Language, Diversity and Inclusion

“There are no pronouns in the Constitution”: A political and sentiment analysis of pronoun discourse in social media

Michael Dow & Kelly Biers, Université de Montréal

A pronoun is, by definition, simply any word that replaces a noun, yet contemporary usages of the word pronoun show that its meaning is changing. Consider the following statements:

a. My pronouns are she/her. b. I won't date a girl with pronouns.

While statement (a) suggests a narrowed interpretation of pronouns for “third person pronouns” (at least within certain circumstances), this shift alone cannot account for statement (b), which suggests a broadened reading along the lines of gender inclusivity. Evidently, the semantics of pronouns is not merely undergoing an evolution in its scope or quantity; these examples also attest to changes in quality (amelioration and pejoration, respectively), often aligning with one’s political worldview (e.g., Sendén et al. 2021). In this project, we aim to document the discourse surrounding the word pronoun(s) in a Twitter corpus, looking at the emotional and political contexts surrounding its usage over time.

First, we gathered an exhaustive corpus of all English-language tweets containing the word pronoun(s) between 2006-2022 (approximately 9.3 million). We performed sentiment analysis using VADER (Hutto & Gilbert 2014) on the tweet text to obtain a composite score for each tweet. We then employed machine learning to estimate each user’s political affiliation (binary left- vs. right-wing), based on the tweets in the corpus, supplementary tweets in the training set and user-provided descriptions. Finally, we performed co-occurrence analysis on the tweets from accounts representing the two political extremes separately in order to deduce emergent themes and their relevant prominence within and between the sets.

We find that, once overall discourse surrounding pronoun(s) starts rising sharply starting approximately in 2016, positive language significantly and consistently outstrips negative language among likely left-wing users. In comparison, positive and negative sentiments remain essentially equal in the right-wing users’ tweets. In the co-occurrence analysis, preliminary results find that discourse on the left-wing extremity of the political scale focuses more on notions of respect, love and gender identity but also has an increased use of swear words, which are often judged as negative by sentiment analysis algorithms. Meanwhile, uniquely prominent themes in right-wing discourse centre around grammar, religion and the inclusion of “pronouns in bio” (i.e., a user’s account description). While some shared themes emerge, closer investigation suggests vastly different experiences along political lines. We aim to interpret these results within a feminist critical discourse analysis framework (Lazar 2007), comparing them to other instances of “counter-resistance” (Cameron 1995, Talbot 2007) to understand the current semantic shifts of pronoun(s) within larger discursive patterns.

References

Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London and New York: Routledge. Gustafsson Sendén, M., Renström, E., & Lindqvist, A. (2021). Pronouns beyond the binary: The change of attitudes and use over time. Gender & Society, 35(4), 588-615. Hutto, C.J. & Gilbert, Eric. 2014. VADER: A parsimonious rule-based model for sentiment analysis of social media text. In Proceedings of the international AAAI conference on web and social media (Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 216-225). Lazar, Michelle. 2007. Feminist critical discourse analysis. Critical Discourse Studies 4(2). 141-164. Talbot, Mary. 2007. Political correctness and freedom of speech. In Marlis Hellinger and Anne Pauwel (eds.), Handbook of language and communication: Diversity and change. Berlin and New York: DeGruyter. 751-764.

AUTHOR BIOS

Michael Dow (he/him) is a linguistics professor at the Université de Montréal and a co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique. His main research interests include laboratory phonology and corpus linguistics, with emphases on vowel nasality, social media and language games.

Kelly Biers (he/him) is an associate professor of French and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His research and teaching focus on language and gender as well as feminist and decolonial pedagogies in the French curriculum.

Building Community: Vocabularies and Rituals Used to Define and Process Climate Grief by Politically Active Youth in Mi'kma'ki

Lilian Barraclough, University of Guelph & Melanie Zurba, Dalhousie University

There are many terms that exist to describe and define climate grief but the vocabularies that youth use to describe climate grief are not well defined. The purpose of this research was to identify the vocabularies that politically active youth use to describe and define climate grief and the rituals that they use to process it through a poetry workshop, interviews, and arts-based engagement. Twenty youth ages 12-29 living in Mi’kma’ki (Atlantic Canada) engaged in political activism connected to climate change participated in individual interviews to understand their journey to becoming politically active, their personal experiences of climate grief, and how they define and manage their climate grief on a day-to-day basis. Five of those twenty youth participated in a facilitated poetry workshop that guided them through writing poetry expressing their definitions of and experiences with climate grief, followed by a focus group debriefing their experience in the workshop. An additional three of the twenty participants submitted individual visual and written pieces of art on climate grief and participated in short interviews following their submission. The main vocabularies used to define and describe climate grief were found to be in contrast: full of despair and focused on apocalypse; and full of hope and centered on community and building just futures. Additionally, participants identified that community-centered rituals that involved tangible change or meaningful interactions were crucial for helping them manage their grief through rituals. This paper presentation will cover the main findings of the language used by politically active youth to describe and define their mental health and emotional wellbeing experiences related to climate change. It will also delve in-depth into the arts-based poetry methods that were used to identify the vocabularies, imagery, and narratives used by the youth participants to define and describe climate grief and their personal experiences. The presentation will share some of the poetry and visual art created by the youth participants to illustrate their experiences within their own words and relate the findings back to the literature on climate grief and anxiety and youth climate activism.

