Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Arabic Heritage Speakers’ Production And Perception Of Arabic Emphatic-Plain Contrasts, Maaly Al Omary

Theses and Dissertations

Arabic emphasis refers to the production of consonants resulting from a primary constriction in the dental or alveolar region and a secondary constriction in the back of the vocal tract, recognized as ‘Emphatic.’ These have contrastive consonants produced in the dental or alveolar region, recognized as ‘Plain.’ The existing research on emphasis in Arabic has identified specific acoustic parameters that distinguish between plain versus emphatic consonants in production and factors that have been shown to influence the perception of emphatics. While previous studies have established these patterns for both native speakers of Arabic and L2 learners of Arabic, they have …

Individual Differences Of L1 Category Precision In L2 Speech Learning, Sujin Oh

Theses and Dissertations

The revised Speech Learning Model (SLM-r) postulates that learners with more precisely defined categories in their native language (L1) exhibit greater proficiency in acquiring sounds in a second language (L2). Despite its recent emergence, empirical studies validating this hypothesis remain scarce. This study aims to investigate the predictive role of L1 category precision in L2 performance, particularly as a fundamental factor influencing L2 speech development. Furthermore, it aims to uncover a potential correlation between learners’ perceptual and production abilities, mediated by L1 category precision, within the framework of L2 speech development. The findings from Studies 1 and 2 furnish compelling …

Multimodal Vocabulary Learning Through Manga In Japanese As A World Language, Atsuko Suga Borgmann

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the effect of manga, a form of Japanese comic strip, on vocabulary learning among college-level Japanese as a world language (JWL) learners. Vocabulary acquisition through reading in the context of world language education has been researched widely, but less attention has been devoted to multimodal literature with image and text such as manga. This research examines how manga’s multimodality affects learners’ context building, inference for unknown words and how manga affects retaining vocabulary. The study raises three research questions. First, to what extent does manga influence one’s ability to infer the meaning of unknown words compared to …

Is That A Rhetorical Question?: A Pragmatic Analysis, Jacklyn Ryan

Theses and Dissertations

There has been much work on the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of questions.While the argument herein is that rhetorical questions do not function like typical information-seeking questions, it remains the case that they are, if nothing else, syntactically interrogative. This fact is explored by examining different types of rhetorical questions through various lenses, including question semantics, Gricean pragmatics, and Speech Act Theory. A pragmatic framework is proposed to explain the effects that rhetorical questions have on the conversational scoreboard. Their illocutionary force is also considered, as it, along with contextual factors, can affect how rhetorical questions are interpreted. This paper …

From Antiracism To Abolition: The Role Of University Culture Centers In Black Students' Academic Identities And Language, Kristin Demint Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on focus group, interview, and participant-observer data collected as part of this IRB-approved [19.177] qualitative research project, this dissertation provides insights about how Black American students develop academic identities through coursework and extracurricular involvement in a Black culture center on the campus of a historically white institution (HWI). I apply the lens of “abolitionist education” (Love) to explore the languaging that students and faculty in the Black culture center do to create community and racial uplift in a type of institution where racial identity historically has been marginalized and obscured—and where, the collected data indicate, such occlusion continues despite …

Mobilizing Resources: Towards A Transnational Orientation In The Composition Classroom, Gitte Frandsen

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present two studies on transnational, multilingual undergraduate students which focus on students’ rich, complex communication patterns across contexts. First, I examine the linguistic, literate, rhetorical, and cultural resources they deploy to make meaning across non-academic contexts as they take care of everyday tasks, navigate different linguistic and cultural landscapes, build relationships, and broker meaning for others. Next, I explore how the students mobilize their multiple resources and strategies to learn, write, and co-construct meaning with others in academic contexts. I discuss how these strategies are often constrained by English Only discourses and policies in the classroom …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

The Effect Of Shadowing In Learning L2 Segments: A Perspective From Phonetic Convergence, Ruqayyah Althubyani

Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to investigate the role that phonetic convergence plays in the acquisition of L2 segments. In particular, it examined whether phonetic convergence towards native speakers could help Arabic-speaking second-language (L2) learners of English improve their pronunciation of four problematic English segments (/p, v, ɛ, oʊ/). To do so, the study went through several phases of experimental studies. Phonetic convergence was first explored in the productions of Arabic L2 learners towards five different English native model talkers in non-interactive setting. Five XAB perceptual similarity judgments and acoustic measurements of VOT, vowel duration, F0, and F1*F2 were used to evaluate …

The Development Of Case Morphology And Sentential Word Order In Arabic As A Second Language: A Processability Perspective, Abdullah Alsubhi

Theses and Dissertations

Processability theory argues that the development of interlanguage syntactic and morphological structures is guided by general principles, which make up a “language processor”. These principles develop gradually and are implicationally ordered. The theory claims that interlanguage syntactic and morphological structures develop in the order the principles responsible for their production become available to the learner (Pienemann, 1998; Pienemann et al., 2005). This study used these principles as reflected in processing procedures and mapping principles to investigate the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic case morphology and sentential word order. The goal of using these principles was to hypothesize a developmental route …

