...2/14/12 AFAS 160D1 Dr. Yuxuf Abana Essay # 1 The value of language The Norton anthology of African American literature book, does a great job in describing the uniqueness of the early African American language, as the roots for the spiritual and the secular forms of the African American vernacular. But for one to understand the African American vernacular, one must understand how the language was created. The language of the early Africans that occupied north America was unique to only this ethical group, because they where the only forms of Africans in that time that spoke a kind of language that was broken English or formally called “Pidgin” which is known as the language of the slaves. Lets take a look at the active definition for pidgin, so we can come to a clear understanding of the word before we progress further in the paper: “A simplified form of speech that is usually a mixture of two or more languages, has a rudimentary grammar and vocabulary, is used for communication between groups speaking different languages, and is not spoken as a first or native language. Also called contact language.”(pidgin online) so contact language is the language first spoken or developed when the Africans where first In America. The language was created due to the direct result of the times being that Africans by law where not allowed to be educated or to be treated like anything other then a slave, no social interactions...
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...Preface ..............................................................................................................................................................ii Introduction .....................................................................................................................................................1 Sources..............................................................................................................................................................1 Spelling .............................................................................................................................................................1 Nigerian English/West African English.........................................................................................................1 Pidgin versus Nigerian English ......................................................................................................................1 Auxiliaries ........................................................................................................................................................2 Student slang....................................................................................................................................................2 Pronunciation spellings...
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...records, sociolinguists also examine how language and society have interacted in the past. For example, they have tabulated the frequency of the singular pronoun thou and its replacement you in dated hand-written or printed documents and correlated changes in frequency with changes in class structure in 16th and 17th century England. This is historical sociolinguistics: the study of relationship between changes in society and changes in language over a period of time. What is dialect? Sociolinguists also study dialect — any regional, social or ethnic variety of a language. By that definition, the English taught in school as correct and used in non-personal writing is only one dialect of contemporary American English. Usually called Standard American English or Edited American English, it is the dialect used in this essay. Scholars are currently using a sociolinguistic perspective to answer some intriguing questions about language in the United States, including these: * Which speakers in urban areas of the North are changing the pronunciation of vowels in a systematic way? For...
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...During the late 19th century and early 20th century, different minorities in New Orleans came together and performed improvised music for the dancers (“A New Orlean Jazz”). The existence of this diversity in musicians and need to play music by these performers is the main cause such a unique genre of music culture could form. As the jazz culture became widespread, it influenced other parts of art such as novels and poems. It become more than music; it was culture. During the late 20th century, jazz was an important revolution that helped gain minority the recognition and importance it had longed for. With more recognition, African American and minorities could start appealing for more equality with the majority (Early). Jazz was a major influence on the Civil Rights Act that prohibited segregation in...
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...British Isles is accredited to four centuries of colonialism and British imperialism, which led to English being spoken by over three hundred million people. (Crystal 14) The first significant stride in the advancement of English towards its pre-eminence as a world language occurred during the early trade in the Atlantic. Crystal also articulates that by the year 1600, England had gained trading contacts across three continents, which retrospectively provided a powerful platform on which the English language was to flourish and become the globally dominant medium of communication that it is at present (39). Trading companies such as the Newfoundland fur trade, the ivory and gold trade on the western coast of Africa and the East India Company brought speakers of English into economic contact throughout the world. English and the English-based pidgins created in parts of West Africa, acted as lingua francas of common communication during the colonial period. These pidgins during the slave trade were the only means of communicating with other Africans. Eventually, pidgins became the first languages of African slave children and grandchildren. To operate as first languages, the functions of pidgins had to be elaborated, their structures...
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...that is a combination of "proper English" and a combination of African languages. Because of this combination a pattern was formed on how certain words are said such as this and that, would be pronounced dis and dat. In all words the "Th." sound sounded like a "D". There was also another pattern formed such as, no tense indicated in the verb, no "r" sound and no consonant pairs. These are just some of the many patterns that were created when Africans were forced to learn the English language.History states that around 1619, during the slave trade, ships collected slaves not just from one nation but from many nations. Although they were all Africans certain areas spoke different languages. Some Africans spoke Ibo, Yoruba and Hausa. They were then separated from each other and had to travel with people whom the could not understand. Captain William Smith wrote:...There will be no more likelihood of their succeeding in a plot...The slaves then had to learn English so that they could have some form of communication with their masters. Their native language and English would be combined and they would speak African-English pidgin. As the slaves began to learn how to communicate with each other, their words would merge into one common word that they could all understand. This is one of the ways that the language became mixed with English.When the African slaves had children they talked to them in African English pidgin. The slaves taught the children both languages so that they...
