This study discusses perceptions of variation across dialects of Arabic in the Arab world as revealed through a perceptual dialectology map task. On a map of the Arab world, female undergraduate students at Qatar University provided information about boundaries where people speak differently and labels for those boundaries. A correlation analysis of the boundaries showed that participants viewed Arabic dialects as constituting five major dialect groups: the Maghreb, Egypt and Sudan, the Levant, the Gulf, and Somalia. A closer analysis of the content of the labels revealed variation in terms of principal (Goffman 1981) on whom they draw in their judgments, the latter being either individual, regional (intermediate) or wide-scope generic. This analysis not only identifies more granularity in the concept of principal, it also quantifies the different kinds of principal and identifies statistical relationships between them, the labels, and the boundaries.

Dr. Barrett will talk about Maya understandings of the dead, funerary practices, and ways of communicating with the ancestors, and then discuss the emergence of rock and hip hop music performed in Mayan languages and the ways they emphasize the ancestors in their music. 

El Dr. Barrett explicará como los Mayas se comunican con sus ancestros, las prácticas funerarias que los mayas tienen y sus pensamientos en cuando a los muertos. También hablará sobre como los ancestros tienen un rol en la inspiración de la música Maya y como el rock y hip hop ha influenciado a esta cultura.

Maria Polinsky, Harvard University

“Does English Have Resumptive Pronouns?”

 Co-sponsored by the Linguistics Program and the UK Department of English

Venue: Niles Gallery, Fine Arts Library