In forensic speaker comparison, there may be cases in which the speech samples to be compared are not in the same language. Research in forensic phonetics has however almost exclusively been done...Show moreIn forensic speaker comparison, there may be cases in which the speech samples to be compared are not in the same language. Research in forensic phonetics has however almost exclusively been done in monolingual contexts. This study aims to give more clarity about what features can be used in cross-linguistic speaker comparison. This is done by investigating whether proficient first language (L1) Dutch speakers of second language (L2) English adapt the vowel in and to the target language. L2 sound learning models predict that Dutch learners will have difficulty learning the difference between /ɛ/ and /æ/ and will therefore only be able to approximate nativelike pronunciation. The vowels in en and and of 35 proficient, female Dutch speakers of English were analyzed, both as a discourse marker and a coordinating conjunction. Mixed-effect models showed that for both word classes, the F1 and F2 were language-dependent. This means that the use of /æ/ as a characteristic in cross-linguistic speaker comparison is not useful.Show less
This thesis ventures into the particular climate of Mapudungun translators in Chile and scrutinizes the possibility of translation as an instrument of Mapuche activism. It investigates notions of...Show moreThis thesis ventures into the particular climate of Mapudungun translators in Chile and scrutinizes the possibility of translation as an instrument of Mapuche activism. It investigates notions of political agency, habitus, hybridity, and fluency to establish whether these suit the postcolonial condition of Indigenous Latin America. The study’s theoretical framework builds upon translation theories that consider the ties between transformative practices and political or activist engagement. The literature review explores the transformative elements of translation to deduce how activist translation can be defined. It additionally dissects Bourdieu’s conceptualization of habitus and agency to comprehend and analyze transformative translation practices in the postcolonial condition. This debate on postcolonial and translatorial paradigms is complemented by a consideration of the overarching crucial role of translation in Mapuche literature and the significant link between Indigenous identity and language. This thesis expands upon Bhabha’s hybridity and Venuti’s fluency to examine the viability of Rivera Cusicanqui’s ch’ixi as a framework to study Mapudungun translation. The study relies on semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis to determine the political means of Mapudungun translations. The results provide insight into the different forms of sociopolitical translation undertaken by Mapudungun translators and what can be considered the task of the Mapudungun translator. Most importantly, this work provides incentive for further research into translation practices in Indigenous Latin America and demonstrates why this cultural region should not remain overlooked.Show less
When the Dutch settled in North America during the seventeenth century, for colonising and trade purposes, came language contact between the two groups of speakers. One result from this contact is...Show moreWhen the Dutch settled in North America during the seventeenth century, for colonising and trade purposes, came language contact between the two groups of speakers. One result from this contact is loanwords. This research investigates Dutch loanwords in American English and their frequency. Through a combination of Schultz’s (2012, 2017, 2018, 2019) framework, the Oxford English Dictionary and Van der Sijs’ (2010) glossary of Dutch loanwords in North American languages, this research was performed. The frequencies were analysed through the Corpus of Historical American English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. These corpora provided an overview of the development of frequencies both over time and across text types. This research concludes that the frequency of Dutch loanwords in American English increases over time.Show less
This thesis provides an analysis of the translation of racial taboo language in Southern Gothic novels in the form of a descriptive case study. For this study, two well-known examples of Southern...Show moreThis thesis provides an analysis of the translation of racial taboo language in Southern Gothic novels in the form of a descriptive case study. For this study, two well-known examples of Southern Gothic fiction were selected: Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1941) and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). A crucial characteristic of Southern Gothic as a genre that differs from general American Gothic is the fact that it specifically explores the unpleasant realities of life in the American South, including racial injustices and prejudices. As a result, a prominent element in novels of this genre is that they include topics that could be considered problematic and even taboo in their writing, such as racial stereotyping and slurs targeting minority groups. The translation of such language is particularly problematic for translators, as the acceptance of taboo language and the way taboo words are used not only differs per cultural context but also changes over time. The analysis used an approach based on Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) as it will focus on the effect the use of taboo language in the target text (TT) might have within the target culture (TC). The analysis considered whether certain ethical considerations might have influenced the translation procurers the translators have employed and also how the source culture (SC) differs from the TC. This study found that the approach of translations from the 1960s and the 2010s was not significantly different for most instances of taboo language, while the ideology within both the SC and TC and the degree of acceptability for certain words has changed.Show less
