Slang is a nonstandard informal vocabulary peculiar to a group. In this digital age, the reproduction and evolution of slang words has become faster due to the digital platforms that they are often...Show moreSlang is a nonstandard informal vocabulary peculiar to a group. In this digital age, the reproduction and evolution of slang words has become faster due to the digital platforms that they are often used in. Research has been done on the lexical aspects of slang and slang in general (Sornig (1981); Metcalf (2002)), and on forms of digital slang (McCulloch (2019)), but none view slang as a mode of translation and applied it to to other types of text besides messages on social media. This thesis will address where digital slang terms come from, and if their origins can help explain how likely they are to be understood by someone who speaks regular English. To do so I will annotate a slang translation of Harry Potter, and research the etymological origins of the slang to try to discover - using Metcalf’s (2002) FUDGE theory - which slang terms are more likely to be understood. I expect to find that the slang terms that more closely resemble regular English words are more likely to be understood.Show less
Code switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written...Show moreCode switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, or ‘code’, by someone engaged in speech or text. It is a practise employed by multilinguals in both oral and written conversations. Different multilinguals will have different switching patterns. These patterns can vary depending on the speaker’s language proficiency, community norms, the typology of their languages, and the cultural or political relations these languages might have with one another, among many other reasons. Code switching between Spanish and English and Spanish and French has been the subject of various studies. Although trilingual research is rare (e.g. Parafita Couto et al., 2023; Valdés Kroff et al., 2023), there has also been some research on the connection between Spanish, French and English, but most of this work is based in the French-speaking provinces of Canada (e.g. COLEM, 2023; Pato, 2019, 2022). This paper aims to study the code-switching patterns among a set of trilingual siblings living in Geneva who have Colombian heritage and attend a British school in the city. The participants recorded themselves for up to 30 minutes having casual conversations following a prompt in three separate occasions. The switches were identified alongside general information about the corpus, such as how many languages were present in each clause, the clauses’ matrix language, the general use of each language in the corpus, among others. This paper focuses on intraclausal switching. We followed Deuchar et al. (2007)’s methodology which categorises each intraclausal switch into insertion, alteration, or congruent lexicalisation according to the code switching pattern it most aligned with following Muysken’s typology of bilingual speech patterns (2000).Because English, Spanish and French are typologically similar, combined with the fact our participants are fluent in all three languages, and due to the culturally open context of Geneva, we expected alternation to be the dominant switch pattern in the recorded conversations. Having said this, since the participants go to a British school where their education is mainly in English, and because the Colombian community in Geneva is not as big as other bilingual communities around the world, a dominant insertional pattern was also a possibility. The corpus was composed of mainly unilingual clauses with 7.8% of the first recording being bilingual clauses, 19.6% of the second recording, and 8.95% of the third. Only three clauses in the entire corpus were trilingual out of 1215. Once we had analysed the entirety of the conversations, the dominant pattern was indeed overwhelmingly insertion with 77.55% of the switches in the corpus presenting this pattern. Congruent lexicalisation was present in 11.56% of the switches and alternation in the other 10.88%. Although these results do not necessarily align with our expectations of codeswitching in Switzerland, we believe our participants’ specific background, namely the fact that language separation is encouraged in the different spheres of their lives, could explain the prevalence of insertion over alternation in our case study. We hope our research will contribute to bigger corpus studies of trilingual codeswitching patterns in different communities.Show less
The introduction of the concept of exaptation into the field of linguistics. A comparison of the history of the concept in evolution and linguistics. The various changes it underwent and the...Show moreThe introduction of the concept of exaptation into the field of linguistics. A comparison of the history of the concept in evolution and linguistics. The various changes it underwent and the transformation that was required to fit it into the field of linguistics. It further explores the impact it had on both fields.Show less
Ever since the introduction of Translation Universals, their existence has been widely debated. Explicitation and implicitation are no exception to this. These Translation Universals, both...Show moreEver since the introduction of Translation Universals, their existence has been widely debated. Explicitation and implicitation are no exception to this. These Translation Universals, both separately and together, have been studied in a variety of genres and text types. This thesis examined explicitation and implicitation in Dutch Patient Information Leaflets (PILs). It looked at how explicit the Dutch PILs were, what the rate of explicitation to implicitation was, and which explicitation and implicitation strategies were used. To study this, a bilingual parallel corpus of English and Dutch PILs of orally taken contraceptives was analysed. The source and target texts were compared side by side and occurrences of explicitation and implicitation were identified, the rate of explicitation to implicitation was calculated and the different implicitation strategies used were determined. The results show a rate of 60% explicitation and 40% implicitation, with 234 explicitation shifts and 156 implicitation shifts identified. Additionally, a wide range of explicitation and implicitation strategies was found, with the most common explicitation strategies being the addition of a connective element, the filling of an elliptical structure and the use of lexical repetition. The most commonly used implicitation strategy, by far, was the use of a hypernym. Overall, Dutch PILs were more explicit than English ones, especially concerning connectives, though English PILs were more explicit in regard to hyponyms. With this research into explicitation and implicitation, we are one step closer to either confirming or disputing these Translation Universals, using the method proposed by Chesterman (2010). Additionally, by researching the explicitness of PILs, we contribute to the existing research on their lay-friendliness.Show less
