Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Training Grammaticality: Can People Be Taught To Perceive The Singular ‘They’ As Grammatical?, Val Willham

Undergraduate Honors Theses

As the usage of personal pronouns other than he and she becomes more mainstream, debates about their usage have become more and more common. Many of the reasons discouraging their use are rooted in negative attitudes toward people who prefer to be referred to as such (Patev, et al 2019). However, prior research has also found that perceptions of singular gender-neutral pronouns like they/them as being grammatically confusing can be an obstacle toward their use, even by people who otherwise hold positive opinions towards transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) individuals (Patev, et al 2019). Given the role that language use …

Against A Ternary Analysis Of Syllable Strength: Positional Variation In The Vowel Inventory Of English, Joseph Lorber

Undergraduate Honors Theses

All of the vowels in Standard American English (SAE) are distinguishable from each other in stressed syllables, and it is generally accepted that none of them are contrastive in unstressed syllables. However, unstressed word-final syllables (or ultimas) without a coda consonant are able to host more vowel contrasts than unstressed syllables, evidenced by the minimal pair [ˈwɪndi] ‘windy’ and [ˈwɪndo͡ʊ] ‘window,’ but not as many contrasts as stressed syllables. Therefore, the standard analysis of syllable strength in SAE is a ternary one, where stressed syllables are Strong, unstressed non-final syllables are Weak, and unstressed open ultimas are Intermediate.

This work …

“I Got A Migraine And That Sucked”: College Students’ Affective Stance Towards Their Migraine Experiences, Megha Vasudevan

Undergraduate Research Awards

Migraines are a genetically influenced disorder and they are a common cause for disability (Ruschel & Jesus, 2023). This study seeks to examine the affective stance of college students towards their migraines. Affective stance refers to overt expressions of emotions in relation towards a particular entity to convey an emotional position in relation to that entity (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen, 2012, Kiesling 2022). Since this study was seeking to research a specific community, both participants were recruited because of their migraine experience. The findings of this study reveal that college students generally take a negative stance towards their migraine experiences, …

Documenting Multilingualism And Contact, Lenore A. Grenoble, Jack B. Martin

Arts & Sciences Articles

In order to understand why languages become endangered, linguists must shift from documenting the last fluent speakers to documenting the larger ecology of language use in an area. The papers in this special issue all address different aspects of documenting language multilingualism. They address three related topics: (1) consideration of the state of multilingualism in endangered language ecologies; (2) tools and methods for transcribing, annotating, analyzing and presenting multilingual corpora; and (3) methods in documenting and studying language contact in process.

Bad Asians: How Heritage Language Ability And Perception Affects Korean And Chinese College Students’ Identity, Grace Liscomb

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I explore east Asian-Americans’ negotiation of identity through the attitudes they take towards their respective abilities to speak their heritage languages (HL). In this project, heritage language refers to a minority language that children learn at home, typically from parents and family members. Ideologically, I call upon He’s (2006) notion that identity is negotiated through speech. I utilize Corbin and Strauss’ (1990) grounded theory as a method of open analysis. The data I analyze is from 8 sociolinguistic interviews with 3 Korean-Americans and 5 Chinese-Americans. The first round of open coding has revealed a larger theme: in support of the …

In Search Of Phonetic Evidence For Prosodically-Motivated Aspiration, Mckinley Sprinkle

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the production and perception of aspiration in all possible levels of stress and word positions attested under the left-edge prosodic description theorized by Kiparsky (1979), Withgott (1982), and Jensen (2000), as well as in all attested environments for unaspirated voiceless stops. Through the metric of voice onset time (VOT), I phonetically test the realization of aspiration and examine its perception as categorical in several environments that are not acoustically salient. Through a production study and two linked perception studies I provide acoustic evidence in support of the phonological definition of categorical aspiration as prosodically-motivated in English, and …

Robert Brandom On Semantics And The Objectivity Of Conceptual Norms, Jiayu Wu

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In arguing for an inferentialist understanding of conceptual contents, Robert Brandom claims that a fundamental feature of the norms that govern our concept-using practices is that they are objective. Brandom believes that the objective aspect of conceptual norms is grounded in the distinction between the normative status of a performance being a correct (or incorrect) application of a concept and the normative attitude of a performance being taken as a correct (or incorrect) application. In the first two sections of this thesis, I will offer an overview of Brandom’s inferential approach to semantics and his normative approach to pragmatics. In …

