Digital Commons Network^™

A Course In Legal English And U.S. Law For Undergraduate Japanese Law Students, Leonard George Leverson

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, I discuss the design of a Legal English and U.S. Law course for undergraduate Japanese law students visiting for a semester at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s English Language Academy. I review how I went about analyzing the students’ needs and wants and the factors affecting their motivation. I explain my philosophy of second language teaching, in particular, that second language teaching should contain an element of play. I describe how I sought to introduce a play element in the course through such techniques as watching law-related movies, role play activities, Kahoot quizzes, and pronunciation drills. Course design …

A Community-Engaged Narrative Inquiry Photovoice Project Examining The Health-Impacting Experiences Of Older Adult Russian And Spanish-Speaking Immigrants In Southeastern Wisconsin, United States., Maren Hawkins

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Among the nearly 10 million older adult immigrants in the United States, most come from Mexico and speak Spanish. Moreover, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking immigrants from the Former Soviet Union already residing in the United States, the current war in Ukraine is fueling mass emigration of Ukrainian and Russian-speakers from Ukraine. Thus, in this study we sought to examine the health-impacting experiences of older adult Russian and Spanish-speaking immigrants in Southeastern Wisconsin. Design & Methods: This was a Community-Engaged Participatory Narrative Inquiry Photovoice Project and applied the Older Adult Immigrant Adapted Model for Health …

The Syntax And Semantics Of Non-Standard Wh-Constructions In Korean, Okgi Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The following is an investigation of the syntax and semantics of two types of non-standard wh-construction in Korean: one concerns so-called why-like what-interrogatives, where what-questions are construed as why-questions asking for cause/reason/purpose, and the other concerns what-exclamatives, which are used to express a speaker’s emotive attitude toward a certain state of affairs or degree. Both of these wh-constructions are viewed as nonstandard in the sense that they behave differently from standard what-questions. In this dissertation, I aim to provide a syntactically and semantically precise characterization of the two non-standard wh-constructions in Korean.

Korean why-like what-interrogatives, namely mwe-l-interrogatives, raise many theoretical …

Individual Differences In Non-Native Phonological Contrast Learning: The Role Of Perceptual Sensitivity To Sub-Phonemic Variation In Native Categories, Jieun Lee

Theses and Dissertations

The current study explored individual differences in sensitivity to sub-phonemic variation of acoustic cues in the perception of a native language (L1) category in order to test the hypothesis that second language (L2) learners’ different sensitivity to the L2-relevant acoustic dimension in L1 perception could explain individual variability in nonnative phonological contrast learning. In addition, this study also investigated whether the modified High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) paradigm could aid in nonnative phonological contrast learning. The cue-attention switching training was added to the typical HVPT paradigm with multiple talkers, expecting to reallocate learners’ attention away from the less relevant acoustic …

Syllable Structure And Phonological Processes Of Southern Najdi Arabic: An Optimality-Theoretic Model, Saad Alshahrani

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation provides a theoretical analysis of the syllable structures and vowel processes in an understudied dialect, Southern Najdi Arabic (SNA). Using the dialect’s unique phonological characteristics, the analysis aims to contribute to a better understanding of the phonological representations of syllables and common processes in Arabic dialects and to shed light on some of the longstanding problems in the literature. Presented within the model of Optimality Theory (OT), the dissertation offers a unified account for syllabification patterns and related phenomena, such as vowel raising, syncope (high vowel deletion, trisyllabic elision, and feminine suffix vowel deletion), CV metathesis, epenthesis, and …

The Acquisition Of Morphology And Morphosyntax Of Persian (Farsi) Heritage Language As An Independent Variety In The United States: New Perspectives, Hamideh Sadat Bagherzadeh

Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing body of research from various perspectives in heritage language (henceforth HL) acquisition as an emerging field. Some studies proposed that HL acquisition is a differential acquisition compared with the baseline language (i.e., the language spoken by the parents or caregivers) (Kupisch & Rothman, 2018; Dubiel & Guilfoyle, 2021; Makarova & Terekhova, 2021; Caloi & Torregrossa, 2021; Nagy, 2021), while some other studies focus on a comparison of heritage speakers (henceforth HSs) with monolingual speakers and suggest that HSs acquisition of the baseline language is either incomplete, deficient, or arttrided (Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, 2013; Montrul, 2005, …