Dialects have been studied in different ways for centuries, from the dialectal maps that pioneered the field to the contemporary analysis between urban speech and rural speech. Through the medium...Show moreDialects have been studied in different ways for centuries, from the dialectal maps that pioneered the field to the contemporary analysis between urban speech and rural speech. Through the medium of drama scripts produced by Dublin playwrights, this thesis studies how Dublin speech has shifted in its representation and, by extension, how the variety has shifted. With the aim of giving insight into the accuracy of representation, the sociolinguistic aspects of how language varieties are represented by characters of different backgrounds and how this intersects with the aspect of time. By analyzing nine separate plays written by three authors, across about 80 years, the study concluded that drama encapsulates a high degree of non-standard variety-specific features. These are especially apparent in the use of grammatical features, phrasal constructions, and vocabulary. The incorporation of the Irish language and the use of minor respellings to portray non-standard speech was, however, concluded to be mainly stylistic. Yet, a lot of items corresponding to documented Dublin features were found in the texts. Out of these it was the grammatical items that stood out the most. Several grammatical forms were found across all authors, specific forms that also corresponded to Irish and Dublin features. Lastly, this study could not add much to the sociolinguistic aspects of literary non-standard representation. As the play portrayed working class speakers without any upper-class characters involved.Show less
The current study offers the first clause type anticipation based on the prosody of Beijing Mandarin for native Taiwan Mandarin listeners, building upon the research of Gryllia et al. (2020). By...Show moreThe current study offers the first clause type anticipation based on the prosody of Beijing Mandarin for native Taiwan Mandarin listeners, building upon the research of Gryllia et al. (2020). By conducting an online audio-gating experiment, our findings indicated that TM listeners encounter difficulties anticipating wh-questions based on BM prosodic cues, whereas the anticipation of declaratives was more successful. The effect of the clause types intended by the BM speaker was significant from Gate II, and the effect of tones in Gate III suggested an intertwined interaction between tone and intonation. Additionally, the impact of the gate and its interaction with the intended clause type was also shown to influence the clause type anticipation.Show less
This thesis presents a contrastive analysis between the observational stand-up comedies of the Greek Lambros Fisfis and the American Jim Gaffigan. The analysis criterion was the different...Show moreThis thesis presents a contrastive analysis between the observational stand-up comedies of the Greek Lambros Fisfis and the American Jim Gaffigan. The analysis criterion was the different linguistic devices used on the grounds of the first Knowledge Resource, the Language, offered by the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo & Raskin 1991), the four Humor Identification Forms (Shade 1996), and the five levels of linguistic analysis (morphology, syntax, phonetics-phonology, semantics, and pragmatics). To what extent does each comedian rely on the different linguistic devices corresponding to the five levels of linguistic analysis to elicit laughter from the audience? Subsequently, how different or similar is each comedian’s approach regarding the different levels of analysis from which they draw their devices and the different types of the devices themselves? To answer these questions, I present a comparative analysis of the linguistic devices used in 15 clips from Fisfis’ playlist on YouTube, “Να ένας Σοφός” (Here is a Wise Man) and Gaffigan’s playlist on YouTube, “Laugh Society” respectively. The results suggest that both comedians relied mainly on the Verbal Humor Identification Form, and Fisfis used more devices than Gaffigan on the morphological, phonetic-phonological, and pragmatic levels. Gaffigan, on the other hand, used more devices than Fisfis on the syntactic and semantic levels.Show less
The research relates to the use of conditionals in the warning paragraph of medicinal contraindications in a patient information leaflet (PIL) or Package Leaflet (PL), and whether aspects of the...Show moreThe research relates to the use of conditionals in the warning paragraph of medicinal contraindications in a patient information leaflet (PIL) or Package Leaflet (PL), and whether aspects of the language used can be identified as a source of anxiety for patients with prescription medicines.Show less
This thesis examines whether native speakers of Dutch can aspirate unvoiced word-initial plosives in English as a second language and if they are able to do so to the same degree as native speakers...Show moreThis thesis examines whether native speakers of Dutch can aspirate unvoiced word-initial plosives in English as a second language and if they are able to do so to the same degree as native speakers of English. Aspiration was measured in word-initial unvoiced plosives /p, t, k/ using Voice Onset Time (VOT). Influence of sex, age, age of onset of the second language, and self-reported general pronunciation ability in English were also examined. Native Dutch VOT generally lies between 0-20ms, while native English VOT is anywhere between 50-100 ms. Using recordings from 19 participants who read both Dutch and English sentences out loud, it was found that participants increased their aspiration with an average of 10 ms when switching from Dutch to English. The analysis also shows that two participants out of 19 had an average VOT at a native-like level (>50 ms). Further investigation showed that sex, age, and age of onset did not influence VOT. Participants who graded their general pronunciation abilities with an 8 or higher did show a bigger increase in VOT, but there was no correlation to higher VOT in English when compared to other speakers. Other results showed that /p, t, k/ were not aspirated to the same extent, with /t/ being aspirated significantly more and /p/ significantly less. Lastly, the co-existence of words in both English and Dutch did not significantly alter the VOT, only when words started with /k/ did aspiration significantly improve when the exact word also existed in Dutch. These results conclude that native speakers of Dutch increase aspiration and can aspirate to a native-like degree while speaking English. Any defining factors of the participants who were able to do so are not available due to the limited sample size.Show less
