Relevant bibliographies by topics / English and African

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  1. Journal articles
  2. Dissertations / Theses
  3. Books
  4. Book chapters
  5. Conference papers
  6. Reports

Academic literature on the topic 'English and African'

Author: Grafiati
Published: 4 June 2021
Last updated: 14 February 2022

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Journal articles on the topic "English and African"

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Simo Bobda, Augustin. "The formation of regional and national features in African English pronunciation." English World-Wide 24, no. 1 (2003): 17–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.24.1.03sim.

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Serious studies on English pronunciation in Africa, which are only beginning, have so far highlighted the regional and sociolinguistic distribution of some features on the continent. The present paper revisits some aspects of these studies and presents a sort of pronunciation atlas on the basis of some selected features. But more importantly, the paper examines how these features are formed. It considers, but goes beyond, the over-used theory of mother-tongue interference, and analyses a wide range of other factors: colonial input, shared historical experience, movement of populations, colonial and post-colonial opening to other continents, the psychological factor, speakers’ attitudes towards the various models of pronunciation in their community, etc. For example, the Krio connection accounts for some striking similarities between Nigerian, Sierra Leonean and Gambian Englishes despite the wide geographical distance between them. The positive perception of their accent, which they judge superior to the other West African accents, has, in the past three decades, shaped the English pronunciation of Ghanaians in a particular way. The northward movements of populations have disseminated to East Africa some typically Southern African features. Links between Southern and East Africa, and Asia, are reflected in the presence of some Asian features in East and Southern African Englishes. The paper shows how African accents of English result from the interaction between the influence of indigenous languages and Africans’ exposure to several colonial and post-colonial Englishes.
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Bernsten, Jan. "English in South Africa." Language Problems and Language Planning 25, no. 3 (2001): 219–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lplp.25.3.02ber.

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In a departure from language policy in most other African countries, the 1996 South African Constitution added nine indigenous languages to join English and Afrikaans as official languages. This policy was meant to provide equal status to the indigenous languages and promote their use in power domains such as education, government, media and business. However, recent studies show that English has been expanding its domains at the expense of the other ten languages. At the same time, the expanded use of English has had an impact on the varieties of English used in South Africa. As the number of speakers and the domains of language use increase, the importance of Black South African English is also expanding. The purpose of this paper is to analyze current studies on South African Englishes, examining the way in which expanded use and domains for BSAE speakers will have a significant impact on the variety of English which will ultimately take center stage in South Africa.
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Mesthire, Rajend. "South African Indian English." English Today 9, no. 2 (1993): 12–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266078400000286.

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Hibbert, Liesel. "English in South Africa: parallels with African American vernacular English." English Today 18, no. 1 (2002): 31–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266078402001037.

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A comparison between Black English usage in South Africa and the United StatesThere has been a long tradition of resistance in South African politics, as there has been for African-Americans in the United States. The historical links between African Americans and their counterparts on the African continent prompt one to draw a comparison between the groups in terms of linguistic and social status. This comparison demonstrates that Black South African English (BSAfE) is a distinctive form with its own stable conventions, as representative in its own context as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is in the United States.
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BOBDA, AUGUSTIN SIMO. "Linguistic apartheid: English language policy in Africa." English Today 20, no. 1 (2004): 19–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s026607840400104x.

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THIS paper examines English language policy in Africa from colonial times to the present day. Colonial policy was marked by a linguistic apartheid which consisted in driving Africans away from the language, first by limiting access to formal education, then by not showing much enthusiasm for teaching them the language, then at times preferring to encourage Pidgin English, and finally by encouraging deviant features. Linguistic apartheid continues today through such institutions as the BBC, whose African Network Service openly promotes deviant African features through their jingles, the employment of African correspondents with deeply local English features, and the reading of unedited letters from listeners that contain substandard features. More subtle ways of promoting such apartheid include the negligible weight of the English language in school curricula.
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Harries, Jim. "Mission in a Post Modern World: Issues of Language and Dependency in Post-Colonial Africa." Exchange 39, no. 4 (2010): 309–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157254310x537007.

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AbstractThe communication revolution has made texts and languages available to people who, it is here suggested, might not have the cultural components needed to use them in the same way as native speakers. Introduced languages have in much of Africa eclipsed indigenous knowledge from opportunity for home grown development. Africans flocking to Western languages supported by numerous Western subsidies, leaves African ways of life concealed from the West. Western languages can be used to undermine the West. The inadequacy of English in Africa is illustrated by the contrast between the holistic and dualistic worldviews; English being dualistic is a poor means for expressing African holism. This makes the use of English in and for Africa inherently confusing. It is proposed that indigenous development be encouraged through challenging and encouraging African theology on its own terms, by encouraging some Western missionaries to use African languages and resources in their task.
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Kaviti, Lillian Katunge, Rebecca Oladipo, and Isaiah Ndung’u Mwaniki. "African Adaptation Processes in English." International Journal for Innovation Education and Research 4, no. 6 (2016): 50–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.31686/ijier.vol4.iss6.556.

