490 research outputs found

    Parallel grammaticalizations in Tibeto-Burman : evidence of Sapir's 'Drift'

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    In chapters seven and eight of his book Language, Sapir talked about what he called ‘drift’, the changes that a language undergoes through time [...]. Dialects of a language are formed when that language is broken into different segments that no longer move along the same exact drift. Even so, the general drift of a language has its deep and its shallow currents; those features that distinguish closely related dialects will be of the rapid, shallow currents, while the deeper, slower currents may remain consistent between the dialects for millennia. It is this latter type that Sapir felt is ‘fundamental to the genius of the language’ (p. 172), and he said that ‘The momentum of the more fundamental, the pre-dialectal, drift is often such that languages long disconnected will pass through the same or strikingly similar phases’ (p. 172)

    Age effects in first language attrition: speech perception by Korean-English bilinguals

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    This article has been awarded Open Materials and Open Data badges. All materials and data are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/B2478 and at https://osf.io/G4C7Z. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.This study investigated how bilinguals’ perception of their first language (L1) differs according to age of reduced contact with L1 after immersion in a second language (L2). Twenty-one L1 Korean-L2 English bilinguals in the United States, ranging in age of reduced contact from 3 to 15 years, and 17 control participants in Korea were tested perceptually on three L1 contrasts differing in similarity to L2 contrasts. Compared to control participants, bilinguals were less accurate on L1-specific contrasts, and their accuracy was significantly correlated with age of reduced contact, an effect most pronounced for the contrast most dissimilar to L2. These findings suggest that the earlier bilinguals are extensively exposed to L2, the less likely they are to perceive L1 sounds accurately. However, this relationship is modulated by crosslinguistic similarity, and a turning point in L2 acquisition and L1 attrition of phonology appears to occur at around age 12.This research was supported by funding from the Ph.D. Program in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland. The funding source was not involved in the design of the study, in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. We thank Dr. Youngkyu Kim at Ewha Womans University for his substantial support and Ms. Irene Jieun Ahn (formerly at Ewha Womans University and currently at Michigan State University) for her help during data collection in Korea. (Ph.D. Program in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland

    Ergative marking in Tibeto-Burman

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    This paper presents the first results of a comprehensive project on comparative Tibeto-Burman (TB) morpho-syntax. Data on morphological forms and typological patterns were collected from one hundred fifty-one languages and dialects in the TB family. For this paper the data were surveyed for nominal 'ergative' or agentive case marking (postpositions), in an attempt to determine if it would be possible to reconstruct an ergative case marker to Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB), and in so doing learn more about the nature of grammatical organization in PTB. Ablative, instrumental, genitive, locative, and other case forms were also surveyed for possible cognacy with ergative forms, as suggested in DeLancey 1984

    In the borderland between song and speech

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    This book focuses on vocal expressions in the borderland between song and speech. It spans across several linguistic and musical milieus in societies where oral transmission of culture dominates. ‘Vocal expression’ is an alternative word for ‘song’ which is free from bias based on cultural and research-related traditions. The borderland between song and speech is a segment of the larger continuum that extends from speech to song. These vocal expressions are endangered to the same degree as the languages they represent. Perspectives derived from ethnomusicology, prosody, syntax, and semantics are combined in the research, in which performance templates serve as an analytical tool. The focus is on the techniques that make performance possible and on the transmission of these techniques. The performance templates serve to organize the vocal expression of words by combining musical and linguistic conventions. It is shown that all the cultures studied have principles for organizing these parameters; but each does this in its own unique way while meeting a number of basic needs on the part of human society, particularly communal interaction and interaction with the spirit world. A working method is developed that makes it possible to gain qualitative knowledge from a large body of material within a comparatively limited period of time

    Development Theory and the Ethnicity Question - The Cases of the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Thailand

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    An acoustic analysis of tone and register in Louma Oeshi

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    This study describes the acoustic properties associated with tone and register in Louma Oeshi, a previously unstudied Akoid language of Laos. Louma Oeshi uses three tones (High, Mid, and Low) which overlap with a tense/lax register distinction to yield a six-way suprasegmental contrast. In this paper, we (1) offer a first account of the pitch and voice quality characteristics associated with each Tone-Register pair, (2) examine further the variability in glottalization strategies signaling the constricted register, and (3) explore the influence of contrastive voice quality on pitch and vice versa, particularly as a predictor of the variation in glottalization

    Phonemes and orthography: Language planning in ten minority languages of Thailand

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    Agroforestry coffee production in Northern Thailand : livelihood system transformation and institutional changes

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    Coffee production in Northern Thailand is now growing. There is an interesting historical background of the hill tribe famers, opium production, slash and burn practices, as well as the state effort to empower the hill tribe farmers. Being introduced as a cash income crop, arabica coffee production by the hill tribe farmers is now increasing its significance. This paper tries to examine the resilience of the hill tribe coffee farmers’ livelihood and analyse the transformation into coffee production with focus on institutional causes. The research applies the qualitative research approach in order to gain a thick description. The research data was collected during the field investigation in Chang Rai Province in July 2016. Semi-structured interviews and observation were conducted in five villages of Akha and Lahu tribes. The findings showed a great diversity in how each community and each farmer has shifted to coffee farming. The study also reveals that the livelihood of the hill tribe farmers have greatly improved after having an agriculture system transformation into coffee farming. Key practices that make the livelihood resilient were agroforestry coffee farming, with application of intercropping, home gardening, and composting. Findings from a series of interviews and observations suggest that institutional changes in the national land management has a significant impact on pushing the transformation to agroforestry coffee farming among the sample villages. However, this shift toward coffee had to be met with a demand in the domestic coffee market since the 2000s. This transformation also indicates the existence of powerful environmental discourses in Thailand behind the national land use policy which had greatly influenced farmers’ perceptions on natural resource use.M-IE
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