Translating cultural references (CRs) in literature is notoriously difficult and depends on context, significance of the CR in the text, and familiarity of the TT reader with the source language...Show moreTranslating cultural references (CRs) in literature is notoriously difficult and depends on context, significance of the CR in the text, and familiarity of the TT reader with the source language and culture. TT readers’ needs can be expected to be different depending on their knowledge of the source language and culture. This means that for one language pair, strategies for the translation of CRs still differ, depending on directionality of the translation. This study provides a quantitative analysis of the first 100 CRs from 5 novels translated from English to Dutch, and 5 novels translated from Dutch to English. The translation pairs were categorized by translation strategy (using Olk, 2001) as well as by type of CR (using Grit, 1997), analysing the degree of domestication or foreignization of the overall translation strategies as well as the strategies per CR type. The analysis shows that, overall, the strategies used for translating from English to Dutch are more foreignizing. The results from this study may be used to aid translator’s choices by providing insight into the effect of their individual choices, as well as future reader reception studies.Show less
In this thesis, I provide the first acoustic description of Ecuadorian Siona phonemic vowels, six oral vowels and six corresponding nasal vowels. Two phonetic dimensions – vowel height, measured...Show moreIn this thesis, I provide the first acoustic description of Ecuadorian Siona phonemic vowels, six oral vowels and six corresponding nasal vowels. Two phonetic dimensions – vowel height, measured through the first formant frequency (F1), and vowel backness, measured through the second formant frequency (F2) – are taken as the descriptors of vowel quality. These dimensions are used to illustrate the target vowels in their acoustic space. Vowel quantity, which refers to vowel duration, is also measured. For each target vowel, the mean frequencies of F1 and F2, as well as the durational means, are presented. In addition, the effects of different phonological environment on the realization of target vowels are investigated. Ultimately, I construct the acoustic vowel space for oral and nasal vowels, and I compare the acoustic properties of the two types of vowels. The results for oral vowels demonstrate six distinct qualities, similar to the ones described by Bruil (2014), with the back vowels appearing consistently lower in the vowel space. Nasal vowel space shows more variability and a general shrinking effect of vocalic contrasts. The findings also demonstrate a nasalization effect whereby all nasal vowels are on average lower than their oral counterparts. Finally, the analysis revealed that the vowels /i, ɨ̃/ are phonetically long, at least in the context that they appeared.Show less
After the Black Lives Matter movement started, racism has become strictly taboo in the United States. This increased political correctness has also spread to the Netherlands, whose government has...Show moreAfter the Black Lives Matter movement started, racism has become strictly taboo in the United States. This increased political correctness has also spread to the Netherlands, whose government has only recently apologised for its contribution to slavery. As a result of this increased political correctness, taboo and offensive language has been a frequently studied topic in Translation Studies for the past few decades. While the translation of racial slurs has been studied frequently in subtitling, there has not been as much research into the translation of racist discourse in literary works. Moreover, publications that studied racism in literary translations have mostly focused on the translation of racial slurs or Black Vernacular, rather than analysing racist language in general. In this thesis, a comparative analysis is conducted in the form of a close reading of a selection of phrases that contain racist and racial discourse in To Kill a Mockingbird and its two Dutch translations. The first Dutch translation appeared in 1961 and the retranslation was published in 2010. The aim of this case study is to analyse how the translator of the Dutch retranslation was affected by changing social norms regarding racism in his translation choices. The results show that the 2010 retranslation generally contained fewer offensive terms compared to the first Dutch translation. While it is not always clear what motivated this translation strategy, the analysis shows that in some cases it is definitely the result of changing social norms regarding racism. It can therefore be argued that the 2010 retranslation is more politically correct than the 1961 translation. Furthermore, it can be concluded that while the retranslation hypothesis has been debunked, the 2010 translation does appear to be a more literal rendering of the source text than the 1961 translation.Show less
This thesis builds on van Engelenhoven’s (2014) observation that ‘speaking’ Indies Dutch language varieties in the Netherlands no longer arises from multilingual competence, but rather from...Show moreThis thesis builds on van Engelenhoven’s (2014) observation that ‘speaking’ Indies Dutch language varieties in the Netherlands no longer arises from multilingual competence, but rather from linguistic folklore. It takes into account the effect of postcolonial memory-making (Pattynama, 2013) and colonial power dynamics on Indo-Dutch heritage (van Leeuwen, 2008) and explores to what extent these forces have affected Indies Dutch linguistic folklore. Semi-structured interviews with six second generation Indo-Dutch respondents revealed that Indies Dutch linguistic folklore consists of a holistic set of linguistic, paralinguistic and cultural markers that arise primarily from one’s familial and cultural background.Show less
