Campus English: lexical variations in Cameroon

Kouega, Jean Paul

doi:10.1515/ijsl.2009.036

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Studies of loanwords typically gauge borrowing rates by reporting raw frequencies of use of loanwords (Imm 2009;Kouega 2009;Furiassi 2011;among others). This is problematic because a loanword's use depends not only on the very act of being borrowed from one language into another, but also on a speaker's (or writer's) desire to use the concept that the word denotes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling loanword success – a sociolinguistic quantitative study of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English

Calude

Miller

Pagel

2020

Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory

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Loanword use has dominated the literature on language contact and its salient nature continues to draw interest from linguists and non-linguists. Traditionally, loanwords were investigated by means of raw frequencies, which are at best uninformative and at worst misleading. Following a new wave of studies which look at loans from a quantitatively more informed standpoint, modelling "success" by taking into account frequency of the counterparts available in the language adopting the loanwords, we propose a similar model of loan-use and demonstrate its benefits in a case study of loanwords from Māori into (New Zealand) English. Our model contributes to previous work in this area by combining both the success measure mentioned above with a rich range of linguistic characteristics of the loanwords (such as loan length and word class), as well as a similarly detailed group of sociolinguistic characteristics of the speakers using them (gender, age and ethnicity of both, speakers and addresses). Our model is unique in bringing together of all these factors at the same time. The findings presented here illustrate the benefit of a quantitatively balanced approach to modelling loanword use. Furthermore, they illustrate the complex interaction between linguistic and sociolinguistic factors in such language contact scenarios.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling loanword success – a sociolinguistic quantitative study of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English

Calude

Miller

Pagel

2020

Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory

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“…Many of these words are the outcomes of various word-formation processes such as compounding, blending, and borrowing (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes, 2006). In studying the campus English used by Anglophone university students in Cameroon, Kouega (2009) found that many non-standard lexical items were incorporated in the informal speech of these students. These variants sprang from a variety of word-formation processes, like borrowing, coinage, compounding, phraseological units, shortening, affixation, and meaning change.…”

Section: Lexical Variation In Spoken Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sociolinguistic Variation in Hong Kong Sign Language

Siu¹

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<p>Internal lexical variation appears to be a prominent feature within signed languages; it is perhaps a result of their distinctive acquisition patterns and fragile transmission. Recent research in different signed languages indicates that sociolinguistic variation within signed languages parallels some patterns found in spoken languages, though with some factors distinct to the former. This research examines sociolinguistic variation in a regional sign language, Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL), “spoken” by deaf people in Hong Kong. The focus of this dissertation is lexical variation and two phonological variations in the signs DEAF/HEARING, and ‘location drop’ in articulation of signs made at the forehead. This research project is a modified replication of the earlier studies in American Sign Language, Australian Sign Language, and New Zealand Sign Language (Lucas, Bayley, & Valli, 2001; Schembri, McKee, McKee, Pivac, Johnston, & Goswell, 2009; McKee & McKee, 2011). The data of 65 participants recruited from the researcher’s networks in the HKSL community using the friend-of-a-friend method was analyzed. Three types of data were collected: free conversation, picture naming and interview. A set of 120 pictures (with/without Chinese characters) was used to elicit signs for the concepts represented. Fifty-one out of these 120 concepts were analyzed from the semantic domains of colour, kinship, number, and country/region. Results show that school attended and age of signer play a prominent role in lexical variation. A gender effect is also found in several concepts. In addition to individual lexical items, the use of compound signs, ‘citation forms’ and handedness in number signs were also examined. Various social factors including school, age, gender, education, and work environment, interact with each other to constrain the variant choices. While numbers over ten can be produced either one-handed or two-handed, signs for hundred and tens highly favour the latter. Regarding phonological variation, conversation videos of 40 participants were annotated for the DEAF/HEARING and location drop variables. For the DEAF/HEARING variables, preliminary investigation of the movement pattern demonstrates that there may be two different types of change going on: linguistically driven (originated from compounds) and socially driven (motivated by redefining deaf identity). It also suggests that DEAF is in a further stage of development than HEARING. For the location variable, twenty tokens from each participant were coded, producing 800 tokens for multivariate analysis. Again, complex correlations between social factors are found to constrain the lowering of signs. The findings further indicate that this change has originated in the deaf school name signs due to their salience, and signers from these schools have led the change. In addition, the results in both phonological variables show that grammatical constraints play an essential role in conditioning variant choices, which parallels results of the previous studies. In sum, the lexical analysis results affirm the crucial role of school in shaping a signer’s lexicon. The findings of the phonological variables confirm the role of grammatical function. Also, there is evidence of language change in progress in this young sign language.</p>

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Campus English: lexical variations in Cameroon

Cited by 2 publications

References 7 publications

Modelling loanword success – a sociolinguistic quantitative study of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English

Modelling loanword success – a sociolinguistic quantitative study of Māori loanwords in New Zealand English

Sociolinguistic Variation in Hong Kong Sign Language

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