leader’s] intent” as well as being too much of a “straight follower” (i.e. not offering movement ideas to the partnership), while being encouraged to “support the leader”, “pay[] attention and listen[]”, and only “contribute” in response to the leader or when the leader offers an opportunity. This dynamic strongly resembles accounts of actual conversations between middle class, white, North American men and women, in which men have been found to hold the floor for a greater percentage of the time and interrupt more, while women talk less, interrupt less, use more supportive strategies (James & Drakich, 1993; Kendall & Tannen, 1997; Lee & Mccabe, 2020; Zimmerman & West, 1975) and, despite this, are still often perceived as more interruptive (Orcutt & Mennella, 1995). Though not universally representative of conversation dynamics between men and women, the salience of these same patterns in the way the WCS PARTNERSHIP IS CONVERSATION metaphor is mobilized, reveals underlying heteronormative and essentialized gender ideologies and conceptual models of WCS partnership. These ideologies and conceptions may continue to implicitly tie following to femininity and leading to masculinity, despite the extensive work being done to avoid explicitly gendered language. This analysis demonstrates the role of shared metaphor use in the persistence of gendered language and ideologies, even amongst speakers and communities that are committed to gender equality and degendering. It further asks: if WCS partnership dynamics give followers more say than other dances, but are nonetheless described through metaphor use that invokes hegemonic masculine conversational norms, can partner dance ever be truly degendered or is the legacy of gendering so pervasive that the mere act of leading or following is inherently situated within hegemonic gender norms? References: Callahan, J. L. (2005). ‘Speaking a secret language’: West Coast Swing as a community of practice of informal and incidental learners. Research in Dance Education, 6(1–2), 3–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/14617890500372974 Cox, N. (2012). A Skillful Breaking of Expectations: Embodied Knowledge, Communication, and Connection in West Coast Swing Dance. Bryn Mawr. James, D., & Drakich, J. (1993). Understanding gender differences in amount of talk: A critical review of research. In Gender and conversational interaction. (pp. 281–312). Oxford University Press. Kendall, S., & Tannen, D. (1997). Gender and language in the workplace. In R. Wodak (Ed.), Gender and Discourse (pp. 81–105). Sage Publications Ltd. Koller, V. (2004). Metaphor and gender in business media discourse: A critical cognitive study. Palgrave Macmillan. Lee, J. J., & Mccabe, J. M. (2020). Who speaks and who listens: Revisiting the chilly climate in college classrooms. Gender and Society, 35(1), 32–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243220977141 Orcutt, J. D., & Mennella, D. L. (1995). Gender and Perceptions of Interruption as Intrusive Talk: An Experimental Analysis and Reply to Criticism. Symbolic Interaction, 18(1), 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.1995.18.1.59 Zimmerman, D. H., & West, C. (1975). Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation. In B. Thorne & N. Henley (Eds.), Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance (pp. 105–129). Newberry House. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.125.12zim
Open Access
Talking dance, doing gender: Gendered language use in a podcast made by and for the West Coast Swing dance community
(International Gender and Language Association (IGALA 11), 2021-07-08) O'Neill, Brittney
Traditionally, social partner dance communities have constrained participation by gender, permitting only men to lead and only women to follow. More recently, however, emerging degendering movements have sought to enable all dancers to participate in their preferred role regardless of gender. Like much feminist and queer activism (e.g. Ehrlich & King, 1994; Moulton, Robinson, & Elias, 1978; Zimman, 2017), these degendering movements have also called for language reform, specifically focussing on the use of gender neutral terms in generic reference to dance roles. West Coast Swing (WCS), an increasingly global dance community which originated in the USA, is currently in the midst of such a change, seemingly headed towards complete degendering. WCS, then, presents a unique opportunity to explore the language use of those for, against, and ambivalent towards the degendering movement as it unfolds in public discourse. Using The Naked Truth, a podcast made by and for the WCS community, as a case study, this project analyses the use of gendered versus degendered language in generic reference to dance roles in the context of ongoing social and linguistic activism in the WCS community. “Leading and Following” (February 2019, 92 minutes), the episode used for analysis, features conversations between a male-identifying dancer who publicly endorses degendering, and a female-identifying top-tier professional dancer who, while endorsing freedom to dance in one’s preferred role, publicly resists allowing same gendered couples to compete against mixed gender couples. Despite the two speakers differing in rates of and strategies for degendered language use roughly in accordance with their alignment to the degendering