Digital Commons Network^™

Stable Complexity: Verbal Inflection In Prominent And Frequent Environments, Lukas Denk

Linguistics ETDs

Despite presenting challenges for speakers, complex linguistic features such as lexically conditioned inflection (LCI) persist across different languages. LCI forms part of not entirely predictable paradigms which require lexeme-specific knowledge to master. Moreover, LCI remains one of the oldest morphological phenomena in certain languages. Previous research has linked the persistence of such complexity to language-external factors like geographic and social circumstances of speech communities.

This dissertation delves into the question whether language-internal properties are associated with the distribution of inflectional complexity. LCI is compared with other inflectional paradigms across 41 genetically and geographically distant languages. The study shows that LCI …

Conceptual Meaning In Phonology: Multimodal Iconic Expressions In Discourse Focus, David Páez Acevedo

Linguistics ETDs

In everyday communication, speakers go beyond words to synchronize speech sounds and gestures, adding nuanced meanings. For instance, in Colombian Spanish, recounting the distant past involves elongating words, modulating pitch, and using expressive hand movements. This dissertation explores this phenomenon, termed Multimodal Iconic Expressions (MMIEs), using Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Grammar. The quantitative study uncovers correlations between verb aspect, nominal quantification, and speech duration, revealing phono-iconic connections. The qualitative study examines construal operations giving rise to MMIEs across semantic domains. MMIEs predominantly appear in discourse Focus, with durative events and mass-like quantities exhibiting pronounced phono-iconic associations. Patterns include stress and …

Lucky Chile In The Land Of Enchantment: Mapping Perception Of Signed Language Varieties In New Mexico, David Player

Linguistics ETDs

There are no known published studies documenting the linguistic variation of American Sign Language in New Mexico. We applied the Perceptual Dialectology approach to gain insights into how ASL variation is perceived by the Deaf and Hard of Hearing population in New Mexico. Participants reported 60 signs associated with a historical variety of ASL used at NMSD, and many more signs that are linked to regional and cultural relevance in New Mexico. Four participants provided highly descriptive maps that identify themes related to the sources of variation. Comparisons to studies of Black ASL are discussed to identify parallels in the …

Social Verbs: A Force-Dynamic Analysis, Pavlina Kalm

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation provides a semantic analysis of verbs that describe social events, i.e., events in which participants interact with each other on a social level. The following broad semantic categories of verbs are discussed: verbs of communication (e.g., tell, say, advise), transfer of possession verbs (e.g., own, give, buy), social role verbs (e.g., work, hire, imprison), verbs of interpersonal interactions (e.g., fight, meet, bully), and verbs that denote conceptual relations between entities (e.g., differ, symbolize, indicate). Despite their prominent status in the lexicon and frequent use in everyday situations, linguistic accounts of social verbs are …

Seeing Is Believing: The Role Of The Visual Stimulus In Cognitive Knowledge Of Sound Structure, John M. Sances

Linguistics ETDs

Usage-based Phonology proposes that language users’ knowledge is stored in the form of exemplars reflecting experience of language usage. Exemplars encompass all visual and auditory information perceived during a language interaction, but few studies have examined the role that visual information plays. This dissertation addresses this question through two experiments. Experiment 1 tested perceptions of rounding via the visual signal (lip protrusion) in native French speakers. Participants perceived rounding in both visual and auditory signals, suggesting they may store the visual stimulus in their exemplars. Experiment 2 tested native American English speakers learning French on perceptions of rounding using audio …

Spanish /S/ Reduction In Cíbola County, New Mexico, Brandon Martinez

Linguistics ETDs

The extent to which /s/ reduces in both onset and coda positions varies greatly across Spanish varieties, with Traditional New Mexican Spanish showing significant reduction rates in past research. However, to-date there has been no in-depth linguistic study of Spanish in Cíbola County. The current work presents an analysis of variable /s/ reduction in Cíbola Spanish, using data from the New Mexico-Colorado Spanish Survey. The results demonstrate that reduction in this dialect is conditioned primarily by linguistic rather than extralinguistic factors, which vary based on syllable position. The manuscript also briefly introduces the history of Cíbola, Hispanic identity & …