AUTHOR BIOS

Lilian Barraclough is a PhD student in Social Practice and Transformational Change at the University of Guelph. She holds a Master of Environmental Studies from Dalhousie University, and a BSc. In Environmental Science from the University of King's College. Her research focuses are: the mental and emotional impacts of climate change on youth climate activists, youth engagement and youth-adult allyship in climate organizing, and intersectional climate justice policies and practices. In addition to her academic background, she is a longtime youth climate justice organizer and activist and has been involved in youth-led and youth-serving environmental and climate organizations for over a decade.

Dr. Zurba’s (she/her) work focuses on projects that are developed and implemented in collaboration with communities. She has worked with Indigenous and other equity-deserving communities in Canada and other regions on projects focusing on co-management of species, protected areas, forest tenure, water regulation, food sovereignty, health promotion and wellbeing, and land-based learning and curriculum development. Her work has also contributes to public discussion on what “reconciliation” means in Canada, as well as the development of principles for equitable research in universities and other institutions. Dr. Zurba maintains a role in global policy development as Chair for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Commission for Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP) Theme for Governance, Equity, and Rights (TGER). Lilian Barraclough (she/they), MES, BSc., EPt.PhD Student - Social Practice and Transformational Change, University of Guelph

Metalinguistic Awareness of BAG-raising

Lisa Sullivan, Oklahoma State University

Research on metalinguistic awareness (MLA) of sociophonetic features suggests that differences in MLA may be associated with the markedness of dialects or features, and individual participants’ production, perception or dialect region (Johnstone & Kiesling, 2008; Ruch, 2018). MLA exists on a scale ranging from no awareness of different variants at one end, through increasing awareness of variants and their social meanings, to complete awareness at the other. MLA is related to Preston’s (1996) model of folk linguistic awareness which includes 4 modes: availability, accuracy, detail, and control. Availability is the most closely linked to MLA.

/æg/-raising refers to the process whereby English speakers from some regions of North America raise (and front) /æ/ before /g/ (see Freeman (2021) for a summary of research on this feature). Not much is known about the MLA of this feature, though anecdotal evidence suggests that some speakers distinguish the raised and unraised variants of /æ/ while others do not, and that this difference varies in relation to production. That is, non-raisers are aware of two distinct variants whereas /æg/-raisers aren’t. The current study attempts to systematically verify anecdotal evidence of the MLA of /æg/-raising and investigate its relation to dialect region and exposure through a series of tasks designed to tap into MLA.

61 native speakers of North American English (33 female, 28 male; age 18-72) completed the study. Participants were divided into 3 groups based on dialect region and exposure to /æg/-raising (RAISE - /æg/-raisers, NREX - non-raisers with exposure, NRNX - non-raisers without exposure) based on their dialect region and exposure to /æg/-raising. In Task 1, they were given North American regions and asked to describe the accent features of those regions. In Task 2, they were given words targeting sociophonetic features (including /æg/-raising) and asked to describe the variation in their pronunciation. In Task 3, they heard speakers saying words with those features and were asked to indicate where they thought the speaker was from. The audio stimuli used were natural productions of these features recorded by native speakers. All questions were open response and scored for accuracy.

Results for Tasks 2 and 3 are summarized in the figure.

Task 1 was set aside as only 2 participants identified /æg/-raising in this task. Non-raisers had higher scores than raisers overall. This effect is driven by Task 2 where raisers had significantly lower scores than non-raisers. This is consistent with the anecdotal evidence, in that it finds speakers from non-raising regions have more awareness of /æg/-raising than those from raising regions. The results also suggest that it is possible to quantify MLA. Being able to do so would allow MLA to be used as an independent variable in quantitative sociolinguistic work.

References

Freeman, V. (2021). Vague eggs and tags: Prevelar merger in Seattle. Language Variation and Change, 33(1), 57-80.

Johnstone, B., & Kiesling, S. F. (2008). Indexicality and experience: Exploring the meanings of/aw/-monophthongization in Pittsburgh. Journal of sociolinguistics, 12(1), 5–33.

Preston, D. R. (1996). Whaddayaknow?: The modes of folk linguistic awareness. Language awareness, 5(1), 40–74.

Ruch, H. (2018). The role of acoustic distance and sociolinguistic knowledge in dialect identification. Frontiers in psychology, 9(818), 1-15.

Ri, ŝli, and ĝi: Neopronouns and variation in Esperanto gender-inclusive language

Griffin Cahill & Katie Slemp, York University, Toronto, Canada.

This paper examines the development and use of neopronouns and gender-inclusive language through the case study of Esperanto. As a constructed language yet counting a healthy community of speakers including a limited number of native speakers, Esperanto presents a unique case through which to examine gendered language attitudes. Starting with Lakoff’s (1975) analysis of language use by women in her social circle, sociolinguists began to examine the correlation of language and gender. Spender (1980) argued that much of the English language reflected the social power that men had/have, where language more often reflected men’s experience of the world than women’s. Subsequently, Eckert’s (1989) examination of phonological data in the Northern Cities vowel shift demonstrated that variationist sociolinguists’ use of demographic categories (like gender) has often been overly conflated with social meaning.

The central text of the Esperantist movement is Fundamento de Esperanto (Zamenhof, 1905). At the first world Esperanto Congress, the Fundamento was recognized as the sole and eternal authority over Esperanto, with modifications to that text being prohibited (Schor, 2016). Following a proposal by Zamenhof himself, the Akademio de Esperanto was founded (Historio de la Akademio, 2017), which is modeled on other national bodies with the intent of regulating language and language use within the lines set out in Fundamento.

