Diffusion, levelling, simplification and reallocation in past tense BE in the English Fens

In the dialect contact framework proposed by Trudgill (1986), relatively little research has investigated the consequences of the mixing of different grammatical systems of English. The apparent time survey of the Fenland dialect of eastern England reported here provides an example of a range of dialect contact processes reconfiguring variable patterns of past tense BE, resulting in a variety with analogical levelling to was in positive contexts –' the farms was '– and to weren't in negative clauses –' the farm weren't '. In focussing this was/weren't pattern, a number of the processes typical of koine´isation can be observed – diffusion (the geographical and/or social spread of a linguistic form from another socio-geographical place), levelling (the eradication of marked or minority forms in situations of dialect competition, where the number of variants in the output is dramatically reduced from the number in the input), simplification (a relative diminution of grammatical irregularity and redundancy) and reallocation (where two (or more) ingredient variants of the dialect mix are refunctionalised to serve new social, stylistic, or, as here, grammatical roles).     

Internal and external motivation in phonetic change: Dialect levelling outcomes for an English vowel shift

This article is a contribution to the debate about the primacy of internal versus external factors in language change ( Farrar and Jones 2002 ; Thomason and Kaufman 1988 ). Taking Labov's Principles of Vowel Shifting ( Labov 1994 ) as representing internal factors, we examine a vowel shift in Ashford, south‐east of London. F1 and F2 measurements of the short vowels suggest a classic chain shift, largely following Labov's Principles II and III (though Labov's assumption that London short front vowels are rising is shown to be wrong). However, corresponding data from Reading, west of London, evidence no signs of a chain shift. The two datasets show identical targets for the changes in each town. Thus, there has been convergence between the two short vowel systems – from different starting points. We argue that a dialect contact model is more explanatory than internal factors in this case of regional dialect levelling in the south‐east of England.     

Linguistic differentiation and Mayan language revitalization in Guatemala1

This paper presents a quantitative study of syntactic change in the context of Mayan language revitalization in Guatemala. Quantitative analyses of grammatical variation and code‐switching patterns were used to examine the degree of Spanish influence in the speech of three generations of Sipakapense‐Spanish bilinguals. The younger generations show lower frequencies of code‐switching compared to the oldest generation. In terms of syntactic variation, younger speakers show patterns that suggest a resistance to influence from Spanish. The results suggest that younger speakers are hyperdifferentiating the two languages by avoiding traditional Sipakapense constructions that could be interpreted as resulting from Spanish influence. The analysis highlights the important role of language ideology in cases of language change due to contact and language shift.     

Two Generations, Two Strategies: The Fate of Bare English–origin Nouns in Ukrainian

The status of lone nouns of one language in discourse of another is often ambiguous, since they typically provide few indications of their language membership. Making use of the facts of linguistic variability in each of Ukrainian and English, we examine the quantitative conditioning of such forms in bilingual performance data. Results yield a synchronic portrait of the integrated loanword, even when it bears no surface indication of that integration, is neither recurrent nor widespread, and has no history of attestation or other status in the language. Distinguishing the languages involved in the contact situation (Canada) as produced by the first generation (G₁) or the second generation (G₂), further reveals that G₁ speakers incorporate borrowed items – nonce or established – into recipient language discourse by applying to them the fine details of their native language constraints on linguistic variability. In contrast, G₂ speakers' treatment of English-origin nouns coincides neither with their own treatment of Ukrainian nouns nor with G₁ speakers' treatment of Ukrainian or English–origin nouns.     

Staking the claims of identity: Purism,linguistics and the media in post‐1990 Germany1

The paper examines one of the major metalinguistic debates in post‐war Germany: the debate about the influence of English on German, an issue which was raised in the 1990s in the German media and has dominated media discussions on language ever since. The analysis demonstrates that the debate is deeply embedded in current socio‐political discourses as well as in long‐term discursive traditions concerning, on the one hand, the socio‐political changes following German reunification in 1989/90, which involved a revision of the concepts of nation and nationalism, and, on the other, the genesis of the concept of nation, which is closely bound up with the history of the educated bourgeoisie and the process of standardisation as well as linguistic purism. It is argued that the debate on Anglicisms, as is the case in many other metalinguistic debates, cannot be regarded in isolation from the socio‐political environment and the context of historical usage within which it is embedded.     

