In Urdu, all nouns are gendered, and this gender is visible in the way that other word classes agree with these nouns. English does not have the grammatical category of gender, and English nouns...Show moreIn Urdu, all nouns are gendered, and this gender is visible in the way that other word classes agree with these nouns. English does not have the grammatical category of gender, and English nouns are inherently genderless. This paper investigates the criteria used by Urdu speakers to assign gender to English nouns when they are code-switched into Urdu discourse. I identified four such criteria which have been found to influence such gender assignment in other languages—morphological factors, phonological factors, semantic equivalency and hyponymhypernym relations. I used these criteria as a framework to analyse the gender assignment process in Urdu. I created a questionnaire in which native Urdu speakers were prompted to inflect certain words which must agree with the English nouns in Urdu sentences, and analysed the results. All four criteria were found to influence gender assignment.Show less
This thesis investigates the similarities and differences between the realizations of /tj/ in English and Dutch, focusing on the process of palatalization in both languages. This paper investigates...Show moreThis thesis investigates the similarities and differences between the realizations of /tj/ in English and Dutch, focusing on the process of palatalization in both languages. This paper investigates the various linguistic environments in which palatalization occurs and describes the linguistic factors that influence the different realizations of the cluster. An experiment with Dutch speakers is conducted. This experiment is compared to literature about the processes in English and Dutch. Stress is the main linguistic factor that promotes palatalization in both languages.Show less
The present thesis takes on the topic of how polarity focus works in the Catalan language. It focuses on the sequences formed by a polarity element sí “yes” or no “no”, combined with que to...Show moreThe present thesis takes on the topic of how polarity focus works in the Catalan language. It focuses on the sequences formed by a polarity element sí “yes” or no “no”, combined with que to introduce a clause, forming sí que, sí que no and no que no sentences. These sequences have been studied in the literature individually, but not a lot has been said in terms of comparison. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to compare and analyze the sentences introduced by these sequences, as well as their distribution based on their triggers and the context they appear in. The account given indicates various findings. Firstly, sí/no + que sequences can introduce answers to polarity questions, as well as respond to a previous utterance indicating polarity emphasis. Moreover, they can also be used in contrastive settings. However, the three sequences cannot always appear in the same contexts unrestrictedly. Case and point, it is argued that sí que no and no que no are not interchangeable, despite both of them seemingly denoting negative polarity emphasis.Show less
When individuals receive compliments, they often want to accept them while maintaining modesty, creating a dilemma in how to respond. Studies on compliment responses have demonstrated various...Show moreWhen individuals receive compliments, they often want to accept them while maintaining modesty, creating a dilemma in how to respond. Studies on compliment responses have demonstrated various strategies that people employ in these situations. Given that text messages have become a large part of communication nowadays, it is interesting to determine which compliment response strategies are utilised in text messaging, as it has different response possibilities and limitations than face-to-face interaction, and has not been studied yet. Therefore, this study examines the responses to compliments (among acquaintances) via text messages. These responses are categorised to provide an overview of the strategies used in written communication. The results indicate that ‘accepting’ strategies were the most frequently employed, with ‘thanking’ being the most common response, generally accompanied by an emoji or affectionate words (e.g., “aww,” “my love,” “homie”). Even ‘deflecting’ strategies were predominantly only used in combination with an accepting strategy.Show less
In this paper, I explore the following research question: are there differences between the tendencies of speakers of English and Dutch, native and non-native, monolingual and non-monolingual, when...Show moreIn this paper, I explore the following research question: are there differences between the tendencies of speakers of English and Dutch, native and non-native, monolingual and non-monolingual, when referring to un(der)specified subjects1? Do native speakers of these languages use different tactics to refer to generic human subjects whose (gender) identity is either unknown or unimportant (in context) than non-native speakers? Also, how does artificial intelligence mimic these tendencies? To answer these questions, I have researched the intuitions of native speakers of English and Dutch, created a survey-writing task hybrid experiment based on the findings, and tested whether the found patterns are (re)produced by participants as well as text-generating artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT (GPT- 3.5). I have found that the consensus of literature appears to be that native Dutch users tend to use the singular third person masculine generically, while native English users prefer to use ‘he/she’. Meanwhile, English and Dutch participants use the (neuter) formal and informal singular second person forms. The ChatGPT-generated texts also predominantly include second person forms in both languages.Show less