movement, both appear to be aware of and to attempt degendered language use to at least some extent. However, a lack of other-initiated repair and the presence of symmetrical accommodation both to gendered and degendered language suggest that smooth conversational flow was privileged over any activist goals which may have motivated the speakers’ own language choices. Gendered language was particularly common in contexts where generics were linked to specific real-world situations, known individuals, or to an already gendered generic partner. For example, when referring generically to leaders dancing with a specific female-identifying follower, only male reference was used. Similarly, where referring generically to types of conversation experienced with real students, traditionally-gendered reference was more frequent. These patterns suggest that, at least for these two speakers, language change remains relatively superficial. Their mental models of the gender/role dynamic seem to be strongly shaped by exemplars based in existing statistical distributions and by heteronormativity, rather than by their goals for linguistic and social change. Thus, while language reform may play a role in making non-traditional-role dancers feel more welcome in the community, it does not yet appear to be impacting the underlying expectations of these two heavily-involved members of the community. This work provides specific evidence of the need for language reform to be accompanied by continued social and institutional change in order to create meaningful transformations of gendered conceptual categories, even amongst those who explicitly support reform.
Open Access
How the name of your lipstick reflects society’s notion of who you are: A linguistic analysis of cosmetic colour names
(2022-08) Bressler, Clint; Angermeyer, Philipp
The topic for this paper was inspired from frequent visits to cosmetic retail outlets which prompted an inquiry about colour names driven by two primary observations. The first was that the colour names displayed for the products rarely described their ascribed colour. The second was that these colour names were often abstract in nature, indexing an abstract concept rather than anything directly related to the properties of colour. This pattern varied some between brands and products, but the general observations remained the same. The question arises, if most colour names can have no descriptive qualities, then what is their intended purpose? Thus, this paper focuses on the themes and entities that colour names index, why brands choose to index these themes, how these colour naming conventions relate to the linguistic anthropologic discussions of colour terms, and how this affects the scope of linguistic landscapes.
Open Access
Case Assignment: A Comparison between Agreement-based versus Dependent Case Accounts
(2022-08) Cai, Wenyi; Alboiu, Gabriela
This major research paper (MRP) aims to review the literature that has looked into Case theories from a generative grammar perspective from Government and Binding (Chomsky, 1981) onwards. Specifically, it offers a critical examination of the agreement-based Case account (Chomsky, 1981, 1995, 2000, 2001, etc.) and the dependent Case account (Marantz, 1991), and discusses their contribution to our current understanding of syntactic Case valuation on nominal arguments. Various counterevidence is also presented, which raises potential problems for both accounts.
Open Access
A Minimalist Review of Current Theories on Japanese Passivisation
(2022-08) Langstroth, Zachary; Alboiu, Gabriela
The Japanese passive voice has presented challenges to a universal theory of passivisation as a process where an internal argument, usually the direct object, is promoted to the subject position. A subset of Japanese passives called “indirect” passives appear to increase the valence of their predicate, containing an additional argument, occupying the subject position, when compared to corresponding active sentences. This has led to some controversy in research assuming specific structures for such sentences, with some researchers arguing that the passive morpheme in indirect passives is merely homophonous with a counterpart in more traditional passives, while some argue that Japanese has no true passive voice. Recently, some arguments have been made that the subjects of these indirect passives in fact do have active sources which are obscured by general facts of movement in Japanese, i.e. that post-nominal elements are never left stranded. This text is intended as a critical review of prior research on the Japanese passive under current Minimalist understandings of syntactic theory. To that end, three prominent schools of thought on Japanese passive formation are examined: Non-uniform analyses, which posit two homophonous passive morphemes used in different constructions; Uniform analyses, which claim that Japanese has no true indigenous passive voice; and the recent unified passive analysis put forth by Ishizuka (2012), which posits that instances of increased valence in certain passives are in fact derived in a similar manner to English pseudo-passives, where a non-core argument is promoted to the subject position. These theories will be compared in how well they comply with given data, as well as their tenability under syntactic assumptions made in current Minimalist Program-based theory.