As per Fundamento, nouns are prescriptively unmarked masculine gender for animate referents, with the affix -ino to denote female. For pronouns, Esperanto possesses two that intrinsically denote singular masculine and feminine animates, li and ŝi respectively, plus a gender non-specific plural ili. There are two further pronouns, ĝi and oni, the former being singular and non-specific in referent (equivalent to the English it) and the latter being indefinite (equivalent to the French on). Since the publication of Fundamento, however, a number of neopronouns and other gender-neutral language changes have been proposed, ri being the most prominent of these.  

Perception studies have shown that there are consequences to the use of gender-exclusive language (e.g., in job advertisements; Stout & Dasgupta, 2011). And Sczesny et al. (2015) demonstrate in their research that language-use intentions are tied to sexist attitudes and ideologies.

This paper presents select changes which have occurred in Esperanto despite its rigidity, with a particular focus on riismo, and other gender-based language reform movements (Gobbo, 2017; Kramer, 2020), and analyzes attitudes towards these changes as presented in online spaces. Ultimately, we show that the conflict between language prescription and change transcends language boundaries, including even la lingvo internacia.

References

Eckert, Penelope. (1989). The whole woman: Sex and gender differences in variation. Language Variation and Change, 1, 245-267.

Gobbo, Federico. (2017). “Beyond the nation state? The ideology of the Esperanto movement between neutralism and multilingualism.” Social Inclusion 5:38-47.

Historio de la Akademio (2017, Feb. 18). Akademio de Esperanto.  https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/akademio/index.php?title=Historio_de_la_Akademio .

Kramer, Markos. (2020, May 12). “La efektiva uzado de seksneŭtralaj pronomoj laŭ empiria  esplorstudo.” Lingva Kritiko.   https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de- seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/.

Lakoff, Robin. (1975). Language and Woman’s Place. Language in Society, 2: 1 (Apr., 1973), pp. 45-80.

Schor, Esther (2016). Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Sczesny, S., Moser, F., & Wood, W. (2015). Beyond Sexist Beliefs: How Do People Decide to Use Gender-Inclusive Language? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(7), 943-954.

Spender, Dale. (1980). Man Made Language. Routledge & Kegan Paul.Stout J. G., Dasgupta N. (2011). When he doesn’t mean you: Gender-exclusive language as ostracism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3, 757-769.

Zamenhoff, L. L. (1905). Fundamento de Esperanto. Paris: Hachette.

AUTHOR BIOS

Griffin Cahill is a PhD candidate in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at York University, Toronto. He holds an MA in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from York University, a MA in European Studies from the University of Guelph, and a BA (Honours with Distinction) in European Studies and Diaspora and Transnational Studies. His research primarily focuses on the phonetics and phonologies of indigenous, minority and other languages undergoing revitalization. 

Katie Slemp is a PhD candidate in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at York University, Toronto. She holds an MA in Hispanic Studies from The University of Western Ontario, and a BA (Spanish) and BSc (Biochemistry) with a minor in Religion from Calvin University. Her research focuses on verbal hygiene, specifically gender-inclusive language reform in Romance, and language variation and change.

A Tolerance Principle analysis of rules for grammatical gender assignment in the acquisition of French as a first language

Maureen Scheidnes, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Applying the Tolerance Principle (Yang, 2016) to Icelandic, Björnsdóttir (2021) showed that certain suffixes formed the basis for productive rules for gender assignment. The basic assumption is that if the rule occurs in the input without too many exceptions (e, the threshold for which is established by the formula in (4) where N is the number of candidates for a rule), then it is computationally advantageous for the learner to form a rule. However, if there are too many exceptions, then item-by-item learning is more effective.

Compared to other Romance languages, French nouns present less consistent cues as to gender assignment. This has led to debate about whether French-learning children are assigning gender on a rule or piecemeal basis (see Meisel, 2018; Ayoun, 2018). If rule-based learning is occurring, it is unclear what the basis for this would be. Prior researchers have suggested the rules in (1-3).

(1) masculine default, (2) final syllable type (i.e., open syllable = masculine, closed = feminine), (3) final 1-2 segments (e.g., words ending in /ʃ/ are feminine). (4)e≤θN whereθN =N/lnN The current study seeks to examine the extent to which any of the rules in (1-3) could form a productive rule for gender assignment in French per the Tolerance Principle (TP).

This research question was addressed using (a) nouns produced by caregivers in the Lyon corpus (Demuth & Tremblay, 2008) and (b) CDI data (Frank et al., 2016). With respect to (a), determiner-noun sequences with overt gender marking were extracted from the caregivers’ speech of all five L1 French-learning children. Nouns with natural gender (e.g., maman, papa) were excluded. Nouns were ranked by frequency of use and the top 500 were analyzed. For (b), all nouns from Words & Sentences (European French) were ranked by the percentage of children who were reported to have produced them by 24 months. Nouns with natural gender were excluded, leaving 323.

In order to simulate development, the formula in (4) was applied to an increasing number of nouns: for (a-b): 50, 100, 200, 300, and for (a): 400 and 500. Applying the masculine default rule, the threshold for the number of tolerable exceptions was exceeded at every stage. The open syllable = masculine rule led to a tolerable number of exceptions, but the closed syllable = feminine rule did not. While the number of nouns under analysis was too small to allow for a robust examination of each individual final segment, nouns ending in most final obstruents or nasals were reliably feminine at most stages. However, nouns ending in liquids consistently exceeded the number of exceptions. Findings for both sets of data were very similar, despite differences in lexical items. These findings suggest that the open syllable = masculine rule is the most robustly productive rule. The implications of these findings for acquisition of French in other contexts will be discussed.

