LINGUIST List 14.95

Mon Jan 13 2003

Diss: Socioling: Upadhyaya "Sociolinguistics..."

Editor for this issue: Karolina Owczarzak <karolinalinguistlist.org>

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1. h_upadhyaya, Socioling: Upadhyaya "Sociolinguistics - Syntax Interface..."

New Dissertation Abstract

Institution: University of Hyderabad
Program: Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2002

Author: Himanshu Upadhyaya 

Dissertation Title: 
Sociolinguistics - Syntax Interface of NEG Placement Features

Linguistic Field: Syntax, Sociolinguistics

Dissertation Director 1: Probal Dasgupta

Dissertation Abstract: 

This dissertation seeks to raise a specific set of issues in
preparation for a possible serious analysis based on this
reformulation of the basic questions at the interface between
socio-linguistics and syntactic studies revisualized as components of
a not yet widely accepted overarching discipline of macrolinguistics,
while focusing on the pretheoretically staightforward syntactic
question of Neg placement features in two varieties of Gujarati,
i.e. Kathiyawadi and Surati, in relation to the pretheoretically
understood social question of the underlying social and power
relations between two communities, i.e. the residents of Surat who
speak Surati and the immigrants who migrated recently from Saurashtra
to Surat who speak Kathiyawadi and the resultant impact on Neg
placement features. In undertaking the project of reformulating
questions at the point where such (not necessarily only these
particular) syntactic and sociolinguistic issues meet, this
dissertation examines the interface, and at times, intersections of
human linguisticality, i.e. logical problem of language acquisition,
and sociality , i.e. people's knowledge as well as perceptions of
languages (varieties) shared with other participants in making a
speech community (cf. Chomsky 1988 and, for this formulation in terms
of linguisticality and sociality, Singh 1998). Examining closely the
working of a shared knowledge system, i.e. language and through it
interactions among residents and immigrants, with linguistic as well
as social perspective, the study aspires to un-knot, to the extent
possible, ties of system as well as acts of sharing. In the shared
system of a speech community, the system is an expression of human
linguisticality, while the sharing is an expression of sociality. The
workings of a shared system in a speech community, i.e. of a language,
are continually held in tension by the dual forces of human
linguisticality and sociality.

This involves engaging with several theoretical themes such as
Universal Grammar (I choose to study only the Principles and
Parameters framework, as the exact choice of framework has no bearing
on the concerns here), convergence/divergence and interactions/power
relations producing a measure of linguistic stratification as a
reflection of social stratification. Recent literature on syntactic
studies and sociolinguistics provides strong conceptual and analytical
justification for such an integrated approach contributing to
convergence between theories of language and society (Chomsky
1985,1987 and Lele and Singh 1989, as well as Singh 1996a, 1998).