This study aimed to gain understanding of the directive behavior of 4- and 5- year-old English-speaking children in child-to-child and child-caretaker interactions. The research analyzed 660...Show moreThis study aimed to gain understanding of the directive behavior of 4- and 5- year-old English-speaking children in child-to-child and child-caretaker interactions. The research analyzed 660 directives extracted from 10 hours of video recordings. The findings showed that the compliance with the directive was influenced by the speaker's familiarity with their surroundings and the degree of directness of the directive. Additionally, children who were more familiar with each other used more indirect directives, while 4-year-olds used more indirect directives than 5-year-olds. A pattern was observed where children phrased their directives differently when speaking to a teacher or to a peer, with directives to teachers being less direct and relying more on the teacher's inference skills.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
There is currently a very wide range of different approaches on the study of emotional meaning in language. This paper discusses how these different approaches might be combined within the same...Show moreThere is currently a very wide range of different approaches on the study of emotional meaning in language. This paper discusses how these different approaches might be combined within the same model. I hypothese a framework, which incorporates both pragmatic and sociolinguistic theory, and illustrates how this framework could be used to compare the emotional meaning of US politicians in relation to their American culture.Show less
This study aims to clarify the general attitudes of Dutch people towards the usage of anglicisms in Dutch. To this end the function and presence of anglicisms in Dutch are analysed, followed by the...Show moreThis study aims to clarify the general attitudes of Dutch people towards the usage of anglicisms in Dutch. To this end the function and presence of anglicisms in Dutch are analysed, followed by the creation and distribution of a survey that presents ten frequently used anglicisms in Dutch. The results of the survey display an overall neutral stance towards the presence and usage of anglicisms in Dutch, with some interesting outcomes considering the age, education level, and province of origin of the participants.Show less
Computer-Mediated-Communication is bereft of any intonation markers usually found in face-to-face conversations. As a result, how a sender meant to send out a message versus how their addressee...Show moreComputer-Mediated-Communication is bereft of any intonation markers usually found in face-to-face conversations. As a result, how a sender meant to send out a message versus how their addressee reads it sometimes differ. This can lead to uncooperative and confusing online communication. This paper set out to examine if (and what) effects different punctuation types have on the interpretation of meaning in WhatsApp communication, and whether one’s age or native language influences the perception of these markers. The punctuation types were the exclamation mark, ellipsis, periods, and no punctuation. Unlike previous studies conducted on this topic which focussed only on students, this study was conducted among 123 respondents from a wide variety of ages and countries. Through an online survey, participants were asked for their opinions and thoughts to different types of punctuation used in recurring but otherwise identical messages. Results indicated that different punctuation types elicit strong and differing views, based on what punctuation type is used, and that these types influence their feelings towards the message as well as to the personal state of their interlocutor. The most significant findings were found for ellipsis points and messages lacking any punctuation: ellipses can lead to very negative interpretations in respondents, and a lack of punctuation can lead to respondents feeling sidelined. Interpretations of certain punctuation types are influenced by a reader’s age and native language. Using Yus’ theory of a phatic internet and cyber literacy, this paper posits that the reason respondents assign these meanings to different types of punctuation is to avoid misunderstandings, form identities, and stay on good terms with people in a world in which most daily conversation happens online.Show less
As English continues to be the world’s lingua franca, it is important to recognize the pragmatic norms and conventions of the language. Additionally, it is necessary to understand the norms being...Show moreAs English continues to be the world’s lingua franca, it is important to recognize the pragmatic norms and conventions of the language. Additionally, it is necessary to understand the norms being used by non-native speakers and how the differences may affect communication. This research focuses on how requests were produced by native and non-native English speakers. In specific, it analyzed both which strategies were utilized in forming requests as well as how many were used. The data for this research was collected using in an open role-play involving 38 female participants who had various grammatical competence and were of four different nationalities. The participants’ request strategies were analyzed relative to both their grammatical competence and nationality. The first set of analyses found neither grammatical competence or nationality to a reliable predictor for which request strategies were used. A second set of analyses indicated that nation might be a predictor of a speaker’s use of modal modification to a head act.Show less
Master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (MA)
open access
Current Word Order Analysis in Ancient Greek is not entirely satisfactory as it focuses on describing word order variation only in clauses, whereas in other parts of a sentence consisting of...Show moreCurrent Word Order Analysis in Ancient Greek is not entirely satisfactory as it focuses on describing word order variation only in clauses, whereas in other parts of a sentence consisting of multiple constituents there also appears variation in word order. Because of for example the occurrence of hyperbaton in these parts of the sentence, this variation seems meaningful and can possibly be described in the same terms as the variation in clauses. Therefore, in this thesis, it is proposed to apply the model not only to clauses but also to smaller segments of the text. Just like any other spoken language, the language of the messenger stories in Euripides can be segmented into Intonation Units (IU's). IU's are separated from one another by a pause or other prosodic feature such as pitch. Because of the lack of recorded data, IU-segmentation of ancient texts is in this thesis done by making use of the meter and of the syntactical segmentation criteria suggested by Scheppers (2011).Show less
I contrast naturally occurring conversation with the Liturgy of the Catholic Mass, focussing on speech acts, implicatures, the intersubjective/argumentative nature of language, and on uncooperative...Show moreI contrast naturally occurring conversation with the Liturgy of the Catholic Mass, focussing on speech acts, implicatures, the intersubjective/argumentative nature of language, and on uncooperative communication. This comparison allows me to determine what the characteristics of Mass are as an activity type (Levinson 1992), and to reflect from a Wittgensteinian point of view on the philosophical implications of the results gained. Ultimately, I show that human communication with the divine, i.e. prayer, closely resembles interpersonal communication in the ethical realm.Show less
Brown and Levinson’s (1987) typology of politeness strategies is based on the basic wants of a model person (MP). Their concepts of face and positive and negative politeness have been...Show moreBrown and Levinson’s (1987) typology of politeness strategies is based on the basic wants of a model person (MP). Their concepts of face and positive and negative politeness have been groundbreaking in the fields of pragmatics and intercultural communication. However, their claim of having developed a universal model has been refuted by many scholars (Bargiela-Chiappini 2003; Watts 2003; Hill et al. 1986; Matsumoto 1988; Nwoye 1992; Mao 1994). In this paper, I use a contrastive language guide by Baxter and Baxter (2011) to attempt to analyze [1] how their pragmalinguistic advice relates to Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness; [2] what influence the sociological variables have had on Baxter and Baxter’s choice of politeness strategies that are incorporated with face-threatening acts (FTAs); and [3] what the key underlying cultural differences are between the Dutch and the British in their choice of politeness strategies. The results of this study indicate that the pragmalinguistic advice relates to Brown and Levinson’s theory by using positive and negative politeness strategies when an FTA is incorporated into an utterance. Furthermore, sociological variables do play a significant role in the selection of politeness strategies, as they adhere to the discernment principles of their respective cultures. The key difference between the Dutch and the British is found in the sociological variable Low context communication.Show less