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The multilingual situation in Africa has led to the development of ‘hybrid’ languages in multi-lingual and multi-cultural situations. These hybrid languages are sometimes associated with urban youth born and bred in multicultural environments. In this category we place the Kenyan variety referred to as ‘Engsh’. We compared this hybrid urban language with Nigerian Pidgin English to establish whether there are any sociolinguistic similarities between the two African indigenized varieties of English. This entailed analyzing the grammar of the two varieties then scrutinizing the semantic shift processes to assess whether the languages express any African world view in terms of semantic interpretation. The significance of this study is to demonstrate the extent to which African speakers have adapted the grammar and lexicon of English (a former colonial language) to reflect their unique African speech styles and cultural experiences
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Titlestad, Peter. "People's English, codification, function, and logic." English Today 18, no. 2 (2002): 14–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266078402002031.

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A response to Pearl Ntlhakana, ‘People's English’, on the language situation in South Africa, in ET62 (16:2), Apr 2000.If you have a non-standard local form of English, what do you do with it?Pearl Ntlhakana gives a bold answer, supporting her arguments by reference to an article by Chick and Wade (1997), also on the South African situation. By “People's English”, Ntlhakana means what is usually referred to as Black South African English (BSAE), the English that is said to be characteristic of the indigenous African population of South Africa. What she suggests is that “a restandardised variety would actually replace the current standard (White South African English with Southern British English as its model), performing the whole range of formal functions”.
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Queen, Robin, and Marlyse Baptista. "African American English." Journal of English Linguistics 36, no. 2 (2008): 185–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0075424208317324.

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van Rooy, Bertus, Lize Terblanche, Christoph Haase, and Josef J. Schmied. "Register differentiation in East African English." English World-Wide 31, no. 3 (2010): 311–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.31.3.04van.

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The article examines register variation in East African English by submitting the East African component of the International Corpus of English (ICE) to a complete multidimensional analysis (Biber 1988). A six-factor model was extracted using 67 linguistic features (Biber 1988). The results show that the extent of register variation is not less in ICE-East Africa than in Biber (1988). However, East African English displays unique stylistic features across registers. The overall effect is that East African English leans more towards the formal side (especially Dimensions 3, 5 and 6). There is a strong emphasis on the involvement of the addressee, more formal features for the encoding of information, and delineation of reference by textual rather than contextual means, even when the information is not very abstract. The paper establishes a baseline of the extent of register variation in East African English, and identifies certain typical features across all registers.
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Dissertations / Theses on the topic "English and African"

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Howe, Darin M. "Negation in early African American English." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1995. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp05/mq24075.pdf.

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Coertze, Salome. "Aviation English in South African airspace." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/80386.

