School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemThe place of foreign culture in the Saudi pre-service EFL teacher education(Saudi Students Schools & Clubs in UK and Ireland, 2008)In this paper, the researcher presents the results of an investigation of the place of foreign culture in preservice EFL teacher education. Grounded in the context of Saudi Arabia, qualitative analysis indicates that widespread static views of culture across the education sector minimise the place of culture in both policy and practice. Intercultural approaches need to be adapted as a way to reconceptualise culture dynamically. Implications included recommending supportive policies, appropriate pedagogies, and computer-assisted exposure to better emphasise the place of foreign culture within pre-service EFL teacher education.
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ItemTowards a Web search service for minority language communities(State Library of Victoria, 2006)Locating resources of interest on the web in the general case is at best a low precision activity owing to the large number of pages on the web (for example, Google covers more than 8 billion web pages). As language communities (at all points on the spectrum) increasingly self-publish materials on the web, so interested users are beginning to search for them in the same way that they search for general internet resources, using broad coverage search engines with typically simple queries. Given that language resources are in a minority case on the web in general, finding relevant materials for low density or lesser used languages on the web is in general an increasingly inefficient exercise even for experienced searchers. Furthermore, the inconsistent coverage of web content between search engines serves to complicate matters even more. A number of previous research efforts have focused on using web data to create language corpora, mine linguistic data, building language ontologies, create thesaurii etc. The work reported in this paper contrasts with previous research in that it is not specifically oriented towards creation of language resources from web data directly, but rather, increasing the likelihood that end users searching for resources in minority languages will actually find useful results from web searches. Similarly, it differs from earlier work by virtue of its focus on search optimization directly, rather than as a component of a larger process (other researchers use the seed URIs discovered via the mechanism described in this paper in their own varied work). The work here can be seen to contribute to a user-centric agenda for locating language resources for lesser-used languages on the web. (From Introduction)
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ItemSynchrony as the underlying structure of gesture: the relationship between speech sound and body movement at the micro level(School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)In pursuit of the nature of gesture, Condon observed synchrony of the body with speech sound within speakers and between speaker and listener. His work aroused interest on first publication in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but most researchers failed to replicate the results and interest waned. This paper presents a successful replication of the original research with updated methodology. A review of the original research is also presented as context for the replication.
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ItemA speech/gesture interface: encoding static, locative relationships in verbal discourse(School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)When speakers communicate, both verbal and non-verbal aspects of behaviour create and influence discourse. This paper looks at a PhD in progress, which examines how native speakers of Australian English and French use both language and gesture to describe static, locative relationships in everyday spatial scenes. The major hypotheses of the study stem from two theoretical concepts which are central to the lexical expression of spatial relationships: the degree of granularity (Narasimhan and Gullberg) in individual English and French prepositions, and the frames of reference (Levinson) adopted by speakers to encode locative relationships. A link between language and gesture is proposed by examining the ramifications these concepts may have for a speaker’s gestural behaviour.
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ItemThe emergence of a determiner system: the case of Mauritian Creole(School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)In the early stages of creolization, a large number of French determiners incorporated into the nouns that they modified. The immediate consequence was that Mauritian Creole (MC) had only bare nouns with ambiguous interpretations between [±definite] singular and plural interpretations. Gradually, new determiners emerged to mark those semantic contrasts, but bare nouns still occur in the creole, with a definite singular interpretation in some syntactic environments, providing evidence for a phonologically null definite determiner, equivalent to the French definite article. Post-nominal ‘la’ in MC, which has been defined as a definite determiner, is argued to be a Specificity marker, which occurs only with referential NPs. The process of grammaticalization of new functional items in the determiner system was accompanied by changes in the syntax of the noun phrase from French to creole. A feature driven analysis within Chomsky’s Minimalist framework (1995, 2001) suggests that these changes were driven by the need to map semantic features onto the syntax.
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ItemAntipassives in Yukulta(School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)Yukulta’s antipassive construction is obligatorily used to code transitive propositions that involve counterfactuals or marked A-O relationships. Its use and the use of active transitive constructions is strictly regulated by these grammatical features, to the extent that the two constructions have a complementary distribution. The particular functions of Yukulta’s antipassive and its highly conditioned usage are atypical for antipassives cross-linguistically.
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Item“The thought we have learnt”: internally persuasive discourse in Chinese post-graduate journals(School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)This paper adopts a view that any learning experience is basically meta-cognitive and is mediated through an essentially Bakhtinian ideological process involving internally persuasive discourse. This process often involves tension and conflict for individuals as they engage with new understandings and ways of thinking about important concepts. To illustrate elements of these new ways of thinking, examples of my research with Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language post-graduate students, based on a Bakhtinian notion of ‘ideological becoming’ are analysed. Through a preliminary analysis of data I suggest that by using reflective journals as part of a dialogical process, these students are able to engage effectively with key issues in learning.
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ItemHeteronyms in Australian English: self reported ssage and assessments(School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)This paper explores reported usage and evaluations of the ‘Australianness’ of heteronyms: pairs of words that have the same referent, are stylistically equal and traditionally are associated with different varieties of English. The data consist of 36 surveys completed by a diverse group of Australian English speakers. It examines the relationship between self reported usage, rankings of ‘Australianness’ and age. The findings indicate that older participants tend to report using more conservative forms. They also suggest that younger speakers differ to older ones in their views about the ‘Australianness’ of lexical items and that terms viewed as most Australian were also reported to be most used.
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ItemEveryday forms of language-based marginalization in Zimbabwe(School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)This article examines the micro-social forms of language-based marginalization among the diverse ethnolinguistic polities of Zimbabwe. Based on the findings of field research carried out in Zimbabwe from November 2005 to May 2006, the paper highlights the more specific and salient everyday effects of linguistic inequalities on individual members of speech communities. The major forms of language-based marginalization that emerged from the data included negative perceptions and stereotypes about minority languages; forced assimilation of minority language speakers into majority language groups; linguistic imperial tendencies of majority language speakers; as well as internalized domination and inferiority among minority language speakers. This paper comes to the conclusion that these forms of everyday language-based marginalization are not easily discernible as they lie hidden in the fissures and faultlines of insincere ethnolinguistic tolerance that is often accompanied by an admixture of patrimonial and paternalistic tendencies.
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Item‘Talking tactics’ – fathers’ language work in bilingual childrearing in intermarried families in Japan(School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)This paper challenges the tacit yet pervasive assumption that intermarried fathers play peripheral, subordinate roles in the bilingual childrearing of their children. The author’s ongoing research is a qualitative sociolinguistic investigation of the language work undertaken by native English speaking intermarried fathers residing in Japan, and their experiences of the bilingual childrearing process. In this paper, a preliminary discussion of a recently conducted case study details one family’s experience of implementing a specific discourse strategy. The extent to which parental second language proficiency, the gender of the minority language speaking parent, and future plans affect patterns of language use and bilingual childrearing strategies in intermarried families is examined.
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