Research Articles (General Linguistics)
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Browsing Research Articles (General Linguistics) by Subject "Afrikaans language"
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- ItemAnalysing Afrikaans-English bilingual children's conversational code switching(Deptartment of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, 2012) Nel, Joanine; Huddlestone, KateIt has been observed that children mix languages more often if they have been exposed to mixed speech, especially if they are in bilingual company. Very little research, however, exists on the code switching (CS) of children brought up in multilingual contexts. The study discussed in this paper investigates the grammatical and socio-pragmatic characteristics of the conversational CS of three Afrikaans-English bilingual children and aims to contribute towards a better understanding of child CS. The study was conducted through the analysis of spontaneous conversational CS elicited during multiple play sessions. Data were analysed within the frameworks of the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model and Conversation Analysis (CA). The study accounts for the different types of CS that occur, and examines which grammatical and/or socio-pragmatic difficulties may drive children to use specific types of CS, while also considering whether the context of an utterance has an influence on how and why CS takes place.
- ItemThe comprehension and production of plural forms of nouns by 6-year-old Afrikaans-speaking children with and without specific language impairment(Stellenbosch University, 2006) Southwood, FrenetteIn Afrikaans, plurality is indicated phonetically in several ways. The large number of pluralisation rules and the many exceptions to these rules cause acquirers of Afrikaans to make some use of rote learning. The question arises as to how, if at all, the knowledge of pluralisation of Afrikaans-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) differs from that of typically developing children: if even typically developing Afrikaans-speaking children have to learn the correct phonetic realisation of the plural forms of nouns (to a certain extent) and if this learning is not yet completed by 6 years of age (Southwood, 2006), can knowledge of pluralisation then be used to differentiate between Afrikaans-speaking children with and without SLI (seeing that SLI is characterised by a deficit in grammatical morphology)? This paper attempts to answer this question by examining the comprehension and production of plural forms by 10 6-year-olds with SLI and 10 without. It was found that some selected measures of comprehension and production of pluralisation are sufficiently sensitive to differentiate between the two groups. It was also found that neither of two prominent accounts of SLI, namely the Feature Deficit Hypothesis (Gopnik, 1994a) and the Surface Hypothesis (Leonard, 1989 and others), offers an adequate explanation for the problems with pluralisation experienced by Afrikaans-speaking children.
- ItemHaving fun with van : a nanosyntactic take on syncretism(Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, 2013) Pretorius, ErinSyncretism is the phenomenon where one (phonological) form is able to spell out more than one (grammatical) function. The P(repositional) element van (“from/of”) in Afrikaans represents an instance of syncretism: it is able to spell out many different functions including spatial, possessive and partitive functions. Any theoretical framework seeking to account for how form relates to function ought to provide an account of this phenomenon. Within the broad minimalist approach, Nanosyntax (NS) has yielded the most systematic and explicit accounts of syncretism (cf. e.g. Starke 2009; Caha 2006, 2009). This paper offers a nanosyntactic characterisation of the Afrikaans P element van, focusing specifically on its behaviour in Afrikaans partitive constructions and offering a tentative analysis to account for the seemingly irregular behaviour displayed by van in these constructions. The analysis is based on a modified syntactic decomposition of “the genitive zone” proposed by Caha (2009). The presence of an additional node, Specific (SPF), is argued for in the lowest layer of the structure that is encoded on the lexical entry for van. One merit of the proposed analysis is that it takes into account how van interacts with other word-level elements in the phrase.
- ItemMotion events in Afrikaans : their expression by adult speakers and by children with and without language impairment(Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, 2010) Oosthuizen, Helena; Hohle, Barbara; Southwood, FrenetteMotion events occur frequently in everyday life as people and objects constantly change their relative location to one another. Although children's descriptions of motion events resemble those of adults in their own language group from very early on (Choi and Bowermann 1991), there is increasing evidence for subtle differences as well. Young children speaking different languages seem to have some difficulty in expressing two types of spatial information in the same conceptual frame (e.g. Ochsenbauer and Hickmann 2010). In English and other satellite-framed languages such as German and Afrikaans, this task involves using a complex particle verb construction in which a directional particle (e.g. out) combines with a prepositional phrase carrying further information about the source or goal of movement (e.g. some bees came out of the tree) (Berman and Slobin 1994:161). Little is known about the development of this type of structure in satellite-framed languages such as Afrikaans. This paper examined whether (i) there are developmental differences between adults and 6-year-old Afrikaans-speaking children in the production of preposition+verb particle structures, and whether (ii) children with language impairment produce these structures in a different way than typically developing children. Target elements were preposition+verb particle structures with the particles af 'down', in 'in', uit 'out' and op 'up'. The performance of ten adults was compared to that of 30 typically developing and three language-impaired 6-year-olds. Half of the participants in the adult and typically developing groups were speakers of Mainstream Afrikaans (MA), and half were speakers of Cape Afrikaans (CA), a non-mainstream dialect. Distinct developmental differences that could not be attributed to dialectal variation, were found between 6-year-olds and adults. Children with language impairment showed less variation in their responses than their typically developing peers. Possible explanations for the findings are discussed.
- ItemSpecific language impairment as a syntax-phonology (PF) interface problem : evidence from Afrikaans(Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, 2012) Corver, Norbert; Southwood, Frenette; Van Hout, RoelandA theoretical account of specific language impairment (SLI) – one which places the locus of the impairment at Spell-Out at the syntax-phonology interface – is proposed and then tested against utterances from Afrikaans-speaking children with SLI. Drawing on Minimalism, our account offers a unified explanation for the seemingly diverse phenomena found in the Afrikaans data: omission of certain lexical material, double articulation of other lexical material and word order deviations. Based on our data, we conclude that the language problem of children with SLI appears to lie neither in the mapping from lexicon to syntax (thus in the selection of a lexical item as a member of the numeration) nor in the computational system, but in the mapping of an adult-like syntactic representation onto a proper sound representation.
- ItemTaalbewussyn as komponent van geletterdheidsvaardigheid : 'n ondersoek na narratiefvaardigheidontwikkeling by Graad 3-leerders(LitNet, 2017) Brand, Irene; Anthonissen, ChristineDaar word wyd verwys na ondergemiddelde prestasie van jong leerders in geletterdheidsontwikkeling in Suid-Afrikaanse skole (Donald en Condy 2005; Klop 2011; Marais 2012). Terselfdertyd word toegewyd aandag gegee aan moontlike verklarings vir die betreklik lae sukseskoers in die ontwikkeling van kinders se lees- en skryfvaardighede, asook aan moontlike ingrypings wat sukseservaring in vroeë geletterdheidsontwikkeling sal verbeter (Pretorius en Machet 2004; Olivier, Anthonissen en Southwood 2010; Murray, De Pascalis e.a. 2016). Hierdie artikel verwys na ’n studie wat uitgevoer is in Graad 3-klaskamers in twee landelike laerskole in Wes-Kaap waar spesifiek aandag gegee is aan die begrip taalbewussyn en hoe dit in leerders se narratiefontwikkeling waargeneem word. ’n Buitekurrikulêre program, ’n sogenaamde narratiefverrykingsprogram, is ontwikkel en oor ’n periode van ses maande in die taalonderrigperiode as stimulasie en vir diagnostiese doeleindes vir leerders aangebied. Ons kom tot die gevolgtrekking dat aandag aan taalbewussyn by leerders, binne skoolverband en spesifiek met aanmoediging van verhalende lees-, vertel- en skryfwerk, ’n geleentheid bied om geletterdheidsontwikkeling binne skoolverband te bevorder.