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Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: A lack of English proficiency and failure to use standard phraseology played a role in two of the world’s largest aviation disasters in South Germany and Tenerife, respectively. As a result, the crucial role of effective pilot-ATC (air traffic controller) communication came under scrutiny and measures were put in place to ensure that aviation safety is not jeopardised by language-related problems. For example, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) implemented English language proficiency standards and testing. The study reported in this thesis investigated the use of Aviation English and standard phraseology, which is used in radiotelephony communication by the operational aviation community. Aviation English consists of a range of operationally-relevant language functions and dialogue management, e.g. orders, requests, and offers to act; a blend of formulaic standard phraseology and plain or everyday speech if and when a non-routine situation occurs. Data on pilots’ and ATCs’ perceptions of the role of language in air traffic communication, their perspectives on English as lingua franca in aviation, and English language proficiency standards and testing were collected by means of a questionnaire. The respondents included full-time professional pilots (domestic and international flights), part-time professional pilots and pilots who fly for leisure, and ATCs in Air Traffic Navigation Service units that handle domestic and/or international flights. Recordings of on-site air traffic communication from two airport towers were obtained and were used to study the use of Aviation English and standard phraseology in pilot-ATC communication in South Africa. The results indicated that the majority of pilots and ATCs believe that language-related problems can cause fatal accidents and serious incidents. Pilots and ATCs in South Africa do experience threatening and potentially hazardous situations as a result of communication problems, however, they are confident that communication problems are resolved quickly and successfully in order to avoid accidents. The analysis of the voice recordings correlated with the pilots’ and ATCs’ perceptions that in spite of communication problems (languagerelated and non-language-related) occurring in South African airspace, pilots and ATCs have strategies in place to resolve them effectively and they are also able to use plain English to negotiate understanding and meaning. The majority of the respondents indicated that they agree that English should be used as the lingua franca in aviation around the world and they regard the English language proficiency of South African pilots and ATCs as satisfactory. The majority support ICAO’s English language proficiency standards and testing. The recordings presented a small percentage of transmissions with read-back/hear-back errors, but a substantial number of instances of radio distortions and background noise which interfered with the intelligibility of the transmissions, correlated with the results of the questionnaire. A small percentage of transmissions contained deviations from Aviation English and standard phraseology and/or the use of plain English. The researcher is of the opinion that this initial investigation into Aviation English serves to indicate some avenues for fruitful linguistic investigations into Aviation English and pilot-ATC communication in South Africa.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ontoereikende taalvaardigheid in Engels en nalating om standaard frases te gebruik, het bygedra tot twee van die ernstigste vliegongelukke in lugvaartgeskiedenis, naamlik in Suid-Duitsland en Tenerife, onderskeidelik. As gevolg van die ongelukke, het die kritieke rol van effektiewe kommunikasie tussen vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers onder die loep gekom, en maatreëls is ingestel om te verseker dat lugvaartveiligheid nie deur taalverwante probleme benadeel word nie. Die Internasionale Burgerlugvaartorganisasie (IBLO) het byvoorbeeld, onder andere, taalvaardigheidsstandaarde en -toetsing vir vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers ingestel. Die studie in hierdie tesis ondersoek die gebruik van Lugvaart-Engels (“Aviation English”) en standaard frases wat in radiokommunikasie deur die operasionele lugvaartgemeenskap gebruik word. Lugvaart-Engels bestaan uit ’n reeks operasioneel-toepaslike taalfunksies en gespreksbestuurmiddels, bv. instruksies, versoeke en ander handelinge; ’n mengsel van formele standaard frases en alledaagse Engels vir gevalle waar buitengewone of nie-roetine situasies hulle voordoen. ’n Vraelys is gebruik om inligting oor vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers se sienings van die rol van taal in lugverkeerleiding in te samel, asook sienings oor die gebruik van Engels as lingua franca in lugverkeer en die IBLO se taalvaardigheidsstandaarde en toetsing vir vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers. Die deelnemers sluit vlieëniers (voltyds en deeltyds, asook private en beroepsvlieëniers) in en lugverkeerleiers in lugverkeernavigasie-eenhede wat binnelandse en internasionale verkeer hanteer. Lewendige opnames wat van twee lughawetorings bekom is, is gebruik om taalverwante en ander kommunikasieprobleme tussen vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers te ondersoek. Die resultate dui daarop dat die meerderheid vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers van mening is dat taalverwante probleme tot noodlottige ongelukke en ernstige insidente kan lei. Daar is verder deur die deelnemers bevestig dat hulle dikwels in gevaarlike situasies beland waar kommunikasieprobleme tot die gevaar bygedra het, maar hulle is van mening dat kommunikasieprobleme in die Suid-Afrikaanse lugruim tydig en effektief opgelos word om ongelukke te vermy. Die opnames het met die bevindings van die vraelys ooreengestem en het aangedui dat, ten spyte van kommunikasieprobleme (taalverwant en nie-taalverwant) in die Suid-Afrikaanse lugruim, vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers oor die vermoë beskik om sodanige probleme vinnig en suksesvol op te los. Dit het ook aan die lig gekom dat vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers in Suid- Afrika daartoe in staat is om in alledaagse Engels te kommunikeer om enige onduidelikheid of buitengewone versoeke en instruksies te hanteer. Die meeste van die deelnemers meen dat vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers in Suid-Afrika se taalvaardigheid in Engels bevredigend is en taalvaardigheidstandaarde en -toetsing word sterk ondersteun. Die lewendige opnames het ’n klein persentasie terugleesfoute bevat, maar ’n groot aantal gevalle van radiosteurings en agtergrondgeraas het met die hoorbaarheid en verstaanbaarheid van die kommunikasie ingemeng, wat met die resultate van die vraelys ooreengestem het. ’n Klein persentasie van die uitsendings het afwykings van Lugvaart-Engels en standaard frases en/of die gebruik van alledaagse Engels bevat. Die navorser is van mening dat hierdie studie die weg baan vir potensiële navorsing binne linguistiek ten opsigte van Lugvaart-Engels en die kommunikasie tussen vlieëniers en lugverkeerleiers in Suid-Afrika.
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Fong, Kaela. "Talkin' Black: African American English Usage in Professional African American Athletes." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1352.

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Sports play an important role in the culture of the United States as does language, so the choice to use non-Standard dialects in a nation that privileges the Standard and negatively judges dialectical differences, especially those spoken by mostly people of color, is not undertaken lightly. Because of this privileging of Standard American English, it is assumed that only professional African American athletes are allowed to keep their native dialect if it is African American English (AAE) and still be successful. However, this is complicated by the historical and present increased criticisms women face in both sport and language. To investigate this claim, a quantitative analysis of post-game interviews of five men and five women in the National Basketball Association and Women’s National Basketball Association, respectively, was conducted. The athletes were analyzed to see if they used dental stopping and be-leveling, two features of AAE. Four additional features of AAE were also investigated on an exploratory basis. Inter-gender variance was found among both genders. Across genders, women used the features of AAE studied an average of 30.6 percent less than men, demonstrating a clear gender difference in the usage of AAE. The results of this study illustrate disparities in women and men’s language use that could be a consequence of the inherent and historical sexism women must face in the realms of both sport and language.
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Kamper, Herman. "Speech recognition of South African English accents." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/20249.

