Papers by Bertus van Rooy
South African Journal of Linguistics, 2000
World Englishes, 2014
The extension of the progressive form to stative verbs is a widely discussed feature of Outer Cir... more The extension of the progressive form to stative verbs is a widely discussed feature of Outer Circle varieties of English. This paper examines the semantics of the stative progressive in three corpora, representing spoken and written Indian (IndE), Kenyan (KenE) and Black South African English (BSAfE). The results reveal that progressive form is used more frequently in spoken than written data, and most frequently in BSAfE, then KenE, and then IndE. All three Outer Circle varieties use the progressive form proportionally more often with stative verbs than British English. The main use of the progressive form is to convey a sense of extended duration. This Outer Circle prototype is termed an on-going state, and clearly differs from the sense of a temporary state, which is prototypical for Inner Circle varieties. There are nevertheless a substantial minority of limited duration (temporary state) uses, especially in the written data, but at the same time, a number of examples where the progressive conveys the sense of states with unlimited duration, especially in BSAfE and the spoken data. The main conclusion is that the progressive is not simply extended to stative verbs, as is argued by many previous researchers, but rather than a different prototype, of extended duration, sanctions a wider range of uses of the progressive form with dynamic verbs and stative verbs alike.
Varieties of English Around the World, 2009
Varieties of English Around the World, 2014
At Phase 4 of the Dynamic Model, Schneider (2007) postulates that a stable postcolonial English w... more At Phase 4 of the Dynamic Model, Schneider (2007) postulates that a stable postcolonial English will gain acceptance in a country, and become endonormative, but it will also be perceived as homogenous. This paper argues that, in a postcolonial language contact situation, multiple contact settings gives rise to different postcolonial Englishes, which will not necessarily converge. The number of contact settings should correspond closely to the number of stabilising varieties. Endonormativity will result from identity rewriting, and this should typically happen for an entire country, or at least for the dominant group of English speakers. These refinements on the Dynamic Model are presented with evidence from the United States of America and South Africa, two less typical settings due to the complexity of their population demographics.
The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research, 2015
World Englishes, 2012
World Englishes as a field of inquiry has burgeoned such that authors now recognize the need for ... more World Englishes as a field of inquiry has burgeoned such that authors now recognize the need for accessible textbooks. This review examines two recent textbooks featuring similar resources yet different approaches to introducing world Englishes to an undergraduate audience. Both also include supplementary websites that bring authentic examples of global English use to media-hungry students.
Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 2011
Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 2015
Reed/The Handbook of English Pronunciation, 2015
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014
Http Dx Doi Org 10 2989 16073614 2015 1012691, Mar 26, 2015
Academic performance at universities in South Africa is a cause of concern. It is widely acknowle... more Academic performance at universities in South Africa is a cause of concern. It is widely acknowledged that there are a variety of factors that contribute to poor academic performance, but language is regarded as one of the most important issues in this discussion. In this article, the relationship between language and academic performance at a South African university for the first-year group in 2010 (n = 900) is investigated, taking their performance in their second (2011) and third (2012) year into account. The authors review: (a) the relationships between measures of language ability (matric scores, and scores on university placement tests like the NBT and TALL/TAG); and (b) the relationship between these language measures, performance in courses offered by universities to support students and general academic success indicators to investigate the language issue and academic performance at university. The main findings of the study are: (a) matric average results above 65% are useful to predict academic success at university; matric average results below 65% cannot be used with confidence to predict success at university; (b) language measures (e.g. matric language marks, and scores on academic literacy tests used by some universities) are not good predictors of academic success at university; (c) there are strong positive relationships between the academic literacy components in the NBT and TALL/TAG; and (d) scores achieved in academic literacy modules are good predictors of academic success. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of strategic decisions that academic managers should consider when they reflect on the language issue and its impact on academic performance at South African universities.
Http Dx Doi Org 10 2989 16073610209486319, Nov 12, 2009
... The CLAWS7 tagset consists of 137 tags, excluding punctuation tags, while TOSCA-ICLE consists... more ... The CLAWS7 tagset consists of 137 tags, excluding punctuation tags, while TOSCA-ICLE consists of 220 different tags. ... CLAWS7 was selected because, in a sense, we regard it as the industry benchmark. It has a similar architecture as TOSCA-ICLE, and has very wide currency. ...
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, May 25, 2004
In die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi, 2014
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2015
The BA Language Technology program was recently introduced at the North-West University and is, t... more The BA Language Technology program was recently introduced at the North-West University and is, to date, the only of its kind in South Africa. This paper gives an overview of the program, which consists of computational linguistic subjects as well as subjects from languages, computer science, mathematics, and statistics. A brief discussion of the content of the program and specifically the computational linguistics subjects, illustrates that the BA Language Technology program is a vocationally directed, future oriented teaching program, preparing students for both future graduate studies and a career in language technology. By means of an example, it is then illustrated how students and researchers alike benefit from working side by side on research and development projects by using a problembased, project-organized approach to curriculum design and teaching.
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Papers by Bertus van Rooy