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- PublicationAbout Time: Conceptualizing and Representing Temporality in German, Swiss and Austrian Culture. Introduction(Association of Third-Level Teachers of German in Ireland, 2013-09)
; 273 - PublicationThe Acquisition of Community Speech Norms by Asian Immigrants Learning English as a Second Language: a preliminary studyWe investigate Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants' acquisition of the variable (ing), which occurs in progressive tenses, participles, noun phrases, etc., and which can be pronounced [iŋ] or [In]. A VARBRUL 2 program analysis of native speaker speech shows that the production of (ing) is constrained by phonological, grammatical, stylistic, and social factors. An analysis of the nonnative speakers' acquisition of these norms shows that [In] is more frequent before anterior segments (reflecting ease of articulation), and that males use [In] more frequently than females, especially in monitored speech (perhaps reflecting their desire to accommodate to a male native speaker norm rather than to an overall native speaker norm). The analysis also shows evidence of grammatical constraints which are different from those in the native speakers' speech. This difference may reflect the fact that it is easier to acquire the [In] variant in “frozen forms,” such as prepositions, than in productive rules.
1551Scopus© Citations 140 - PublicationAdiós, Hemingway: il falso policial si piega all'analisi antropologicaLeonardo Padura Fuentes oggi è uno dei giallisti cubani più conosciuti e letti all’estero. I suoi romanzi interpretano la realtà in modo critico e disincantato. Lo scrittore svolge la sua critica dall’interno dell’Isola e utilizza la sua arte per descrivere la complessità sociale habanera tramite una nuova forma di romanzo poliziesco.
166 - PublicationAjiaco, Rum and Coffee: Food and Identity in Leonardo Padura's Detective FictionThis chapter analyses the representation of food, cooking and its related convivial aspects in the detective novels written by the Cuban author Leonardo Padura. These novels inscribe themselves into a long tradition of detective novels which consider the description of food and meals as one of their distinctive features (such as the ones written by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Andrea Cammilleri, just to name a few). I argue that in Padura's novels the mention of food and cooking performs many different functions within the text. First of all food complement the social backdrop of the story and set the Cuban character of the novel, bringing in the elements of syncretism, mestizaje and hybridity which are essential to fully understand Cuban identity. The author always presents classical dishes of the Cuban tradition, recovering the cultural roots of its characters and of his nation. However in Padura's novel cooking and food are also an important indicator of the specific historical moment in which the story is set and they provide important elements to understand the social situation of the time. References to cooking and food are used here to describe the food shortage affecting the island, as a consequence of the US embargo, and to denounce the hidden or semi-hidden presence of the black market economy in Cuba. Secondly food contributes strongly to the characterization of the protagonist of Padura's novels: the detective Mario Conde. In this case food, is used to describe the personal and psychological world of the protagonist and his affective sphere. Finally the convivial aspect of food allows Padura to represent the emotional bond between his characters and to trace the profile of a specific generation of Cubans born just before the Revolution and educated in the Revolutionary ideology. Food provides, thus, the opportunity to bridge the national tradition and memory with a specific generational experience and identity.
62 - PublicationAssessing the nature and role of substrate influence in the formation and development of the creoles of SurinameOver the last 30 years or so, a significant amount of research has been carried out on the genesis and development of creoles. This research has shown that the creators of creoles’ first languages made an important contribution to creole grammars, but that their overall role in any specific case was largely dependent on the social circumstances in which the creole emerged. This suggests that substrate influence always interacted with other sources. However, to date, relatively little research has been done on the various ways in which the creators’ first languages influenced specific creole features and how this interaction was determined or constrained by other processes and sources. The aim of this paper is to investigate these issues in more detail in the light of ongoing research on the formation and development of the Tense, Mood and Aspect system of the creoles of Suriname.
