L2 Inflectional Morphology and Prosody: The Case of L1 Bengali Speakers of L2 English

This study is set in the context of the persistent omission of functional morphology by adult second language speakers, which often remains in evidence at high levels of proficiency and end-state grammars. The aim of this thesis is to examine the spoken suppliance of inflectional morphology by adult first language speakers of Bengali, as spoken in and around Dhaka, Bangladesh, and to do so in the phonological framework of the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis. An initial analysis of the prosodic representation of Bengali inflectional morphology, in contrast to that in English, finds that the acquisition task for Bengali speakers should, on the one hand, be facilitated according to the availability of required second language prosodic representation to transfer to the interlanguage grammar. On the other, however, a mismatch is found between the minimality requirements of the prosodic word and the moraic structure below the level of the prosodic word. A small group of learners from beginner to advanced participated in a semi-spontaneous elicitation task, grammaticality judgement test and elicited imitation task. The data were analysed for evidence of suppliance of inflection (in accordance with the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis) and for signs of transfer of Bengali minimality requirements and subsequent repair on English 'sub-minimal' stems. The results of the experiments in this study found that by advanced proficiency, first language Bengali speakers appeared to reap the benefits of transfer of first language prosodic representation. However, though observation of suppliance rates on different stem types during the developmental stages may at first not seem to support the outcome, depending upon the interpretation of the strong and weak versions of the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis, asymmetrical suppliance rates at lower levels may, in part, be phonologically influenced by the availability of the required prosodic representation and adjustment to the moraic structure of the second language

The Philological-Pragmatic Approach : A Study of Language Choice and Code-Switching in Early Modern English School Performances

In this study I set out to account for certain central aspects of language choice and code-switching. My purpose is twofold: to explain why people use multiple languages within a single discourse or choose to use a particular language in a particular setting, and to demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of combining philosophical and empirical research. Towards these ends, I develop a philological-pragmatic approach and apply it to a collection of multilingual texts. The material consists of the Orationes manuscript (Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral Archives Lit. MS E41), containing speeches and plays in English, Latin, and Greek performed by students at the King’s School, Canterbury, in 1665–1684. I conduct a philosophical and methodological analysis of the philological-pragmatic approach, construct a framework on the basis of that analysis, and apply it in the empirical analyses to understand and explain actions. The philosophical and methodological analyses indicate that a basis for the philological-pragmatic approach can be constructed by reinterpreting philology and pragmatics from the perspective of action analysis and theory of action: philology as the study of concrete action-tokens (interpretation), pragmatics as the study of abstract action-types (explication and classification). The empirical analyses indicate that multilingual language use is an important and characteristic strategy in the Orationes texts. Three explanatory entities were central in accounting for multilingual language use: consequences of actions, causal antecedents, and further actions/forms. Consequences were classified into five basic categories: face-related, textual, argumentative, stylistic, and capacitative. These taxonomies sufficiently accounted for the patterns of language use observed in the dataset. The study constitutes the first book-length investigation of the Orationes texts. In addition to advancing our understanding of the roots of multilingual language use in the Early Modern English period, the patterns identified have several parallels both in different periods and in different cultures. Detecting such patterns has the potential to contribute to an integrated account of the phenomenon. Finally, the study offers other researchers a model for combining philology and pragmatics.Käsittelen väitöskirjassani kielen valintaa ja koodinvaihtoa. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on yhtäältä selittää, miksi yhden diskurssin sisällä käytetään useita kieliä tai tietyissä tilanteissa valitaan tietty kieli, ja toisaalta tuoda esiin hyötyjä, joita saadaan yhdistämällä filosofinen ja empiirinen tutkimus. Kehitän tutkimuksessani ns. filologis-pragmaattisen lähestymistavan ja sovellan sitä monikielisen tekstikokoelman analyysiin. Aineistoni koostuu Orationes-käsikirjoituksesta (Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral Archives Lit. MS E41), joka sisältää Canterburyn King’s Schoolin oppilaiden vuosina 1665–1684 esittämiä puheita ja näytelmiä. Teksteissä käytettävät kielet ovat englanti, latina ja kreikka. Laadin filosofisen ja menetelmäopillisen kuvauksen filologis-pragmaattisesta lähestymistavasta, kehitän analyysin pohjalta viitekehyksen ja sovellan tätä viitekehystä tutkimuksen empiirisessä osassa tekojen ymmärtämiseen ja selittämiseen. Filosofisten ja menetelmäopillisten analyysien perusteella filologis-pragmaattinen lähestymistapa voidaan rakentaa määrittelemällä filologia ja pragmatiikka tekojen tutkimisen näkökulmasta: filologia tutkii konkreettisia tekoesiintymiä (menetelmänä tulkinta), pragmatiikka abstrakteja tekotyyppejä (menetelminä eksplikaatio ja luokittelu). Empiirisen analyysin perusteella monikielinen kielenkäyttö on keskeinen osa Orationes-tekstejä. Selityksissä viittasin erityisesti tekojen seurauksiin, kausaalisiin tekijöihin sekä muihin tekoihin/rakenteisiin. Luokittelin tekojen seuraukset edelleen kasvoihin liittyviin, tekstuaalisiin, argumentatiivisiin, stilistisiin ja mahdollistaviin. Näiden taksonomioiden avulla pystyin selittämään tutkittavat ilmiöt aineistossani. Väitöstutkimukseni on ensimmäinen laaja tutkimus Orationes-teksteistä. Tutkimuksen tulokset auttavat ymmärtämään monikielisen kielenkäytön juuria 1600-luvun Britanniassa. Vertaamalla tuloksia aiempiin tutkimuksiin löydetään yhtymäkohtia eri aikakausilta ja eri kulttuureista. Näitä yhtymäkohtia tarkastelemalla saavutetaan entistä kattavampi käsitys monikielisen kielenkäytön luonteesta. Tutkimukseni tarjoaa myös yleisen mallin filologian ja pragmatiikan yhdistämiseen

Picturing voices, writing thickness: a multimodal approach to translating the Afro-Cuban tales of Lydia Cabrera

Lydia Cabrera's career spans much of the twentieth century and her many books provide a unique insight into Afro-Cuban religions, customs, and folktales. Her work crosses the boundaries between ethnography, linguistics and fiction and her texts are inscribed with the dual strands of the African and Iberian cultures that fuse together to form the Cuban. Nonetheless, Cabrera's oeuvre remains relatively unknown outside Spanish-speaking academic circles and to date very little of it has been translated. This research project aims to address Cabrera's unwarranted obscurity by presenting English translations of twelve of her Afro-Cuban tales alongside hitherto unpublished archival material. Polyvocality is identified as a key feature of her work and ways in which 'voice' operates in her four collections of short stories are analysed. It is considered important that all the participants in the story-telling chain be 'heard' in any new presentation of Cabrera's work. This means paying attention to Cabrera as author of the published texts, but also to the informants who were her oral sources, to the translator, and to the reader of the new English versions. The fact that Cabrera's tales often encompass both the scientific (ethnographic) and the artistic (literary), makes the process of translating them a rich and complex endeavour. In formulating a creative response to this complexity, insights are drawn from visual art, concrete poetry, and ethnography. The notion of 'thick translation' (Appiah 1993/2000) provides the theoretical underpinning for the multimodal artefact which is developed. This PhD therefore also crosses disciplines - translation studies and interactive media - and comprises two parts; a written thesis and a DVD-Rom. Ultimately, it is suggested that one future direction for translation is to take a 'visual turn' towards a practice which does more than offer one written text in the place of another