Languages, Linguistics and Academic Literacy

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A syntactic analysis of Kinyarwanda applicatives.
(2005) Ngoboka, Jean-Paul.; Zeller, Jochen Klaus.
"A syntactic Analysis of Kinyarwanda applicatives" is a study of the syntax of Kinyarwanda which focuses on applicatives. Applicatives are constructions in which the object of a preposition becomes the direct object of the verb through a grammatical function changing process. In such constructions, the verb bears a morpheme referred to as the applicative morpheme which turns an intransitive verb into a transitive verb and a transitive verb into a ditransitive verb. The derived object may perform various thematic functions, including those of instrument, beneficiary, goal, manner, reason, purpose and motive. The study provides a thorough description of different types of ditransitive applicatives in Kinyarwanda by examining the syntactic properties exhibited by both objects. In general Kinyarwanda may be classified as a 'symmetrical' language in which more than one object can exhibit direct object properties. This is true for instrumental, benefactive and manner applicatives. However, some applicatives in Kinyarwanda such as the locative applicatives are 'asymmetrical' in that only one object exhibits all the direct object properties. In my research I analyse Kinyarwanda applicatives within the framework of Principles-and-Parameters (Chomsky 1981, 1986a, b and subsequent work), more specifically the Government and Binding theory (Chomsky 1981). I base the discussion on three analyses that have been proposed in the literature of applicatives: Baker's (1988) preposition incorporation theory, Larson's (1988) double object construction analysis and Nakamura's (1997) account of object extraction in applicative constructions, which is based on Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program. The study shows that the above analyses account for some aspects of applicatives, but that there are certain facts that are not accounted for, which require a different analysis.
Addressing the "standard English' debate in South Africa : the case of South African Indian English.
(2007) Wiebesiek, Lisa.; Rudwick, Stephanie Inge.; Zeller, Jochen Klaus.
This dissertation is an investigation into the 'Standard English' debate in South Africa using South African Indian English (SAlE) as a case study. I examine the 'Standard English' debate from both a sociolinguistic and a syntactic point of view. Since English underwent a process of standardization in the eighteenth century, the concept of 'Standard English' has influenced peoples' attitudes towards different varieties of English and the speakers of those varieties. 'Standard English' has, since this time, been used as a yardstick against which other varieties of English have been judged. In South Africa, where during the apartheid era, language as well as skin colour and ethnicity were used as a basis for discrimination, the 'Standard English' debate and the standard language ideology need to be explored in order to draw attention to areas of potential discrimination. Through an extended review of the literature on the 'Standard English' Debate and a particular focus on South African Indian English, as well as interviews with South African Indian participants, I investigate how the 'Standard English' debate is, more often than not, a debate about ideology, power and inequality, rather than simply about 'good' or 'correct' language usage. I argue that language attitudes are, in many cases, attitudes towards speakers, making them a potential vehicle for discrimination and prejudice. I examine the social history of the South African Indian community and SAIE and argue that the unique history of the South African Indian community has affected the development of SAlE and attitudes towards its speakers, and the attitudes of speakers of SAlE toward their own variety. Furthermore, I explore how this history has affected the syntactic structure of SAlE and provide, through a syntactic analysis of South African Indian English wh-questions, evidence for the fact that these constructions are formed on the basis of a systematic and rule-governed grammar that is different to that of 'Standard English', but is not, as a result of this difference, incorrect.
Against overt particle incorporation.
(University of Pennsylvania. Department of Linguistics. Penn Linguistics Club., 1997) Zeller, Jochen Klaus.
No abstract available.
AILA Africa Research Network Launch 2007 : research into the use of the African languages for academic purposes.
(Cambridge University Press for British Council and National Centre for Languages., 2008) Wildsmith-Cromarty, Rosemary.
No abstract available.
Analisis de los mecanismos orales que han asegurado la conservacion del romancero en Colombia con referencia especial a las colecciones hechas por G. Beutler, G. de Granda, F. Dougherty y G. Hersalek.
(1997) Hersalek, Gloria.; Sienaert, Edgard Richard.