Open Access
The Rhotic Consonant(s) in Contemporary Modern Irish
(2022-08) Cahill, Griffin; Elfner, Emily
The subject of this major research paper (MRP) is the status of rhotic consonant(s) in the phonemic inventory of Modern Irish (Gaeilge, Nua-Ghaeilge). Traditional studies of the phonologies of dialects of Irish have described the rhotic in Irish as consisting of the alveolar tap (/ɾ/) with contrastive palatalized and velarized secondary articulations (/ɾj/ and /ɾɣ/) (Ó Cuív 1944; de Bhaldraithe 1966; Hamilton 1974; Sutton 1993; Ó Baoill 1996; Ó Raghallaigh 2014). The alveolar approximate ([ɹ]) as an allophone of /ɾ/ has also recently been attested in some studies (Ó Sé 2000: 19; Hickey 2014; Kukhto & Nikolaev 2016). However, the emergence of this allophone, and the precise circumstances under which it occurs, have largely been unexplored. This is not to say that previous scholars have ignored the occurrence of /ɹ/ broadly, but potentially that this is a new and ongoing phenomenon. As an example, previous work of the rhotic of Montréal French has shown that changes like this can occur rapidly (Sankoff & Blondeau 2007). Most previous studies of Irish phonetics and phonology have focused on speakers living in a Gaeltacht, the rural traditionally Irish speaking geographic regions primarily located on the Atlantic fringe of the island. However, the expansion of private Irish-medium schooling in the form of Gaelscoileanna since the 1970’s, as well as substantial sustained capital and political investment from successive Irish governments have produced a great number of high-level L2 users, as well as native speakers from non-Gaeltacht backgrounds. A part of the impetus to this research is to include these “new” speakers in the conversations around language change and variation in Irish as well, particularly as the Gaeltachtaí continue to be threatened and as “urban Irish” speakers begin to form a larger and larger portion of the language’s user base. There is also evidence uncovered in scholarly work that Irish phonology and phonetics are changing in other, broader ways, even amongst Gaeltacht speakers (Welby et al. 2017; Müller et al. 2019).
Open Access
English-Mandarin code-switching in a bilingual family
(2022-08) Cui, QingXiao; Angermeyer, Philipp
The study of code-switching has raised and attempted to answer a number of questions related to the nature of language use, the motivations behind different kinds of language use, and the very nature of a “language.” Broadly, two questions have been central: the “how?” and the “why?” When interlocutors alternate between two or more languages or language varieties, what are the formal and structural features of their language use, and what are their motivations for doing so? The present study intends to investigate both of these questions in the context of the code-switching behaviours of one English-Mandarin bilingual family living in Canada. Canada is home to many immigrant languages, one of the most prominent among them being Mandarin (Statistics Canada, 2017; 2022). In addition, Chinese diaspora communities that speak a variety of Chinese and non-Chinese languages exist worldwide, and their code-switching practices are accordingly varied (Li, 2016).
Open Access
Recontextualization of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Textual Trajectories and Meaning in Social Media Posts about Roe v Wade
(2022-08) Michels, Victoria R.; Ehrlich, Susan L.