Spanish-Origin Verbal And Grammatical Borrowing In Paraguayan Guaraní, Josefina Bittar Prieto

Linguistics ETDs

Previous work on language change in contact situations has treated lexical borrowing and grammatical borrowing as discrete phenomena (Appel and Muysken 1987, Thomason 2001, Campbell 2013). Claims that lexical borrowing needs to occur before grammatical borrowing (e.g. Thomason and Kaufmann 1988) or that grammar can be borrowed without any lexicon (e.g. Aikhenvald 2002) are often mentioned in the literature. This dissertation explores the interplay between grammatical constructions (in the sense of Goldberg 2006) and lexical elements in intense contact situations. More specifically, it addresses the following research question: Are grammatical constructions borrowed independently from the elements contained in said constructions? …

Language Co-Activation In Novice And Intermediate L2 Learners, Nicholas Sulier

Linguistics ETDs

One of the most intriguing aspects of bilingual speakers and signers is their ability to access both languages simultaneously. Though much research has been dedicated to understanding how two languages interact, or co-activate, within proficient bilinguals, less is understood about how and when novice and intermediate learners develop similar cross-language interactions. Thus, the current study aimed to uncover at what stages during novice and intermediate L2 development co-activation can be detected. It also investigated possible mechanisms behind co-activation. Specifically, the study attempted to clarify if any detected co-activation amongst L2 learners is dependent on associations between lexical and conceptual representations, …

Wordhood Issues: Typology And Grammaticalization, Tim Zingler

Linguistics ETDs

This work investigates the distribution of “wordhood issues,” in which a morpheme behaves like a word on one subset of wordhood parameters but like a bound item on another. The empirical focus is on the exponents of definiteness, case, indexation, and tense in 60 unrelated languages from five macro-areas. The methodological basis for the wordhood analyses is a set of eight parameters of phonological and morphological wordhood.

The main result is that grammatical markers (“grams”) retain the ability of morphological words to co-occur with members of different syntactic categories even after being integrated into larger phonological word domains. Meanwhile, grams …

Exploring Language Endangerment And Language Change In Tohono O'Odham, Keiko F. Beers

Linguistics ETDs

Endangered languages are often assumed to undergo grammatical losses. Grammaticalization – which is concerned with how grammar evolves – has been largely overlooked in such contexts. In this dissertation, I address two questions: 1) Do grammaticalization processes in endangered languages look as they do in more robustly spoken languages, and 2) are there other changes that require explanations outside of grammaticalization?

The language that I consider is Tohono O'odham (Uto-Aztecan), spoken in Arizona (US) and Sonora (Mexico), which has become endangered over the last century due to coercive assimilationist policies. I conduct a comparative analysis of pre-existing oral data over …

Treatment Intervention For Social Functioning And Social Cognition In Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder (Asd): Utilizing Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (Tdcs) At The Right Temporoparietal Junction (Rtpj), Joan Esse Wilson

Linguistics ETDs

Social deficits are a key diagnostic feature for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may be a promising treatment modality to enhance interventions that are currently extremely time- and labor-intensive. This three-article dissertation investigates tDCS applied over the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) paired with social functioning and social cognition interventions with adults with ASD, examining measures of social functioning, verbal fluency, social skills, empathy, and facial emotion recognition and processing. Results of these studies show significant differences in performance on several measures after receipt of verum, anodal tDCS over the rTPJ. Theoretical implications are examined within a …

A Cross-Linguistic Typology Of ‘Take’ Serial Verb Constructions, Taegyeong Lee

Linguistics ETDs

Serial verb constructions (SVCs) are multiple verbs forming a single predicate in a single clause (Aikhenvald 2006a, 2018). Serial verbs do not exhibit syntactic dependency between the verbs. Each of these verbs must occur on its own. The verb ‘take’ is one of the common verbs that occur in SVCs, and it tends to grammaticalize following numerous different paths. Yet, there are no studies with a considerable sample of ‘take’ SVCs. Moreover, the polysemy of ‘take’ SVCs has not been explored in detail. Based on Aikhenvald (2018)’s functional framework, the present study aims to examine ‘take’ SVCs in 45 languages …