285 - PublicationAssessing the Sociolinguistic Situation of the Maroon CreolesRecent anthropological and socio-historical research on Maroon populations suggests that Maroon communities have undergone significant social change since the 1960s spurred by processes of urbanization. However, to date very little is known about how these social changes are impacting on the Maroon Creoles as there is very little sociolinguistic research being carried out in the region. The aim of this paper is to examine the sociolinguistic context of the Maroon Creoles in the light of data from two recent sociolinguistic surveys carried out in Suriname and French Guiana. The findings demonstrate that the sociolinguistic status of Maroon languages has undergone various changes. Several of them are now well represented in French Guiana and, as additional languages, are gaining speakers both in Suriname and French Guiana. While their speakers increasingly practice them together with other languages, thus displaying their multilingual repertoire, there is little indication that their survival is threatened because their speakers predominantly hold positive attitudes towards them.
393Scopus© Citations 7 - PublicationAvenging Assassins: Women and Power in Rosario Tijeras (1999) by Jorge Franco and La Reina del Sur (2002) by Arturo Pérez ReverteNarco/sicaresque novels with a female killer at their core are uncommon, indicative of society’s gendering of violence which marks female killers as deviant and the macho-posturing of narco-culture which marginalizes women. This article examines two narco-novels about female killers propelled into the drugs business to avenge violence, but who wield power very differently, according to their status in the cartel and the narrative strategies adopted. Rosario Tijeras’s violence is sexualized around her femme-fatale allure which undermines her agency, particularly as she is spoken for by an infatuated male narrator. Rosario, controlled by cartel bosses, exercises little control over her textual representation or her life. La Reina del Sur offers parallel narratives: from the perspective of the main character, Teresa Mendoza, and from a journalist who is researching her story for his novel. Teresa thus gains a measure of control over her narrative representation and her life and progresses to lead an international drugs network. These texts turn readers into detectives, not to find the killers, but to unravel the motivations of women in the drugs trade and to debate the ways they can exercise power in these violent hyper-masculine worlds which become, both in Spain and Mexico, an eternal crime scene, implicating law enforcement, local government and any other supposedly legitimate agency willing to be ‘bought’.
131 - PublicationBetween contact and internal development: Towards a multi-layered explanation for the development of the TMA system in the creoles of SurinameThis paper proposes a new analysis of the formation of the TMA system of the Surinamese Maroon Creoles based on a wide range of both contemporary and historical sources. The paper first provides a brief synopsis of the socio-historical context in which the Creoles of Suriname emerged and developed, and a broad overview of the TMA systems of those Creoles and of varieties of Gbe. It then discusses four processes that were involved in the emergence of the creole TMA system: substrate influence, internal change from a substrate calque, superstrate influence, and shift of form and category correlated with innovation. The paper then concludes that Creole formation is to be considered as a gradual and multi-layered process (Arends 1993, Bruyn 1995), involving processes of language change that also operate in other so-called normal contact settings (Thomason & Kaufman 1988).
315 - PublicationBetween Resurrection and Insurrection: Jesus and the “Deconstruction of Monotheism” in “Von der Zärtlichkeit” by Navid Kermani and “ich, jesus von nazareth” by SAIDThe work of Navid Kermani and SAID frequently engages with religious themes and their respective oeuvres foreground the diversity within Islam and blur religious dividing lines. In spite of their differences, the short stories “Von der Zärtlichkeit” (Of Tenderness) by Kermani and “ich, jesus von nazareth” (i, jesus of nazareth) by SAID invite comparison because they share a deconstructive engagement with the figure of Jesus, conveying a spirituality felt in the material, rather than the metaphysical world. Whereas the former depicts a mystical experience in which Jesus’s presence is felt without him being glimpsed, implying an ambiguous sense of the divine in withdrawal and of empty sacred space, the latter is an at times angry monologue delivered by Jesus, in which holiness is located in righteous action against injustice. Hence the former evokes issues of spiritual absence and presence through Jesus’s resurrection, whereas the latter conveys a sense of insurrection, underlining Jesus’s role as a social radical. Both texts, however, shift meaning away from a transcendent God and toward the world, suggesting a religiosity beyond identity and ideology which can be illuminated by bringing Jean-Luc Nancy’s non-dualist concept of the “deconstruction of monotheism” into dialogue with the texts’ Christian and Sufi allusions.
