The development of phonological awareness literacy measures for isiXhosa
- Diemer, Maxine, Van der Merwe, Kristin, De Vos, Mark A
- Authors: Diemer, Maxine , Van der Merwe, Kristin , De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469404 , vital:77239 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2015.1108769
- Description: This study outlines the development of linguistically based, language-specific measures of phonological awareness in isiXhosa and presents some preliminary findings. Hitherto, the study of phonological awareness has predominantly focussed on English, and to date phonological awareness in Bantu languages has not been adequately addressed. This study explicitly discusses the decisions made when developing a phonological awareness test for isiXhosa, which can easily be adapted for other Bantu languages. Our results show how participants perform better in syllable awareness tasks and how this is conditioned by the language-specific structures of isiXhosa. We demonstrate the need for micro-linguistic and language-specific considerations in the development of phonological awareness tests.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Diemer, Maxine , Van der Merwe, Kristin , De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469404 , vital:77239 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2015.1108769
- Description: This study outlines the development of linguistically based, language-specific measures of phonological awareness in isiXhosa and presents some preliminary findings. Hitherto, the study of phonological awareness has predominantly focussed on English, and to date phonological awareness in Bantu languages has not been adequately addressed. This study explicitly discusses the decisions made when developing a phonological awareness test for isiXhosa, which can easily be adapted for other Bantu languages. Our results show how participants perform better in syllable awareness tasks and how this is conditioned by the language-specific structures of isiXhosa. We demonstrate the need for micro-linguistic and language-specific considerations in the development of phonological awareness tests.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
“Ha! Relationships? I only shout at them!”: Strategic management of discordant rapport in an African small business context
- Lauriks, Sanne, Siebörger, Ian, De Vos, Mark A
- Authors: Lauriks, Sanne , Siebörger, Ian , De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/385338 , vital:68009 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2015-0002"
- Description: This study demonstrates how and why interactants at a tyre fitment centre in Grahamstown, South Africa, manage discordant interpersonal relationships in strategic ways. Individuals in a post-apartheid small business respond to their social and economic context and exercise agency to their advantage in doing so. This study draws on linguistic ethnography (Rampton 2007) and the Rapport Management Framework (RMF, Spencer-Oatey 2000b, 2011), itself a development of politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1987). An initial RMF analysis ran into difficulties around interactions that at first glance appeared to be oriented toward Rapport Challenge and Neglect. Upon closer examination, it appeared that discordant rapport was being actively maintained in this business. This led us to address underdeveloped areas of RMF that were not responsive enough to describe naturally occurring small business interactions, and propose an Enhanced Rapport Management Framework to overcome its inadequacies. We conclude that people may deliberately maintain discordant relationships when it is in their best interests to do so. Thus, contrary to a common-sense belief that harmonious social relations are an intrinsic good, we found that promoting discordant social relations can be understood as a rational response to individuals’ social and economic contexts, particularly in conditions such as those in many postcolonial African societies.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Lauriks, Sanne , Siebörger, Ian , De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/385338 , vital:68009 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2015-0002"
- Description: This study demonstrates how and why interactants at a tyre fitment centre in Grahamstown, South Africa, manage discordant interpersonal relationships in strategic ways. Individuals in a post-apartheid small business respond to their social and economic context and exercise agency to their advantage in doing so. This study draws on linguistic ethnography (Rampton 2007) and the Rapport Management Framework (RMF, Spencer-Oatey 2000b, 2011), itself a development of politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1987). An initial RMF analysis ran into difficulties around interactions that at first glance appeared to be oriented toward Rapport Challenge and Neglect. Upon closer examination, it appeared that discordant rapport was being actively maintained in this business. This led us to address underdeveloped areas of RMF that were not responsive enough to describe naturally occurring small business interactions, and propose an Enhanced Rapport Management Framework to overcome its inadequacies. We conclude that people may deliberately maintain discordant relationships when it is in their best interests to do so. Thus, contrary to a common-sense belief that harmonious social relations are an intrinsic good, we found that promoting discordant social relations can be understood as a rational response to individuals’ social and economic contexts, particularly in conditions such as those in many postcolonial African societies.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Atomic Homogeneity: A semantic strategy for the determination of plurality in the complex noun phrases of South African English
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469382 , vital:77237 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2014.925209