The thesis is a description and analysis of the oral style devices on four collections undertaken by G.Beutler, G. de Granda, F. Dougherty and G. Hersalek in Colombia. Themes and their transmitters are analysed. Oral features such as formulas, the uses of repetition and parallelism as well as variability are explored in individual chapters which are illustrated with Colombian texts. The thesis consists of an introduction to the theme of the Oral Spanish Balladry and its collections; a summarized description of the primary sources; an annotated transcription of our compilation of texts in the department of Boyaca and five chapters of analysis and description of oral style mechanisms. Charts showing the themes collected in Colombia and the number, gender and age of its repositories are included. Maps indicate the departments in Colombia where those themes were found. Graphs have the purpose to show a clearer perspective on the distribution of the Spanish Balladry in Colombia, thus, offering a guide for new researchers. This analysis shows that the Colombian transmitters have made use both of the oral style devices inherited from Spain as well as their own initiative that has produced innovations at different levels in this tradition.
Assessing politeness, language and gender in hlonipha.
(2007) Luthuli, Thobekile Patience.; Rudwick, Stephanie Inge.
The aim of this study is to investigate the politeness phenomena (particularly isiHlonipho) within the isiZulu speaking community in KwaZulu Natal. The study focuses on the understanding of isiHlonipho within the isiZulu speaking community and whether males and females from the urban and rural areas share a similar or different understanding of isiHlonipho. Furthermore the thesis investigates which of the existing Western/non-Western models of politeness are relevant for describing the politeness phenomena in the target community. In order to achieve triangulation, qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection were used. These comprised of interviews with cultural/religious leaders, discourse completion tasks, and interviews with males and females from urban and rural areas in Mdumezulu and Umlazi Township. My findings reveal that the understanding of politeness phenomena within the target community is more in keeping with that in other non-Western cultures than in Western cultures. Females from the rural area are found to utilize isiHlonipho more than those females from the urban area. On the basis of this limited sample, it is argued that females from the urban area may be beginning to reject traditional Zulu femininity in favour of more westernized identities.
Beyond traditional literature : towards oral theory as aural linguistics.
(1996) Alant, Jacob Willem.; Sienaert, Edgard Richard.
Oral Theory, which is the discipline that studies the oral tradition, has been characterized as a literary anthropology, centered on essentially two notions: tradition on the one hand, literature on the other. Though emphasis has moved from an initial preoccupation with oral textual form (as advocated by Parry and Lord) to concerns with the oral text as social practice, the anthropological / literary orientation has generally remained intact. But through its designation of a traditional 'other' Oral Theory is, at best, a sub-field of anthropology; the literature it purports to study is not literature, but anthropological data. This undermines the existence of the field as discipline. In this study it is suggested that the essence of orality as subject matter of Oral Theory - should be seen not in the origins of its creativity (deemed 'traditional'), nor in its aesthetic process / product itself ('literature'), but in its use of language deriving from a different 'auditory' conception of language (as contrasted with the largely 'visualist' conception of language at least partly associated with writing). In other words, the study of orality should not be about specific oral 'genres', but about verbalization in general. In terms of its auditory conception, language is primarily defined as existing in sound, a definition which places it in a continuum with other symbolical / meaningful sounds, normally conceptualized as 'music'. Linguistics, being fundamentally scriptist (visualist) in orientation, fails to account for the auditory conception of language. To remedy this, Oral Theory needs to set itself up as an 'aural linguistics' - implying close interdisciplinary collaboration with the field of musicology - through which the linguistic sign of orality could be studied in all its particularity and complexity of meaning.
Bodylands : inscriptions of the body and embodiment in the novels of Lauren Beukes. Key terms : South African literature, inscriptions of the body and space, gender, abjection, the disciplined body, the grotesque and classical body.
(2015) King, Natasha.; Dimitriu, Ileana.; Sandwith, Corinne.
This dissertation takes up the question of the body and embodiment(s) in contemporary South African fiction, paying particular attention to the novels of award-wining author, Lauren Beukes. In the first three fictional works published to date, namely Moxyland (2008), Zoo City (2010) and The Shining Girls (2013), the body emerges as a persistent focus of narrative interest and attention. My aim in this dissertation is to explore how these fictional bodies are imagined and constructed; to ask what kinds of bodies predominate in Beukes’s texts and to consider their thematic, narrative, aesthetic and political significance. Taking my cue from contemporary cultural theory (the work of Foucault, Bakhtin and Scarry), and various studies in feminist theory (such as Gatens, Grosz and Butler), I hope to bring renewed attention to the body and its inscriptions within discourse by offering a reading of the body in Beukes’s first three fictional works: Moxyland (2008), Zoo City (2010) and The Shining Girls (2013). By extending the existing critical literature on the body, as well as these novels, I aim to provide a reading of the body in these texts in terms of the following themes: the disciplined body, the body in pain, the gendered body, the body in relation to power and the vulnerable body.