The effect of domain prestige and interlocutors' bilingualism on loanword adaptations

There is great variability in whether foreign sounds in loanwords are adapted, such that segments show cross‐word and cross‐situational variation in adaptation. Previous research proposed that word frequency, speakers' level of bilingualism and neighborhoods' level of bilingualism can explain such variability. We test for the effect of these factors and propose two additional factors: interlocutors' level of bilingualism and the prestige of the donor language in the loanword's domain. Analyzing elicited productions of loanwords from Spanish into Mexicano in a village where Spanish and Mexicano enjoy prestige in complementary domains, we show that interlocutors' bilingualism and prestige influence the rate of sound adaptation. Additionally, we find that speakers accommodate to their interlocutors, regardless of the interlocutors' level of bilingualism. As retention of foreign sounds can lead to sound change, these results show that social factors can influence changes in a language's sound system.     

Grammatical constructions in typical developing children: effects of explicit reinforcement, automatic reinforcement and parity

This study replicated and extended Wright (2006) and Whitehurst, Ironsmith, and Goldfein (1974) by examining whether preschool aged children would increase their use of passive grammatical voice rather than using the more age-appropriate active grammatical construction when the former was modeled by an adult. Results showed that 5 of the 6 participants began using the passive voice after this verbal behavior had been modeled. For 3 of the participants, this change was large. The change occurred even though the adult model explicitly rewarded the participant with praise and stickers for using the active voice, while providing no praise or stickers for using the passive form that was modeled. For 1 participant, the modeling procedure had no effect on use of the passive voice. These results indicate a strong automatic reinforcement effect of achieving parity with the grammatical structures used by adults, compared to the effects of explicit reinforcement by the adult. This might help to explain why children acquire grammatical structures prevalent in their language community apparently without explicit instruction.     

A postcolonial perspective on language and difference in social work: bilingual practitioners working in the linguistic borderlands

This paper employs a postcolonial perspective to explore the issue of language identity and difference in social work. It presents a case study of three bilingual practitioners who acquired English either as a result of colonial or postcolonial language policies in their respective countries of birth and who at the time of the study were residing in Australia. These informants demonstrate a variety of patterns of cross-border mobility currently being exercised by social workers in an era marked by transnational activities such as education and practice. The three accounts are mediated through a postcolonial lens in order to reveal some of the distinct linguistic dimensions of social work in terms of how and why personal language biography may become a salient issue in practice. The discussion that follows illustrates the potential of a postcolonial perspective for enhancing understandings of language in social work in terms of four themes: the relocation of difference from the margins to the centre; the historical dimensions of language identity; the spatial dimensions of linguistic relations; and the role of English in knowledge production.     

Dimensions of style: Context,politics and motivation in gay Israeli speech1

Sociolinguistic research has traditionally examined stylistic variation as a way of understanding how speakers may use language indexically. Quantitatively, research has sought to correlate observed patterns of variation across such external parameters as context or topic with the ways in which speakers linguistically orient themselves to their immediate surroundings or to some other socially‐salient reference group. Recently, this approach has been criticized for being too mechanistic. In this paper, I present a new method for examining stylistic variation that addresses this critique, and demonstrate how an attention to speakers' motivations and interactional goals can be reconciled with a quantitative analysis of variation. I illustrate the proposed method with a quantitative examination of systematic patterns of prosodic variation in the speech of a group of Israeli men who are all members of various lesbian and gay political‐activist groups.     

Positive and negative intergroup contact in school and out-of-school contexts: A longitudinal approach to spillover effects

This study aims to tackle positive and negative intergroup contact in school and out-of-school contexts to test whether a spillover effect (i.e., the extent to which experiences that individuals have in one context spill over into another) applies to intergroup contact. Participants were 984 adolescents (M_age = 14.66; 62.7% female; 24.8% ethnic minority). Results indicated that positive contact in school was related over time to higher positive contact in out-of-school contexts and vice versa (i.e., valence consistent spillover effect). Positive contact in school was linked over time to lower negative contact in out-of-school contexts (i.e., valence inconsistent spillover effect). Overall, this study provides novel insights into the transmission of adolescents' intergroup contact across socialization contexts by emphasizing the leading role of positive contact in schools.     