Érosion et variation de l’italien parlé au sein de la communauté italienne de Montréal

Fabio Scetti, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and CIRM / McGill University Cette communication vise à décrire le lien entre pratiques langagières et représentations des langues au sein de la communauté italienne de Montréal, QC (Canada). L’objectif principal étant d’illustrer certains traits d’érosion des formes en italien parlé par les descendants de cette migration et observer l’influence des dialectes qui sont encore présentes dans les pratiques langagières, de nos jours, au sein de la communauté.

Le projet de recherche s’inscrit dans une étude sociolinguistique plus large qui se focalise sur le lien entre identité ethnolinguistique et pratiques langagières dans un contexte multilingue comme celui de Montréal, au contact de deux langues dominantes : le français et l’anglais. Les questions linguistiques et l’importance des politiques linguistiques au Québec, particulièrement en lien avec la scolarisation des enfants issus de la migration, doivent être considérées afin d’analyser comment une langue d’héritage se transmet d’une génération à l’autre et quel est son rôle dans le processus de construction identitaire du groupe.

Des recherches de terrain, menées entre 2011 et 2023, ont permis l’établissement d’un corpus multilingue – fait d’observations ethnographiques de la vie de quartier et d’environ 100 entretiens semi-directifs enregistrés. Notre analyse sociolinguistique des pratiques langagières nous a permis de mettre en lumière certains phénomènes de contact de langues, ainsi que certains traits d’érosion de la variété d’italien montréalais que Villata avait nommé d’italianese (Villata, 2010).

Nous avons ensuite analysé le rôle fondamental des pratiques langagières et le statut de l’italien à travers les idéologies et les représentations autour du « vero italiano » (le vrai italien). L’analyse linguistique et discursive que nous proposons permet, enfin, de mieux comprendre comment les pratiques langagières deviennent une manifestation d’appartenance au groupe et surtout comment l’italien conserve son rôle de marqueur de l’identité de la communauté dans le temps. Mots-clés : Communauté italienne, Montréal, Contact de Langues, Variation, Langue et identité.

AUTHOR BIO

Fabio Scetti is a Professor of Linguistics at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and Associated Researcher at CIRM / McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He holds a PhD in Linguistics and his research interests are: Sociolinguistics, Language Contact, Language Practices, Language and Identity and Migration. He also participates in two groups of research in Lexicography of Endangered Minority Languages focusing mainly on the Northern Italian regions.

The Phonetics and Phonology of Twin Vowels in Esahie: A Case Study

Solomon Owusu Amoh, Eotvos Lorand University & Michigan State University

This paper presents an in-depth case study on the phonetic and phonological phenomena of twin vowels in hiatus in Esahie, a lesser-studied language of Ghana. Through the analysis of speech data from native speakers, we investigate the phonological behavior of these twin vowels, emphasizing the processes of vowel deletion.

The presence of two contiguous vowels of identical quality (underlyingly) poses a challenge in determining which vowel undergoes deletion. Utilizing an autosegmental theoretical framework, our findings reveal a complex interaction between phonetic and phonological factors that elucidate aspects of the language's sound system, contributing to broader linguistic theory. Specifically, we observe that the deletion of one vowel in hiatus is influenced by variables such as syllable position, tonal patterns, and morphological context.

As noted by Clements (1986), in Luganda, the first vowel in a sequence typically undergoes deletion, allowing the second vowel to expand and occupy its position. However, in the Akan languages, the principle of compensatory lengthening does not apply. By incorporating Akan tonology, we hypothesize that the distinction between which of the two identical vowels is deleted can be attributed to the contrastive tones they carry. A HLH tonal melody at the lexical level consistently results in a HL!H (downstepped high) melody at the surface level. Contrary to thesituation in Luganda, the downstepping hypothesis suggests that it is the second vowel that isdeleted, rather than the first. This works in both Esahie, Fante and Nzema as far this research is concern. This deletion leads to a floating tone, causing the high tone that precedes it to exhibit a lower pitch value than the preceding high tone.

Keywords: Esahie, phonetics, phonology, twin vowels, hiatus, vowel deletion, syllable structure.

References

Casali, R. (2011). Hiatus Resolution. The Blackwell companion to phonology. van Oostendorp,

Marc, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume and Keren Rice (eds). Blackwell Publishing.

Casali, R. (1996). Resolving hiatus. (Doctoral Dissertation) University of California, Los Angeles.

Clements, G. N. (1986). Compensatory lengthening and consonant gemination in Luganda. In: Studies in compensatory lengthening, pp 37-77. Edited by Leo Wetzels and Engin Sezer. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

AUTHOR BIO

Solomon Owusu Amoh is a PhD candidate at the Eotvos Lorand University and a fixed-term tutor at Michigan State University, specializing in Phonetics and Phonology. His dissertation hovers around strategies Esahie ‘Sehwi’ resorts to when filling hiatus. He is enthusiastic to participate in this conference.