This thesis explores vowel mergers in the South Asian community of East Lancashire and the social factors affecting these realisations. Possible (non-)mergers north/force and face/goat are examined...Show moreThis thesis explores vowel mergers in the South Asian community of East Lancashire and the social factors affecting these realisations. Possible (non-)mergers north/force and face/goat are examined for a total of seven speakers by means of a word list reading, and sociolinguistic interviews with all speakers provided data on social factors such as socioeconomic background, social mobility, and identity. Like Standard British English, there is a merge of the lexical sets north and force, following what has been described as the first force merger. However, face and goat present a non-merger that behaves differently compared to the known northern English standard. Unlike a northern, monophthongised realisation of both vowels, all speakers gravitate towards a more southern, diphthongised realisation of face. Goat, however, remains a monophthong for all within this small dataset. The deviation found in the face lexical set might be explained through the social factor of social mobility, as all speakers express a desire to rise above the lower to working-class environment they have grown up in. At the same time, if the maintenance of monophthongised goat is an indication of loyalty to their identity, an argument can be made for the lacking desire of the younger second-generation British South Asians to give up their distinguishing dialectal features.Show less
The phenomenon of Russian honorific agreement was first mentioned and used as evidence in Agreement Hierarchy by Greville Corbett (1979). Since then it has received little attention in the...Show moreThe phenomenon of Russian honorific agreement was first mentioned and used as evidence in Agreement Hierarchy by Greville Corbett (1979). Since then it has received little attention in the literature, unlike the other, more famous, cases of semantic agreement, e.g. hybrid nouns (Corbett 2015), pancake sentences (Enger 2004). This thesis is dedicated to investigating honorific agreement in Russian on the basis of independently collected data from the Russian National Corpus and a number of individually selected literary works.Show less
Contrastive focus reduplication (CR) is one of many types of reduplication. CR constructions can be interpreted in a number of different ways and often occur in specific co-texts. The present paper...Show moreContrastive focus reduplication (CR) is one of many types of reduplication. CR constructions can be interpreted in a number of different ways and often occur in specific co-texts. The present paper presents a quantitative investigation into CR in Dutch, taking data from a questionnaire containing constructed examples of CR in which participants were asked to share how they interpret the examples and whether they would use them themselves. Specifically, the following aspects are investigated: interpretation, co-text, age of the participant, and gender of the participant. Furthermore, the concept of receptivity (from multilingualism studies) is introduced, which helps explain why participants understand constructions they would not use themselves. It emerges that there are correlations between certain characteristic types of co-texts and CR interpretations, i.e. certain co-texts tend to result in certain readings. In terms of interpreting CRs, age does not turn out to play a role. It does play a role, however, in the likelihood of participants using these constructions, as older participants tend to consider it less likely that they would. Finally, gender does not play a role in the interpretation nor in the likelihood of participants using the CR examples.Show less
Several languages in the world alternate between marked and unmarked objects with respect to different properties of the noun, including animacy and specificity. This phenomenon is called...Show moreSeveral languages in the world alternate between marked and unmarked objects with respect to different properties of the noun, including animacy and specificity. This phenomenon is called differential object marking. In this thesis, I describe the differential object marking system of Cha’palaa, a Barbacoan language spoken in Ecuador, and compare this with the differential object marking systems of the related Barbacoan languages. It can be concluded that in three of the four languages, including Cha’palaa, differential object marking is only governed by specificity. In one language, namely Awa Pit, differential object marking is governed by both animacy and specificity.Show less