“One Does Not Simply Categorize A Meme”: A Dual Classification System For Visual-Textual Internet Memes, Leslie Cochrane, Alexandra Johnson, Aubrey Lay, Ginny Helmandollar

Arts & Sciences Articles

Internet memes are a popular and long-standing genre of discourse on social media platforms, used to express everything from emotional states to political opinions. Dancygier and Vandelanotte (2017) define internet memes as intertextual, multimodal discourses that combine text with images. In order to capture and compare these rapidly-changing discourses, we propose a descriptive dual classification system for memes with two components: meme composition and multimodal quality. Meme composition categorizes memes by their structure—beyond the individual images they employ—and thus explains how memes recontextualize images and text to create new meanings. Multimodal quality serves to describe the way(s) that the text …

Cross-Dialectal Vowel Mapping And Glide Perception, Abram Clear

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Broadening our understandings of how the perceptual system accounts for dialectal vowel variation, this research investigates the perceptual mapping of Appalachian English (AE) monophthongal [aɪ]. I explore this mapping through the secondary perception of palatal glides in hiatus sequences of monophthongal [aɪ.a]. Formant transitions from a high front vowel to a non-high, non-front vowel mimic the formant signature of a canonical [j], resulting in the perception of an acoustic glide (Hogoboom 2020). I ask if listeners may still perceive a glide when canonical formant transitions are absent. If participants map monophthongal [aɪ] to a high front position, they might perceive …

Quantifying Dimensions Of The Vowel Space In Patients With Schizophrenia And Controls, Elizabeth Maneval

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The speech of patients with schizophrenia has been characterized as being aprosodic, or lacking pitch variation. Recent research on linguistic aspects of schizophrenia has looked at the vowel space to determine if there is some correlation between acoustic aspects of speech and patient status (Compton et al. 2018). Additional research by Hogoboom et al. (submitted) noted that measurements of Euclidean distance (ED), which is the average distance from the center of the vowel space to all vowels produced, and vowel density, which is the proportion of vowels clustered together in the center of the vowel space, were significantly correlated for …

Accessing The Gray Area Between Phonetics And Phonology: The Development Of Vowel Length As A Subphonemic Cue, Abby Fergus

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Previous research has shown that speakers of English use vowel length as a subphonemic cue to the voicing of a following obstruent. Countless studies have demonstrated adults’ ability to make a voicing judgement based upon vowel length but studies with children have provided mixed and sometimes conflicting results. In the present study, we sought to first determine whether adults would exhibit varying sensitivity to vowel length based upon whether it is found in a position where it is predictive of the phonemic status of another sound (i.e. serving as a subphonemic cue). Second, we removed top-down information in order to …

Linguistic Measures Of Symptomatology In Schizophrenia, Celia Metzger

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research investigates how to measure affected speech of patients with schizophrenia by analyzing how they orally describe a picture compared to controls. Currently, there is no single clear set of criteria for recognizing disorganized speech. By working with a standard set of parameters (descriptions of a single picture) we can find patterns of speech that differ between the two groups.

68 patients and 78 controls were asked to describe a line drawing of a beach scene as completely as possible for a period of 2 minutes. These picture descriptions were analyzed on the basis of i) ɴᴀʀʀᴀᴛɪᴠᴇ sᴛʀᴜᴄᴛᴜʀᴇ, which …

The Influence Of Language-Specific And Universal Factors On Acquisition Of Motion Verbs, Rebecca Smyder, Kaitlyn Harrigan

Arts & Sciences Articles

This study explores children’s encoding of novel verbs referring to motion events, and finds influence of both language-specific and universal constraints on meaning. Motion verbs fall into two categories—manner verbs encode how a movement happens (run, swim), and path verbs encode the starting and ending point of a motion (enter, fall). Some languages express path more frequently in the verb (Spanish, Hebrew), and others manner more frequently (English, German). Our study expands on this previous work demonstrating sensitivity to these language-specific distributions, as well as expanding to test environmental factors representing a predictable …