In this exploratory study, I investigate how Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s texts about the Roe v. Wade case are recontextualized into news and social media discourse on abortion following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Using Critical Discourse Analysis with data collected from Twitter and American news media outlets, I consider the trajectories and meanings of Ginsburg’s texts when they are recontextualized into new discursive contexts. My analysis found that both pro-choice and anti-abortion discourse recontextualize her texts, focusing on different aspects to support one of the two positions on abortion. I conclude that the trajectory of Ginsburg’s texts into pro-choice discourse may contribute to gender empowerment by referencing Ginsburg’s advocacy for individual autonomy and choice for women whereas the trajectory into anti-abortion discourse may perpetuate gender inequality by focusing on state rights and her criticisms of the decision while diminishing her support of choice and autonomy.
Open Access
The Semantic Derogation of Female
(2022-08) Ferley, Andrew; King, Ruth
As Schulz (1975) observed decades ago, terms of reference can reflect a range of underlying ideological assumptions. One of her examples of this phenomenon is the lexical choice between freedom fighter and terrorist (p. 64), with the former reflective of positive appraisals and the latter a far more negative one. Schulz goes on to discuss the phenomenon she labels “the semantic derogation of women” whereby once neutral terms of reference undergo pejoration; part of the discussion compares terms like lady with its male counterpart gentleman, with the former undergoing pejoration in many contexts but not the latter. I first became aware of this phenomenon sometime during 2020, with regard to terms of reference for women when I observed people replying to online posts which described women as females with entirely textless responses consisting solely of pictures of an alien race from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. These aliens are caricatures of capitalism and misogyny, and they themselves refer to women as females. I interpreted these interactions to mean those who posted these pictures of the fictitious aliens were signalling shared gender ideology with the Star Trek aliens. However, “terminally online” behaviour like this often does not necessarily translate into real-world discursive patterns. I next asked many of the women in my life their reactions to hearing women referred to as female(s). While there was some variation in response, quite a few reported that this was a red flag for them, and men who did this, in their experience, were either dangerous or toxic. I followed up on these observations with an informal sampling of friends and coworkers, and the results were suggestive of female as a lexical variant which had undergone semantic derogation. Later in 2021, I conducted a qualitative analysis of the online communications of a misogynistic online Pickup Artist community which utilized this lexical variant frequently. However, while some findings were suggestive of such an analysis, they were ultimately inconclusive as within that insular community, one manner of referring to women seemed as hostile as any other. The present study continues this examination of what I have come to refer to as the conspicuous female. Specifically, I characterise it as a lexical variant for women which, when it occurs outside of clinical contexts, seems to carry ideological baggage. To this end, I approach the question from a different direction than my earlier project, which was small in scale and purely qualitative in analysis. First, I re-administer an earlier survey on attitudes towards this lexical variant with a larger sample and a wider age range than in my previous research. Secondly, I mine Twitter using keyword searches for a reasonably large corpus of tweets containing the targeted variant, female, and a variant which is less negatively charged, woman. The choice of this second, more innocuous variant, was decided based on results from the attitudinal survey. The Twitter data are analyzed using the tools of critical discourse analysis (van Dijk 2005), for content which indexes prejudicial ideologies as well as quantitative variationist methodology (Bayley 2019).
Open Access
The effects of prosody and production planning in external t-sandhi
(2022-08) Borje, Cydklaire; Elfner, Emily
The change in pronunciation of word-final /t/ in English is known as external coronal stop sandhi and is understood to be motivated by several phonological conditions. Though much of the research in this area (e.g., Tanner et al., 2017, Kilbourne-Ceron et al., 2016, Coetzee and Kawahara, 2013) has generally focused on a single t-sandhi alternation within a corpus (e.g., from /t/ to /ɾ/), the results of these studies make it clear that it is always a combination of factors that play a role in each alternation. In this paper, I propose that examining the distribution of various types of t-sandhi clause-internally would provide a more complete look of where speakers preferred to use different forms of /t/ in their natural speech: tightly controlling an area of analysis would make this otherwise wide scope more manageable. This project uses two production experiments to examine the interaction between prosody and other conditioning factors on t-sandhi: established segmental contexts and findings from Production Planning studies were used to control the environment surrounding word-final /t/ and record the distribution of its pronunciation. The results of these studies show that the more marked forms of t-sandhi (in terms of production) favor prosodically defined environments not explored in previous studies: word external, clause-internal flapping exclusively preferred environments where the following word did not carry lexical stress on the first syllable; released-t’s were never produced in environments 2 where the /t/ was preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant, and also displayed changes in production rates that were sensitive to prosodic correlates. Production planning variables also showed some expected results which show areas of interest for further t-sandhi and production experiments focused on the production planning hypothesis (Tanner et al. 2017, Kilbourne-Ceron et al. 2016).
