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Title:
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Sociolinguistics - Syntax Interface of NEG Placement Features
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Author:
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Himanshu Upadhyaya
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Hyderabad
, Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies
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Degree Date:
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2002
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Sociolinguistics
Syntax
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Subject Language(s):
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Gujarati
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Director(s):
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Probal Dasgupta
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Abstract:
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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).
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