Positional variation of vowels in Jersey Norman French as a result of language contact with English

Jackson Wolf, Georgetown University

Jersey Norman French (known as Jèrrias by its speakers) is an understudied dialect of French that is spoken on the island of Jersey in the English Channel. The existing body of research on JNF (Spence 1960, Liddicoat 1994, Jones 2001)  is either sociolinguistic in nature or preservationist as the language tends towards  extinction due to the dominating presence of English. These analyses are descriptive in nature and are subject to rule ordering issues.  I present a re-analysis of existing data from these principal sources to analyze the effects of vowel changes under duress of English interference. Using an Optimality Theory approach, I demonstrate the interesting differences between JNF and Metropolitan French better captured through a system of ranked constraints. These effects include diphthongization of /e ẽ o ø/- the clearest influence of English- rounding of /e/ and /ẽ/  after labial consonants, vowel breaking of /u/ into /wo/ before coronal consonants, and a chain shift of the front vowels before nasal consonants.   

AUTHOR BIO

Jackson Wolf is a PhD student of Theoretical Linguistics at Georgetown University. His areas of interest are in phonetics, phonology, and morphology. He is interested in the way speakers manipulate existing outputs to encode new meaning. Examples include language games, non-concatenative morphology, and reduplication. He is also interested in tone and pitch-accent systems and how these autosegmental features are assigned. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Linguistics and French Language & Literature at Oakland University in Rochester, MI, researching the assignment of the English irregular past tense as well as translating regional songs of endangered languages in France into French. He earned his Master's degree in Linguistics at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI, constructing an algorithm to derive the possible transformations in Verlan.

Clipping as a Morphological Process in Akan

Jonas Agyemfra,  St. Ambrose College of Education, Ghana & Job Anane, Memorial University of Newfoundland,Canada

This study examines clipping as a morphological process in Akan. There has been indepthstudies on Akan word formation processes like reduplication, affixation, compounding, etc in the literature but no attention has been paid to clipping as a word formation process in Akan. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify clipping as one of the productive ways through which new words are formed in Akan. With this, the study investigates the types of words that clipping affects in Akan, the types of clipping, whether clipping is an arbitrary exercise or a constraint-based phenomenon in Akan and finally, carry out a constraint-based analysis with Optimality Theory (the underpinning theoretical framework) to help buttress the claim by Kager(1999) that Optimality Theory (henceforth, OT) goes beyond just a theory used in the domain of phonology only, but used in other linguistic domains, which in this case would be used to cater for clipping as a morphological process under morphology. The study is situated in the qualitative type of research design, as it seeks to describe the operationality of clipping in Akan. With the use of interview (semi-structured) and observation (full and participant), data is sought from renowned linguists and other natives or speakers of Akan. With the preliminary data sought so far, the study brings to light that nouns lend themselves to be clipped in Akan, which it is anticipated that other word classes may be found at the end of the study. Again, Akan clipped words are polysyllabic in nature, with a minimum of two syllables – in fact, some clipped word forms in Akan are even made up of four syllables. Also, fore clipping, back clipping and medial clipping are the types of clipping identified to be operational in Akan so far. It has also been observed that clipping is not an arbitrary exercise or done haphazardly but a constraint-basedphenomenon, which in this case, the clipped word forms are formalized in OT to show that there is adherence to the phonotactics of the Akan language, especially in the area of its syllable structure. 

References

Aronoff, M. (1997). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (3rd Ed.). New York: St. Martin’s ​       Press.

Crystal, D. (1999). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (2nd Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge ​​       University Press.

Lewis, D. (2004). A Constraint Based Analysis of Nominal Clips in Yoruba. In K.Owolabi & A. ​​     Dasylva (Eds.). Forms and Functions of English and Indigenous Languages in Nigeria  (pp. 296-312). Ibadan: Group Publishers.

Kager, R. (1999). Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University.

McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. (1994). The Emergence of the Unmarked Optimality in Prosodic ​​    Morphology. Retrieved from: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/linguist_faculty_pubs/18/

Oraibi, H.H. (2021). A Contrastive Study of Clipping in English and Arabic. Retrieved from: ​​       https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351194296

Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative ​​      Grammar. ROA Version, 8/2002.

Veisbergs, A. (1999). Clipping in English and Latvian. Mickiewicz: Adam Mickiewicz

Yule, G. (1985). The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

AUTHOR BIOS

Jonas Agyemfra holds Master of Philosophy in Ghanaian Language Studies and Bachelor of Arts in Twi Education with English from the University of Education, Winneba. He has several years of experience in teaching the Akan Language. His research interests include; Phonology, Morphology, Syntax and Sociolinguistics of the Akan Language.

Job Anane holds Master of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics and Bachelor of Arts in Ghanaian Language (Twi Education) from the University of Education, Winneba. He has several years of experience in teaching the Akan Language prior to his studies at The Memorial University of Newfoundland. His research interests include; Morphosyntax and Morphosemantics of the Akan Language.

L’alternance des auxiliaires au seuil du XXe siècle : L’exemple du nord-est du Nouveau-Brunswick

Basile Roussel (Université de Moncton, campus de Shippagan), Jeffrey Lamontagne (Indiana University)   et Florence Trudeau (Université de Sherbrooke)

L’alternance entre les auxiliaires avoir (j’ai déménagé) et être (je suis déménagé) constitue un phénomène grammatical documenté au sein des variétés de français contemporain. En français acadien, l’auxiliaire avoir atteint des taux d’emploi très élevés avec les verbes permettant l’alternance, soit entre 80% dans le nord-est du Nouveau-Brunswick (N.-B.) (Roussel, 2016) et 98% à l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard (King et Nadasdi, 2001), alors que sa fréquence est beaucoup plus variable en français laurentien parlé à Montréal (33%) (Sankoff et Thibault, 1977) et à Ottawa-Hull (66%) (Willis, 2000). La prépondérance de l’auxiliaire avoir en français acadien constitue-t-elle un phénomène récent? Quels patrons linguistiques régissaient sa sélection à un état antérieur? Cette communication cible le français acadien parlé dans le nord-est du N.-B. et vise à documenter la structure de la variation au seuil du XXe siècle. 