158 - PublicationBook review: Arends, J. Language and Slavery: A social and linguistic history of the Suriname creoles.This book has been in the making for a long time: Jacques Arends spent two decades researching it and after his untimely death in 2005, it took another decade to appear. The wait was not in vain though as the final product goes well beyond Arends’ previous work, shedding new light on Suriname’s early period and sociolinguistic matters. Although aspects of the volume are by now inevitably somewhat dated, it still constitutes the most comprehensive historical treatise on the emergence and early development of the Suriname creoles, and significantly enhances current knowledge on creole genesis.
227 - PublicationThe categories of Modern Irish verbal inflectionThis paper sets out to identify the categories underlying Irish verbal inflection and to explain why they have their observed morphological and semantic properties. Assuming that the semantic range of a tense is a function of the whole clause, it derives the tenses of Irish from three syntactic features. Their basic value and position in the clause, along with that of other independently justified formatives, determines the attested range of interpretations for each tense, while the way they are spelled out determines the observed morphological patterns. Since the analysis of verbal categories is based on their syntactic realization, the same explanation accounts for the paradigmatic structure of Irish conjugation and for various syntagmatic phenomena of contextual allomorphy. A language-specific investigation thus claims a broader theoretical significance as an exploration of the interconnected workings of syntax, morphology, and semantics.
1201Scopus© Citations 5 - PublicationCollaborative Learning: Increasing Students' Engagement Outside the ClassroomSeveral factors, including the Bologna process, the embargo on university posts and a larger student population pursuing degrees, have contributed to radical changes in teaching, learning and assessment in Irish higher education in the last few years. Challenges to academics have resulted in curriculum reform and, most importantly, in innovative practices in which the curriculum is delivered and assessed. It was in this context that a collaborative component has been introduced into Level 2 Spanish language modules at University College Dublin. A small action research project has been undertaken to explore the students’ views about this innovative way of learning. This article addresses the extent to which collaborative learning outside the classroom contributes to the enhancement of student learning and it examines the obstacles encountered by the students during the semester. The discussion of the findings focuses on feedback from the students and on group reflections submitted via Blackboard, the university’s VLE (virtual learning environment).
77 - PublicationConstraining inherent inflection: Number and Nominal AspectSince Booij (1994, 1996) it has become increasingly clear that inflectional morphology can take part in lexeme formation and compounding. Booij (1994) recognized the need for substantive constraints on the ways inflection can feed derivation, and restricted its derivational use to deictic categories, including Number. Pursuing this search for constraints, I propose that Number is a single morphological category covering two abstract functions (cf. Beard 1995), and that it can be inherent only when it expresses the more “lexical” of those functions, and thus means more than the grammatical feature would. This “lexical” Number expresses properties of the lexeme but stands halfway between the lexical core and the properly inflectional categories. It encodes mereological (part-whole) properties of the noun’s interpretation, thus paralleling the role of Aspect in the verbal domain, and like Aspect it can be integrated to different degrees in the grammatical system of a language. In some languages, this type of information has a specific morphological expression (so-called collective affixes). In others, it appears only as non-canonical semantics (and sometimes form) for Number inflection. Inherent Number, both as a component of lexemeformation and as fixed Number value on certain nouns, consists in the expression of Nominal Aspect through the morphology of Number. Morphology is not “split”, but its uses are. Inherent inflection, specifically Number, arises in certain languages as a by-product of the separation of (morphological) form and meaning. The article develops these views by presenting first a relatively detailed exemplification from several sources (section 1), followed by some critical reflections on the peculiarities of these constructions, to the effect that inherent Number must be qualitatively different from inflectional Number (section 2). Section 3 sets out in detail the hypothesis that inherent Number is the inflectional expression of Nominal Aspect, and section 4 concludes the argument by hypothesizing that Number not only can, but must have a distinct interpretation as a lexicalized property than as a regular inflectional one.