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...The English that was brought to America in seventeenth century was, of course, the language--or versions of the language--of Early Modern England. The year of the Captain John Smith's founding of Jamestown (1607) coincides roughly with Shakespeare's writing of Timon of Athens and Pericles, and the King James Bible (the "Authorized Version") was published only four years later, in 1611. It was not long before writers on both sides of the Atlantic began to acknowledge the language's divergence. As early as the mid-seventeenth century, Samuel Johnson, in a review of Lewis Evans's "Geographical, Historical, Political, Philosophical, and Mechanical Essays," pays the [American] writer's language a backhanded compliment: This treatise is written with such elegance as the subject admits, tho' not without some mixture of the American dialect, a tract ["trace"] of corruption to which every language widely diffused must always be exposed. (In the World, No. 102, Dec. 12, 1754; quoted by Mencken 4) Johnson's assessment was mild compared to that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who asserted in 1822 that "the Americans presented the extraordinary anomaly of a people without a language. That they had mistaken the English language for baggage (which is called plunder in America), and had stolen it" (quoted in Mencken 28). Noah Webster attributed some of the marked features of New England speech to a conservatism engendered by the relative isolation, vis à vis the rest of the world, of the colonists...
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...ang katangian ng wika ay: 1. ang wika ay mayroong 2 masistemang balangkas 2. ang wika ay arbitraryo 3. ang wika ay sinasalitang tunog 4. ang wika ay ginagamit sa komunikasyon 5. ang wika ay pantao 6. ang wika ay nakaugat sa kultura 7. ang wika ay malikhain 8. ang wika ay patuloy na nagbabago 9. ang wika ay natatangi ang teorya ng wika ay: 1. teoryang bawaw 2. teoryang pooh pooh 3. teoryang tara ra boom de ay 4. teoryang ding dong 5. teoryang tata 6. teoryang yo-he-ho ang kahalagahan ng wika ay: 1. ang wika ay instumento ng edukasyon 2. nag-iingat at nagpapalaganap ng kaalaman 3. nagbubuklod sa bansa 4. lumilinang ng malikhaing isip Mga Pangunahin At Pandaigdigan katangian ng Wika ni Gleason. 1. masistemang balangkas – kapag sinasabing masistema, ang ibig ipakahulugan nito ay may kaayusan o order . bawat wika kung ganoon ay may kaaysan o order ang istruktura. May dalawang masistemang balangtas ang wika ; ang balangkas ng may tunog at ang balangkas ng mga kahulugan. Ang wika ay may tiyak na dami ng mga tunog na pinagsam- sama sa isang sistematikong paraan upang makabuo ng mga makahulugang yunit tulad ng mga salita . gayundin , ang mga salita ay mapagsasama –sama upang makabuo ng mga parirala at sugnay /pangungusap 2. sinasalitang tunog- maraming mga tunog sa paligid na makahulugan ngunit hindi lahat ay maituturing na wika . ilang sa mga halimbawa ay ang alarma ng orasan . kulog sa kalangitan, wang wang ng patrol ng pulis, lagaslas ng tubig,...
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...INTRODUCTION Afro centricity is a concept propounded by Molefi Asante which according to him is a paradigm based on the idea that African people should reassert a sense of agency in order to achieve sanity. This concept is concerned more about the African values and cultures. One can say it is a pan African ideology in culture, philosophy, and history. It is a call for social change. This concept had its origins from an African American society or world where the blacks were marginalized in a white hegemony. It was a fight for change. This birth gave birth to the American civil right. This concept can be seen in the texts and writings of Alice Walker and Richard Wright who were American writers of the late 19th century and early 20th century. In A father’s law , we see this aspect also being portrayed. Ruddy becomes the chief of police in a white community. We see him being the only black to live in a white a neighborhood of Brentwood Park. In society where the whites occupy all the big and important jobs and the blacks do the mean and odd jobs like house help and gardener. During that era we realize that majority of those who were educated and went to school were the whites and the blacks uneducated. But in the novel , we discover Tommy to be a very intelligent black university student who studies in a white university. This brings out the African value and potential in a white dominated society. In Alice Walker’s The color purple, we see the aspect of solidarity among the...
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...YULE – THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE S U M M A R Y ( C HA P TE R S F O R I S L 1 ) CHAPTER 1 – THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE The divine source: Bible: Adam gave names to the things Hindu: wife of the creator of the universe created the language Several experiments to find the “original” language: Psammetichus: two babies grew up only for the company of goats children have uttered “bekos” – (Phrygian word for “bread”) could be the sound of the goats “be” (Greek suffix “-kos”) King James the Fourth: Children should have started speaking Hebrew Other experiments: children whit no access to human language grow up with no language at all The natural sound source: Language as a result of onomatopoeia and/or natural cries of emotion (e.g. splash, bang, boom, ouch, ooh, wow,…) What about soundless and abstract things? The social interaction source: Language as a result of communication between earliest groups of humans, who used hums, grunts and groans -> language as a progress of this Apes and other primates also have grunts and groans for communication, but no language The physical adaption source: Evolution factors which have made humans able to develop language: o Teeth are upright and even in height o Lips have more intricate muscle interlacing than other primates o Mouth is smaller an can be opened and closed rapidly o Tongue is smaller, thicker and more muscular o Larynx (containing the vocal cords) is much lower than the position of other primates o Pharynx (above...