Can you "dig up the hatchet"? : on the semantic transparency of idioms in English.
(2013) Sutherland, Julia.; Zeller, Jochen Klaus.; Tappe, Heike Magdalena Elfriede.
This thesis is concerned with the connection between syntax and semantics regarding the construction of special meaning in English. To investigate this construction I have taken a selection of English idioms, modified them in structured ways and then presented them to a group of English mother tongue speakers to test whether, although modified, these idioms retain their idiomaticity. These modifications took the form of two specific operations, those of mobility and transferability (the latter operation was created for the purpose of this thesis). An idiom’s parts are considered mobile if its parts can undergo movement and retain an idiomatic reading. In this thesis, the movement operation that I was concerned with was passivisation. An idiom’s parts are considered transferable if one of its parts can be replaced (e.g. the verb with another verb or the object determiner phrase with another determiner phrase) and idiomaticity is retained. I hypothesise that whether an idiom’s parts are transferable and mobile is dependent on whether the idiom is compositional or not. I will discuss the above hypothesis against previous work of both Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist Program and Jackendoff’s (1997) representational modularity. The results gained in this study show that idioms cannot be categorised neatly as compositional or non-compositional, but rather exist on a continuum of idiomaticity. On the one end of the continuum exist idioms that are completely inflexible and the rate of flexibility increases the further the continuum extends. Therefore on the one side of the scale is an idiom such as “trip the light fantastic” which is inflexible and on the other side is an idiom such as “I lift my hat to you” which is flexible but in restrained ways.
Church and poverty : towards a prophetic solidarity model for the United Church of Zambia's participation in poverty eradication in Zambia.
(2018) Simukonda, Joseph Darius.; Le Bruyns, Clint Charles.
Religion is one of the forces that is strategically positioned in society to contribute to the socioeconomic development. Both secular and religious organisations are unanimous that religion should be a critical partner in the development agenda. This study systematically explores how prophetic solidarity model could help the UCZ to move from merely participating in poverty eradication to become the church of the margins in search for a poverty free society. The study argues that, prophetic solidarity model may help the UCZ to understand that poverty eradication is an aspect of the mission of God in the world and any Church that claim to be an agent of mission can only do so in solidarity with the margins. This means that the UCZ should move beyond bandage approach to poverty to understanding the key underlying causes of poverty through social analysis and critical policy engagement. This demands that the UCZ should reconceptualise God’s mission in terms of transforming political structures and policy transformation in solidarity with the poor. This will mean that the UCZ will no longer claim to be listening to the voices of the margins, since she will now function as the church of the marginalised in struggle and in solidarity with the margins against socioeconomic and political oppression and exploitation in the Zambian context. In order to enhance the prophetic solidarity engagement of the UCZ in the context of socioeconomic and political uncertainty, this study delved into David Korten’s theory of development that seeks to address poverty by dealing with the root cause of poverty; liberation theology that calls the church to be involved in political and civic affairs of society by exposing any form of exploitation and injustices; the theory of mission from the margins that seeks to empower the poor so that they can become agents of transformation; public theology that seeks the presence of the church in public space to engage in policy formulation and many others issues that boarder on the well-being of God’s people; and lastly, in chapter seven, the study reflected on Jesus as a model for prophetic engagement where it has been revealed that, Jesus stands out as an example for the church’s prophetic engagement with poverty, for he was not just a religious leader but also a political activist who confronted structures, institutions, authorities and systems that oppressed the poor.
Code-mixing in simultaneous language acquisition.
(2006) Hara, Agness Bernadette Chimangeni.; Wildsmith-Cromarty, Rosemary.