Open Access
Raising in Modern Standard Arabic
(2022-08) Al-Janabi, Enas; Alboiu, Gabriela
This study investigates a core subject in generative syntax which is Argument movement (A-movement) as is represented by the syntactic process of Raising in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Subject-to-subject raising, and subject-to-object raising have been extensively studied in English language and other languages, however, this is not the case for MSA. Although the topic of Raising has been getting more attention in the last few decades, relevant studies in MSA remain sparse. Moreover, there are conflicting views towards the availability of A-movement, and hence Raising, as well as an overall lack of comprehensive research.
Open Access
Dingxi Mandarin /n/-/l/ Merger and its Transfer to L2 English
(2023-07) Jin, Dawei; Narayan, Chandan
In Dingxi, a remote place in Gansu province of China, the alveolar nasal /n/ and the lateral /l/ merge in the local Mandarin dialect. The author, born and raised in Dingxi, observes that himself and local people have difficulties in producing English words with syllable-initial [n-], e.g., Nike, nice, neighbor, noodle, national etc. Similar /n/-/l/ merger is attested in a variety of Mandarin dialects (Sichuan, Hubei, Yunnan, Shanxi, Shandong), as well as in Cantonese, South Min, and other Chinese languages. Literature on the Cantonese /n/-/l/ merger appears in English and some Chinese literature addresses the same phenomenon in Mandarin as well as its transfer to L2 English. This paper deals primarily the nasality of [n/l]-initial words in Dingxi Mandarin and L2 English using acoustic cues (F2-F1, A1P0, F3, BW1, DeltaA1, Relative RMS), and investigates the realization of the /n/-/l/ merger in various phonological environment in both Dingxi Mandarin and L2 English. To preview the results, both the acoustic and phonological analysis confirm that the /n/-/l/ merger in Dingxi Mandarin transfers to L2 English. Importantly, I introduce a velum coarticulation hypothesis that explains these phenomena-- from the reduced nasality of alveolar nasal in Dingxi Mandarin, to the reversed F2-F1 pattern in Dingxi Xi rhymes [i y] comparing with native English speakers, and to the convergence of the F2-F1 value of /n/ and /l/ in Hon rhymes [a o e u]. I also show that the nasality measurement illustrates a convergence of /n/ and /l/ to an acoustic realization that lies between /n/ and /l/, a phenomenon that has not been described previously.
Open Access
'Ovary Motional': Constructing Gender and Identity in Roller Derby Names
(2023-08) Hambleton, Sophie; King, Ruth
The present work is concerned with roller derby, long considered a socially transgressive sport. It began with sports promoter Leo Seltzer’s marathon on roller skates, which took place in Chicago, Illinois in 1935 (Gieseler, 2014). Seltzer sought ways to make his marathon less repetitive than the participants simply doing laps, and began to add elements of both show business and contact sport, which drew in large crowds. In a 1971 interview with the New York Times, Seltzer described the basic appeal of roller derby as ‘noise, colour, body contact’ (Harlan, 2019, p.1).