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Thesis (MScEng)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Several accents of English are spoken in South Africa. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems should therefore be able to process the di erent accents of South African English (SAE). In South Africa, however, system development is hampered by the limited availability of speech resources. In this thesis we consider di erent acoustic modelling approaches and system con gurations in order to determine which strategies take best advantage of a limited corpus of the ve accents of SAE for the purpose of ASR. Three acoustic modelling approaches are considered: (i) accent-speci c modelling, in which accents are modelled separately; (ii) accent-independent modelling, in which acoustic training data is pooled across accents; and (iii) multi-accent modelling, which allows selective data sharing between accents. For the latter approach, selective sharing is enabled by extending the decision-tree state clustering process normally used to construct tied-state hidden Markov models (HMMs) by allowing accent-based questions. In a rst set of experiments, we investigate phone and word recognition performance achieved by the three modelling approaches in a con guration where the accent of each test utterance is assumed to be known. Each utterance is therefore presented only to the matching model set. We show that, in terms of best recognition performance, the decision of whether to separate or to pool training data depends on the particular accents in question. Multi-accent acoustic modelling, however, allows this decision to be made automatically in a data-driven manner. When modelling the ve accents of SAE, multi-accent models yield a statistically signi cant improvement of 1.25% absolute in word recognition accuracy over accent-speci c and accentindependent models. In a second set of experiments, we consider the practical scenario where the accent of each test utterance is assumed to be unknown. Each utterance is presented simultaneously to a bank of recognisers, one for each accent, running in parallel. In this setup, accent identi cation is performed implicitly during the speech recognition process. A system employing multi-accent acoustic models in this parallel con guration is shown to achieve slightly improved performance relative to the con guration in which the accents are known. This demonstrates that accent identi cation errors made during the parallel recognition process do not a ect recognition performance. Furthermore, the parallel approach is also shown to outperform an accent-independent system obtained by pooling acoustic and language model training data. In a nal set of experiments, we consider the unsupervised reclassi cation of training set accent labels. Accent labels are assigned by human annotators based on a speaker's mother-tongue or ethnicity. These might not be optimal for modelling purposes. By classifying the accent of each utterance in the training set by using rst-pass acoustic models and then retraining the models, reclassi ed acoustic models are obtained. We show that the proposed relabelling procedure does not lead to any improvements and that training on the originally labelled data remains the best approach.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Verskeie aksente van Engels word in Suid Afrika gepraat. Outomatiese spraakherkenningstelsels moet dus in staat wees om verskillende aksente van Suid Afrikaanse Engels (SAE) te kan hanteer. In Suid Afrika word die ontwikkeling van spraakherkenningstegnologie egter deur die beperkte beskikbaarheid van geannoteerde spraakdata belemmer. In hierdie tesis ondersoek ons verskillende akoestiese modelleringstegnieke en stelselkon gurasies ten einde te bepaal watter strategie e die beste gebruik maak van 'n databasis van die vyf aksente van SAE. Drie akoestiese modelleringstegnieke word ondersoek: (i) aksent-spesi eke modellering, waarin elke aksent apart gemodelleer word; (ii) aksent-onafhanklike modellering, waarin die akoestiese afrigdata van verskillende aksente saamgegooi word; en (iii) multi-aksent modellering, waarin data selektief tussen aksente gedeel word. Vir laasgenoemde word selektiewe deling moontlik gemaak deur die besluitnemingsboom-toestandbondeling-algoritme, wat gebruik word in die afrig van gebinde-toestand verskuilde Markov-modelle, uit te brei deur aksent-gebaseerde vrae toe te laat. In 'n eerste stel eksperimente word die foon- en woordherkenningsakkuraathede van die drie modelleringstegnieke vergelyk in 'n kon gurasie waarin daar aanvaar word dat die aksent van elke toetsspraakdeel bekend is. In hierdie kon gurasie word elke spraakdeel slegs gebied aan die modelstel wat ooreenstem met die aksent van die spraakdeel. In terme van herkenningsakkuraathede, wys ons dat die keuse tussen aksent-spesi eke en aksent-onafhanklike modellering afhanklik is van die spesi eke aksente wat ondersoek word. Multi-aksent akoestiese modellering stel ons egter in staat om hierdie besluit outomaties op 'n data-gedrewe wyse te neem. Vir die modellering van die vyf aksente van SAE lewer multi-aksent modelle 'n statisties beduidende verbetering van 1.25% absoluut in woordherkenningsakkuraatheid op in vergelyking met aksent-spesi eke en aksent-onafhanklike modelle. In 'n tweede stel eksperimente word die praktiese scenario ondersoek waar daar aanvaar word dat die aksent van elke toetsspraakdeel onbekend is. Elke spraakdeel word gelyktydig gebied aan 'n stel herkenners, een vir elke aksent, wat in parallel hardloop. In hierdie opstelling word aksentidenti kasie implisiet uitgevoer. Ons vind dat 'n stelsel wat multi-aksent akoestiese modelle in parallel inspan, e ense verbeterde werkverrigting toon in vergelyking met die opstelling waar die aksent bekend is. Dit dui daarop dat aksentidenti seringsfoute wat gemaak word gedurende herkenning, nie werkverrigting be nvloed nie. Verder wys ons dat die parallelle benadering ook beter werkverrigting toon as 'n aksent-onafhanklike stelsel wat verkry word deur akoestiese en taalmodelleringsafrigdata saam te gooi. In 'n nale stel eksperimente ondersoek ons die ongekontroleerde herklassi kasie van aksenttoekennings van die spraakdele in ons afrigstel. Aksente word gemerk deur menslike transkribeerders op grond van 'n spreker se moedertaal en ras. Hierdie toekennings is nie noodwendig optimaal vir modelleringsdoeleindes nie. Deur die aksent van elke spraakdeel in die afrigstel te klassi seer deur van aanvanklike akoestiese modelle gebruik te maak en dan weer modelle af te rig, word hergeklassi seerde akoestiese modelle verkry. Ons wys dat die voorgestelde herklassi seringsalgoritme nie tot enige verbeterings lei nie en dat dit die beste is om modelle op die oorspronklike data af te rig.
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Engelbrecht, Herman Arnold. "Automatic phoneme recognition of South African English." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/49867.