In this thesis I set out to describe and subsequently compile a terminology of the prosecution of financial crime in the Netherlands in its entirety, from the initial reporting to the final...Show moreIn this thesis I set out to describe and subsequently compile a terminology of the prosecution of financial crime in the Netherlands in its entirety, from the initial reporting to the final sentence. I will discuss the legal system of the Netherlands with the help of various legal scholarly sources and other descriptive sources. By situating the uniquely system-bound language of the prosecution of financial crime in the Netherlands within Dutch legal language, I uncover the challenges of producing an English language terminology for this particular subfield. The subfield, which touches on multiple areas of law and policy and is regulated by multiple institutions, results from governments’ and supranational organizations’ increased attention for crimes with a significant financial component and high societal impact in recent years. By giving an overview of the field of translation studies – and in particular theory of legal translation – such as theories by Deborah Cao and Susan Šarčević I will provide a foundation for overcoming terminological and translation challenges. My proposed methodology suggests an approach to translating Dutch legal terminology which consists of presenting micro-evaluation and macro-evaluation of concepts, assessing both conceptual relations and origins, and illustrating the found relations and definitions in the end product.Show less
The Guaporé-Mamoré language area hosts a large amount of linguistic diversity; however, its history of contact remains understudied. This thesis aims to shed light on the contact patterns in the...Show moreThe Guaporé-Mamoré language area hosts a large amount of linguistic diversity; however, its history of contact remains understudied. This thesis aims to shed light on the contact patterns in the region through a study which compares languages in area with regards to their word stress and phonological tone. For this aim, a sample of 40 languages belonging to the area, plus 9 control languages, was collected which gathered the characteristics of their word stress and tone systems. The results show that languages in the Guaporé-Mamoré area tend to prefer right-bound, fixed stress, although only the languages south-west of the Guaporé river, corresponding to the Mojo-Chiquito culture area, are significantly different from the control languages (p = .003) in this regard. The results thus imply different levels of contact in sub-regions of the proposed area. Further research is needed into the commonalities and differences between languages in the region, as well as documentation of the languages.Show less
The present study investigates to what extent students, who originate from outside of the Randstad area, accommodate their accent, during their studies here, to Leiden students who have studied in...Show moreThe present study investigates to what extent students, who originate from outside of the Randstad area, accommodate their accent, during their studies here, to Leiden students who have studied in Leiden for a longer time. Moreover, a linguistically marked feature, the ''Gooise r'' is also said to be employed in Leiden and cultivated among these Leiden students. Both of these phenomena were investigated through qualitative interviews. This was researched via the following questions. 1. To what extent do students who come from outside of Leiden accommodate their accent to their peers and why? a. What did they alter? b. To what extent do students possess the so-called Gooise ''r''? c. What are the social and or linguistic connotations of the Gooise ''r'' in Leiden student circles? d. Do they align with existing academic and popular media ones? It turned out that these students accommodated their accent and language to their peers in varying degrees. Possible reasons were their social network, intergroup relations, remarks and preventing miscommunication. The ''Gooise r'' was also present among the majority of the participants. They associated its usage with posh Leiden students or posh people in general, middle class ''Leids'' or working class ''Leienaren''. They all attributed its usage to the Randstad region.Show less
This thesis explores how intelligible Czech accented English is to foreign speakers and what pronunciation issues Czech learners of English have. With English language becoming the world’s lingua...Show moreThis thesis explores how intelligible Czech accented English is to foreign speakers and what pronunciation issues Czech learners of English have. With English language becoming the world’s lingua franca, there has been a significant change in the attitude towards English pronunciation teaching over the years. This paper introduces the change from the Nativeness Principle, that focused on sounding native-like, to the Intelligibility Principle, the goal of which is to have a clear pronunciation enough to converse comfortably with other speakers of English. This paper’s focus is particularly on the Czech accented English and its understandability in conversation. Mutual intelligibility is what Jenkins (2000; 2002) aimed at when putting together a list of core pronunciation features one should focus on when learning English. This Lingua Franca Core (LFC), as she named it, serves as a base for this paper. In this study, recordings of less advanced Czech learners of English were collected and analysed, in order to pinpoint the main pronunciation mistakes. These were compared to Jenkins’ LFC to establish how intelligible the Czech accent is. Selected bits of the recordings were also sent to responders through a survey, to find out what their opinion on the Czech accent is. The main findings of the analysis showed that less advanced Czech learners substitute English vowels with Czech ones, they put stress on the first syllable in every word and pronounce English weak vowel forms as full ones. They also struggle with the pronunciation of voiced and voiceless dental fricatives, and they insert a glottal stop in between words, creating clear boundaries. The survey results showed that these aspects of Czech English mainly constitute a problem in isolated words. When context is provided, the Czech accent proved to be quite intelligible and some of the pronunciation features even helped with intelligibility. The study concluded with pronunciation tips for English learners.Show less