Open Access
The Effects of Comparative Explicit Instruction on Gender Marking of Possessive Adjectives and Pronouns
(2023-08) Beatrice, Cindy; Smeets, Liz
Learners acquiring a second language can receive input about the L2 grammar in a natural environment, and/or through explicit instruction (EI). The latter is quite common among adult L2 learners, but how necessary or useful EI is, is still an open debate. As argued by Henry, Culman, and VanPatten (2009) “not all EI is the same, not all structures are the same, and the interaction of EI, structure, and processing problems may yield different results in different studies”. Explicit instruction has been argued to be particularly beneficial for grammatical phenomena where learners continue to perform non-target like (Izquierdo & Collins, 2008; McManus, 2013; and more). The current research investigates the effects of explicit instruction on a linguistic phenomenon that has been shown to be problematic also for more advanced learners, namely gender marking on possessive pronouns and adjectives. Specifically, we compare instruction in the L2 only to a comparative approach where instruction is provided in both the L1 and L2. In this thesis, chapter one focuses on existing literature and past studies relevant to the current research, such as the generative approach to second language acquisition (SLA), L1 transfer in SLA, and theories about explicit instruction and comparative explicit instruction. Chapter two explains the focus of the research, with an outline of the topic of this study, an explanation of how possessive adjectives and pronouns work in English, and how their counterparts work in Spanish and Italian, and a presentation of previous research on this topic. Chapter three presents the research questions, methods, tasks, and participant descriptions. The results of each test are presented in chapter four, with an explanation of the two types of instructions the groups received, as well as the analysis of the final results. Finally, the conclusion is followed by the appendix with the tasks and a complete bibliography of works cited.
Open Access
The Perception of Mixed Utterances by Jamaican Bilinguals
(2023-08) Gooden, Amanda C.; Angermeyer, Philipp
Language in Jamaica is marked by high variation (Patrick, 2004 as cited in Kennedy, 2017) among speakers across all linguistic contexts (Christie, 2003). This is caused by two broad factors: firstly, by the varying linguistic repertoires among speakers, with some speakers being dominant Jamaican Creole (JC) speakers, some dominant Standard Jamaican English speakers (SJE), and some balanced bilinguals (Kennedy, 2017) and secondly, by the blurred boundary between English, the language brought to the island by British colonizers in 1655, and Jamaican Creole, the de facto National language of the country and language of the majority (Farquharson, 2013), whose genesis is attributed to language contact between speakers of English and various African languages during the period of colonization in the country. Because of the relationship between these languages in their structure and usage, they are proposed to exist on a continuum, with forms closer to Jamaican Creole being basilectal forms at one end and forms closer to Mainstream English being acrolectal forms on the other end (DeCamp, 1971). These however, are idealized forms, as most speech lies between poles, and speech found here are called mesolectal forms. These forms are likely the result of language mixing that has been present since the creation of JC (Patrick, 2013) and continued contact between JC and its lexifier, SJE. The purpose of this research project is to determine how Jamaican speakers process linguistic forms that do not neatly belong to either language by observing where they judge linguistic utterances to belong on a visual depiction of the proposed language continuum. The placement of these utterances by participants of this study will be tested against two social variables: the geographical location of speakers and their language attitudes. The first variable will be tested by including speech perception by Jamaicans living in the island and those living in the diaspora, namely various cities in Canada and the United States of America. The second variable will be tested by asking participants about their attitudes towards language use in Jamaican contexts, specifically JC that has held an inferior social status to SJE in Jamaica, because of its perception as a broken variety of English (Kouwenberg et al., 2011), associated with poverty and a lack of education (Christie, 2003).
Open Access
Language and Identity: Perceptions and Ideologies of Calabrese in Toronto
(2023-08) McGunnigle, Liam; Hoffman, Michol
The Calabrese community of Toronto is one of the most robustly represented regional groups within the Italian diasporic community in Toronto and the GTA from its origins in the early to mid-20th century (Hagan & Rando 2007; Sinopoli 2003). Despite the size of the community, the Calabrese variety has been falling out of usage as the community shifts from multilingualism to English monolingualism across generations. It is crucial to study such speech communities as language loss becomes a potential reality (Nagy 2017). This paper is concerned with the relationship between language and identity as it pertains to the language attitudes of Italian-Canadians. Throughout this paper, I will address questions centralizing the linguistic features which index a Calabrese identity, the ways in which these markers serve to differentiate regional groups of Italians, and the interaction between language ideologies and attitudes towards regional groups. By addressing such questions, I aim to develop a deeper understanding of the community and their perception of regional language variation. In doing so, I will be contributing to ongoing documentation of regional varieties of Italian that are falling out of usage in the diasporic setting.