台湾高中第二外语教育现状与发展方向

今日,国际化的定义非常多样化,也逐渐在学校教育中扎根、发展。教育部门和学校一方面要不断推进英语教育的推广与改进,另一方面也要思考在多文化、多语言社会产生的内部国际化课题。在台湾,提早实施英语教育、推进高中第二外语教育、推行中小学及高中的国际教育政策等皆是教育改革重要部分。作为教育改革中的重要环节,20世纪90年代后期开始积极推动的高中第二外语教育已经取得了一定成效,但依旧存在专业教师培养与大学课程的衔接等方面问题。     

Language attitudes and sociolinguistic behaviour: Exploring attitude-behaviour relations in language

This paper is concerned with the relationship between attitude and behaviour in language. Adolescent male and female subjects were recorded and index-scores of their linguistic behaviour compared to their assessment of ingroup members in a verbal-guise attitude experiment, and to their attitudes concerning language usage in a questionnaire. It was hypothesised that male subjects' language would be closer to the vernacular, and that they would also express more positive attitudes towards ingroup members than would female subjects. However, no significant correlation between attitude and behaviour was found in the quantitative analysis, but results from the attitude-questionnaire support our hypothesis: male subjects have more vernacular features in their language and also express more genuinely positive attitudes towards the local vernaculars than do female subjects. Finally, methodological and theoretical implications of these results are discussed, emphasising the importance of using eclectic approaches in future research on attitude-behaviour relations in language.     

Gender differences in team work and team competition

We study whether the gender performance gap is affected by the gender composition of teams. A real-effort experiment is employed with wages based either on the team’s performance, or on the outcome of a competition between teams. We find that, relative to a single-sex environment, gender diversity increases the gender performance gap with team pay whereas it decreases the gap with team competition. The results show that there can be a tension between the objective to maximize overall performance and to minimize gender inequality.     

Diffusion in small worlds with homophily and social reinforcement: A theoretical model

We introduce homophily in a percolation model of word-of-mouth diffusion in social networks by reorganizing the nodes according to similarity in preferences for adoption of an innovation. Such preferences are described by a “minimum utility requirement” for an agent to adopt. We show that homophily removes the non-linear relation between preferences and diffusion in the standard percolation model with a high diffusion regime (“hit”) and a low diffusion regime (“flop”). Instead, in a model with perfect homophily, the final diffusion scales linearly with individual preferences: all agents who are willing to adopt, do adopt the innovation. We also investigate the combined effect of homophily and social reinforcement in diffusion. Results indicate that social reinforcement renders clustered networks more efficient in terms of diffusion size for network with strong homophily, while the opposite is true for networks without homophily. The simple structure of our model allows to disentangle the effect of social influence, homophily and the network structure on diffusion. However, the controllability of the theoretical structure comes at the expenses of the realism of the model. For this, we discuss possible extensions and empirical applications.     

Styling the worker: Gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy

This paper discusses some sociolinguistic characteristics of the speech style prescribed to workers for interacting with customers in service contexts, focusing in particular on the linguistic and vocal 'styling' prescribed for operators in telephone call centres in the U.K. Attention is drawn to the similarities between the preferred style of speech and what is popularly thought of as 'women's language'. The intensive regulation of service workers' speech and the valorization of 'feminine' communication styles are analysed in relation to changes occurring as a consequence of economic globalization.     

