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The English serial verb construction go-V is hypothesized to have originated from the semantically similar go-and-V construction via grammaticalization (Nicolle 2007), or alternately from a sequence of sentenceinitial imperatives (Zwicky 2003). Building on diachronic corpus work by Nicolle (2009) and Bachmann (2013), this study investigates the changing usage of go/come-V, go/come-and-V, and go/come-comma-V, comparing across grammatical contexts and dialects. The corpus is an original 600,000-word collection of plays, balanced by 50-year time period and by dialect, spanning the Early Modern English period through the 20th century. Results indicate that a 16th- 17th century preference for go-V shifts in favor of go-and-V by the 19th century, finally equalizing by the end of the 20th century, which contextualizes the 19th-20th century shift from go-and-V to go-V observed by Bachmann (2013). A consistent high frequency of infinitive and imperative contexts supports a non-finite, but not specifically imperative, origin for go-V, contrary to hypotheses by Zwicky (2003) and Nicolle (2007). The expanded perspective offered by the Early Modern English data suggests a need for Old English evidence, rather than extrapolation from more recent data, in uncovering the origin of go-V.

Since the 1959 Communist Revolution, the Cuban people have faced conditions of isolation and scarcity which have limited the country’s contact with outside languages (West-Durán 2017). Even so, the island offers a rich, complex, ancestral dialect that is unique to Cuban society not only in its accent, but also in its lexicon and slang system. This study considers the evolution of the Cuban dialect after the Revolution by examining eight Cuban films between 1959 to 1999 and analyzing relevant terminology appearing throughout this cinematic corpus. Based on an etymological investigation of 173 of the items collected, this paper offers two main arguments. Firstly, the isolation of Cuba conditioned limited linguistic change within the 1959 to 1999 timeframe. This leads to our second argument: the isolation of Cuban society influenced the dialect not only in the lack of major changes which it faced, but also in the recycling of pre-existing African and indigenous terms which had been introduced into the island long before the Revolution.

Perceptual intelligibility is characteristic of the articulatory speech impairments associated with dysarthria, a motor speech disorder common in those with cerebral palsy (Pennington et al., 2016). Previous research has sought to establish more empirical diagnostic measures of dysarthria through investigation of articulatory acoustic correlates, such as vowel space area, to perceptual intelligibility in this population. The objective of the present study was to assess the relationship between quadrilateral vowel space area (VSA) (Thompson, 2023) and dysarthria in terms of both diagnostic category and perceptual intelligibility ratings. Eight adult male speakers with spastic dysarthria associated with cerebral palsy were compared to age and gender matched control speakers, and clinical speakers were also compared to themselves based on perceptual intelligibility ratings. Results reaffirmed previous findings that VSA is impaired in dysarthric speakers and that quadrilateral VSA is highly and accurately predicative of perceptual intelligibility (Platt et al., 1980; Ansel & Kent, 1992; Kent & Kim, 2003; Kim et al., 2011; Scholderle et al., 2016; Thompson et al., 2023). Specifically, a variable statistic model factoring both general intelligibility category as well as specific percent intelligibility was found to be highly accurate in predicting intelligibility based on VSA. Because these results reaffirmed previous findings that VSA may be an effective measure of intelligibility impairment, this study reaffirms the need to further confirm the efficacy of quadrilateral VSA as a predictive diagnostic measure of dysarthria in a more diverse array of dysarthric speakers.

In her 1993 chapter “Who’s Got the Floor?”, Carole Edelsky stated that floors can often be built jointly between interlocutors, in addition to previous conceptions of floors being orderly and built by one speaker at a time. In my analysis of my conversational segment, I argue that Edelsky’s proposal of floor function and turn-taking rings true in a discourse between friends. My analysis shows that floors can indeed be built collaboratively, especially in contexts where friends are joking or discussing otherwise non-serious topics. Furthermore, I argue that the collaborative floor-building in my data is a reflection of and contributes to the group’s cohesion and shared identity as friends.

The construction of narrative identity is a dynamic process, particularly within storytelling interactions, where the narrator and other characters negotiate their roles and stances. In sociolinguistics, identity is not viewed as a fixed trait but as something that emerges through interaction, shaped by the speaker’s alignment with others and their display of knowledge and agency. This paper examines how the identity of the “morally righteous guest” is constructed through a display of both epistemic and agentive selves, focusing on how the main storyteller navigates these roles in contrast to another character in the narrative. Drawing on the concepts of reported speech and voicing, the storyteller positions themselves as a moral evaluator by emphasizing their epistemic self-offering judgments about the events-while minimizing their own agency. This voicing technique allows the storyteller to shift responsibility to other characters while garnering alignment and empathy from the audience. Through this interaction, not only is the storyteller’s identity shaped, but the alignment between the storyteller and the audience also becomes central, as it reinforces shared values and perspectives. This paper will demonstrate how the interplay of these elements-constructed dialogue, alignment, and identity negotiation-illuminates the process of narrative identity construction in discourse.

No abstract.