602 occurrences ont été extraites à partir d’un corpus auprès de personnes nées entre 1882 et 1909 dans plusieurs régions du nord-est du N.-B. (Beaulieu et Cichocki, 2014). Ces occurrences ont été analysées avec le logiciel R afin d’effectuer une régression logistique à effets mixtes et des arbres de régression.

Le taux d’emploi de l’auxiliaire avoir (82,1%, N=494/602) se rapproche de celui observé chez des individus nés plus récemment (Roussel, 2016). En général, l’auxiliaire avoir est favorisé lorsque le sujet est animé plutôt qu’inanimé (marginalement; p = 0,0795) ou impersonnel (p = 0,0039). De plus, la présence d’un adjoint postverbal favorise également l’auxiliaire avoir (p < 0,0001). 

Une analyse plus approfondie révèle que ce sont surtout les taux d’emploi et non le conditionnement qui varient entre les régions, tel qu’illustré par les arbres de régression. Ces arbres regroupent prioritairement les régions de Pointe-Alexandre et Shippagan (distincts de la région de Lamèque) lorsque le sujet est animé, mais Shippagan et la région de Lamèque (à l’exclusion de Pointe-Alexandre) lorsque le sujet est inanimé. Cependant, la présence d’intervenants syntaxiques (négation et autres adverbes) augmente la probabilité d’employer avoir à Shippagan (p = 0,0047), mais pas dans la région de Lamèque. 

Les résultats témoignent d’une uniformité importante mais non négligeable où il y aurait eu trois pôles dialectaux dans le nord-est du N.-B. : Shippagan, Lamèque et Pointe-Alexandre. Ces régions se seraient comportées de manière globalement similaire, mais avec des différences subtiles entre les grammaires, soit lorsqu’il n’y a ni un sujet animé ni un adjoint postverbal ou soit lorsqu’il y a un intervenant syntaxique. Nous discuterons des similitudes et des différences qui surgissent entre les différentes régions considérées ici afin de contextualiser ces résultats avec ce qui a déjà été documenté sur cette variable.

Références

Beaulieu, Louise et Wladyslaw Cichocki (2014). Les formes comme/comme que en français acadien du nord-est du Nouveau- Brunswick : Variation synchronique et diachronique. Dans Actes du congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne de linguistique, sous la direction de Teddiman, L., 2-15. 

King, Ruth et Terry Nadasdi (2001). How auxiliaries be/have in Acadian French. Dans Papers from the Twenty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association, sous la direction de Patricia Balcom, Louise Beaulieu et Gisèle Chevalier, 61-72. Moncton: Université de Moncton.

Roussel, Basile (2016). J’ai therefore je suis : A quantitative analysis of auxiliary alternation in 

Acadian French. Communication présentée au colloque New Ways of Analyzing Variation, Simon Fraser University.

Sankoff, Gillian et Pierrette Thibault (1977). L’alternance entre les auxiliaires avoir et être en français parlé à Montréal. Langue française, 34 : 81-108. 

Willis, Lauren A. (2000). Être ou ne plus être?: Auxiliary alternation in Ottawa-Hull French. Mémoire de maîtrise, Université d’Ottawa.

Contact information: Basile Roussel, Ph. D. (il/lui, he/him) basile.roussel@umoncton.ca 

La recension des travaux en linguistique acadienne : Un bilan diachronique et rétrospectif

Laurence Arrighi, Basile Roussel, Isabelle Violette et Alexandra Snider, Centre de recherche sur la langue en Acadie, Université de Moncton

Dans cette communication, nous proposons de brosser un bilan diachronique et rétrospectif des tendances théoriques priorisées au sein du champ d’études qu’est la linguistique acadienne. Notre démarche s’inscrit dans la continuité des efforts initiés par Edward Gesner au milieu des années 1980 avec la publication d’une bibliographie annotée regroupant plus de 400 titres de travaux scientifiques tels que des articles et des chapitres publiés jusque-là (Gesner, 1986). Pour ce faire, nous avons recensé et catégorisé plus de 500 travaux publiés entre 1986 et 2022 afin d’offrir un état des lieux plus de trente ans après la publication de la bibliographie de Gesner et d’identifier d’éventuels besoins pour la construction du savoir en milieu acadien. Notre analyse nous a permis de procéder à une catégorisation des travaux qui reflète adéquatement les tendances théoriques qui ont été priorisées au cours des trente dernières années. À titre d’exemple, les travaux en sociolinguistique ont été catégorisés séparément selon s’ils appartiennent au cadre variationniste ou à celui de l’analyse des représentations linguistiques. Procéder ainsi nous a permis de rendre compte de plusieurs tendances au cours des trente dernières années, telles qu’une diminution du nombre de travaux portant sur la description du système linguistique (de 46 à 22%) et une augmentation de ceux portant sur l’analyse des représentations linguistiques (de 15% à 37%). De plus, nous avons constaté des disparités géographiques au niveau des terrains d’enquête choisis avec une prépondérance de certains terrains, tels que le sud-est du Nouveau-Brunswick, au détriment de d’autres. Nous tenterons avec cette communication de mettre en évidence l'évolution des centres d'intérêt des linguistes acadianistes au fil du temps et de contextualiser cette évolution de la linguistique acadienne dans l’écologie spécifique dans laquelle elle a évolué.

