| 1 |
Author(s):
Mariam Titilope Gobir, Victoria Dankyi Adwoa.
Page No : 1-16
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An Interlanguage Phonological Approach to the Analysis of Selected Ghanaian Newscasters’ Renditions
Abstract
In recent years, specially marked varieties of the English language have been the thrust of many researches, and the Ghanaian English is one of them. This study examined selected Ghanaian newscasters’ renditions using the tenets of Selinker’s Interlanguage Phonology Theory: simplification, overgeneralisation of the L2 and transfer. The study also incorporated the use of Praat application for the analysis of the data. Apart from this, the interview method was used to collect the data for the study. The data collected consist of interviews recorded across twelve radio stations in Cape-Coast, Ghana. The data analysis revealed that some phonemes of the British English (BrE) are unavailable in the Ghanaian English; hence, the newscasters introduce or transfer some of the phonemic features that are characteristics of the individual's variety into the British English (BrE), especially those with similar phonemic properties. Also, phonological simplification processes were introduced by the respondents to enable them to produce words easily and as a result, the words and syllables end up reduced, restructured or re-syllabified. In conclusion, the findings from the study have reflected that there are modifications by the studied speakers and these modifications are what make the English language spoken by the newscasters distinct from what is obtainable on the job, due to the exigencies of the second language situation and specific cognitive oriented problems.
| 2 |
Author(s):
Emmanuel Mensah Bonsu, Joseph Benjamin Archibald Afful (PhD).
Page No : 17-38
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Genre Analysis of Abstracts of Research Articles Published in Biostatistics
Abstract
Genre studies have contributed to revealing the communicative purposes and structural properties particular to specific discourse communities. Research articles (RA) have been the focus of most genre studies for the past four decades. RA abstract is important because it summarizes the work, persuades readers, and ‘sells’ the article locally and internationally. An emerging academic discipline that has been under studied is Biostatistics. The study aimed at exploring the move structure and lexico-grammatical features of RA abstracts published in Biostatistics. Forty (40) RA abstracts were extracted from four different Biostatistics journals. Hyland’s five-move structure model was adopted to guide the analysis. Using Hüttner’s classification model, the most frequent move was the Product, with a 100% occurrence. While the Introduction move was core, the Purpose, Method, Product and Conclusion moves were obligatory. It was revealed that the abstracts follow the completely linear five-move structure, i.e., M1>M2>M3>M4>M5. While the study revealed that the total number of words in an abstract is 244, the Product move had the highest textual space in the abstract. With the linguistic realisation of the moves, the past verb tense was preferred, occurring frequently in the Method move. The Introduction and Conclusion moves recorded frequent use of modal verbs. Personal pronouns were characteristic of the Method move. These linguistic realisations served to differentiate one move from the others. While the study contributes to research on RA abstracts generally, it guides the practice of abstract designing in Biostatistics. Finally, it offers insights for further research.
| 3 |
Author(s):
Ogar Simon Oko , Isaac Eyi Ngulube.
Page No : 39-49
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Negation in English and Yala Languages
Abstract
Negation is a denial, or a way of expressing a rejection of a positive proposition. It is a universal feature of human language in the sense that every language has a way of expressing a denial of fact, action, idea, or some such thing. Seeing that every language has a way of expressing negation, it was the aim of this work to examine the contrasts that exist in the ways in which negation is expressed in English and Yala languages. Yala is among the Idomoid group of languages. These languages are chosen due to their contact situation as well as the need that arises for comparative linguistics when languages come in contact. The study reveals that significant differences exist between the negation strategies of English and Yala languages; English is said to have more negation operators than Yala, thus displaying a fairly richer morpho-syntactic process in terms of negation. However, while the scope of negation commands certain phonological changes in Yala, it does not in English. It is also evident from the study that negation is marked with the use of cleft-like sentences in both languages. Moreover, in English, modal negation may have a wide or narrow scope, while in Yala, modal negation usually has a narrow scope. It was found from the study that to express non-modal negation, English and Yala use ‘not transport’; however, English marks non-modal negations through other means as well. Therefore, contrastive statements are made after establishing contrasts in different aspects of negation in both languages, and predictions of difficulty are made after each contrastive statement. The essence of the contrastive statement and predictions is to help teachers of Yala learners to place in the proper perspective the problems of the learners in relation to English negation.
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Author(s):
Lolo ThankGod, Isaac Eyi Ngulube.