This thesis is based on the recorded speech and field notes of the author's three-year-old child who was acquiring three languages simultaneously (Chichewa, Chitumbuka and English). Chichewa is his mother's first language, Chitumbuka is his father's first language and English is both the language of the preschool that he was attending and the official language in Malawi. This study was unusual in that it involved African languages that are under-researched in the field of language acquisition and dealt with two cognate languages (Chichewa and Chitumbuka) and a non-cognate language, English. The fact that Chichewa and Chitumbuka strongly resemble each other may have made movement between the two easier for the child. The analysis of the child's recorded speech shows that he mixed more at the lexical level (64.2%) and less at the phonological level (6.3%). The findings demonstrate that what the child had learnt at school in English fulfilled a booster function when either Chichewa or Chitumbuka was used. The results also reveal that the child's language mixing was influenced by the topic of discussion, the context and the interlocutor's mixed input. The interlocutor's discourse strategies also had an impact on the child's use of mixing. The results therefore provide support for the bilingual bootstrapping hypothesis, the modeling hypothesis and the discourse hypothesis. The results also demonstrate that Chichewa was generally the matrix or host language when mixing occurred. At school, however, where only English was permitted, the question of a matrix language did not occur. Furthermore, the combination of lexical and grammatical morphemes demonstrates that Chichewa was dominant in the child's speech, in terms of the dominant-language hypothesis proposed by Petersen (1988). This study challenges the Free Morpheme Constraint and the Equivalence Constraint in that they do not appear to be universally applicable. Instead, the Matrix Language Frame Model is supported as it applies to code-mixing involving English and Bantu languages. This model was relevant, as the speech analyzed in this study involved code-mixing between English and the two Bantu languages, Chichewa and Chitumbuka. However, it was difficult to apply the Matrix Language Frame Model to some of the child's mixed utterances because the MLU was low. It is hoped therefore that researchers will create further models that will allow for an analysis of the mixed morphemes in single word utterances, especially for the Nguni African languages, which are agglutinative by nature.
Code-switching as a technique in teaching literature in a secondary school ESL classroom.
(2001) Moodley, Visvaganthie.; Kamwangamalu, Nkonko M.
This dissertation focuses on code-switching i.e. the alternate use of two languages within the same speech event, as a technique in teaching literature to Grade 10 ESL learners by bilingual teachers in comparison to English only method by an English monolingual teacher, in two schools in Port Shepstone. This study examines the forms and functions of English-Zulu code-switching by bilingual ESL teachers. Using the experimental approach, it also investigates whether there are any significant differences in scholastic achievement as measured by tests of literary works between the control group which is taught through the medium of English and the experimental group which is taught through the medium of cs. This study also examines the attitudes of monolingual and bilingual educators and bilingual learners toward CS, particularly in the domain of the school. Through an analysis of data obtained from questionnaires, interviews, lesson recordings and tests, this research reveals that even though CS does not appear to significantly contribute to scholastic achievement, it fulfills a variety of pedagogical functions. CS therefore claims a firm position in the classroom. As such, I argue that CS should not necessarily be perceived as interlanguage but as a form of linguistic code in its own right. I also demonstrate that contrary to a wealth of studies (e. g. Nyowe 1992; Gibb 1998) that show that English monolingual speakers, as well as those who employ CS in their linguistic repertoire, stigmatise the use of CS, the majority of participants of this research perceive CS as a code that is both inevitable and a valuable learning resource. Finally, I explore the implications of this research for principals, teachers and governing body members. I suggest that there is a need for these role players to engage in consciousness raising as the ANC Language Policy Document clearly accords CS an official status and more importantly, CS is a reality in the classroom. In addition, I examine the implications of CS for ESL teachers and teaching, particularly in the teaching of literature. I suggest that by employing CS in the teaching of literature teachers help learners to better interact with and interpret the literary text, and also promote communicative competence among the learners. Lastly, I explore the implications of CS for methodology. I conclude that the strategic use of CS effectively enhances English L2 acquisition.
Code-switching during church sermons: implications on language development.
(2017) Dladla, Celimpilo Piety.; Dlamini, Phindile Dorothy Mamsomi.; Ndebele, Hloniphani.
Cognitive, affective, and behavioural aspects of attitude in isiZulu L1 tertiary students towards discipline-specific terminology in isiZulu and isiZulu as an academic language.
(2022) Sibisi, Muhle Praiseworth.; Tappe, Heike Magdalena Elfried.