The Bard In Napoleonic France And Revivalist Wales: A Contrasting Symbol Of Nationality, Resistance And Liminality, Shelley Morwenna Williams

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

Spurred by antiquarianism and the quest for a pan-Celtic, non-classical mythology, two infamous translators and forgers sparked influential and prolific artistic production in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. James Macpherson (1736-1796) and his Ossian provided fuel to the fire stoked by Napoleon Bonaparte for a new imperial art, and Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg, 1747-1826) contributed to an ardent cultural revival in Wales. Both writers have garnered renewed scholarly attention in recent decades, mostly focused on uncovering the genuine Celtic and medieval sources from which they so liberally borrowed. However, scant attention has been paid to the …

The Syntax Of Negation In Iraqi Arabic, Saja Albuarabi

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of negation in Iraqi Arabic. It investigates the syntactic properties of negation in this dialect by presenting some previously unnoticed empirical facts about this phenomenon and by analyzing its theoretical significance for Arabic syntax in particular and Human language in general. Iraqi Arabic is a cluster of subdialects that show an interesting systematic microvariation in the use of negative expressions. The first goal of this dissertation is to present the syntactic properties of negation in all these subdialects through a detailed description and comprehensive survey. Based on this survey and description, these subdialects, are divided …

Remarks On Modern Standard Arabic Construct State And Quantification, Mohammed Abuhaib

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the interpretations of genitive and quantificational forms that Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) unifies under a complex DP, namely Construct State (CS). Despite the linguistic differences between these phenomena, the PF form of this structure neutralizes all indicated types and their sub-types into a head-complement form (possessum-possessor or quantifier-domain restriction), where the whole structure’s definiteness is recovered from the complement that is distinguished for this value overtly. However, the internal syntactic and semantic components such as the source of relations and definiteness value of the whole structure that contribute to the CS its various interpretations are always concealed …

Simple Subject-Verb Agreement: A Morphosyntactic Path To Arabic Variations, Turki Alwahibee

Theses and Dissertations

The analytic object of this dissertation is to formally model the Arabic subject-verb agreement aspects, more particularly, the verbal agreement with simple subject DPs. It aims to define how φ-agreement is formally manifested across the Arabic varieties, more specifically, Standard Arabic and the current dialects, and hopes to draw the latter varieties’ interrelation. In other words, this thesis hopes to advance the overall understanding of subject-verb agreement in Arabic and contribute to a clearer and simpler view of a number of specific syntactic phenomena. Most important of all, the subject DP relative order with respect to the verbal predicate influences …

Descripción Y Caracterización De Los Fenómenos Que Afectan La Producción Del Ritmo En Español Por Hablantes Nativos De Inglés Norteamericano. Un Estudio Descriptivo A Partir Del Aula De L2, Leire Martin Perez

Theses and Dissertations

El presente estudio muestra los resultados de una investigación centrada en la producción del ritmo español por hablantes nativos de inglés, aprendientes de español como L2. En general, la adquisición de una segunda lengua es un proceso complejo en el que se deben dominar diferentes áreas. Entre estas áreas, la comunicación oral destaca, ya que es la primera disciplina que se pone en práctica cuando nos comunicamos con alguien. Sin embargo, el proceso de adquisición de la fonética resulta el más complejo para muchos aprendientes, especialmente la adquisición del ritmo, pese a ayudar a hablar de manera más fluida evitando …

Information Structure In Standard Arabic Verbal Sentences, Salem Albuhayri

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates Information Structure (IS) in relation to the clausal architecture in Standard Arabic (SA). The attention is confined to word order variation and its role in structuring discourse. The structural positions with potential information structure import are argued to appear at the edg-es of phases, namely vP and CP. It presents an analysis which brings together the minimalist scheme as embodied in Chomsky (2000, onwards) and the cartographic approach to discourse as embodied in Rizzi (1997, 2001) and Cinque (1999). First, in chapter (‎2) a distinction is made be-tween VSO and SVO clauses, in which I propose that …

When The Specters Of The First World War Return To The Anglo-Irish Estate: Elizabeth Bowen’S A World Of Love And J. G. Farrell’S Troubles, Andréa Caloiaro

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

In Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love and J. G. Farrell’s Troubles, the First World War’s dead reappear as specters within the Anglo-Irish estate. Through the lens of traumatology, this essay examines the symbolic function of this spectral return in light of its psychological, political, and cultural-historical implications for the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, and more broadly, for contemporary Ireland. This essay argues that although A World of Love and Troubles are empathetic representations of how the Ascendancy experienced the First World War as an historical locus of trauma, their narrative designs figure spectral return as a symbolic mode of critique …

Expository Language Sample Assessment Of Spanish- English Bilingual Middle-School Children, Rachel Ann Eggert

Theses and Dissertations

Because of the possible bias and limitations in using standardized assessments, it is advantageous to assess school-age children who are bilingual using additional descriptive assessments, including language sampling. Choosing expository discourse language sampling to assess this population is beneficial because it is the standard form of discourse in a classroom setting and provides a more complex language sample. Using expository discourse language sampling, this study assesses the oral expository discourse language skills of Spanish- English bilingual middle school students who have learned English as a second language. The study found that expository discourse was a feasible way to assess the …

Heroic Failure: Brexit And The Politics Of Pain. Fintan O’Toole. London: Apollo, Uk, 2018. 217 Pages. Isbn: 978–1789540987., Peter C. Grosvenor

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

No abstract provided.