Communicative Openness About Adoption and Interest in Contact in a Sample of Domestic and Intercountry Adolescent Adoptees

Adolescent intercountry (n = 122) and domestic (n = 40) adoptees and their adoptive parents were asked about their views on communicative openness. The adoptees were also asked for their thoughts on birth parents and contact. A modest association between communicative openness and feelings about adoptive status and self-esteem was found. Girls were more interested in many aspects of their adoptions than boys. Compared with the situation at 11 years of age, there was greater parent-child agreement on whether the child had difficulties talking about adoption. Nevertheless, at age 15, children were still nearly twice as likely to report difficulties talking about adoption issues than their adoptive parents realized. At the age of 15, the majority of the adoptees expressed a desire for contact with birth relatives, but this was a reduction from the numbers at age 11. They also reported finding it easier to talk about adoption issues than they did at the age of 11. The implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Communicative competence and the facilitating and perturbing factors in the socialisation of immigrant students

This work analyses the communicative competence and the factors that facilitate and perturb the socialisation of immigrant students in primary education. It provides greater knowledge concerning the relationship between the immigrant student's social and linguistic competence. It also analyses the presence of difficulties in the different language components (morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics). The sample is made up of a total of 326 immigrant students between 6 and 12 years of age, attending 10 different schools. The study demonstrates that immigrant students possess a low level of linguistic dominion. All the linguistic components analysed are affected, although greater difficulties are evident in morphology and syntax than in semantics and pragmatics. The relationship between linguistic competence and the factors that facilitate and perturb socialisation is underlined. This work concludes that there is a significant relation between semantics and pragmatics and several socialisation factors (leadership, aggressiveness–stubbornness and anxiety–shyness). The educational centres should be aware of the complicated learning process that immigrant students have to go through.     

Morphosyntactic development and educational style of parents in neglected children

This research analyses the morpho-syntactical competence of children in care and the educational style of their parents. The studies from the literature give no specific data concerning how the morphological and syntactic components are affected in children suffering from neglect. These studies point to important deficiencies in language development, but do not specify what such difficulties actually are. This research is carried out within the framework of the residential care children's homes in the region of Extremadura (Spain). The morpho-syntactic competence of the children and the parental educational style of a total of 74 children in residential care are analysed. The subjects are 41 males and 33 females, between 6 and 18 years of age. We apply the ‘Objective Language Criteria Test’ (BLOCScreening) to evaluate their linguistic development and the ‘Autoevaluative Multifactorial Child Adaptation Test’ (TAMAI) to determine educational style. The presence of difficulties in morphosyntaxis is evident. The children with a low dominion of morphology and syntax perceive a more punitive style in the parents. The difficulties in morphosyntax are manifested both expressive and receptive. Use short sentences to frequent omission of morphological markers. Comprehension problems are lower than those of expression, but it shows a erroneous understanding of some grammatical structures, and grammatical errors in spontaneous speech. Use fewer morphologically complex words in their narratives. Have difficulty in organising the content of the speech and the use of cohesive devices (using the precision and accuracy of the conjunctions used in compound sentences). We must stress the need to carry out early prevention and intervention programmes in order to promote an increase in both the quantity and the quality of language stimulation. From there, the need to set up intervention programmes that influence the linguistic competence of children who have suffered abuse.     

创建传统，彰显特色——新中国阿拉伯语专业一甲子谈

本文梳理了中国阿拉伯语专业自1946年迄今的成长历程，阐述了新中国成立60年来阿语专业建设的成就和特色，并对新世纪阿语专业的发展作了高屋建瓴的展望。尤其强调，新中国高校阿语专业已超越传统宗教语言范畴，正式成为中国外语教育的一个组成部分，且学科内涵得到了不断拓宽。     

User involvement and empowerment among asylum seekers in Norwegian reception centres

A considerable amount of literature has been published on conditions in reception centres for asylum seekers. The previous studies show that the life of residents in the centres is characterised by uncertainty, passivity, powerlessness and gradual disqualification. Drawing from data collected from asylum seekers and service providers in Norwegian reception centres, this article examines the tools used to counteract these processes. The article maintains that organised activities, such as language courses and user involvement in the form of cooperative councils, have an impact on the empowerment of asylum seekers. However, user motivation for participation and involvement in these arrangements is undermined, due to residents' responses on factors which operate both at the structural and relational level. The findings and questions raised in the article have wider implications for social work with asylum seekers in other European countries, as well as for current efforts being made by EU countries to regulate reception conditions for asylum seekers. Among other things, the authors relate their findings to reception standards as defined in the EU Directive on Reception Conditions for asylum seekers.