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Towards Explaining Variation In Entrainment, Andreas Weise
Towards Explaining Variation In Entrainment, Andreas Weise
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Entrainment refers to the tendency of human speakers to adapt to their interlocutors to become more similar to them. This affects various dimensions and occurs in many contexts, allowing for rich applications in human-computer interaction. However, it is not exhibited by every speaker in every conversation but varies widely across features, speakers, and contexts, hindering broad application. This variation, whose guiding principles are poorly understood even after decades of entrainment research, is the subject of this thesis. We begin with a comprehensive literature review that serves as the foundation of our own work and provides a reference to guide future …
The Acquisition Of Variation In Future Time Expression By High School Student Learners Of Spanish In Upstate New York, Erika E. Clarkin
The Acquisition Of Variation In Future Time Expression By High School Student Learners Of Spanish In Upstate New York, Erika E. Clarkin
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
The present dissertation sets out to investigate the acquisition of variation in future-time expression by English speakers L2 learners of Spanish in a high school setting. I explore the variable use of the morphological future, the periphrastic future, and the present indicative to express the future time in Spanish by the participants. A total of 2,282 tokens were collected at three different times during the school year. The participants were attending year six of Spanish instruction. The study takes into consideration previously published research on the use of future markers by native speakers and by non-native speakers. The present study …
Dominican Spanish In New York : Language Attitudes And Variation Of Final /ɾ/ And /L/, Gabriel Valentín Guadalupe
Dominican Spanish In New York : Language Attitudes And Variation Of Final /ɾ/ And /L/, Gabriel Valentín Guadalupe
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
The objective of this dissertation is to contribute to the growing body of research on sociolinguistic variation of final liquids in Caribbean Spanish in a language and dialectal contact situation. To achieve that objective, this study analyzes the Spanish of Dominicans in the New York Metropolitan Area. The dissertation has two main goals. The first is to describe language attitudes among Dominicans in New York. Data extracted from questionnaires are analyzed to show how Dominicans evaluate their varieties of Spanish and those of others. Additionally, the dissertation looks at whether inter- and intra-group interactions affect language attitudes. The second goal …
Dialect And Employability: Human Resource Managers' Perceptions Of African American English, Kimberly Michelsen
Dialect And Employability: Human Resource Managers' Perceptions Of African American English, Kimberly Michelsen
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis addresses the question of whether different dialects can change the probability of speakers being perceived as employable. It is one of the few that takes this question away from college campuses and directly to Human Resources Managers in the workforce. Using the Matched Guise Technique, recordings of Standard American English (SAE) and African American English (AAE) were presented to forty-two HR Managers from regions across the United States. Using a series of Likert scales, the HR Managers rated the recordings on eight characteristics of employability: four focused on professional skills and four focused on human-relation skills. The study …
Effects Of Phonological Contrast On Within-Category Phonetic Variation, Ivy Hauser
Effects Of Phonological Contrast On Within-Category Phonetic Variation, Ivy Hauser
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates an often assumed hypothesis in phonetics and phonology: that there should be relatively less within-category phonetic variation in production in languages which have relatively more phonological contrasts (Lindblom, 1986, on vowels). Although this hypothesis is intuitive, there is little existing evidence to support the claim and it is difficult to generalize outside of vowels. In this dissertation, I argue that this hypothesis is not trivially true and needs additional specification. I propose an extension of this hypothesis, Contrast-Dependent Variation, which predicts relative differences in extent of within-category variation between languages and individual speakers. Contrast-Dependent Variation can make …
A Study Of Sociolinguistic Variation In A Small Community : Puerto Rican Spanish In Amsterdam, New York, Zahir Mumin
A Study Of Sociolinguistic Variation In A Small Community : Puerto Rican Spanish In Amsterdam, New York, Zahir Mumin
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
The objective of the current study is to contribute to the larger body of sociophonetic variation research by describing and analyzing Spanish as spoken in a small Puerto Rican community in the US. First, I describe phonological and morphosyntactic features of Spanish as used by four different groups of Puerto Rican informants in Amsterdam, New York based on the duration of time that they have lived on the Island of Puerto Rico. Previous research on Puerto Rican Spanish in the US has focused particularly on final /s/ deletion (Poplack, 1980b, 1980c), final liquid production of /l/ and /ɾ/ (Ramos-Pellicia, 2007), …
Stress Variation As Unifying Features Of Upstate New York, Tracey Vail
Stress Variation As Unifying Features Of Upstate New York, Tracey Vail
Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics
This study investigates sociophonetic stress variation in the Onondaga County area of Upstate New York. I argue that five variations of stress correlate to factors of age, education level, place of residence, frequency, and analogical change. Dinkin and Evanini (2010) have examined and discovered similar outcomes of stress variation in his work with dialectal features across the state of New York. Rather than analyze the state and its borders in their entirety, I focus on morpheme-specific analogical change of stress in specific social categories within the Syracuse, New York region. In terms of lexical items, I analyze stress placement within …
A Variationist Approach To Code-Switching And Lexical Borrowing : The Case Of Limonese-Spanish Bilinguals In Puerto LimóN, Costa Rica, Ashley Laboda
A Variationist Approach To Code-Switching And Lexical Borrowing : The Case Of Limonese-Spanish Bilinguals In Puerto LimóN, Costa Rica, Ashley Laboda
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
The current study aims to contribute to the body of research on variation in the speech of bilinguals in language contact situations, as well as the ongoing discussions of creoles in contact with languages other than their lexifiers. Bilingual production of lone lexical Spanish insertions and multiword Spanish insertions in otherwise Limonese Creole (Limonese) speech are analyzed, and both linguistic and extralinguistic factors are considered. Previous studies have measured lone word integration in bilingual corpora and have shown that lone lexical insertions are integrated into the recipient language as borrowings almost categorically regardless of frequency (nonce or more frequent than …
/Ae/ And /E/ In El Paso English, Lance Levi Williams
/Ae/ And /E/ In El Paso English, Lance Levi Williams
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The production and perception of front vowels /ae/ and /e/ by El Paso residents was examined in a pilot study to begin to establish linguistic variables in an understudied yet dynamic speech community and explore the question of the unity of the speech community and possible influence of L2 English speakers on L1 English speakers. 25 subjects, males age 19 to 34, were given both tests of perception and production, and these results were analyzed with respect to their social and linguistic backgrounds. In general, subjects in the Anglo group appeared to be more united in their production and perception …