India is in the throes of one of the darkest moments in the nation’s history. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic, resulting from the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has been ravaging the lives and...Show moreIndia is in the throes of one of the darkest moments in the nation’s history. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic, resulting from the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has been ravaging the lives and livelihoods of people all over the world, and the people of India are no exception. Primarily cultural, ethnic or religious minority communities are expected to be disproportionately impacted by the virus and its aftermath (Al Saba 2020). In an attempt to increase international awareness of the situation of marginalised minority communities during this global crisis, this thesis will cover the impact of COVID-19 on one such community, Indian Muslims.Show less
The current thesis aims to investigate the set of factors operative in gender assignment process in Greek-Turkish nominal constructions, that is in code-switching where Greek determiners (gendered)...Show moreThe current thesis aims to investigate the set of factors operative in gender assignment process in Greek-Turkish nominal constructions, that is in code-switching where Greek determiners (gendered) and Turkish nouns (non-gendered) are combined together. MacSwan (2005) using the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995) suggests that in determiner-noun code-switches determiners can only stem from the gendered language, since it encodes the largest amount of uninterpretable features compared to the non-gendered language it interacts with, while nouns as non-function words might as well originate in the non-gendered language. Likewise, Matrix Language Frame was proposed by Myers-Scotton (1993b) in an attempt to set up a theoretical framework within which insertional CS production occurs and is framed by constraints. The latter theory posits that in bilingual speech only on language is dominant, the Matrix Language, while other-language constituents stem from the Embedded Language(s). Bilingual NP Hypothesis complementing MLF model suggests that system morphemes can only stem from the Matrix Language. As opposed to system morphemes, content morphemes may be lexical items from the Embedded Language. In either way, Matrix language accounts for the morpho-syntactic frame in bilingual speech. This results in DPs where Matrix Language, that is Greek, is responsible for determiner. Drawing on the abovementioned frameworks, a 20-person sample of Greek Turkish bilinguals were called to participate in the Director-Matcher task. Through this controlled elicitation and artificial technique Greek-Turkish bilinguals were instructed in such a way that they were prompted to use Turkish nouns within Greek phrases and sentences. Except for the Director-Matcher task, the same subjects were asked to reply to an online linguistic questionnaire where they had to answer crucial for this research questions as well as to evaluate their language skills. The results from the Director-Matcher task indicate that Greek-Turkish bilinguals in Western Thrace use neuter as default, while phonological and analogical factors play no role in gender assignment to Turkish nouns. Significantly enough, the persistent use of neuter in the data points to that, despite the perpetual affiliation of Greek and Turkish among the bilinguals in Western Thrace, they treat Turkish nouns as foreign. This study shows that this is true even for the bilingual system of individuals who are members of a community that has been bilingual for a century. Furthermore, the prevalence of neuter as default gender in Greek-Turkish nominal constructions proves the claim that the criterion determining the factors based on which grammatical gender is assigned to the nouns depends on the language pair under study. Another essential issue which drew my attention while transcribing the data I recorded is the absence of articles (definite or indefinite) in several data points (n=124). It is necessary to highlight that these occurrences do not adhere to the rules of Greek syntax and as, a result, violate the grammaticality of the Greek language system. Last but not least, this study confirms that neuter is the default gender in Greek.Show less