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Thesis (MEng)--University of Stellenbosch, 2004.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Automatic speech recognition applications have been developed for many languages in other countries but not much research has been conducted on developing Human Language Technology (HLT) for S.A. languages. Research has been performed on informally gathered speech data but until now a speech corpus that could be used to develop HLT for S.A. languages did not exist. With the development of the African Speech Technology Speech Corpora, it has now become possible to develop commercial applications of HLT. The two main objectives of this work are the accurate modelling of phonemes, suitable for the purposes of LVCSR, and the evaluation of the untried S.A. English speech corpus. Three different aspects of phoneme modelling was investigated by performing isolated phoneme recognition on the NTIMIT speech corpus. The three aspects were signal processing, statistical modelling of HMM state distributions and context-dependent phoneme modelling. Research has shown that the use of phonetic context when modelling phonemes forms an integral part of most modern LVCSR systems. To facilitate the context-dependent phoneme modelling, a method of constructing robust and accurate models using decision tree-based state clustering techniques is described. The strength of this method is the ability to construct accurate models of contexts that did not occur in the training data. The method incorporates linguistic knowledge about the phonetic context, in conjunction with the training data, to decide which phoneme contexts are similar and should share model parameters. As LVCSR typically consists of continuous recognition of spoken words, the contextdependent and context-independent phoneme models that were created for the isolated recognition experiments are evaluated by performing continuous phoneme recognition. The phoneme recognition experiments are performed, without the aid of a grammar or language model, on the S.A. English corpus. As the S.A. English corpus is newly created, no previous research exist to which the continuous recognition results can be compared to. Therefore, it was necessary to create comparable baseline results, by performing continuous phoneme recognition on the NTIMIT corpus. It was found that acceptable recognition accuracy was obtained on both the NTIMIT and S.A. English corpora. Furthermore, the results on S.A. English was 2 - 6% better than the results on NTIMIT, indicating that the S.A. English corpus is of a high enough quality that it can be used for the development of HLT.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Automatiese spraak-herkenning is al ontwikkel vir ander tale in ander lande maar, daar nog nie baie navorsing gedoen om menslike taal-tegnologie (HLT) te ontwikkel vir Suid- Afrikaanse tale. Daar is al navorsing gedoen op spraak wat informeel versamel is, maar tot nou toe was daar nie 'n spraak databasis wat vir die ontwikkeling van HLT vir S.A. tale. Met die ontwikkeling van die African Speech Technology Speech Corpora, het dit moontlik geword om HLT te ontwikkel vir wat geskik is vir kornmersiele doeleindes. Die twee hoofdoele van hierdie tesis is die akkurate modellering van foneme, geskik vir groot-woordeskat kontinue spraak-herkenning (LVCSR), asook die evaluasie van die S.A. Engels spraak-databasis. Drie aspekte van foneem-modellering word ondersoek deur isoleerde foneem-herkenning te doen op die NTIMIT spraak-databasis. Die drie aspekte wat ondersoek word is sein prosessering, statistiese modellering van die HMM toestands distribusies, en konteksafhanklike foneem-modellering. Navorsing het getoon dat die gebruik van fonetiese konteks 'n integrale deel vorm van meeste moderne LVCSR stelsels. Dit is dus nodig om robuuste en akkurate konteks-afhanklike modelle te kan bou. Hiervoor word 'n besluitnemingsboom- gebaseerde trosvormings tegniek beskryf. Die tegniek is ook in staat is om akkurate modelle te bou van kontekste van nie voorgekom het in die afrigdata nie. Om te besluit watter fonetiese kontekste is soortgelyk en dus model parameters moet deel, maak die tegniek gebruik van die afrigdata en inkorporeer taalkundige kennis oor die fonetiese kontekste. Omdat LVCSR tipies is oor die kontinue herkenning van woorde, word die konteksafhanklike en konteks-onafhanklike modelle, wat gebou is vir die isoleerde foneem-herkenningseksperimente, evalueer d.m.v. kontinue foneem-herkening. Die kontinue foneemherkenningseksperimente word gedoen op die S.A. Engels databasis, sonder die hulp van 'n taalmodel of grammatika. Omdat die S.A. Engels databasis nuut is, is daar nog geen ander navorsing waarteen die result ate vergelyk kan word nie. Dit is dus nodig om kontinue foneem-herkennings result ate op die NTIMIT databasis te genereer, waarteen die S.A. Engels resulte vergelyk kan word. Die resulate dui op aanvaarbare foneem her kenning op beide die NTIMIT en S.A. Engels databassise. Die resultate op S.A. Engels is selfs 2 - 6% beter as die resultate op NTIMIT, wat daarop dui dat die S.A. Engels spraak-databasis geskik is vir die ontwikkeling van HLT.
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Sutcliffe, David. "African American vernacular English : origins and issues." Thesis, University of Reading, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.310623.