The study uses the tripartite model of attitude to interrogate students’ attitudes towards isiZulu and the influence that the existence of discipline-specific terminology in isiZulu has on their attitudes towards isiZulu as an academic language. The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), in response to the constitutional directive of elevating indigenous African languages in South Africa, has developed discipline-specific terminology in isiZulu for Administration, Architecture, Anatomy, Computer Science, Environmental Science, Law, Physics, Psychology and Nursing. The attitudes of students toward the availability of terminology have not been explored. This study explores the perception of isiZulu home language (L1) students on the availability of the terminology in the disciplines of Anatomy, Architecture, Law, and Physics, as well as the lack of the terminology in the disciplines of Community Development, Management, Chemistry, and Physiology. It distinguishes between the uses of isiZulu as a form of mother tongue-based education (MTBE), that applies in the entire learning experience of students, and the use of isiZulu alongside English with discipline-specific terminology as an academic resource for isiZulu L1 students. Applying a mixed methods research methodology, data is sourced using a questionnaire survey and focus group interviews from 149 isiZulu L1 students enrolled in the eight disciplines across the four colleges of UKZN. The results indicate that the attitudes of L1 students are directly impacted by two distinct language learning experiences; those with increased exposure to L1 hold positive attitudes, while those with diminished exposure to L1 hold negative attitudes. The study discovers that the L1 students were not aware of the availability of the discipline-specific terminology in isiZulu at UKZN and that they find the terminology difficult to decipher, irrespective of their language learning experiences. For this reason, there is a preference for loanwords in addition to the terminology in proper isiZulu. The results also indicate that the attitudinal responses on the three aspects of attitude are not consistently aligned towards the attitude objects. This study postulates that discipline-specific terminology in isiZulu should be used consistently throughout the schooling years of the students. The terminology lists need to include loanwords that are accessible to students. In this way, isiZulu, and other African languages, will be activated in academic contexts, the heterogeneity of L1 students will be catered for, and the students’ multilingualism will be a resource that enhances their academic performance. For language attitude studies, this study advocates for the investigation of the three aspects of attitudes individually, conducted both in the absence as well as the presence of the attitudinal objects, in order to obtain comprehensive insight into the attitude construct.
Comparative analysis of autofictional features in the works of Amelie Nothomb, Calixthe Beyala and Nina Bouraoui.
(2011) Ferreira-Meyers, Karen Aline Francoise.; De Meyer, Bernard Albert Marcel Sylvain.
30 years after the coining of autofiction (Doubrovsky, 1977), there is still no general consensus about its exact meaning. This research set out to discover autofiction, whether there is a need for this term, why the public has taken such an interest in autofiction. Research questions were divided into two major categories: 1. What is autofiction? What is its origin? How has it evolved? Which differences are there, if any, between autobiography and autofiction? Is there a need for the separate genre of autofiction? Why/why not? What are its general characteristics? 2. Do the three analysed women authors – Nothomb, Beyala and Bouraoui – incorporate these elements in their writing? If so, how and why? Is autofictional writing a stage/posture in the personal writing development of an author? Is there any link between the writing of the own persona and the obsession with the public persona? Concentrating on terminological and theoretical issues, extensive literature review was done in the first part of the research. Starting from main literary criticism regarding fiction and autobiography/autofiction, the theoretical side of my research dealt with narrative identity and the true/false dichotomy of fact/fiction. Together with qualitative research about intertextuality as applied by autofictional writers (difference plagiarism and intertextual borrowing) led to a functional definition of autofiction, the basis for the comparative study of the three authors. For the research into their public persona, extensive internet research and analysis of newspaper articles were undertaken to show: 1. how the authors portray themselves; 2. how they are perceived by the media; 3. how this possibly influences their writing style. Autofiction requires analysis of: 1. why authors write 2. about what they write 3. how they incorporate the Self and the world in their writing. Bouraoui compares writing to an almost sexual act of love, the most intimate possible. Writing was the only way she could deal with childhood memories and repressed homosexuality. Beyala writes to communicate with others, while Nothomb considers writing as a means to live more intensely, after anorexia. The specificities and distinctive characteristics of the texts and authors were discovered through narrative analysis (factual research into the authors’ public persona + textual analysis of literary oeuvres). In Chapter 3 (Calixthe Beyala), feminine literary criticism as well as postcolonial theories guided my reading. Chapter 4 (Nina Bouraoui) allowed reflexion on the links between memory, identity, truth and autofictional writing. All chapters included research on Doubrovsky’s link between psychoanalysis and autofiction. In conclusion, there is a strong indication that one should speak of autofictions in the plural. This research explains some of the differences between autobiography and autofiction while underlining the importance of the existence of this new, separate sub-genre. The researcher had an opportunity to reflect on human memory and re-interpretation of facts. Where does the dividing line between truth and falsehood fall when the author puts the reader deliberately on a false track by introducing his/her work as « a novel »? Recent, post-modern writing has deliberately transgressed the fine dividing line between fact/fiction. The present research corroborates this view.
