anglicized words and misspelled cognates in native language identification

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The frequency and distribution of written and spoken anglicisms in two varieties of French

This study examines the frequency and distribution of anglicisms in written and spoken French using a corpus of over 100,000 words collected from two reality television shows and from blogs - data representing two varieties of French: Quebecois French (QC), and French from France (FR). The following research questions guided this study: (1) Which variety of French uses a higher total percentage of anglicisms? (2) Which language mode (written or oral) is characterized by a higher frequency of anglicisms? (3) How does the distribution of different anglicism categories (Wholesale, Direct Translations, Hybrids, and French Inventions and Modifications) compare across French language varieties? The results indicate that, overall, anglicisms tend to make up less than one percent of the corpus (0.99%) when using a token analysis, and 2.80% when analyzing anglicism types. Furthermore, of this total, the percentage of tokens/types in FR was 0.94% / 2.80%, while QC totaled 1.03% / 2.80%. Concerning language mode, anglicisms also appear to be equally frequent in the spoken (TV programs) and written (Internet blogs) corpora for both tokens and types. However, when taking language variety into consideration, FR uses a higher percentage of anglicisms in writing, while QC employs more anglicisms in spoken language. Finally, distribution results suggest that while FR and QC share the preference for anglicizing most frequently within the Wholesale and Hybrid categories, the two language varieties differ in the distribution of anglicisms among the Direct. Translation, and French Invention and Modification categorie

An Investigation into the Linguistic Evidence and Classification of Dialect Variation in Biblical Hebrew

The following is a study of dialectal variations in the Masoretic text and classification of selected variations. Introductory material includes discussion of the use of dialect for regional, chronological, and stylistic distinctives. This study is presented in two parts. Part one presents a case for the usage of dialect variation by writers and personalities in the Hebrew Bible. Part two offers analysis of current approaches to the classification of variants into chronological, regional, and stylistic distinctives. Part one begins with an investigation of the Torah, presenting dialectal evidence from Genesis and Deuteronomy relating to vocabulary, geography, and tribal differences. Evidence from the Prophets consists of pronunciation, morphology, and semantic changes from the Former Prophets, as well as dialectal peculiarities from selected Latter Prophets. Features from the Writings relate to vocabulary, syntax, and poetic practices. Part two begins with a discussion of chronologically distinctive features in Biblical Hebrew. Following this is an analysis of regional features in Biblical Hebrew and inscriptional evidence. Discussion regarding the classification of colloquial Hebrew and style-switching closes part two. A summary and final remarks conclude the dissertation. Included in this is a discussion of the benefits of this study for biblical exegesi

Reconsidering "The Conspiracy of Catiline": Participants, Concepts, and Terminology in Cicero and Sallust

My thesis will reconsider the failed attempt by a number of Roman citizens to gain power in Rome in 63 B.C., commonly labeled “The Conspiracy of Catiline.” Two Roman authors, M. Tullius Cicero and C. Sallustius Crispus, were eyewitnesses to the events occurring that year and both wrote lengthy accounts about the discovery and suppression of the affair and its participants, who were planning to gain power in Rome through violent means. The participants planned murder and arson inside of Rome and threatened the city with an army in northern Etruria. Our sources tend to ascribe the leadership of these hostile activities to L. Sergius Catilina, presented as a debauched, and indebted, scion of a noble family. However, our sources discuss many other Roman citizens who participated with the affair. My thesis provides a comprehensive study of the terminology Cicero and Sallust used and the lexical choices they made to describe the affair and its participants. I examine the terminology that both these authors used to identify the affair’s context, primarily focusing on the terms coniuratio (“conspiracy”) and bellum (“war”), with the aim of showing how these terms and concepts become crystallized in this period. In addition, I examine the portrayal of the reported disturbances occurring inside and outside of Rome and the representation of the Roman citizens who were involved in them. By scrutinizing the terminology found in Cicero and Sallust’s accounts of the affair of 63, my thesis demonstrates that its common appellation as “The Conspiracy of Catiline” and all that it means – in terms of a single event with one leader – needs to be reconsidered due to the interpretations of its multifarious aspects