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Lewis, Tamika L. "Exploring Children's Perceptions of African American English." FIU Digital Commons, 2015. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2317.

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The differences in attitudes toward African American English (AAE) and Mainstream American English (MAE) were investigated among elementary students (N=34) and middle school students (N=40) using the Speech Evaluation Instrument (SEI). Participants listened to audio recordings of speakers of AAE and MAE and then completed the SEI. Both elementary and middle school students perceived MAE positively (p =.005), as hypothesized. However, for both hypotheses related to AAE, the researcher hypothesized that both groups would perceive the language negatively; however, in both cases, the researcher failed to reject the null hypothesis. Comparing how each group perceived the two languages, it was found that both groups perceived MAE more positively than they did AAE. With regard to perceptions of AAE, middle school students did not perceive AAE more favorably than elementary students did, as had been hypothesized. On individual scales of the Speech Evaluation Instrument, both elementary and middle school students perceived speakers of MAE more positively than they did speakers of AAE. Students felt that speakers of MAE were better readers, smarter, and more likely to be rich than speakers of AAE. Although, middle school students were more likely to feel that speakers of MAE were more intelligent and more likely to be leaders than speakers of AAE; elementary students did not feel the same way. For middle school students there was a statistically significant difference in how they perceived speakers of the two languages. Middle school students perceived speakers of MAE to be more helpful, more friendly, nicer, and kinder than speakers of AAE. The study concluded that both elementary and middle school students perceived MAE more positively than they did AAE. There appeared to be a shift in perceptions the longer students are in school. The study also revealed that perceiving MAE more positively than AAE did not indicate the participants perceived AAE negatively.
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De, Klerk Vivian A. "Towards a norm in South African Englishes: the case for Xhosa English." World Englishes, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011583.

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Black South African English (BSAE) is generally regarded today as the variety of English commonly used by mother-tongue speakers of South Africa's indigenous African languages in areas where English is not the language of the majority. Its roots lie in the history of the teaching of English to the black people of this country, where the role models who teach English are second language learners themselves. To date, BSAE has mainly been studied within an applied linguistic framework with emphasis on its character as a second language which is deviant from standard English. An alternative view is to see it as a variety in its own right, a new or world English (Coetsee Van Rooy and Verhoef, 2000; van der Walt and van Rooy, 2002). As a consequence, a new look at norms is becoming increasingly necessary, so that decisions about learners' language competence can be made in terms of this variety. This paper reports on preliminary analyses of a recently collected corpus of Xhosa English (XE) (a sub-category of BSAE) which consists of naturalistic spoken data, and comprises some 540,000 words of Xhosa English. This large database enables empirical analysis of actual patterns of use in language, making it possible to test earlier speculations which have been based on intuition, and to explore the possibility of systematic differences in the patterns of structure and use in this particular variety. The paper focuses on 20 separate linguistic characteristics, most of which have been previously identified in the literature as being features of BSAE, and analyses each of them in turn, in order to ascertain their usage patterns and frequency of occurrence in the corpus.
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Hickey, Raymond. "Contact, shift and language change : Irish English and South African Indian English." Universität Potsdam, 2006. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2010/4102/.

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Content: 1. Introduction 2. English in South Africa 2.1. Transmission of English 2.2. The Language Shift 3. Features of South African Indian English 3.1. Discussion of Features 4. Further Shift-induced Varieties 4.1. Aboriginal English 4.2. Hebridean English 5. Conclusion
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Bekker, Ian. "The vowels of South African English / Ian Bekker." Thesis, North-West University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/2003.

