ENGL 6880 Final

Fall 2017

Due Tue 12 Dec, end of day

Digital version available at http://biro.erhetoric.org/wikka.php?wakka=ENGL6880Final It might be easiest to work with the texts in digital form.

Drop your work off outside my office door, or in my PO box. Or email as PDF or Word doc.

Describe and analyze: Use catalogs, lists, clusters, diagrams, trees - with explanations where necessary. Organize your work under headings that isolate a feature if you engage in prose descriptions or speculations. Draw on Curzan for techniques. You are not writing an essay, so you do not need introductions, overviews, conclusions. But speculations grounded in linguistic principles are ok. In each case, focus on specific features or topics that, in your estimation, are linguistically interesting.

Part I: Spoken Discourse

(Estimated time it might take: 2 - 3 hrs)

Describe and analyze the following exchange from a study group. You decide, from a first pass, what’s noteworthy in this dialogue and demands close analysis. Draw on Curzan, chapter 8 for terms, concepts, and analytical guidance. Draw on your work with discourse markers and elements of conversation analysis (pp 271ff).

Topics possible
We don't have any gender or identity data, so those can't be addressed, but some interaction can:

The Sample

Title: Intro Biology Study Group
Undergraduates

Transcript ID: SGR175MU126
Academic Division: Biological and Health Sciences
Publisher: Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English, English Language Institute, University of Michigan
Interactivity Rating: Highly interactive
Number of Participants:
   Students:   5
   Speakers:   5
Recording Date: November 12, 2000
Recording Duration: 103 minutes
Word Count: 22422

S3: (where are) my questions?
S1: what do, you guys have any questions on that first lecture? [S4: yeah (xx) ] on viruses plasmids and prions?
<PAUSE:06>
S3: uh, i tried to match up like um, you know the all the different kinds of viruses viroids plasmids uh trans- posons [S1: posons ] and prions um uh with the different, parts of that diagram like D-N-A replication transcription R-N-A replication [S1: uhuh ] [S4: mhm ] and translation, um so the retrovilus uh virus is the reverse transcription, [S1: right ] R-N-A virus, is just n- deals with R-N-A making R-N-A, [S1: right ] and prions p- proteins making proteins. [S1: right ] or, yeah. and um
S1: or, yeah. [S4: converting ] affecting proteins or changing proteins in some way.
S3: but, transposons D-N-A virus and the plasmids are all involved in, the_ using D-N-A and going, somewhat (somehow) this direction?
S1: right plasmids remember is just a circular D-N-A that's inserted. [S3: okay ] okay? so it's goes_ it starts from D-N-A to R-N-A, to proteins. [S3: okay ] okay uh a D-N-A virus yeah it, um, inserts D-N-A, as its material of... um replication. [S3: right ] right? and then, um it'll go on to to um
S3: but it it goes on to make proteins as well
S1: right it does.
S3: and transposons are sort of mysterious or what?
S1: transposons
S4: yeah i didn't really understand how it moves around the genome (xx)
S3: yeah and, it's really vague
S1: wha- i forget what th- what um
S4: the segments of D-N-A that move from one location to another in the genome.
S3: discovered in nineteen forties but not accepted until later.
S4: yeah
S1: i forget what what i forgot what he said that about it
S4: he said it was like a defective virus, so it can't get into a particle without a protein, i didn't really understand like
S1: i remember when we were talking about there_ remember how we were talking about there're different um phases of like virus tacking if it's um, if it's goes into the lytic cycle or the lysogenic cycle, [S3: right ] right? and like
S4: he didn't really talk about that in class though did he? lytic and lysogenic
S5: yeah he never men- he never mentioned the lytic or the lysogenic
S4: or the lysogenic (xx)
S3: the the terms are mentioned in the lab book but we didn't go over it in class.
S4: right he never talks about it.
S1: okay. well uh the one of them is where D-N-A material is being inserted into the, genome, and then um, it can stay dormant, for a while, which means that it never it_ gets expressed, for a long time after several like replications of the cell. so like, this virus, is being replicated along with the rest of the genome as it, you know what i mean like when the cell divides, and forms two, and then, something in the external environment, signals, the cell_ signals that virus to like, start like, producing its own vi- like taking over the cell and like producing its own virus and things like that. right? [S4: mhm ] so like, that's when i_ that's what immediately what i think of when you say like, it jumps from one part of the of the genome to the other part of the genome. [S3: oh ] do you know what i mean? like, that i- maybe it's a sort of like maybe he's like indirectly talking about um, like the lysogenic versus lytic cycle. do you know what i'm saying? like it [S5: i thought ] can go from, [S4: sounds like it ] different parts of the genome.
S5: but isn't lytic and lysogenic just whether, it dies or not? whether the cell's destroyed after
S1: right. because, in in one condition in one case like, the cell that's gets infected, will explode and like, whatever. right? but like, in another case it could be two or three cells that, after several replications that it does that.
S5: so what does that mean for the transposons?
S1: what like the thing is that like the transposons it s- it says like it jumps from like, from parts of the genome to other parts of the [S5: right ] genome right? and like what i'm saying is that like, during one of th- either the lytic or the lysogenic cycle, either like, one of the cycles when it um D-N-A's inserted is inserted, the cell automatically dies. right? it [S5: right ] automatically jumps to the viru- virus attacks the cell, makes a cell, produces the virus and like the protein coat and explodes right? but in the other cycle what can what it can do is it can in- insert that information, that information can go into the genome, right? and like the cell will_ like the virus will stay dormant. af- and the um, D-N-A may or may not be replicated during the [S3: oops ] next, couple phases and it could be replicated where like, um