A comparative ethnography of rituals and worship among Hindus and Zulus in South Africa with special reference to death rituals and ancestor veneration.
(2007) Govender, Rajendran Thangavelu.; Zungu, Phyllis Jane Nonhlanhla.
This study examines the similarities and differences between the historical background and the current performance of Hindu and Zulu funerals and associated ceremonies. After presenting an account of the historical development of the Hindu and Zulu communities in South Africa, a chronological account of the performance of each of these funeral ceremonies are presented. This account includes a detailed description of the rituals performed when a person is on his/her death bed, the actual funeral ceremonies and the post death rituals and ceremonies associated with ancestor veneration. The incidence and significance of The Anthropology of Geste and Rhythm in each of these ceremonies are demonstrated according to the theory of Marcel Jousse. The Hindu and Zulu ceremonies are then analysed and interpreted to demonstrate an individuals life crises which Van Gennep called the "Rites of Passage" and distinguishes three phases: separation, transition, and incorporation. The discussion accounts for the transmission of traditions over generations, and which demonstrate the anthropological and psychobiological nature of memory, understanding and expression as evident in the performance of Hindu and Zulu funerals and ceremonies and the manner in which the ancestors are venerated in South Africa. The research was undertaken mainly in Kwa-Zulu Natal. However to fill research gaps in the Hindu investigation a study was undertaken in some parts ofIndia as part of the Ford Foundation International Fellowship Programme.
A comparative study of selected ellipsis constructions in English and IsiZulu.
(2018) Bevis, Andrew John.; Zeller, Jochen Klaus.
This work is a comparative study of verb phrase ellipsis (and verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis), sluicing and gapping, along with some of their subtypes, in English and the Bantu language isiZulu. The goal of the present study was to determine from the literature how ellipsis is characterised in English and which ellipsis constructions are attested in isiZulu, which remains practically unstudied in this regard. There is a large body of literature written in the framework of the Minimalist Program (as part of Generative Grammar) on these ellipsis constructions as they appear in English. I draw on selected discussions from this literature in order to give an overview of these constructions and of the key research questions surrounding the study of ellipsis. These questions involve the nature of the ellipsis site in which linguistic material that would otherwise be required is not pronounced but is nevertheless still interpreted, how ellipsis is licensed, how unpronounced material is recovered and how the process of ellipsis is implemented. This thesis focuses on arguments which suggest that the ellipsis site contains fully articulated syntactic structure which is elided by way of being deleted at PF under the correct focus conditions. Evidence for syntactic conditions on ellipsis is also considered, as are some alternative analyses of ellipsis. The literature on ellipsis in Bantu languages is very scant. I highlight the findings of the few studies on Bantu which do exist, and make an original contribution to this area of study by providing data for the aforementioned ellipsis constructions in isiZulu. Unlike the Bantu languages which have already been reported on, isiZulu does seem to have a type of VP-ellipsis which is just like English VP-ellipsis. A further unexpected finding is that isiZulu does not have verb-stranding VP-ellipsis, which has been reported to exist in some Bantu languages as well as in non-Bantu languages with verb raising. Finally, sluicing and gapping have been reported to be possible in some Bantu languages, and my data shows that they are attested in isiZulu as well.
A comparative study of SV/VS word order in Arabic and Bantu.
(2018) Shakhatreh, Mohammad Gaseem.; Zeller, Jochen Klaus.
This thesis studies the SV/VS word orders in Bantu languages and Arabic dialects. This word orders alternation is correlated with other grammatical features as well as semantic/pragmatic readings of the constituents. The main grammatical feature associated with the SV/VS word order dichotomy discussed in this thesis is: subject-verb agreement and realization of agreement on the verb. If the subject precedes the verb, the verb bears full agreement with the subject; in person, number and gender in Arabic and in noun class in Bantu. However, when the subject follows the verb, the verb bears partial agreement with the subject; in gender (and sometimes person) in Standard Arabic, and full agreement in the modern dialects of Arabic while it bears a default agreement in Bantu. The position of the subject (post-or pre-verbal) also affects the pragmatic reading of the subject. In the SV word order, in most Bantu languages as well Standard Arabic, the subject is interpreted as topic. However, in some modern Arabic dialects, it can be interpreted as focus. In the VS word order, a focus reading is available for the subject in Bantu (and sometimes obligatory), while in Arabic, the whole sentence is presented as all new-information (presentational focus). The study shows that, although both SV/VS word orders in these two language groups can have a unified analysis for their derivational properties and the syntactic operations responsible for deriving both SV/VS word order (Fassi Fehri 1993, Benmamoun 2000, Soltan 2006, Zeller 2006, 2008, Halpert 2012 and many others), it cannot however provide a unified analysis to capture the formal grammatical features such as agreement, and pragmatic ideas such as topic and focus that are correlated with SV/VS word orders in both Bantu and Arabic dialects.