Page No : 50-68
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Serial Verb Construction in Abua
Abstract
Serial verb construction (SVC) is a global phenomenon in the worlds’ languages; pidgins and creoles are no exception. Linguists working in the Benue-Congo family of languages attest to the fact that SVC is common in this family of languages. Different approaches have been adopted to account for it; experts are of the view that its origin, existence and productivity relate to the functional load of the inflectional categories of verbs or prepositions in specific languages. This paper examines the existence of SVC in the Abua language, and if it does, we intend to correct certain misconceptions and misrepresentations in the account for SVC. By way of methodology, we elicited data from our respondents, analyzed the data and identify SVC in the Abua language. We found out that SVC involves two principal verbs sharing one predication and one argument. At the same time, these main verbs share value for tense, aspect and represent a single event. This distinctive syntactic and semantic characteristic of SVC fosters serious theoretical challenges. This study evinces that characterizing SVC and making generalizations about its typology is indeed a difficult call to make. The evidence from our data suggests a number of properties that SVC language must have. Based on these underlying semantic and syntactic properties of SVC, we assert that the Abua language has SVC.
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Author(s):
Peace Chinwendu Israel.
Page No : 69-85
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Communicative Competence in Discourse: A Universal Pragmatic Analysis of President Nana Akufo-Addo’s Update No 26: Measures Taken to Combat Spread of Coronavirus
Abstract
This paper examined the 26th official update (speech) of President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana to Ghanaians on the enhanced measures taken to fight the Coronavirus Pandemic. The aim is to examine the extent to which he communicates competently and effectively in managing the spread of the virus. The study adopted the content analytical method which involves qualitative method of data presentation and analysis. The framework employed for the analysis was Habermas’ (1979) Universal Pragmatics. Universal Pragmatics posits that anyone acting communicatively cannot avoid raising the following validity claims: uttering something understandable, giving the hearer something to understand, making himself understandable and coming to an understanding with another person. The analysis revealed the update as having met the validity claims set by Habermas and therefore competent and effective in combating the spread of the deadly disease.
| 6 |
Author(s):
Isaac Boaheng (PhD).
Page No : 86-97
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Formulating a Translation Model for Postcolonial African Literature Through the Study of Selected Works of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Efua Sutherland and Ola Rotimi
Abstract
Postcolonial theory focuses on addressing gaps that are encountered when dealing with literary works or contexts that are minor or peripheral. It explores ways in which dominated or colonized culture can adapt tools of the dominant discourse to fight against its political or cultural dominance. Postcolonial studies serve as a useful tool for translating texts from one language to another. One has to be conversant with the approaches used by postcolonial writers to be able to appreciate their texts and eventually translate them. This paper used the methodology of textual analysis to examine portions of the selected works of four postcolonial African writers; namely, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Efua Sutherland and Ola Rotimi, to bring out key strategies by which these writers decolonized the minds of their African audience. The main decolonizing strategies discussed include adaptation, vernacularization and pidginization. Based on the findings from the analyses, the paper proposes some translation principles for dealing with postcolonial texts. The paper contributes not only to translation studies in Africa but also contributes to the decolonization of Christianity in Africa.
| 7 |
Author(s):
Ibe Chioma Nkechika, Ochiagha Ijeoma Sandra , Chukwu Kenneth Uche (Ph.D).
Page No : 98-109
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Synaesthetic Metaphor as a Language Style in Remi Raji’s Poetry
Abstract
Every poet possesses a style of writing that makes his poetry different from that of others. His style of writing predominantly aids in expressing meaning to his readers. A poet’s style may be assessed in terms of language use, pattern of thematic exploration, poetic structure or figurative expression, etc. Be it as it may, there is no wide gap between his language style and meaning exploration (that is, the literary message he intends to express). This paper therefore is a study of Remi Raji’s poetry with the intention of examining the use of synaesthesia as a language style in his poetry. Adopting Burrow’s (2012) pattern, the research sets out to determine the situation that may have aroused the poet’s use of synaesthesia. According to Burrow’s argument, synaesthetic capacity was stimulated by cultural, social and technological conditions. However, we have limited our investigations to the socio-political conditions which the poems explored and the significance of synaesthesia in portraying them. The research interest therefore was not just to identify synaesthesia as a device but mainly to find out the contextual effects and how they may have helped to stimulate meaning in Remi Raji’s poetry. The poems studied were randomly selected and the method of analysis was qualitative. The conclusion of the paper is that the manifestation of synaesthesia in Remi Raji’s poems is by no means a fortition; rather, it has stylistic significance which aids the conveyance of the literary messages of the poet.