A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Murals on Former U. S. A Embassy in Tehran

Kourosh Karimi, Farhangian University of Sanandaj

Keywords: Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, Transitivity System, Representational

The present paper is a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Murals on outer walls of Former USA Embassy in Tehran, Iranian capital. This work drawn upon Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006, [1996]) visual grammar and Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social semiotic model aims to interrogate the visual representation of two main social actors, namely Iran and USA to reveal the hidden message and ideology behind the scene. The most prominent message remind the tensions among two countries beside some post-revolution events which leads to bilateral hostility through the application of Social semiotic Analysis in form of Verbal Translation of representational level. The corresponding tables include social actors conceptuality or narativity of the shown processes specified, where the murals Numbers 6,7,8,9 narrate a story and the rest; 5, 10, 11 represent concepts about American history and its statuesque. In second phase gaze, angle/ point of view and social distance at the interactive level taken into consideration. At last Iranian participants represent on right side, observe the diplomatic formalities, very conscious about situation and taken actions, but American on left, untrustworthy wing in negotiations, one who committed assassinations and terrors during history with strong imperialistic tendencies but fragile in state and waning military power.

AUTHOR BIO

Dr. Kourosh Karimi (1986) is an adjunct Professor of English language and linguistics at Farhangian University of Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, Iran.

Dr. Karimi holds a Ph.D. in theoretical linguistics. His primary research areas include minority languages in Iran with focus on Kurdish (his native language). He has published some articles in Iranian top peer-reviewed journals such as Research in Western Iranian Languages and Dialects (RWILD) and Journal of Linguistics and Khorasan Dialects. In addition to cited works, he is actively involved in researches and studies on sociolinguistics in minority communities, language planning, critical discourse analysis and transactions among power and language as his main research area and interest.

At this conference, he will present his latest research on the applications of multimodal discourse analysis on visuals. Attendees can look forward to gaining insights into innovative techniques of the extension of CDA studies into the nonverbal forms of communication and meaning making resources behind.

Le français laurentien et son substrat breton

Stéphane Goyette, Acadia University

On comprend bien la genèse du français laurentien (FL): il s’agit de français parisien aristocratique (FPA), sans que les autres parlers d’oïl y aient contribué (Morin 2002). Le FL diffère du français acadien (FA), dont nombre de traits remontant aux parler d’oïl de la région du Poitou-Saintonge, comme l’avais déjà reconnu Massignon (1962).

Certains traits du FL partagés avec d’autres français d’outre-mer (autres que le FA) et inconnus du FPA, toutefois, semblent indiquer que l’ancêtre du FL et d’autres formes de français d’outre-mer devait avoir certains traits propres inconnus du FPC.

Un de ces traits fut découvert par Robert Chaudenson (voir par exemple Chaudenson 1992 book), qui a montré qu’un parler FL, celui de l’Îles-aux-Coudres (ICF), tel que décrit par Seutin 1975, a en partage avec le créole réunionnais (CR) une division des tâches entre le futur simple et le futur périphérique (avec le verbe aller) : le premier ne s’utilisant que dans les phrases négatives, et le second dans les phrases affirmatives :

La première année i (=le bois) sèchera pas, i va plutôt faire des pousses (Seutin op.cit.: 149) Si certains chercheurs (Nicolas 2012) ont découvert une division semblable des deux futurs en français hexagonal moderne (FHM), il s’agit d’une tendance faible, qui tranche avec la division stricte des deux futurs en CR et en ICF. Qui plus est, pour certains chercheurs la négation ne jouerait aucun rôle de ce type en FHM (Villeneuve et Comeau 2016).

Le but de la présentation est de proposer une explication à ce trait partagé par (entre autres) le FL et le CR: une influence bretonne (Données bretonnes tirées de Ternes 2011). En effet, le breton oppose une flexion synthétique et une flexion analytique dans son système verbal, la première des deux étant obligatoire dans (entre autres) les phrases négatives. On propose d’y voir l’origine de ce même trait en FL et en CR. On examinera aussi d’autres traits dans différents français d’outre-mer qui remonteraient au breton.

Pour conclure, on propose que différents français d’outre-mer, dont le créole réunionnais et le français laurentien, doivent certaines particularités à une influence de la langue bretonne.

Bibliographie

Chaudenson, Robert. 1992. Des îles, des hommes, des langues. Langues créoles, cultures créoles. Paris : L’Harmattan.

Massignon, Geneviève. 1962. Les parlers français d’Acadie. Enquête linguistique. Paris : Librairie Klincksieck.

Morin, Yves-Charles. 2002. « Les premiers immigrants et la prononciation du français au Québec ». Revue québécoise de linguistique. Volume 31(1) : 13-143.

Roberts, Nicholas S. 2012. “Future Temporal Reference in Hexagonal French”. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 18(2): 97-106.

Seutin, Émile. 1975. Description grammaticale du parler de l’Île-aux-coudres. Montréal : Les presses de l’Université de Montréal.

Ternes, Elmar. 2011. « Neubretonisch ». In: Ternes, Elmar (Ed.), Brythonic Celtic/Britannisches Keltisch. Bremen: Hempen Verlag: 431-529.

Villeneuve, Anne-José et Philip Comeau. 2016. “Breaking down temporal distance in a Continental French variety: Future temporal reference in Vimeu”. Revue canadienne de linguistique 61.3: 314-336.