Modality, Control And Restructuring In Arabic, Yasser Albaty

Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation examines theories of modality and control with data from Standard Arabic (SA). In particular, I show that complementations of particular modal and control verbs in SA are not clausal, but smaller phrases. This challenges proposed accounts in the literature of modality in SA as well as theories of control within Minimalism. I alternatively argue for a novel account of both constructions that posits a monoclausal (i.e., restructuring) structure.

First, Chapter 2 investigates modality verbs in SA and shows that subjunctive complements of modality do not exhibit the properties of clausal complementation. I examine the syntax-semantics properties of modality …

The Acquisition Of Morphology In Moroccan Heritage Speakers In France, Amal El Haimeur

Theses and Dissertations

There are two major perspectives regarding heritage speakers’ (henceforth HS) ultimate attainment. Some researchers on HS in the U.S. conclude that HS have incomplete grammars (Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky, 2013). It is argued that heritage languages (henceforth HL) do not fully develop (Montrul, 2016), and they are not completely acquired because of shifting to a dominant language (Benmamoun et al., 2013). Other researchers argue that HS’ grammars are complete, but simply different as monolingual and HS experience different linguistic realities (Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012). While there is abundant research on Arabic as a HL in the U.S., research …

Poetics, Not Pragmatics: Understanding Metaphors In A Poetic Context, Savannah Marciezyk

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this paper is to explain why the leading theories of metaphor fail when applied to metaphors which appear in poems. The ability to understand the true meaning of a metaphor in conversations relies on understanding speaker intention and extralinguistic context. This paper argues that because such material is not available to the reader of a poem, theories which rely heavily on pragmatics to explain metaphors cannot be successfully applied to metaphors which appear in poems. This paper makes use of the views on metaphor by John Searle and Paul Grice, and discusses how meaning is constructed in …

Logical Form In The Second Language: An Investigation Into Quantification In Interlanguage, Abdel-Rahman Abu Helal

Theses and Dissertations

In coping with variability in morphological production in L2 acquisition, which represents a

challenge for the parameter (re-)setting theories, Lardiere (2008) proposed the feature reassembly hypothesis in which sequential difficulty in L2 acquisition of morpho-syntactic features

is captured by the processes of (re-)assembly and mapping of features onto their morphological

realizations. Slabakova (2009, 2013) incorporated Lardiere’s proposal in establishing a scale of

difficulty in learning semantic properties (e.g. definiteness) which is based on whether

reassembly is needed and whether the universal meaning is obtained by overt morphology or

context (See also Ramchand & Svenonius, 2008). In considering the truth-conditional aspect …

Segmental Contributions To Speech Intelligibility In Nonconcatenative Vs. Concatenative Languages, Yahya Aldholmi

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the contributions of segments (consonants vs. vowels) to speech intelligibility in Arabic and English. In these two languages, consonants and vowels play crucially different grammatical roles. Arabic is a nonconcatenative language that primarily assigns lexical information to consonants and morphosyntactic information to vowels, while English is a concatenative language that does not assign distinct roles to either class of segments. On this basis, we hypothesized that consonants and vowels would play very different roles in the intelligibility of the two languages. Five laboratory experiments were conducted, three on Arabic and two on English. Participants listened to words …

Input And Processing Factors Affecting Infants’ Vocabulary Size At 19 And 25 Months, Jae Yung Song, Katherine Demuth, James Morgan

Linguistics Faculty Articles

This study examined the relative contributions of three factors to individual differences in vocabulary development: the acoustic quality of mothers’ speech, the quantity of mothers’ speech, and infants’ ability to recognize words. To examine the quality and quantity of mothers’ speech, recordings were collected from 48 mothers when their infants were 17 months old. Infants’ ability to recognize words was gauged by their performance in a perception experiment at 19 months. We examined the relationship between these measures and infants’ vocabulary size at 19 and 25 months. The quantity of mothers’ speech accounted for the greatest amount of variance in …

Italian As A Heritage Language Spoken In The Us, Maria Teresa Bonfatti Sabbioni

Theses and Dissertations

The present study focuses on Italian as a heritage language spoken in the US by individuals bilingual in Italian and English, exposed to both language since birth. The subjects of the study are the members of six family nuclei, for a total of seven children as heritage speakers of Italian and as input receivers, and 6 parents as native speakers of Standard Italian and as input providers, living in different cities in Wisconsin and Illinois. The study specifically investigates the following structures: a) Gender assignment and gender agreement between determiner, noun and adjective; b) Auxiliary selection in the Italian compound …