- Description: The existence of a particular semantic agreement strategy, what I will here call Atomic Homogeneity, has been argued to determine plurality in complex noun phrases. If the denotational properties of a complex noun phrase can be distributed to its smallest, atomic subset then plural agreement is the result. This paper explores this prediction using a large-scale experiment and demonstrates that Atomic Homogeneity is a highly significant statistical effect in the data, thus validating the prediction of this strategy. In addition, this paper serves a methodological purpose by exploring the utility of large-scale data collection by peer interview. Although it might be expected that the method is noisy, this is offset by the large amount of data collected and which is more amenable to statistical analysis than smaller-scale case studies.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469382 , vital:77237 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2014.925209
- Description: The existence of a particular semantic agreement strategy, what I will here call Atomic Homogeneity, has been argued to determine plurality in complex noun phrases. If the denotational properties of a complex noun phrase can be distributed to its smallest, atomic subset then plural agreement is the result. This paper explores this prediction using a large-scale experiment and demonstrates that Atomic Homogeneity is a highly significant statistical effect in the data, thus validating the prediction of this strategy. In addition, this paper serves a methodological purpose by exploring the utility of large-scale data collection by peer interview. Although it might be expected that the method is noisy, this is offset by the large amount of data collected and which is more amenable to statistical analysis than smaller-scale case studies.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
Subject marking and preverbal coordination in Sesotho: A perspective from Optimality Theory
- De Vos, Mark A, Mitchley, Hazel
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A , Mitchley, Hazel
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469393 , vital:77238 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2012.737591
- Description: Agreement usually operates in a one-to-one fashion where an agreement target is matched to a source of agreement. However, when there is more than one source (for example, in preverbal coordination constructions) agreement mismatches occur. These may be resolved either through partial agreement with only a single source, or by various resolution strategies. Bantu languages with their rich noun-class system are an ideal domain to explore resolution strategies. This paper examines the phenomenon of subject-verb agreement with preverbal coordinated DPs in Sesotho (S33) and outlines an Optimality Theoretic analysis of the various strategies that speakers use to negotiate subject verb agreement.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A , Mitchley, Hazel
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469393 , vital:77238 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2012.737591
- Description: Agreement usually operates in a one-to-one fashion where an agreement target is matched to a source of agreement. However, when there is more than one source (for example, in preverbal coordination constructions) agreement mismatches occur. These may be resolved either through partial agreement with only a single source, or by various resolution strategies. Bantu languages with their rich noun-class system are an ideal domain to explore resolution strategies. This paper examines the phenomenon of subject-verb agreement with preverbal coordinated DPs in Sesotho (S33) and outlines an Optimality Theoretic analysis of the various strategies that speakers use to negotiate subject verb agreement.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
An argument for VP coordination: scene-setting coordination and weak islands
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469371 , vital:77236 , https://doi.org/10.2989/SALALS.2009.27.1.1.749
- Description: This article provides a minimalist analysis of a novel type of weak island that has not been discussed in the literature until now. The island is a subtype of extraction from asymmetric coordination islands in violation of the across-the-board constraint. The islands in question are characterised by being weak islands for certain types of adjunct extraction, and by being discontinuous – XP coordination. This article demonstrates the properties of this curious construction type and proposes the first analysis to date. It is argued that this is an instance of VP coordination and that this configuration allows the possibility of high merger of direct objects in a constrained fashion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469371 , vital:77236 , https://doi.org/10.2989/SALALS.2009.27.1.1.749
- Description: This article provides a minimalist analysis of a novel type of weak island that has not been discussed in the literature until now. The island is a subtype of extraction from asymmetric coordination islands in violation of the across-the-board constraint. The islands in question are characterised by being weak islands for certain types of adjunct extraction, and by being discontinuous – XP coordination. This article demonstrates the properties of this curious construction type and proposes the first analysis to date. It is argued that this is an instance of VP coordination and that this configuration allows the possibility of high merger of direct objects in a constrained fashion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
Deriving narrow syntax through constraints on information structure : a parallel between linguistic models of displacement and database theory
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6142 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011594
- Description: This paper presents a research program for normalization-driven syntax. It takes the Minimalist research agenda as a starting point (Chomsky 1995. The Minimalist Program. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.) and explores the question of how the CI interface determines syntactic operations. The proposal provides specific content to the notion of bare output conditions and the nature of the CI interface. It does so by drawing on the tools provided by Relational Theory, a branch of set-theoretic mathematics, and Database Theory, a branch of computer science. It is demonstrated that core components of Narrow Syntax (phrase structure, selection and AGREE) are all definable in terms of Relational Theory. Then, it is shown that the process of relation optimization, or normalization, can derive chain formation. The article concludes with two speculations on the implementation of phases within a normalization-driven grammar and the implications of such a system for the learnability of the lexicon.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6142 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011594