1254Scopus© Citations 3 - PublicationConstructions of Happiness / Konstruktionen des Glücks: IntroductionThe ideal of human happiness is doubtless as old as mankind itself and the history of this tradition is rich and varied. However, across the globe, particularly in the postindustrial ‘developed’ world, people are preoccupied, perhaps more than they have been at any other point in history, with the “unquestioning certainty” that they should be happy. This “duty to be happy” is reflected in the huge amount of research literature on the topic, carried out in diverse fields such as neurology, psychology, sociology and, particularly, in economics, where the number of scholarly articles has increased exponentially, especially in the early years of the twenty-first century. The heightened scientific interest in what makes happy individuals and happy societies, and in how such happiness is to be measured, certainly seems set to continue, as is indicated by international, longitudinal studies monitoring life satisfaction and ‘social well-being’.
139 - PublicationCreole formation as Language Contact: The case of the Suriname CreolesThe aim of the present study is twofold: First, it discusses the formation of radical creoles based on an examination of creole formation in Suriname. The discussion focuses on investigating and illustrating the processes and mechanisms involved in the formation of radical creoles and on determining the nature of the resulting strctures. Second, based on the findings, the study critically evaluates the tenets of the main current theories of creole formation. The investigation suggests that the main inputs to the formation of the predecessor(s) of the modern creoles of Suriname were the range of creole varieties, L2 and pidgin varieties of English (and Portuguese) spoken by the early plantation population and the native African languages of the slaves who arrived during Suriname’s transition to sugar monoculture. The processes and mechanisms that played a role in its formation were similar to those observed in cases of L2 acquisition.
330 - PublicationCreole learner varieties in the past and in the present: implications for creole developmentSecond language (L2) acquisition is widely assumed to have played a role in the emergence of creole genesis. However, the impact of L2 acquisition may not have been restricted to its genesis. In Surinam, newcomers outnumbered locally-born speakers of the Creole throughout the 18th century. To date we know little about the effects that this disproportion of non-native vs. native speakers may have had in the initial and subsequent stages of development of these Creoles. In this paper we combine historical and contemporary data in order to investigate the impact of L2 acquisition and use on developing creoles. We examine several linguistic features in contemporary native (L1) as well as non-native (L2) creole speech in order to reveal the differences in the underlying L1 and L2 systems. These are then compared with their equivalents in the available historical sources. The findings suggest that L2 acquisition affected the development of some linguistic subsystems while others appear little influenced. --- La contribution des processus d’acquisition d’une langue seconde (L2) à l’émergence des créoles est largement reconnue. Cependant, l’impact de la langue seconde ne pourrait se limiter à la genèse du créole. Au Suriname les nouveaux arrivés étaient plus nombreux que les locuteurs natifs du créole pendant tout le 18e siècle. À ce jour, les effets éventuels de la disproportion entre les locuteurs natifs et les non-natifs sur le créole, pendant sa genèse et ultérieurement, sont à peine connus. Dans cet article nous avons combiné des données historiques et contemporaines afin d’étudier l’impact de l’acquisition et de l’utilisation de la L2 sur l’évolution des créoles. Nous examinons plusieurs aspects linguistiques de discours contemporains dans le créole de locuteurs natifs et non-natifs afin d'éclairer les différences sous-jacentes du système de la langue première et seconde. Celles-ci sont ensuite comparées à leurs équivalents provenant de sources antérieures. Cette comparaison nous a permis de conclure que certains sous-systèmes du créole ont davantage été influencés par l’acquisition de la langue seconde que d’autres.
145 - PublicationCreoles in education: A discussion of pertinent issuesThe last three decades have seen a steady increase in the use of Pidgin and Creole (P/C) languages in public life. In many P/C-speaking communities, P/C are now widely used in health education, vocational training, political campaigning and in the media. These developments demonstrate – if it has to be demonstrated at all – that P/Cs are viable means of communication and are well able to express as wide a range of issues as the European languages with which they coexist.
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