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...An Introduction to Sociolinguistics AITA01 1 5/9/05, 4:36 PM Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics The books included in this series provide comprehensive accounts of some of the most central and most rapidly developing areas of research in linguistics. Intended primarily for introductory and post-introductory students, they include exercises, discussion points, and suggestions for further reading. 1. Liliane Haegeman 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Andrew Spencer Helen Goodluck Ronald Wardhaugh Martin Atkinson Diane Blakemore Michael Kenstowicz Deborah Schiffrin John Clark and Colin Yallop 10. 11. 12. 13. Natsuko Tsujimura Robert D. Borsley Nigel Fabb Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer 14. Liliane Haegeman and Jacqueline Guéron 15. Stephen Crain and Diane Lillo-Martin 16. Joan Bresnan 17. Barbara A. Fennell 18. Henry Rogers 19. Benjamin W. Fortson IV 20. AITA01 Liliane Haegeman 2 Introduction to Government and Binding Theory (Second Edition) Morphological Theory Language Acquisition Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Fifth Edition) Children’s Syntax Understanding Utterances Phonology in Generative Grammar Approaches to Discourse An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (Second Edition) An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics Modern Phrase Structure Grammar Linguistics and Literature Semantics in Generative Grammar English Grammar: A Generative Perspective An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language...
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...History of English (Source: A History of English by Barbara A. Fennell) The English language is spoken by 750 million people in the world as either the official language of a nation, a second language, or in a mixture with other languages (such as pidgins and creoles.) English is the (or an) official language in England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; however, the United States has no official language. Indo-European language and people English is classified genetically as a Low West Germanic language of the Indo-European family of languages. The early history of the Germanic languages is based on reconstruction of a Proto-Germanic language that evolved into German, English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, and the Scandinavian languages. In 1786, Sir William Jones discovered that Sanskrit contained many cognates to Greek and Latin. He conjectured a Proto-Indo-European language had existed many years before. Although there is no concrete proof to support this one language had existed, it is believed that many languages spoken in Europe and Western Asia are all derived from a common language. A few languages that are not included in the Indo-European branch of languages include Basque, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian; of which the last three belong to the Finno-Ugric language family. Speakers of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) lived in Southwest Russia around 4,000 to 5,000 BCE. They had words for animals such as bear or wolf (as evidenced in the similarity of the words for these animals...
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...although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader. And what I read were British and American children's books. I was also an early writer. And when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading. All my characters were white and blue-eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples. (Laughter) And they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out. (Laughter) Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. I had never been outside Nigeria. We didn't have snow. We ate mangoes. And we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to. My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer because the characters in the British books I read drank ginger beer. Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was. (Laughter) And for many years afterwards, I would have a desperate desire to taste ginger beer. But that is another story. What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books, by their very nature, had to have foreigners in them, and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Now, things changed when I discovered African books. There weren't many of them available. And they weren't quite...
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...8 Creolization in Anthropological Theory and in Mauritius Thomas Hylland Eriksen A great amount of intellectual energy has been invested in cultural mixing during the last decades. Reacting against an idea of boundedness, internal homogeneity, and stability that has been associated with mainstream twentieth-century anthropology, hundreds—possibly thousands—of anthropologists have tried to redefine, reform, revolutionize, or even relinquish that abhorred “C” word—”culture.” The range of engagement is suggested in the apparent congruence between postmodernist American anthropologists (for example, Clifford & Marcus 1986) and their now classic critique of the Geertzian notion of cultural integration, and the older European critique of the structural-functionalist idea of social integration, which was led by people such as Barth (1966), whose rationalism and naturalism is everything but postmodernist. In both cases, presuppositions of integrated wholes, cultures or social structures, have been debunked. From being a discipline concentrating its efforts on understanding nonliterate societies, often implicitly positing the uncontaminated aborigine as its hero, anthropology increasingly studies cultural impurity and hybridity, and the dominant normative discourse in the field has shifted from defending the cultural rights of small peoples to combating essentialism and reifying identity politics. While this development has been important and necessary for a variety of reasons,...
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...History of English (Source: A History of English by Barbara A. Fennell) The English language is spoken by 750 million people in the world as either the official language of a nation, a second language, or in a mixture with other languages (such as pidgins and creoles.) English is the (or an) official language in England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; however, the United States has no official language. Indo-European language and people English is classified genetically as a Low West Germanic language of the Indo-European family of languages. The early history of the Germanic languages is based on reconstruction of a Proto-Germanic language that evolved into German, English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, and the Scandinavian languages. In 1786, Sir William Jones discovered that Sanskrit contained many cognates to Greek and Latin. He conjectured a Proto-Indo-European language had existed many years before. Although there is no concrete proof to support this one language had existed, it is believed that many languages spoken in Europe and Western Asia are all derived from a common language. A few languages that are not included in the Indo-European branch of languages include Basque, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian; of which the last three belong to the Finno-Ugric language family. Speakers of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) lived in Southwest Russia around 4,000 to 5,000 BCE. They had words for animals such as bear or wolf (as evidenced in the similarity of the words for these...
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