Compliments, Compliment Responses, And Gender, Sam Laveson

Undergraduate Research Awards

This paper argues that the ways cisgender men versus women tend to respond to compliments can be related to the ways that cisgender men and women tend to give compliments in same-sex interactions (SSIs), based on the framework of politeness. In order to construct this argument, this paper draws on literature review, specifically works that have been authored and published by other scholars in the field of language and gender. Many of these scholars study the giving of compliments and the receiving of compliments, but those two concepts are often studied separately. As such, this paper adds to the field …

Teasing Apart Encoding And Retrieval Interference In Sentence Comprehension: Evidence From Agreement Attraction, Daniel Parker, Kelly Konrad

Arts & Sciences Articles

This study investigates interference effects in sentence processing. A parade case involves agreement attraction, where the processing of a number mismatch between a verb and its subject is eased by a number-matching lure (*The keytarget to the cabinetslure were rusty), relative to sentences where neither noun matches the verb (*The key to the cabinet were rusty). Existing accounts claim that this effect reflects error-prone retrieval or misrepresentation of the target. Recently, a third account has been proposed which claims that the contrast between the two configurations reflects increased difficulty in the second sentence due to feature overwriting in the encoding …

Studies On The Anatomy Of Teleosts, Katherine Elliott Bemis

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Longnose Lancetfish, Alepisaurus ferox, is a pelagic marine fish that has a heterodont dentition, including large fangs on both the upper and lower jaws. Their diet is well documented and includes salps, hyperiid amphipods, pelagic polychaete worms, mesopelagic fishes, and cephalopods. However, the function of the heterodont dentition, the structure of the teeth, and replacement mode is largely unknown. We studied a series of A. ferox to describe their dentition and tooth replacement. All teeth are replaced extraosseously. Palatine and dentary fangs develop horizontally in the oral epithelium on the lingual surface of dentigerous bones. Developing fangs rotate into …

Hope For Syntactic Bootstrapping, Kaitlyn Harrigan, Valentine Hacquard, Jeffrey Lidz

Arts & Sciences Articles

We explore children’s use of syntactic distribution in the acquisition of attitude verbs, such as think, want, and hope. Because attitude verbs refer to concepts that are opaque to observation but have syntactic distributions predictive of semantic properties, we hypothesize that syntax may serve as an important cue to learning their meanings. Using a novel methodology, we replicate previous literature showing an asymmetry between acquisition of think and want, and we additionally demonstrate that interpretation of a less frequent attitude verb, hope, patterns with type of syntactic complement. This supports the view that children treat …

Two Is Not Always Better Than One Modeling Evidence For A Single Structure-Building System, Daniel Parker

Arts & Sciences Articles

A challenge for grammatical theories and models of language processing alike is to explain conflicting online and offline judgments about the acceptability of sentences. A prominent example of the online/offline mismatch involves “agreement attraction” in sentences like *The key to the cabinets were rusty, which are often erroneously treated as acceptable in time-restricted “online” measures, but judged as less acceptable in untimed “offline” tasks. The prevailing assumption is that online/offline mismatches are the product of two linguistic analyzers: one analyzer for rapid communication (the “parser”) and another, slower analyzer that classifies grammaticality (the “grammar”). A competing hypothesis states that …

Error-Driven Retrieval In Agreement Attraction Does Not Lead To Misinterpretation, Zoe Schlueter, Daniel Parker, Ellen Lau

Arts & Sciences Articles

Previous work on agreement computation in sentence comprehension motivates a model in which the parser predicts the verb’s number and engages in retrieval of the agreement controller only when it detects a mismatch between the prediction and the bottom-up input. It is the error-driven second stage of this process that is prone to similarity-based interference and can result in the illusory licensing of a subject–verb number agreement violation in the presence of a structurally irrelevant noun matching the number marking on the verb (‘The bed by the lamps were…’), giving rise to an effect known as ‘agreement attraction’. …

Interference In Language Processing Reflects Direct-Access Memory Retrieval: Evidence From Drift-Diffusion Modeling, Daniel Parker, Adam An