Part 2: Dialect Variation

(Estimated time it might take: 1- 3 hrs)

Analyze the following transcript of a dialect using SAE as your point of comparison. Address phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical features. You might make a categorized list of where this dialect departs from SAE, or you might construct a catalogue of its distinctive features. Semantics might come into play, so keep the Cuzan chapter on semantics in mind.

Robeson County African American (60+ -year-old female)

People don't sing no more. I tells the people, the people at our church, until we get back to singing something to the Lord, I don't know if Jesus understands what people singing today, cause I don't understand it, I'm not Jes- I don't understand. You hear all this loud music and you don't hear no words. But we need to sing something that's understanding so that we can sing praises to the Lord. Now I'm not saying it might be, he-, he- he-, he's-, he can hear all things, you know, because he s, he s all in all, and I know he understand. But I still think we ought to serve the Lord wi-,wi-wi, with songs that sings praises to him. Cause you know it's something lacking in our churches and I believe that's what it is. And our men folks is not interested; they need to be there. The beautifulest time I ever seen I went to a church out from Lillington, North Carolina.

from https://ils.unc.edu/afporch/afp_dl01.html

Part 3: Semantics and Semantic Change

(Estimated time it might take: 3 - 4 hrs)
Use ExtractFromBookOfDave

Describe and analyzed this extract from The Book of Dave, by Will Self, for semantic change. You'll need to consider phonemic and morphemic change in your descriptions of semantic change. Draw primarily on Cuzan chap 7, but also chap 9. Present your analyses by using lists, tables, trees, lexical fields, definitions, or whatever analytical methods you use, drawing from Curzan.

The passage shows changes in meaning, in morphemic realization, phonemic realization, and additions to the lexicon.

You're looking for evidence of semantic change to collect and define as patterns and regularities that seem to follow linguistic rules. The passage is written in a fictional written dialect, but it also includes some spoken dialect. You'll need to decide how to address the spoken dialect in your analysis.

You might construct a lexical field or a lexicon as a way to start this and show how and what the words means. Or tree the semantic relationships in the changed lexicon (-nyms). You will have to consider the syntactic roles (221). Consider if you are seeing patterns of generalization or specialization. Or perhaps metaphorical extension. Or others. There are clusters of non-standard words. You'll need to locate and collect these and discuss what is happening morphologically and semantically.

A few examples of clusters I've located

Some words might seem not to have changed in meaning. Rapper, for instance. But take care to consider the larger semantic field in which the words occur in the text.

On the phonemic side, Mutha is a change from the word mother. Your task is to identify what kind of phonemic or morphemic change this is, and to determine if there are other examples of other changes that follow similar rules. Cf the word crete.

Some words or phrases appear to involve more than one change. lawds and luvvies. There's a phonemic change. Lawds = lords, and luvvies comes from love as a social term of endearment. (Ask Emma and Krista about being called luv). But in the text lawds and luvvies are distinguished from subjects of the island, which signals that there's a semantic change, too. Try creating a lexical field or tree for the terms to trace similar changes.

There is some direct discourse represented in the extract, from Efie. Use that for evidence of semantic change, but you can ignore the dialect change evidence.

Glosses
barnet = hair. The 20th century source is rhyming slang: Barnet Fair.

gaff in current English means house or apartment considered a home. Use the OED for other words.

In some English dialects, an initial unvoiced th- is phonemically realized as /f/. Things can be heard spoken as fingz.
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