Open Access
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Normalization of Norman
(2024) Terveen, Isaiah
Shakespeare’s plays have been widely praised by critics, and endure in the popular consciousness to this day. Although all of his works were written at least 500 years after the Norman invasion, his language, as well as our Modern English, includes vocabulary that was introduced to English through the Norman conquest. In our modern speech, words that have Norman origin such as “famous”, “error”, and “deliver” are fully integrated into the language along with words of native Germanic origin, and using them does not convey an aristocratic background. However, these words must have been novel in the language at some point. The first writers of Middle English literature must have encountered at least mild confusion from readers who encountered newly-borrowed Norman vocabulary for the first time, or perhaps it carried an air of sophistication. In fact, it was often the practice that a Norman legal term would be glossed with an Anglo-Saxon equivalent to help reading comprehension (Mellinkoff 1963:120). Although this novelty in usage has faded with the passage of time, it is still possible that the novelty of Norman vocabulary was present in the dialogue of an Early Modern English work, such as William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This leads us to our research question for the paper; in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, how can we see the diffusion of vocabulary inherited from the Norman conquest of England in the text of Shakespeare’s Hamlet? Is there a difference in the usage of Norman and Non-Norman vocabulary by characters? And how do characters of different social backgrounds use English words of Norman origin differently, if there are identifiable differences in their speech at all? The specific impact of the 1066 Norman Invasion of England has been an underrated influence on Hamlet’s linguistic identity. In this paper, I will argue that the overthrow of the Old Anglo-Saxon order of England by Norman French speakers led by William the Conqueror had far-reaching linguistic consequences on English that had fully taken root among the common English of Williams Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to the point that overall rates of the relative usage of Norman-origin vocabulary no were no longer treated as a marker of social meaning. By that I mean, a person or literary character using a Norman word rather than a Germanic one no longer had a clear correlation with their social standing, which can be demonstrated in the text of Hamlet by providing examples of simultaneous use of Germanic and Norman words with the same or similar meaning, such as “carry” and “bear”. In this paper, I will first provide historical context to the languages of Old English and Norman French in anticipation of their contact and conflict. Then I will draw on existing scholarship on language contact and borrowing between the two languages, and summarize the current state of research of Shakespeare’s language and vocabulary. In the following two sections, I will present the data I have collected on the vocabulary of Hamlet, the methods I intend to use to analyze it, and the results of that same analysis. The paper will conclude with remarks on the findings of the data analysis, and will present my conclusions on the ultimate impact of Norman French on Hamlet.
Open Access
Analysis of Korean Word-Initial Stops: A Phonetic Study on Non-Native Speakers of Korean
(2024) Fraser, Corey; Narayan, Chandan
The present study is focused on analyzing the non-native production of the Korean three-way laryngeal contrast, particularly within the context of Korean plosives. The central aim is to investigate how non-native speakers produce this novel three-way distinction, in line with established studies such as those conducted by Chang (2009) and Seo et al., (2020). These studies have identified notable variation in how L2 learners realize this phonemic distinction, revealing that non-native speakers often exhibit diverse phonetic realizations. This research seeks 12 to expand upon these findings by providing a more nuanced understanding of these variations, particularly in relation to the phonetic cues used by non-native speakers. Furthermore, the study aims to explore the effects of proficiency on the production of the three-way laryngeal contrast. Building on the work of Ryu (2017), which demonstrated that L2 learners with higher proficiency levels in Korean are better able to perceive distinct phonemes compared to less proficient learners, this study will further investigate how proficiency influences production accuracy and the ability to achieve the novel three-way distinction. By examining these proficiency effects, the research intends to contribute valuable insights into how varying levels of language proficiency impact the acquisition of complex phonemic contrasts.