From Classroom to Community: Leveraging Translation Competence to Address Ecological Sustainability

Christof Sulzer & Marie Orieux, National Autonomous University of Mexico, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Considering the urgent need for sustainable development to safeguard human life and protect the environment, the undergraduate degree in translation at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, has committed to advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by incorporating a series of interdisciplinary subjects into its curriculum, such as gender equality, community development through cultural awareness, and ecological sustainability.

To address the persistent issue of water scarcity in Central Mexico, the initial focus has been placed on SDG 6: clean water and sanitation for all. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to teaching translation aimed at creating environmental awareness among students, as supported by Cronin (2017), Kölling and Lieb (2023), and Dasca and Cerarols (2024), this study incorporated texts on topics ranging from eco-translation and the visibility of nature to responsible water consumption and transboundary water conflicts into various courses and seminars. Grounded in a social constructivist worldview (Creswell, 2017) and based on a qualitative case study design (Yin, 2018), the research data indicates that participants were encouraged to become proactive agents of change and advocates for conscientious water use.

This talk aims to showcase cutting-edge ideas that combine the commitment to contributing to SDG 6 with the development of translation competence and demonstrates how instructors can purposefully incorporate SDGs into their teaching methodologies. Additionally, it explores the use of innovative translation tasks that challenge the traditional boundaries of university education to help educators build dynamic learning environments and foster a sense of interdisciplinary community that integrates scientific, linguistic, and cultural dimensions. In particular, three student-led projects will be presented: the translation of a board game from French to Spanish designed to gain knowledge of water conservation at the elementary school level; the creation of a bilingual English-Spanish translation memory for a local NGO that provides affordable, clean water access to at-risk communities; and the construction of a water filter using terminology acquired from translating German texts published by the UN.

As we witness a growing scarcity of water not only in Central Mexico but on a world-wide level, this presentation seeks to promote an innovative and efficient use of environmentally conscious teaching practices in translator education, encouraging instructors to embrace and integrate SDGs into their course design.

References

Creswell, J. W. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). McGraw Hill.

Cronin, M. (2017). Eco-translation: Translation and ecology in the age of the Anthropocene. Routledge.

Dasca, M., & Cerarols, R. (2024). Translation studies and ecology: Mapping the possibilities of a new emerging field. Routledge.

Kölling, A., & Lieb, M. (2023). Teaching eco-translation. English Text Construction, 15, 175-195.

Yin, R. K. (2018). Case study research. Design and methods (6th ed.). SAGE Publications.

AUTHOR BIOS

Christof Sulzer ( sulzer@enes.unam.mx ) is a full-time professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He pursued his education in Switzerland, Mexico and Spain, earning a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Alicante. As a sworn translator, he has several years of experience in professional translation and has taught translation as well as foreign language courses at different universities throughout Mexico. His research, published in various peer-reviewed journals, focusses on student-centered curriculum design in both translation and foreign language contexts, self-directed learning, and dialogic teaching as possible approaches towards educational instruction in Mexico.

Marie Orieux ( morieux@enes.unam.mx)  is a full-time professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she teaches French to Spanish translation workshops and Spanish grammar courses in the translation program. After obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in Translation and a Master’s degree in Teaching French as a Foreign Language in France, she settled in Mexico and has specialized in literary and humanistic translation. With fourteen years of teaching experience, she focuses her educational approach on the use of didactic games and the development of student autonomy.

Remarks On The Phonemicity Of Some Selected Akan Consonant Segments

Isaac Nyarko, Pazmany Peter Catholic University

This paper is a re-examination of the phonemicity of some consonantal segments in Akan, namely the alveolar lateral, the labial-palatal and alveo-palatal consonants against the backdropthat the above segments are in an ongoing phonemic controversy.  In this contention, Schachter (1962), Schachter & Fromkin (1968), Eshun (1993), Abakah (2006), have all excluded the labial-palatal and the alveo-palatal consonants; [ ɕɥ, ʨɥ, ʥɥ, ɕ, ʨ, ʥ] from the phonemic inventory of Akan. On the alveolar lateral [l], Andoh-Kumi (1977), Mensah (1987), Schachter (1962) and Schachter & Fromkin (1968) described it as a borrowed segment that has its origin from loanword phonology though Abakah (2006) challenges this assertion. In this paper, an argument is advanced to reinforce the position that the lateral has a Proto-Akan origin and traced its root to the Kwa language family. Though the lateral [ l] is in free variation with [r, d], yet the paper demonstrates that on the back of sonority at word final position as asserted by Abakah (2005), the lateral alternates with only [r] at word final position but with [d, r] at word initial and medial position following some phonological conditions. Additionally, the study evaluates the degree of phonemicity in the palatal diagraphs to the conclusion that the labial-palatal segments [ɕɥ, ʨɥ,ʥɥ] and the alveo-palatal [ʨ, ʥ] are presently phonemic in Akan whereas the alveo-palatals fricative [ɕ] still remains phonetic  

Keywords:  Akan, phonemicity, free variation, labial palatals, lateral, alveo-palatal  

AUTHOR BIO

Isaac Nyarko ( nsempii97 AT gmail DOT com  ) is a PhD. student at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Budapest Hungary. Prior to his studentship, he used to be a lecturer at the Language Department in Methodist College of Education, Ghana. His research interest is in phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax. Consequently, he has published works in Akan child language phonology, non-native speakers` phonology, zero morphology, syntax -semantics of Akan ideophones in reputable journals and other papers under review for publication. He is currently working on a project in Akan phonemicity and circumfixation.