This thesis approaches the problem of cross-linguistic authorship attribution in the context of written English by native Japanese authors. To this end, a hybrid qualitative and quantitative...Show moreThis thesis approaches the problem of cross-linguistic authorship attribution in the context of written English by native Japanese authors. To this end, a hybrid qualitative and quantitative analysis of a learner corpus is conducted, making use of a novel automatic error classifier ERAA. It was found that in a comparison with authors from nine other Asian countries, language errors that native Japanese authors tend to produce in written English that were found in earlier literature appear to be unique to the Japanese authors within a given writing theme. Following statistical analysis, it is furthermore suggested that there exist types of L2 language errors that are unaffected by the surrounding writing theme, while other types are affected. Finally, it is concluded that the employed hybrid analysis method is viable to efficiently conduct large-scale corpus research to study a variety of L2 linguistic traits.Show less
This study investigates language use and code switching (CS) in parliamentary sessions of the People’s Council of Representatives in Aceh, Indonesia. Three recordings of plenary sessions of the...Show moreThis study investigates language use and code switching (CS) in parliamentary sessions of the People’s Council of Representatives in Aceh, Indonesia. Three recordings of plenary sessions of the Council were transcribed and used as data sources for the research. The study used transcriptions to obtain frequency and syntactic constructions and interviews with speakers of Acehnese to obtain social functions and perceived attitudes toward CS. It was found that the use of Acehnese relative to Indonesian and other languages in the parliamentary was 26.5% in terms of word count and 3.3% in terms of continuous speech duration and furthermore could be classified as CS wherein Acehnese served either as Matrix and Embedded Language based on Matrix Language Framework (MLF – Myers-Scotton and Jake, 2009). The CS were mostly intersentential in both direction and extrasentential CS were found only from Indonesian to Acehnese. In addition, the CS mainly functioned as a manner of quotation and interlocutor addressing. This study contributed to a better understanding of language and code switching in politically-motivated settings in Aceh or other multilingual regions in Indonesia. Future research in this area could focus on the intellectual and political factors underlying deliberate code switching.Show less
Bilingual compound verbs (BCVs) are constructions where an inflected light verb from one language co-occurs with an inserted lexical verb from another language, which provides the semantic content,...Show moreBilingual compound verbs (BCVs) are constructions where an inflected light verb from one language co-occurs with an inserted lexical verb from another language, which provides the semantic content, e.g., Spanish/English hacer cook “to cook”: Spanish/Maya hacer loch “to hug”. Although previous studies, i.a., Balam (2015); Balam et al. (2020); Michalski (2017), have analyzed the (morpho)syntactic structure of hacer “to do” BCVs in Spanish/English code-switching and Maya/Spanish code-switching respectively, there is no study that offers a semantic analysis of these innovative constructions in these bilingual varieties. Endeavoring to fill this gap, the present study examines the semantic use of BCVs in Orange Walk, Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico; two linguistically and sociohistorically connected yet distinct communities where Spanish hacer BCVs have been attested (e.g., Balam, 2015; Michalski, 2017). More specifically, we analyzed which semantic domains are open to other language lexical verbs in these two bi/multilingual communities that markedly differ in terms of their frequency of use of BCVs. 903 BCVs from Balam ́s (2016a) corpus of oral production data from Northern Belize and 237 BCVs from Michalski ́s (2021) Yucatan Spanish Twitter corpus were coded using our categorization model, consisting of 3 mains semantic categories, 28 mutually exclusive categories and 5 references to identity. Results show that there are significant similarities and differences regarding the openness of semantic domains to other language lexical verbs in the two communities. In terms of similarities, subcategories “C1 School, Education, Learning-Related” and “B2 Friendships, Social Communication” evinced high levels of openness (> 7%) across the two communities. In terms of differences, the BCVs from Yucatan encapsulated a relatively high degree of cultural and linguistic references (47%) that are idiosyncratic to the Yucatecan/Mayan community. We therefore posit that Backus ́s (2001) concept of specificity and Treffers-Daller ́s (2023) listedness to be the main motivations for the insertion of Maya verbs in hacer BCVs. The Belize results demonstrate that many different semantic contexts exhibited openness to English verb insertions, reflecting the multicultural and multilingual identity of the Northern Belizean society. The high degree of openness found in “C1 School, Education, Learning-Related” (20%) and “C2 Work-Related”(13%) can be attributed to the more frequent (official) use of English in educational and professional settings, possibly resulting in higher levels of “entrenchment” in the speakers´minds (Backus, 2014).Show less
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