Although much research has been conducted into language learning strategies for the four different skills, i.e., reading, listening, writing, and speaking, no research on this topic has...Show moreAlthough much research has been conducted into language learning strategies for the four different skills, i.e., reading, listening, writing, and speaking, no research on this topic has investigated the effect of technology on the language learning process. This thesis examines the language learning strategies that are employed by experienced language learners using a technology-assisted language learning application in order to fill this gap. Data was collected by asking four participants to fill in diary entries related to their language learning behavior for 30 days, while using Duolingo. Two of the participants were then invited to participate in a follow-up interview, which was aimed at uncovering more about what the participants did and why they decided to do so. The data collected in the diary entries and interview transcriptions were analyzed using Grounded Theory. The results showed that the experienced language learners who participated in this experiment employed five different types of technology-assisted language learning strategies, namely (a) internal motivation, (b) external motivation, (c) meta-cognitive, (d) time management, and (e) cognitive. These types can be further subdivided into more specific language learning strategies, such as motivation management and resource selection. Based on these findings a new taxonomy of technology-assisted language learning was proposed and implications for autonomous and classroom-based language learners as well as language educators were concluded.Show less
This research is a literature and jurisprudence study into the effect of the differences in legal interpretation between the EU legal system and the US legal system regarding competition law on the...Show moreThis research is a literature and jurisprudence study into the effect of the differences in legal interpretation between the EU legal system and the US legal system regarding competition law on the translation of competition law terminology into Dutch. Both EU and US competition law addresses broadly the same categories of anticompetitive behaviour - agreements, monopolisation, mergers - but the wording and interpretation of the legislative provisions varies. EU competition law is originally based upon US antitrust law, and therefore shares a lot of the same terminology. The US antitrust law has undergone some fundamental changes in its interpretation, which has in turn driven EU and US terminology further apart. Nowadays, there are vast differences in economic interpretation, political interpretation and legal interpretation. These differences in interpretation have influence on the translation of competition law terminology from US English and EU English, respectively, into Dutch. In the jurisprudence it is shown that the ECJ interprets textually and teleologically, where the US Supreme Court uses conservative purposivism. This leads to differences in the meaning of the same term. Generally, the US Supreme Court find an additional proof of inefficiency necessary in order to establish a competition violation. Both EU competition law and Dutch competition law do not need this additional proof. Therefore, the semantic meaning of competition law terminology is narrower in the US than in the EU. For translation into Dutch it must be assessed on a case-to-case basis whether it is necessary to add ‘inefficiënte’ before a US term so that the target text reader has the same understanding of the legal term as the source text reader.Show less
Although much is a frequently occurring word of many uses, not much research has been done on the different types of much as a negative polarity item (NPI). Therefore, in this study, the NPI...Show moreAlthough much is a frequently occurring word of many uses, not much research has been done on the different types of much as a negative polarity item (NPI). Therefore, in this study, the NPI tendency of two different types of much were compared: differential and adnominal much. Generally, research shows that much tends to be an NPI, whereas differential much prefers non-negation over negation contexts. Thus, the hypothesis is that there would be a strong tendency towards adnominal much occurring as an NPI, whereas differential much would not be an NPI. From the British National Corpus (BNC), 500-instance samples were analysed, and later compared with BNC searches for specific instances (that much, very much, etc.) in order to confirm their validity. These results were divided into NEG – in which negation took place – and POS – in which (implicit) negation did not take place. The results showed that NEG differential much only occurred in 5% of the instances, whereas NEG adnominal much occurred in 28% of the instances. When both much types were combined with modifiers (i.e., very much, that much, so much, etc.), they mostly occurred in a POS context. The bare adnominal much instances – without any modifiers – are almost equally divided among NEG (100) and POS (109) instances. Overall, the NEG instances did not have a preference for a certain genre in comparison to their POS counterparts. The results imply that differential much is not an NPI, whereas adnominal much may have a tendency to occur in NPI contexts.Show less