Medieval Narratives As Meta-Constructions Used In Creating Socio-Cultural Identity, Laurie A. Price

Linguistics ETDs

This study of the distribution and function of Historical Present (HP) in Old French, Old English, and Old Norse narratives combines the methods of cognitive linguistics and corpus-based discourse analysis with insights from work in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and medieval studies. I show that HP, in combination with those other features, is a strategy to establish stance, a strategy that both constructs and reinforces a cultural persona. Although previous research on HP in narratives focused on the use of HP to foreground events and contrast marked vs unmarked events in narratives, my analysis shows that HP has an additional range …

He Spoke, I Spoke: A Usage-Based Examination Of Homophony In The Navajo Verb Complex, Michael Peter Drinkwater

Linguistics ETDs

This study examines homophony between first and third person verbs and between second and third person verbs in Navajo. The typical paradigm for person-marking in Navajo has a sh- prefix for first person, a ni- prefix in second person, and a zero-marked third person. In some phonological environments, however, the first and second person pronouns are elided, producing cases of homophony between first and third and between second and third persons.

I examine all cases of this in Navajo and also provide data from Jicarilla Apache, Hupa (a Pacific Coast Athabaskan language), and three Northern Athabaskan languages: Chilcotin, Koyukon, and …

The Interaction Of Domain-Initial Effects With Lexical Stress: Acoustic Data From English, Spanish, And Portuguese, Ricardo F. Napoleão De Souza

Linguistics ETDs

The phonetic implementation of domain-initial boundaries has gained considerable attention in the literature. However, most studies of the phenomenon have investigated small samples of articulatory data in which target syllables were lexically prominent and/or phrasally accented, introducing important potential confounds. This dissertation tackles these issues by examining how domain-initial effects operate on the acoustic properties of fully unstressed word-initial CV syllables in phrasally unaccented words. Similar materials were designed for a reading task in which 14 speakers of English, Spanish and Portuguese, languages that differ in how lexical prominence affects segmental makeup, took part. Results from the acoustic analyses show …

Using Electrophysiology To Investigate Changes In Brain Activation In Individuals With Chronic Stroke, Sarah G. Dalton

Linguistics ETDs

Many individuals who have experienced a stroke also experience persistent decrements in several domains, such as sensorimotor, language, and cognition. While rehabilitation for these deficits is helpful even decades after a stroke, there is limited information available to determine the most effective pairing of treatment with individual deficits. Further, despite decades of neuroimaging research, our understanding of optimal recovery patterns following stroke is relatively poor. In order to improve outcomes for individuals living with chronic deficits due to stroke, neurophysiological biomarkers corresponding to recovery patterns and treatment response are needed. Electroencephalography (EEG) holds great potential for identifying biomarkers as it …

Simulated Manual Interaction As The Conceptual Base For Reference And Predication: A Cognitive Grammar Analysis Of The Integration Between Handling Gestures And Speech, Ryan D. Smith

Linguistics ETDs

Prior research on representational hand gestures has shown that an object’s affordances influence both the likelihood that it will be indexed in a representational gesture, and the form of the gesture used to refer to it. Objects which afford being held are associated with higher gesture rates than objects which do not afford being held. Further research has shown that the ways humans prototypically interact with an object also influence the reference technique used to refer to that object through a hand gesture. An object that people interact with manually will tend to be indexed through a gesture imitating the …

A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Saudi Arabian Women In Zoe Ferraris' Finding Nouf, Sharifa Bahri

Linguistics ETDs

Saudi Arabian women are often stereotyped, in Western media, not only as victims of the oppression of their male-dominant society but also as voiceless uneducated objects who are simply housewives. The aim of this paper is to challenge this representation of Saudi Arabian women by digging deeper into how these women are represented in the discourse of literature by an author from the United States. A mystery novel featuring Saudi Arabian women and their struggle inside Saudi Arabia has been chosen for Critical Discourse Analysis: Zoe Ferraris’ Finding Nouf (2009). The novel was chosen not only for its genre, location, …