Open Access
Second Language Acquisition of Stress Patterns: A Study on the Effects of L1 Tamil Transfer on L2 English
(2024-08) Srithayananthan, Geettana; Smeets, Liz; Elfner, Emily
Linguistic studies have observed that during second language acquisition (SLA), L2 learners tend to produce non-target like structures, resembling grammars/patterns of the learner’s L1. Schwartz and Sprouse (1996) have accounted for these observations by proposing the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis. This hypothesis assumes that the initial state of L2 acquisition is the L1 grammar (Full Transfer). When L2 input data cannot be assigned to L1 representations, this will force re-structuring and L2 learners will have access to the same properties of Universal Grammar that were available to them during L1 acquisition (Full Access) and therefore target-like acquisition should be possible. This study looked at the L2 acquisition of English stress patterns by L1 Tamil speakers. While English stress patterns can be predicted to some extent by rules that rely on syllable weight, Tamil has fixed stress, occurring in word-initial position. This study examined whether L1 Tamil transfer effects are observed during the acquisition of stress patterns in English and whether these effects weakened as proficiency and exposure to the L2 input data increased. The study consisted of three tasks. In Task 1, participants were asked to read aloud a list of real words in English, while in Task 2, the list consisted of pseudowords. For Task 3, participants were given two pronunciations of pseudowords, with either penultimate and antepenultimate stress, and asked to choose their preferred stress placement. All target words were tri-syllabic. The study was piloted with 13 native English speakers (control group) to account for any variability across the target words. The study then tested 14 L1 Tamil L2 English speakers, with differing levels of English proficiency – beginner, intermediate and advanced. When the results of the L2 learners were compared to the native speakers, an effect of L1 Tamil transfer was found, as L2 learners predicted stress as expected for APU words (with stress on the word-initial syllable) but not for PU words (where the second syllable was stressed) and therefore preferred word initial stress on all words. Furthermore, results showed that within the L2 groups, there was an effect of proficiency – advanced L2 learners performed most target-like, followed by intermediate and beginner speakers. These results were in line with the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis, showing that while effects of L1 transfer are stronger during earlier stages of proficiency, this effect weakens, and target-like performance is possible with increased proficiency and exposure to the L2 input.
Open Access
Wh-movement in British Sign Language
(2024-08-07) Williams, Britton; Alboiu, Gabriela; Avery, Peter
British Sign Language (BSL) is the language of the D/deaf community of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland (UK)1. BSL serves as the language of a thriving, vibrant D/deaf culture in the UK, in which it is used in the same range of genres as any other natural language; in formal settings, day-to-day conversations, the arts, and so on. BSL enjoys a high degree of institutional support, and there are a number of entities which encourage the language’s continued use (Deuchar, 1984: 33-45); it is estimated that between 80 000 and 100 000 D/deaf people use BSL in England alone (Rogers et al., 2018: 2). The linguistic study of BSL began in the late 1970s, when prominent researchers such as James Kyle, Bencie Woll and Margret Deuchar described aspects of BSL syntax and phonology previously unrecorded. These efforts were initially to augment education opportunities for D/deaf individuals in the UK (Woll et al., 1981: 105), though BSL linguistics would eventually become an independent area of study, spearheaded by those first researchers, and later prominent linguists such as Rachel Sutton-Spence. Contemporary BSL linguists have established themselves at the forefront of sign language research and documentation: one of the most impressive achievements in sign language documentation, the British Sign Language Corpus Project (BSLCP), aims to document and transcribe various aspects of BSL linguistic variation. The team behind the BSLCP is composed of Kearsy Cormier, Adam Schembri, Jordan Fenlon, Gabrielle Hodge, Sannah Gulamani, Neil Fox, Heidi Procto, and Matt Brown. Following in the footsteps of these researchers, this project describes aspects of wh-movement in BSL. As is to be seen, wh-movement is a particularly controversial facet of sign language syntax; my objective in the analysis of BSL wh-movement is to determine whether it may provide further insight into key points of interest discussed in recent sign language literature, as well as describe some of its features.