Koenraad Kuiper

Livestock auctions, oral poetry, and ordinary language

A description of the verbal and nonverbal characteristics of the language of stock auctioneers and a comparison with oral poetry show that these auctioneers use an oral formulaic technique. It is suggested that this technique is a response to performance constraints which place a heavy load on short term memory. This hypothesis accounts for features of stock auction speech which are not recognized as characteristically oral formulaic as well as those which are. It also sheds light on two problems that have exercised students of oral literature: the effect of literacy and the role of memorization. These findings support the view that the difference between traditional oral formulaic and ordinary spoken language is one of degree, not kind. (Oral literature, register, stylistics, situational constraints, psychological constraints, formulae)

The modularity of grammar and phonetic stretching

In a recent paper Anthony Woodbury suggests that there is evidence to abandon the thesis of double articulation. The evidence is that certain late phonological rules in Yupik are meaningful. Woodbury takes this as evidence which undermines the theory that grammars are modular. An analysis of Woodburys data shows that these phonological rules are probably not semantically but pragmatically interpreted. An analysis of the process of phonetic stretching in English whereby syllables are lengthened by a late phonological or phonetic rule is shown to be closely parallel to Woodburys cases. Here too the phonetic or phonological rule is pragmatically interpreted. Thus modularity in grammar may be retained and Woodburys revised double-articulation theory may be revised in turn to state that optional rules of post lexical phonology can be pragmatically but not semantically interpreted.

Language and revolution: Formulae of the Cultural Revolution

From the hypothesis that routine formulae code cultural norms, it follows that social change will reveal itself in the formulaic inventory of a language. We test this prediction by looking at some of the changes to formulaic speech which took place in postrevolutionary China, particularly during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. We first examine some generally used politeness formulae, comparing them with prerevolutionary equivalents. We then examine the Public Criticism Meeting as a revolutionary ritual and show that its structure and formulaic language arose directly out of revolutionary imperatives. We attribute the changes in the formulaic inventory of Chinese directly to the need to code new social facts, although old social norms can also be discerned in the new formulae, thus showing that social changes are built on a previous social order. (Oral formulaic performance, routine formulae, situational constraints, Cultural Revolution)

The Oral Tradition in Auction Speech

A UCTION TRADITIONS ARE WORLDWIDE and of considerable antiquity. Herodotus is the first writer to describe an auction, one in Mesopotamia for brides, where the most attractive brought the highest bids and the least attractive were provided with dowries financed from the proceeds of the auction of the more attractive young women. Later, the praetorian guard in one of its more disgruntled moods put the Roman Empire up for a Roman auction. Today there are auctioning systems of diverse character in different parts of the world. In parts of Asia bids are placed by signing into the auctioneers hand, which is hidden under a cloth. At the flower auctions at Aalsmeer in the Netherlands a clock begins to wind down in descending order; the first bidder to stop the clock by pressing a button is the buyer (Cassady 1967). The auctioning tradition which is most familiar in the English-speaking world had its origins in England and was exported to the English colonies all over the world. The evidence which will be presented here for this hypothesis is based on historical reconstruction. By comparing different contemporary auctioning traditions in the English-speaking world, some of the central features of the tradition can be inferred, and, thus, a theory about what Proto English Auction Speech (PEAS) was like will be proposed. The range of current traditions which provide the basis for the reconstruction includes livestock auctions from Whateley, Massachusetts, Toronto, Canada, Banbury, England, and Christchurch, New Zealand; antique auctions at Sothebys in London, Douglas Galleries in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and R. G. Bells auction rooms in Kaiapoi, New Zealand; tobacco auctions in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, and Danville, Virginia; and wool auctions, real estate auctions, and produce auctions, all in Christchurch, New Zealand. These traditions are not only geographically diverse but also diverse by commodity. Although the focus of this study is the linguistic character of auctions in the English tradition, such auctions also have a social character. To contextualize what follows, here first is a description of one auction, that of the Whateley Cooperative Livestock Auction in Whateley, Massachusetts. It is not a prototypical auction. There are no prototypical auctions. But it is a good example of how auctions work. The Whateley Cooperative Livestock Auction is situated on a back road. It is a rather ramshackle building with a

Knowledge of language and phrasal vocabulary acquisition

Locke & Bogins (L&Bs) main thesis can be extended to the acquisition of the phrasal vocabulary in that the acquisition of much phrasal vocabulary combines the acquisition of linguistic knowledge with pragmatics and performance and in that the apprenticeship system for such learning begins to flower in adolescence.

Compounding by adjunction and its empirical consequences

Abstract Three options present themselves for generating compound words within classical generative theory from Chomsky (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995) up to and including GB Theory (Chomsky, Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris, Dordrecht, 1981): they can be base-generated, they can be generated by movement rules or they can be generated by lexical rules. Incorporation, for example, according to Baker (Incorporation: a Theory of Grammatical Function Changing, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988), forms compound words by movement rules. Jackendoff (Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon. Language 51, 639–671,1975) among many others adopts a lexicalist account of compounding where lexical rules are used to filter out redundant, i.e. rule-governed aspects of the representation of structurally complex lexical items. Here it is proposed that compounds are base-generated following Liberman and Sproat (The stress and structure of modified noun phrases in English. In: Sag, I.A., Szabolcsi, A. (Eds.), Lexical Matters. CSLI, Stanford, pp. 131–181,1992). It will be shown that significant properties of compounds, perhaps all linguistically significant properties, follow from their being generated by adjunction to X° either by movement or D-structure adjunction. This entails specifically that there can be no phrasal compounds and no synthetic compounds.

The nature of satire

Abstract This paper argues for a perceptual theory of satire. It shows that satire is neither a matter of form nor of function but a matter of the way both these are perceived in particular contexts by particular people. Three independent factors appear to be responsible for the perception of satire: A perceived intent to alter the perceivers view of some state of affairs, a similarity of form of the satire with some other artifact, and the perceiver finding the satire humorous. This theory predicts that a strong intentionalist theory of satire will be inadequate as will a reader response theory.

Constructing Vocational Aspirations Linguistically

We show that Malaysian Commerce students construct a future for themselves as they construct a vocation through education. Such a vocation is dependent on aspirations which are culturally and linguistically constructed. The students we taught were participating in an English medium Commerce degree taught at a Malaysian university. We enquired as to their home language use and the language they expected to use once they had graduated and were in a position in commerce. They appeared to downgrade the significance of their home languages in preference to English. Such a preference is understandable and advantageous in their educational setting. Whilst it is possibly disadvantageous for a realistic assessment of the linguistic capacities which they will need in the workplace, it reflects an awareness that standard English is advantageous for selection and promotion purposes. We take this to be an example of a neo-colonialist affective stance.

Theories of syntax : concepts and case studies

Preface PART I: CONCEPTS OF SYNTAX 1. Studying Syntax 2. A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Syntax 3. Seven Syntactic Phenomena PART II: THEORIES OF SYNTAX 4. Systemic Functional Grammar 5. The Principles and Parameters Framework 6. Lexical Functional Grammar 7. Minimalism 8. Syntax and its Theories References Index

Studying New Zealand English

NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH is one of the most closely studied national varieties of English outside of the USA and UK, and a source of significance for the dialect differentiation and historical evolution of English. Most of the work has been done in the relatively short period of about 15 years compared with the longer time frame of studies in British and American English. One reason for this is that New Zealand English has, from its beginning, benefited from significant co-operative and collaborative activity among New Zealand linguists.