The Quixote code: Reading between the lines of the Cervantes novel

This study in two parts reexamines the notion that Don Quixote was originally seen as no more than a humorous story, and suggests that due to a variety of factors, a closer, more exegetical reading of the text may well be appropriate. In the first section of this work, focus is placed on the long history of the reception of the Cervantes novel as containing some deeper truth beneath the literal surface of the novel. This is complemented by a review of some examples of when several esoteric readings—done without academic rigor and adequate contextual research—have struck dramatically off-target and have read not between the lines but completely outside of the text of Don Quixote. The second part of this study proposes a new line of exegetical inquiry into the Cervantes classic, incorporating recent research in the field of cognitive science in tandem with contextual historical research to ask different questions and direct attention to areas heretofore only cursorily addressed. The novel is examined in the context of its historical moment—a time when the Spanish Inquisition was at its most catechizing, and had increased the scope of its sites to include Protestant Christians along with its traditional fare of Muslims and Jews in its campaign of forcible conversions to Catholicism. During this era, burning at the stake, torture, and imposed exile were routine techniques to deal with reluctant proselytes—and the world of literature was scrutinized for any messages of dissent from church doctrine—resulting in the creation of the first blacklist of banned books, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. In this second half of the study, a construction of a theory of mind of Cervantes is used to examine how, when confronted by an environment of religious oppression and intolerance and challenged by a policy of censorship, the author may have resorted to encoding a subversive discourse via ekphrastic descriptions of images connected to prohibited texts, religious movements, and schools of thought below the surface of his masterpiece. Indeed, the very names of the characters in Don Quixote, as well as the inspiration for several of the most iconic (mis)adventures of the novel are discussed and shown to have possibly been drawn from precisely these types of images. Of particular significance, the most (in)famous symbol of conflict of all time, originally used to symbolize resistance to religious oppression—the Ichthys of the early Christian church of Rome—is proposed as a possible source of the name Quixote based on paleographical characteristics, principles of cryptography, recent studies in visuality, and the particular wording of passages contained within Don Quixote

Looking with Narcissus: Oscar Wilde’s Reception of the Dying God

‘It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors,’ writes Oscar Wilde in his ‘Preface’ to the 1891 book edition of his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. By transferring agency away from the originator to the recipient, Wilde’s aphorism could be considered a late nineteenth-century version of reception theory, which has sought to challenge conventional critical ideas of influence or tradition in classical studies in recent decades. The Introduction to this thesis relates the classically educated Wilde’s epigram, which supposedly originated with his Trinity College Dublin tutor, John Pentland Mahaffy, to the dissolution of authority both inside and outside Classics during the second half of the nineteenth century. Chapter 1 explores the broadly similar critical sentiments in Wilde’s press correspondence and his defence of his writings in his 1895 libel action against the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde’s inverted ideas of reading, I argue, are informed by the plays of Euripides and Aristophanes. Chapters 2 and 3 turn Wilde’s inverted ideas of reading on their head. Chapter 2 argues that Wilde’s use of the Orpheus story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is revealing about not only Dorian Gray’s but also his author’s troubled relations with both sexes. Chapter 3 shows how Wilde uses Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in his fairy tales and plays to represent unhappy heterosexual relations in contradistinction to a positively portrayed Platonic pedagogical pederasty—a juxtaposition that is reflected in Wilde’s life as well as his work. Chapter 4 reverts to Wilde’s idea that artistic meaning is in the eye of the beholder. The religious relativism and oscillation between literary sources in Wilde’s drama Salomé, which is viewed as an example of ‘Alexandrian’ Euripideanism, contribute to an atmosphere of narcissistic subjectivism and projectionism that meet with the full condemnation of official authority