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This thesis provides a comparative analysis of vowel quality in South African English (SAE) using the following data: firstly, the existing impressionistic literature on SAE and other relevant accents of English, the former of which is subject to a critical review; secondly, acoustic data from a similar range of accents, including new SAE data, collected and instrumentally analyzed specifically for the purposes of this research. These various data are used to position, on both a descriptive and theoretical level, the SAE vowel system. In addition, and in the service of providing a careful reconstruction of the linguistic history of this variety, it offers a three-stage koin´eization model which helps, in many respects, to illuminate the respective roles played by endogenous and exogenous factors in SAE’s development. More generally, the analysis is focussed on rendering explicit the extent to which the synchronic status and diachronic development of SAE more generally, and SAE vowel quality more particularly, provides support for a number of descriptive and theoretical frameworks, including those provided in Labov (1994), Torgersen and Kerswill (2004), Trudgill (2004) and Schneider (2003; 2007). With respect to these frameworks, and based on the results of the analysis, it proposes an extension to Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model, shows Trudgill’s (2004) model of new-dialect formation to be inadequate in accounting for some of the SAE data, provides evidence that SAE is a possibly imminent but ‘conservative’ member of Torgersen and Kerswill’s (2004) SECS-Shift and uses SAE data to question the applicability of the SECS-Shift to FOOT-Fronting. Furthermore, this thesis provides evidence that SAE has undergone an indexicallydriven arrestment of the Diphthong and Southern Shifts and a subsequent and related diffusion of GenSAE values at the expense of BrSAE ones. Similarly, it shows that SAE’s possible participation in the SECS-Shift constitutes an effective chain-shift reversal ‘from above’. It stresses that, in order to understand such phenomena, recourse needs to be made to a theory of indexicality that takes into account the unique sociohistorical development of SAE and its speakers. Lastly, the adoption of the three-stage koin´eization model mentioned above highlights the merits of considering both endogenous and exogenous factors in the historical reconstruction of new-dialect formation and, for research into SAE in particular, strengthens the case for further investigation into the possible effects of 19th-century Afrikaans/Dutch, Yiddish and north-of-English dialects on the formation of modern SAE.
Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.
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Books on the topic "English and African"

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Mufwene, Salikoko S., John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh. African-American English. Routledge, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003165330.

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Cornwell, Gareth. South African English poets. Cape Provincial Library Service on behalf of the National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, 1985.

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Smith, Angela. East African writing in English. Macmillan, 1989.

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Black African literature in English. Africana Pub. Co., 1986.

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Smith, Angela. East African writing in English. Macmillan Publishers, 1989.

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Krishnan, Madhu. Contemporary African Literature in English. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137378330.

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Coetzee, J. M. African pens 2011: New writing from southern Africa. Jacana Media, 2011.

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Green, Lisa J. African American English: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

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Branford, Jean. A dictionary of South African English. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, 1987.

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Kellersberger, Vass Winifred, ed. The African heritage of American English. Indiana University Press, 1993.

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Book chapters on the topic "English and African"

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Williams, Stacy A. S. "African American English." In Encyclopedia of Child Behavior and Development. Springer US, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79061-9_73.

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Peterson, Elizabeth. "African American English." In Making Sense of “Bad English”. Routledge, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429328343-9.

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Mufwene, Salikoko S. "AFRICAN-AMERICAN ENGLISH." In The Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge University Press, 2001. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/chol9780521264792.009.

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Lass, Roger. "South African English." In Language in South Africa. Cambridge University Press, 2002. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511486692.006.

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Lass, Roger. "South African English." In Legacies of Colonial English. Cambridge University Press, 2005. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511486920.015.

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Green, Lisa. "African American English." In Language in the USA. Cambridge University Press, 2004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511809880.007.

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"African American English." In Language and Linguistic Diversity in the US. Routledge, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203154960-14.

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"African–American English." In How Languages Work, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781108553988.027.

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"Botswana (English)." In African Statistical Yearbook. UN, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.18356/57467d4e-en-fr.

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"Djibouti (English)." In African Statistical Yearbook. UN, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.18356/86f6f2ec-en-fr.

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Conference papers on the topic "English and African"

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Beiyi, Sun. "Research on African American Vernacular English --in the film “Crash”." In 6th Annual International Conference on Language, Literature and Linguistics (L3 2017). Global Science & Technology Forum (GSTF), 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5176/2251-3566_l317.72.

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Kleynhans, Neil, Febe de Wet, and Etienne Barnard. "Unsupervised acoustic model training: Comparing South African English and isiZulu." In 2015 Pattern Recognition Association of South Africa and Robotics and Mechatronics International Conference (PRASA-RobMech). IEEE, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/robomech.2015.7359512.

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Groenwold, Sophie, Lily Ou, Aesha Parekh, et al. "Investigating African-American Vernacular English in Transformer-Based Text Generation." In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP). Association for Computational Linguistics, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.emnlp-main.473.

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Oyo, Benedict, and Billy Kalema. "A preliminary speech learning tool for improvement of African English accents." In 2014 International Conference on Education Technologies and Computers (ICETC). IEEE, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/icetc.2014.6998900.

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Stewart, Ian. "Now We Stronger than Ever: African-American English Syntax in Twitter." In Proceedings of the Student Research Workshop at the 14th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Association for Computational Linguistics, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.3115/v1/e14-3004.

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Blodgett, Su Lin, Johnny Wei, and Brendan O’Connor. "Twitter Universal Dependency Parsing for African-American and Mainstream American English." In Proceedings of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). Association for Computational Linguistics, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.18653/v1/p18-1131.

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Avramenko, Olena. "South African English Impact on Cultural Identity Formation and Intercultural Communication." In III International Scientific Congress Society of Ambient Intelligence 2020 (ISC-SAI 2020). Atlantis Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.2991/aebmr.k.200318.042.

