1 / 30

Overview

“ Geiriau Saesneg yn slipio i fewn ”: Investigating the integration of English-origin verbs in Welsh Jonathan Stammers 8 March 2010, Bilingualism Centre. Overview. The Siarad corpus Code-switching vs. borrowing controversy Poplack approach: “Nonce Borrowing” English-origin verbs in Welsh

vicky
Download Presentation

Overview

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. “Geiriau Saesneg yn slipio i fewn”:Investigating the integration of English-origin verbs in WelshJonathan Stammers8 March 2010, Bilingualism Centre

  2. Overview • The Siarad corpus • Code-switching vs. borrowing controversy • Poplack approach: “Nonce Borrowing” • English-origin verbs in Welsh • Analysis: Soft mutation on verbs (2 attempts) • Dealing with word frequency effects • Summary

  3. The Siarad Corpus • 40 hours of Welsh/English bilingual speech recorded & fully transcribed in CHAT format • 69 Naturalistic recordings of informal conversations, typically between 2 speakers, & 30 minutes long; • 151 speakers of varying age, sex and background • 456,266 words (tokens) • Every word tagged for language • Recordings & transcription done by project team (Elen Robert, Peredur Davies, Marika Fusser & myself; Margaret Deuchar – project director) • Freely available to researchers online

  4. Examples in Siarad: Borrowings? • ond mae o mor cheesy mae’n funny yndy ? • “but it’s so cheesy it’s funny isn’t it?” [Fusser29:217] • hynna ’dy’r examdw i gorod eistedd fory • “that’s the exam I have to sit tomorrow.” [Stammers6: 1273]

  5. Code-switching or Borrowing? Criteria: • (Muysken 2000: 73) • Additional Criteria suggested: • “Core/Cultural” distinction:“Cultural” items are not switches • Flagging: self-correction, repetition, hesitation or stammering flags up a switch • Dictionary

  6. Poplack’s approach • Code-switching and borrowing can be distinguished absolutely • “Free morpheme constraint”  no word-internal switching • Variationist approach: Comparing morpho-syntactic patterning of donor-language items with native items • “Nonce Borrowing hypothesis”

  7. The Nonce borrowing hypothesis • “One of the goals of these studies is to develop operational criteria for distinguishing loanwords from codeswitches. Thus, for the Puerto Rican data, a working hypothesis was that loanwords from English were phonologicaly, morphologically, and syntactically integrated into Spanish, were recurrent and widespread, and that an English word not satisfying these criteria could only occur in English monolingual discourse or in code-switches from Spanish to English. In general, however, borrowing is a much more productive process and is not bound by all of these constraints. In particular, phonological integration and the “social” characteristics of recurrence (in the speech of an individual) and distribution (across the community) need not be satisfied. This type of borrowing is sometimes called “nonce” borrowing.” • (Sankoff, Poplack & Vanniarajan 1990: 74)

  8. English verb insertions (1) • More “established English borrowings”: • pasio(to pass), trio (to try), setlo (to settle), canslo (to cancel), meindio (to mind), cysidro (to consider) • sut mae o’n cope-io efo (.) hynna i gyd? • “how is he coping with all that?” [Fusser29:635] • pan dach chi’n defnyddio wide-angle lensesdach chi’n emphasize-io ’r foreground. • “when you use wide-angle lenses, you emphasize the foreground.” [Fusser17: 792]

  9. English verb insertions (2) • bysai hi’m ’di gwisgo helmet’sai pen hi ’di cael ei crush-oto bits • “if she hadn’t worn a helmet, her head would have been crushed to bits.” [Robert3: 898] • a mae ’di cael ei ºgonnect-io i’rprinteryr computer, de • “and it’s been connected to the computer printer, right.” [Roberts2: 627]

  10. English verb insertions (3) • anyway,ges i ’yngazump-io ar hwnna • “anyway, I got gazumped on that one”[Fusser29:700] • maen nhw’n (.) exfoliate-io chdi gynta (.) ac yn spwnjo chi drosodd gynta • “they exfoliate you first, and sponge you over first”[Fusser30:27]