The Expression Of Modality In Iranian Sign Language (Zei), Sara Siyavoshi

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation uses data from Zaban Eshareh Irani, Iranian Sign Language, to investigate the linguistic strategies for the expression of modality in this language. Manual and facial markers of modality are recognized and analyzed based on their form and the semantic domain each covers. Vander Auwera and Plungian (1998) offered a semantic map for categorization of different modals across languages. According to their framework, modality can be classified into two vast domains of possibility and necessity. Based on the source of the modal force then, each modality domain is categorized into three groups of participant-external, participant-internal and epistemic. In this …

The Variable Expression Of Transitive Subject And Possesor In Wayuunaiki (Guajiro), Andres M. Sabogal

Linguistics ETDs

In Wayuunaiki, verbal affixes cross-reference clausal arguments in various ways. Most notably, there are two ways to express transitive subjects, and two ways to express possessors. Much like voice alternatives, the variable expression of subject and possessor impart different perspectives on a situation type, but unlike traditional voice categories, syntactic valence remains equal. This dissertation characterizes these constructions with a specific question in mind: what do these two cross-referencing alternations communicate and what influences their usage? To answer these questions, I consider the linguistic properties observed in the usage of these constructions in narratives (Jusayú 1986, 1994), and informal conversations. …

A Path To Alignment, Gregory Richard Arnold

Linguistics ETDs

What is really needed to make a machine into a verisimilitude of a language using human? Clearly there are holes in human communication, missing linguistic forms, and yet we manage to convey meaning. The under-determinacy of language seems to play an integral part in the adaptive system that all humans possess for perceiving, processing and producing language with shared semantic value. We invent symbols that index the missing contextual elements, allowing partial production of linguistic units. A machine would require the same abilities of indexicality and inventiveness. In this pilot study, I attempt to understand how semantic values shift and …

Conceptual Structures Of Vietnamese Emotions, Hien T. Tran

Linguistics ETDs

ABSTRACT

This dissertation presents a comparative study of the metaphoric and metonymic systems underlying the conceptualizations of two emotions, anger and sadness, in Vietnamese, American English, and Chinese. The analytic and theoretical approach is based on previous studies by Lakoff and Kövecses (1987), Kövecses (1988), Barcelona (1986), King (1989) and Yu (1995). The research presented here on emotion concepts reveals cultural variation and potential universals in the conceptualization of emotions. These results support the “Cultural Embodied Prototype” view proposed by Kövecses (2004:14) which proposes that conceptualizations of human emotions is motivated by both physiological embodied experiences (physiological embodiment) and the …

Cyclic Gestures And Multimodal Symbolic Assemblies: An Argument For Symbolic Complexity In Gesture, Laura Hirrel

Linguistics ETDs

In this dissertation, I seek to better understand the nature of the relationship between meanings expressed in gesture and those expressed in speech. This research focuses on the use of cyclic gestures in English. Cyclic gestures are manual co-speech gestures that are characterized by a circular movement of the hand or arm. Despite cyclic gestures being commonplace in many types of spoken discourse, no previous studies to date have specifically explored the functions these gestures serve in English.

Broadly, this dissertation addresses two questions: (1) What functions do cyclic gestures serve in interaction in English, and (2) how are cyclic …

Fresa Style In Mexico: Sociolinguistic Stereotypes And The Variability Of Social Meanings, Rebeca Martinez Gomez

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation examines the flexibility in the social meanings of sociolinguistic stereotypes and how linguistic and non-linguistic information affect these meanings. The investigation consists of four empirical studies surrounding the case of fresas in Mexico –members of the upper class that are perceived as using a unique linguistic style.