Conflicting paradigms : an investigation into teachers' perceptions of language teaching in English second language primary school classrooms, KwaZulu-Natal.
(2001) Stielau, Joanne Dorothy Melanie.
The aim of this dissertation is to contribute towards research in the area of Second Language Learning and Teaching, with particular focus on English Second Language (ESL) Learning and Teaching in the context of a South African distance college. This report investigates the notion of 'best practice' in language classrooms and compares this notion with a sample of teachers' own views about what constitutes 'best practice' in language teaching. Included in this report are critical discussions regarding language teacher education and the pervasive influence of different language policies in South Africa with regard to the way such policies have influenced teachers' beliefs about their practice. There is also a focus on the debate surrounding the prescription of a single 'best practice' in teacher education. The investigative approach used in this research was essentially qualitative and this report includes details on the benefits and challenges of the narrative task as a research tool, as well as much authentic material in the form of student responses. This investigation found that while many teachers do support practices which are in keeping with official notions of 'best practice' as described in the South African language-in-education policy and Curriculum 2005, there are significant numbers of teachers who advocate practices for language teaching which seem to contradict the notion of 'best practice' including Subtractive Bilingualism, Audiolingual methodology, rote learning and even coersion. Based on these findings, recommendations for the upgrading of existing teacher education programmes and the development of new programmes include the following: • information on changing policies and practices. • credibility in change through practice. • enactment of a process syllabus. • skills development in general classroom practice. • language development as part of teacher education. • acceptance that there is no 'best method'. • the development of broad critical reflexive practice in teachers.
A critical analysis of the relationship between literacy and disadvantage: a case study of grade 11 literacy practices in a township school.
(2016) Haricharan, Dhanwanthie.; Manik, Sadhana.
South Africa is currently in an educational crisis as evidenced by the performance of learners in a myriad of high stakes tests that they are exposed to. It has been established that this state of crisis is strongly correlated with the literacy levels of learners. The performance on the aforementioned tests are aligned with those who hail from previously disadvantaged backgrounds, performing overwhelmingly worse than those who do not. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between literacy and disadvantage. The objectives of the study were to interrogate the literacy practices in school and to identify the ways in which disadvantage manifested itself within these literacy practices. In order to investigate these critical issues, a case study was conducted. One grade 11 class located in a township school formed the case of study. Data was gathered using classroom observations, post observation interviews, focus group interviews with the learners and with the teachers, a semi-structured interview with the principal and a questionnaire for the learners. Reading, writing, speaking and practical literacy practices were observed in the classroom. It was found that there was the general lack of a culture of reading amongst the learners and so the learners’ level of reading was below grade level. Writing was emphasized in class or given as homework with much of the writing centering on note-taking. Learners had to work in an environment where there was a chronic lack of resources (such as textbooks) which impacted on their literacy practices. The teaching and learning environment in which the literacies were embedded was characterized by a lack of suitable reading and writing instruction (in all of their subjects), feedback and practical science literacy. There were however, instances where teachers successfully and practically demonstrated particular tasks. The interactions in the classroom were dominated by the teacher-talk. There was language fluidity in these interactions as teachers used multilingual resources such as code-switching and transliteration to facilitate learning. Teachers also employed innovative teaching strategies. Further analysis of the data showed that disadvantage manifested in literacy practices in both obvious (such as lack of resources) and subtle ways (such as attitudes and social behaviours). The ways in which disadvantage manifested in the literacy practices also differed amongst the different literacy practices. An ecological theory for literacy development was used in order to understand the extent to which literacy development is context dependent and thus more susceptible to influence from situational factors of disadvantage such as poverty, ideology, pedagogy etc. This perspective revealed a nuanced relationship between literacy and disadvantage and concluded that literacy is the product of the individual and his/her environment (which comprises the micro, meso, exo and macro systems)

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