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Moeketsi, Victor. "CHALLENGES FACING AFRICAN LEARNERS WHO LEARN IN ENGLISH IN BLACK TOWNSHIP SCHOOLS OF MELODING, VIRGINIA. A SOUTH AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE." In 10th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation. IATED, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2017.2088.

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Mbogho, Audrey, and Michelle Katz. "The impact of accents on automatic recognition of South African English speech." In the 2010 Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists. ACM Press, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1899503.1899524.

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Dorn, Rachel. "Dialect-Specific Models for Automatic Speech Recognition of African American Vernacular English." In Student Research Workshop Associated with RANLP 2019. Incoma Ltd., 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.26615/issn.2603-2821.2019_003.

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Reports on the topic "English and African"

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Jennings, John M. Modern African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern Military History: A Bibliography of English-Language Books and Articles Published From 1960-2013. Defense Technical Information Center, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.21236/ada597440.

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Atuhurra, Julius, and Michelle Kaffenberger. System (In)Coherence: Quantifying the Alignment of Primary Education Curriculum Standards, Examinations, and Instruction in Two East African Countries. Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.35489/bsg-rise-wp_2020/057.

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Improvements in instructional coherence have been shown to have large impacts on student learning, yet analysis of such coherence, especially in developing countries and at a systems level, is rare. We use an established methodology, the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC), and apply it to a developing country context to systematically analyze and quantify the content and coherence of the primary curriculum standards, national examinations, and actual teaching delivered in the classroom in Uganda and Tanzania. We find high levels of incoherence across all three instructional components. In Uganda, for example, only four of the fourteen topics in the English curriculum standards appear on the primary leaving exam, and two of the highest-priority topics in the standards are completely omitted from the exams. In Tanzania, only three of fourteen English topics are covered on the exam, and all are assessed at the “memorization” level. Rather than aligning with either the curriculum standards or exams, teachers’ classroom instruction is poorly aligned with both. Teachers tend to cover broad swathes of content and levels of cognitive demand, unrelated to the structure of either the curriculum standards or exams. An exception is Uganda mathematics, for which standards, exams, and teacher instruction are all well aligned. By shedding light on alignment deficits in the two countries, these results draw attention to a policy area that has previously attracted little (if any) attention in many developing countries’ education policy reform efforts. In addition to providing empirical results for Uganda and Tanzania, this study provides a proof-of-concept for the use of the SEC methodology as a diagnostic tool in developing countries, helping education systems identify areas of instructional (in)coherence and informing efforts to improve coherence for learning.
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Levinsohn, James. Globalization and the Returns to Speaking English in South Africa. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004. http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w10985.

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Orrnert, Anna. Review of National Social Protection Strategies. Institute of Development Studies (IDS), 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.19088/k4d.2021.026.

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This helpdesk report reviews ten national social protection strategies (published between 2011-2019) in order to map their content, scope, development processes and measures of success. Each strategy was strongly shaped by its local context (e.g. how social development was defined, development priorities and existing capacity and resources) but there were also many observed similarities (e.g. shared values, visions for social protection). The search focused on identifying strategies with a strong social assistance remit from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Sub-Sarahan African and South and South-East Asian regions1 (Latin America was deemed out of scope due the advanced nature of social protection there). Examples from Sub-Saharan Africa are most widely available. Few examples are available from the MENA region2 – it may be that such strategies do not currently exist, that potential strategy development process are in more nascent stages or that those strategies that do exist are not accessible in English. A limitation of this review is that it has not been able to review strategies in other languages. The strategies reviewed in this report are from Bangladesh (2015), Cambodia (2011), Ethiopia (2012), Jordan (2019), Kenya (2011), Lesotho (2014), Liberia (2013), Rwanda (2011), Uganda (2015) and Zambia (2014). The content of this report focuses primarily on the information from these strategies. Where appropriate, it also includes information from secondary sources about other strategies where those original strategies could not be found (e.g. Saudi Arabia’s NSDS).
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Cilliers, Jacobus, Brahm Fleisch, Janeli Kotzé, Nompumelelo Mohohlwane, Stephen Taylor, and Tshegofatso Thulare. Can Virtual Replace In-person Coaching? Experimental Evidence on Teacher Professional Development and Student Learning in South Africa. Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.35489/bsg-rise-wp_2020/050.

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Virtual communication holds the promise of enabling low-cost professional development at scale, but the benefits of in-person interaction might be difficult to replicate. We report on an experiment in South Africa comparing on-site with virtual coaching of public primary school teachers. After three years, on-site coaching improved students' English oral language and reading proficiency (0.31 and 0.13 SD, respectively). Virtual coaching had a smaller impact on English oral language proficiency (0.12 SD), no impact on English reading proficiency, and an unintended negative effect on home language literacy. Classroom observations show that on-site coaching improved teaching practices, and virtual coaching led to larger crowding-out of home language teaching time. Implementation and survey data suggest technology itself was not a barrier to implementation, but rather that in-person contact enabled more accountability and support.
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