Study 1 investigates the linguistic and non-linguistic characteristics associated with the fresa stereotype. Through a qualitative analysis of 64 webpages and 3 performances of the style, it is shown that fresasare perceived as the counterpart of another construct, nacos,and that their linguistic style is linked to English due to …

Anglo And Hispanic Vowel Variation In New Mexican English, Susan Brumbaugh

Linguistics ETDs

This study examines vowel formant differences between English speakers in New Mexico that self-identify as Anglo versus those that self-identify as Hispanic. Audio recordings were made of 16 New Mexicans reading short stories and carrier phases with embedded target words. F1 and F2 measurements were compared at the 50% point for monophthongs and at the 20% and 80% points for diphthongs. Mixed effects models assessed statistical significance of ethnicity, gender, and interactional effects on vowel formants and trajectory length.

All speakers showed a near-complete overlap of BOT and BOUGHT tokens, supporting a merger. Hispanic men and women patterned together to …

Cuasi Nomás Inglés: Prosody At The Crossroads Of Spanish And English In 20th Century New Mexico, Jackelyn Van Buren

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation investigates prosodic change in the long-term language contact setting of Traditional New Mexican Spanish (NMS). NMS prosody is perceptually distinct from other contemporary varieties of Spanish (Hills 1906, Bowen 1952, Lipski 2011), yet the features which make it unique have not been acoustically examined. This study hypothesizes that bilingualism with English has affected NMS prosody and analyzes three features which are known to differ between Spanish and English and therefore provide a quantitative point of comparison: pitch peak alignment, pitch variability, and rhythmic timing. These variables have been demonstrated to be susceptible to transfer in contact situations, including …

A Longitudinal Cross-Sectional Study On The Acquisition Of Navajo Verbs In Children Aged 4 Years 7 Months Through 11 Years 2 Months, Melvatha R. Chee

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation presents an analysis of child acquisition and production of the Navajo verb construction. My data shows that Navajo children extract meaningful verb units that do not adhere to the linguistic boundaries normally ascribed to the Navajo verb. Through my data, I have observed that children use morphologically and phonologically reduced units. They produce verb constructions that exhibit fusion with units outside the verb such as postpositions. As the children acquire larger units, or chunks, morphophonological interactions are preserved.

This dissertation is a longitudinal cross-sectional analysis of child language data collected from four Navajo speaking children. The children, all …

Intensifiers And The Construction Of Identity In New Mexican English, Frances Jones

Linguistics ETDs

In traditional sociolinguistic analyses, one or more linguistic variables are examined in terms of their correlation with broad social categories, such as gender or ethnicity. If a correlation is found, it can be argued that the variable is indexical of the speaker’s membership within the relevant social category (Labov 1972, 2001; Mesthrie et al 2000; Tagliamonte 2005, 2008). The use of intensifiers in English is one linguistic variable which has been extensively analyzed in terms of its variation in multiple populations, with noted differences in intensifier use between male and female speakers, older and younger speakers, and speakers in different …

Highly Complex Syllable Structure: A Typological Study Of Its Phonological Characteristics And Diachronic Development, Shelece Easterday

Linguistics ETDs

The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language. Strong cross-linguistic tendencies in syllable size and shape are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure, a type which is also privileged in abstract models of the syllable. Syllable patterns such as those found in Itelmen qsaɬtxt͡ʃ ‘follow!’ and Tashlhiyt tsskʃftstt ‘you dried it (f)’ are both typologically rare and theoretically marginalized. This dissertation is an investigation of the properties of languages with highly complex syllable patterns. The aims are (i) to establish whether these languages share other linguistic features in common such that …

From Physical Motion To ‘Come And Go’: A Spoken Corpus Based Analysis Of Kata ‘Go’-Specific Constructions In Korean, Jin Hee Kim

Linguistics ETDs

I analyze one of the motion verbs in Korean, kata ‘go,’ and its argument structure constructions. The verb shows an extremely high token frequency and its argument structure constructions have been subject to a great degree of variation in terms of its emergent semantics and syntax. However, there have been recurring issues across the previous studies. First, there is the problem of the so-called “written language bias in linguistics” (Linell, 1982), such that most studies on kata have drawn upon mostly invented sentences or written language data. Secondly, previous studies on kata have focused on the verb itself and have …