Invited Plenary Speakers
Dr. Dominic Schmitz
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
They across space and time: Capturing the nature of a multifaceted pronoun
GW 1, A0010, 9:30 a.m.
In this talk, I will explore the nature of often-discussed generic definite and specific ungendered singular they. The use of singular they has gained prominence not only in linguistic theory but also in public discourse, making it a particularly timely and socially meaningful subject of gender and queer linguistic study. The exploration of the two types of singular they will begin with their semantic properties, proceed through their processing in the mental lexicon, and conclude with insights into their comprehension mechanisms.
The investigation integrates distributional semantics, a computational approach that represents semantic meaning as numerical vectors, with the discriminative lexicon model, a theory and computational implementation designed to provide insight into processes within the
mental lexicon. I will demonstrate that each type of singular they possesses distinct semantic characteristics, processing patterns, and comprehension challenges.
All computational concepts will be introduced in an accessible way, making the talk suitable for audience members with no prior background in computational linguistics. Overall, the talk offers novel perspectives both on the linguistic properties of singular they and on computational methodologies that are yet to be fully established in gender and queer linguistics generally and research on pronouns specifically.
Linnea Garlepow
Philipps-University Marburg
Linguistic differentiation or restriction after political independence?
Diachronic corpus-based insights into the evolution of Indian English
GW 1, A0010, 12:30 p.m.
Two dynamic models aim at describing the diachronic development of World Englishes, such as Indian English (IndE); the ‘Dynamic Model of the Evolution of New Englishes’ (Schneider, 2003) and ‘The Life Cycle of Non-Native Englishes’ (Moag, 1992). Their main difference lies in the effect of a nation’s political independence, with Moag (1992) arguing that English might revert to following British English (BrE) norms (p. 246) and Schneider (2003) believing that the variety is further diversified within the national context (p. 253).
This study compares Indian and British newspaper data from before and after India’s independence in 1947 to find out whether IndE has diverged further from its historical input variety or has started to assimilate to it again, aiming at closing the gap of diachronic research in the area of World Englishes by using historical data (Laliberté 2022: 148).
IndE has shown divergence from BrE in the dative alternation, generally preferring the prepositional dative (e.g., De Cuypere and Verbeke, 2013). The application of the MuPDARF method (Gries and Deshors, 2014), which also considers other intralinguistic factors, points towards further differentiation of IndE. Furthermore, it shows that the variety-specificity of the dative use heightened after India’s political independence, which is reflected in IndE dative choices generally deviating further towards the prepositional dative.
References
De Cuypere, L., & Verbeke, S. (2013). A corpus-based analysis of dative alternation in Indian English. World Englishes, 32(2), 169 – 184.
Gries, S. Th., & Deshors, S.C. (2014). Using regressions to explore deviations between corpus data and a standard/target: two suggestions. Corpora 9(1), 109 – 136.
Laliberté, Catherine (2022). A Diachronic Study of Modals and Semi-modals in Indian English Newspapers. Journal of English Linguistics 50.2: 142 – 168. Web.
Moag, R. F. (1992). The Life Cycle of Non-Native Englishes: A Case Study. In B. B. Kachru (Ed.), The Other Tongue (2nd ed., pp. 233 – 252). University of Illinois Press.
Schneider, E. W. (2003). The Dynamics of New Englishes: From Identity Construction to Dialect Birth. Language 79(2), 233 – 281.