Tuesday, 29 May, 4.00-5 pm: Simeon Dekker

May 14th, 2012 by Daan van de Velde

Cohesion, coherence and beyond in Old Russian birchbark letters

Venue: Lipsius, 001

For an article in preparation I have investigated the use of imperative subjects in the corpus of medieval Russian birchbark letters. This perspective serves as a starting point for more general questions about cohesion and coherence. For instance, imperative subjects might be seen as cohesive devices, creating speaker selection in communicatively heterogeneous letters with more than one addressee. In certain cases, however, no overt marker of speaker selection is present. This is due to the context in which letters containing instructions were often performed orally, i.e. read out aloud in front of the addressee(s).

There are several ends to which this initial exploration could lead. For one, it might be a step towards a description of referential devices in Old Russian. Secondly, it could be the beginning of a typology of communicative functions of letters on birchbark. But it could also lead to more fundamental questions about the nature of language, e.g. the exact relationship between spoken and written language, the extent to which the context of performance determines meaning, making use of meaning potentials, to the detriment of the notion of fixed meanings attaching to words and constructions.

I would like to discuss these possibilities and hear your thoughts about the directions into which this research project might lead me. First of all, I have to clearly formulate the overarching goal of the project. In addition, a theory is needed in order to justify the selection of case studies of those linguistic elements that are appropriate for investigation.

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Tuesday, 29 May, 4.00-5 pm: Simeon Dekker

May 14th, 2012 by Daan van de Velde

Venue: Lipsius, 001

Cohesion, coherence and beyond in Old Russian birchbark letters


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Tuesday, 24 April, 4.00-5 pm: Khalid Mourigh

April 16th, 2012 by Daan van de Velde

Venue: Lipsius, 308

Non-integrated borrowings in Ghomara Berber


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Tuesday, 24 April, 4.00-5 pm: Khalid Mourigh

April 16th, 2012 by Daan van de Velde

Non-integrated borrowings in Ghomara Berber

Venue: Lipsius, 308

In the literature borrowing usually means the integration of elements of one language (Source Language) into another language (Recipient Language). In many languages lexical borrowings are integrated in the native grammar. Therefore research has tended to focus on the study of 'integrated' borrowings. However, a number of languages show very interesting cases of non-integrated lexical borrowings. Berber languages, which have been in close contact with Arabic variaties, especially provide interesting examples. Ghomara Berber seems to be one of the most extreme cases in terms of the extent of non-integrated lexical borrowings, which are found in basically all inflectional categories. Furthermore, this has resulted in structural borrowing as well. In this talk, I will discuss the impact of this type of borrowing on the native morphology.

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Tuesday, 21 February, 16.00-17 pm: Maaike van Naerssen

February 8th, 2012 by Daan van de Velde

'Politeness' in Dutch and Indonesian

Venue: Lipsius, 308

Alongside linguistics competence, communicative competence is essential to successfully participate in communication. Part of communicative competence is knowing what social conventions to abide to, when (not) to speak, and how to express yourself politely. But what strategies and conventions are considered socially appropriate seems by no means universal. What might be the correct way to behave in one language and (language) culture, is not necessarily thought to be polite (or even acceptable) in another. My research concentrates on verbal politeness strategies, and the problems cross-linguistic and –cultural pragmatic differences can cause. To that end I will make a contrastive analysis of two very different languages and cultures: Dutch and Indonesian. By analyzing visual recordings of natural conversations between native speakers I want to define several ‘situations’ or ‘speech events’, roughly corresponding to Searle’s category of directives, in which particular linguistic behavior is used which can be evaluated as polite. I think it is important to focus on the speech events and strategies used in them, and not to try and define ‘politeness markers’, since, as many have claimed, politeness is a social/interactional phenomenon, heavily depending on context and situational evaluations and not inherent to certain words or structures.

But before I can actually start analyzing my data, there are some problems I have to deal with first: what is politeness? what is culture? how and when and where do I find politeness? how do I know what I list as ‘polite’ corresponds to what native speakers perceive to be polite? I have some preliminary definitions and ideas about this that I would like to discuss with you. There are a lot of languages represented within the LUCL and I hope you will share your thoughts on how these theoretical concepts can best be described in the area you’re working on to the benefit of my research.

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