  11. Soft Mutation in Welsh

  12. Soft mutation on verbs: Environments (1) • After "i" particle e.g. oedd e’n mynd i ºgostio pres[Fusser6:524] • After "ei" possessive (with masculine subject) e.g. fyswn i licio ei ºfenthyg o[Fusser9:375] • After various other particles: heb, am, cyn, gan, ar, neu; dy possessive e.g. sut mae o am ºfihafio[Fusser15:510]

  13. Soft mutation on verbs: Environments (2) • With gwneud (or ddaru) auxiliary + Subject e.g. wnest ti ºdrio?[Stammers5:708] • After "i" + (non-overt) Subject e.g. mae’n gwneud i chdi ºgofio rywbeth dydy?[Stammers7:139] • After Finite Verb + Subject e.g. sut fedra i ºddeud?[Fusser4:257]

  14. Soft Mutation: Variation E.g. Welsh verb “cerdded” (to walk): a maen nhw’n mynd i ºgerdded am tua dwy, dair milltir “and they’re going to walk for 2 or 3 miles” [Roberts2: 32] But frequently mutation doesn’t happen where expected (especially in informal spoken Welsh): a (.) does dim byd i poeni amdano “and there’s nothing to worry about” [Fusser14: 40]

  15. Three groups of verbs compared in this study (1st Analysis): • Native Welsh:cofio (remember), defnyddio (use), cwyno (complain), pwyso (push), cneifio (shear), treiglo (mutate), twtio (tidy) talu (pay), penderfynu (decide), poeni (worry), lladd (kill), cwrdd (meet), cau (close), dal (hold), dechrau (start), cael (have), mynd (go), gweld (see). [irregular verbs and non –(i)o suffix included] • Listed English:trio, cario, clirio, dreifio, sbwnjo, clariffeio, pinsio, bargeinio, pipo, dipio, trotio, manejio, tsiecio, titso, protestio, cidnapio twtsiad, dripian, [non –(i)o suffix included] • Unlisted English:text-io, download-io, brief-io, quote-io, bulk-io, ban-io, bypass-io, crush-o, trample-o, base-io, connect-io, babysit-io, decorate-io, concentrate-io, mollycoddle-io, power-walk-io

  16. Method • Text-based searches through corpus (and using word frequency lists) for possible verbs, extracting examples where mutation expected (and where consonant can be mutated!) • Coded each verb as mutated or not • First attempt: used a random sampling technique to find the native Welsh verbs

  17. Results (First Attempt): (1)

  18. Results (First Attempt): (1)

  19. Analysis: 1st & 2nd Attempts

  20. Other Possible Variables: (1) Mutation Environment • (A) "i" particle • (B) "gwneud" auxiliary + Subject • (C) "i" + (non-overt) Subject • (D) "ei" possessive • (E) Fin Verb + Subject • (F) other particle

  21. Other Possible Variables: (2) Initial Consonant

  22. Three groups of verbs compared in this study (2nd Analysis): • Native Welsh:cofio (remember), defnyddio (use), cwyno (complain), pwyso (push), cneifio (shear), treiglo (mutate), twtio (tidy) • Listed English:trio, cario, clirio, dreifio, sbwnjo, clariffeio, pinsio, bargeinio, pipo, dipio, trotio, manejio, tsiecio, titso, protestio, cidnapio • Unlisted English:text-io, download-io, brief-io, quote-io, bulk-io, ban-io, bypass-io, crush-o, trample-o, base-io, connect-io, babysit-io, decorate-io, concentrate-io, mollycoddle-io, power-walk-io

  23. Results: Second Analysis

  24. Results: First & Second Analyses

  25. Results: 1st & 2nd Attempts

  26. Results (First Analysis)

  27. Results (Second Analysis)

  28. Statistical Testing: 1st & 2nd Analyses

  29. Summary • English-origin verbs in Welsh – highly productive (―(i)o) suffix). Almost certainly be considered a simple case of borrowings according to Poplack • Subset of them based on a dictionary criterion found to be significantly less integrated morpho-syntactically (with respect to soft mutation) : could be considered “switches” • Strong (log-linear) relationship between word frequency and rate of mutation • This goes against Poplack’s “nonce borrowing” hypothesis: “nonce” items pattern significantly differently from “established” items, based on either dictionary criterion OR frequency

More Related