- Description: This paper presents a research program for normalization-driven syntax. It takes the Minimalist research agenda as a starting point (Chomsky 1995. The Minimalist Program. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.) and explores the question of how the CI interface determines syntactic operations. The proposal provides specific content to the notion of bare output conditions and the nature of the CI interface. It does so by drawing on the tools provided by Relational Theory, a branch of set-theoretic mathematics, and Database Theory, a branch of computer science. It is demonstrated that core components of Narrow Syntax (phrase structure, selection and AGREE) are all definable in terms of Relational Theory. Then, it is shown that the process of relation optimization, or normalization, can derive chain formation. The article concludes with two speculations on the implementation of phases within a normalization-driven grammar and the implications of such a system for the learnability of the lexicon.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Educated mother-tongue South African English: A corpus approach
- Adendorff, Ralph D, De Klerk, Vivian A, De Vos, Mark A, Hunt, Sally, Simango, Silvester R, Todd, Louise, Niesler, Thomas
- Authors: Adendorff, Ralph D , De Klerk, Vivian A , De Vos, Mark A , Hunt, Sally , Simango, Silvester R , Todd, Louise , Niesler, Thomas
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124352 , vital:35597 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10228190608566261
- Description: South Africa is anecdotally known for its complex system of speech varieties correlating with variables such as ethnicity, first language, class and education. These intuitions (e.g. Lass 1990) require further investigation, especially in the context of a changing South Africa where language variety plays a key role in identifying social, economic and ethnic group membership. Thus, in this research, the extent to which these variables play a role in variety is explored using a corpus approach (the nature of class and race in the corpus is discussed more fully later in the article). The corpus project, focusing primarily on accent, has been undertaken by members of the Department of English Language and Linguistics at Rhodes University in South Africa, collaborating with staff from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. A corpus (the first of its kind) is being compiled, comprising the speech of educated, white, mother-tongue speakers of South African English (as distinct from Afrikaans English, Indian English, and the second language (L2) varieties of English used by speakers of indigenous African languages), and data collection is well under way. This short article aims to describe the aims of the project, and the methodological approach which underpins it, as well as to highlight some of the more problematic aspects of the research.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Adendorff, Ralph D , De Klerk, Vivian A , De Vos, Mark A , Hunt, Sally , Simango, Silvester R , Todd, Louise , Niesler, Thomas
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124352 , vital:35597 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10228190608566261
- Description: South Africa is anecdotally known for its complex system of speech varieties correlating with variables such as ethnicity, first language, class and education. These intuitions (e.g. Lass 1990) require further investigation, especially in the context of a changing South Africa where language variety plays a key role in identifying social, economic and ethnic group membership. Thus, in this research, the extent to which these variables play a role in variety is explored using a corpus approach (the nature of class and race in the corpus is discussed more fully later in the article). The corpus project, focusing primarily on accent, has been undertaken by members of the Department of English Language and Linguistics at Rhodes University in South Africa, collaborating with staff from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. A corpus (the first of its kind) is being compiled, comprising the speech of educated, white, mother-tongue speakers of South African English (as distinct from Afrikaans English, Indian English, and the second language (L2) varieties of English used by speakers of indigenous African languages), and data collection is well under way. This short article aims to describe the aims of the project, and the methodological approach which underpins it, as well as to highlight some of the more problematic aspects of the research.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Towards a definition of SUBJECT in binding domains and subject-oriented anaphora
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6141 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011593
- Description: The question of subjecthood has dogged linguistic science since ancient times. However, in current versions of Minimalism, subjects do not have primitive status and can only be defined in derived terms. However, subjects and the broader theoretical notion of SUBJECT remain important in linguistic description. This paper develops a definition of subjecthood in terms of set-theoretic notions of functional dependency: when a feature, say phi, determines the value of some other feature, say u-phi. This notion is used to describe various phenomena where subjecthood has been invoked: binding domains and subject-oriented anaphors.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: De Vos, Mark A
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6141 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011593
- Description: The question of subjecthood has dogged linguistic science since ancient times. However, in current versions of Minimalism, subjects do not have primitive status and can only be defined in derived terms. However, subjects and the broader theoretical notion of SUBJECT remain important in linguistic description. This paper develops a definition of subjecthood in terms of set-theoretic notions of functional dependency: when a feature, say phi, determines the value of some other feature, say u-phi. This notion is used to describe various phenomena where subjecthood has been invoked: binding domains and subject-oriented anaphors.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
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