Arts & Sciences Articles

Many studies on memory retrieval in language processing have identified similarity-based interference as a key determinant of comprehension. The broad consensus is that similarity-based interference reflects erroneous retrieval of a non-target item that matches some of the retrieval cues. However, the mechanisms responsible for such effects remain debated. Activation-based models of retrieval (e.g., Lewis & Vasishth, 2005) claim that any differences in processing difficulty due to interference in standard RT measures and judgments reflect differences in the speed of retrieval (i.e., the amount of time it takes to retrieve a memory item). But this claim is inconsistent with empirical data …

Cue Combinatorics In Memory Retrieval For Anaphora, Daniel Parker

Arts & Sciences Articles

Many studies have shown that memory retrieval for real-time language processing relies on a cue-based access mechanism, which allows the cues available at the retrieval site to directly access the target representation in memory. An open question is how different types of cues are combined at retrieval to create a single retrieval probe (“cue combinatorics”). This study addresses this question by testing whether retrieval for antecedent-reflexive dependencies combines cues in a linear (i.e., additive) or nonlinear (i.e., multiplicative) fashion. Results from computational simulations and a reading time experiment show that target items that match all the cues of the reflexive …

A Memory-Based Explanation Of Antecedent-Ellipsis Mismatches New Insights From Computational Modeling, Daniel Parker

Arts & Sciences Articles

An active question in psycholinguistics is whether or not the parser and grammar reflect distinct cognitive systems. Recent evidence for a distinct-systems view comes from cases of ungrammatical but acceptable antecedent-ellipsis mismatches (e.g., *Tom kicked Bill, and Matt was kicked by Tom too.). The finding that these mismatches show varying degrees of acceptability has been presented as evidence for the use of extra-grammatical parsing strategies that restructure a mismatched antecedent to satisfy the syntactic constraints on ellipsis (Arregui et al. 2006; Kim et al. 2011). In this paper, I argue that it is unnecessary to posit a special class of …

Not All Phrases Are Equally Attractive: New Evidence For Selective Agreement Attraction Effects In Comprehension, Daniel Parker, Adam An

Arts & Sciences Articles

Research on memory retrieval during sentence comprehension suggests that similarity-based interference is mediated by the grammatical function of the distractor. For instance, Van Dyke and McElree (2011) observed interference during retrieval for subject-verb thematic binding when the distractor occurred as an oblique argument inside a prepositional phrase (PP), but not when it occurred as a core argument in direct object position. This contrast motivated the proposal that constituent encodings vary in the distinctiveness of their memory representations based on an argument hierarchy, which makes them differentially susceptible to interference. However, this hypothesis has not been explicitly tested. The present …

Stress Avoidance In Hiatus, Anya Hogoboom

Arts & Sciences Articles

Segment-based syllable weight has been proposed to be calculated by either rhyme segments (McCarthy, 1979) or by intervals (Steriade, 2012). An interval is defined as the vocalic material of a syllable and all following segmental material until the vowel of the following syllable. The two theories parse segments into the same domains in two cases: word-finally,1 and for the first vowel of two adjacent vowels in different syllables, i.e., in hiatus. While the weight domain is the same for the two theories in cases of hiatus (consisting of just a short vowel, ‘V’), the categorization of weight is different. While …

Introduction To "Lexical Borrowing And Deborrowing In Spanish In New York City", Rachel Varra

Arts & Sciences Book Chapters

Lexical Borrowing and Deborrowing in Spanish in New York City provides a sociodemographic portrait of lexical borrowing in Spanish in New York City.

The volume offers new and important insights into research on lexical borrowing. In particular, it presents empirical data obtained through quantitative analysis to answer the question of who is most likely to use English lexical borrowings while speaking Spanish, to address the impact that English has on Spanish as spoken in the city and to identify the social factors that contribute to language change.

The book also provides an empirical, corpus-based-approach to distinguishing between borrowing and other …

Durational Cues To Stress, Final Lengthening, And The Perception Of Rhythm, Anya Hogoboom

Arts & Sciences Articles

Binary stress languages have a well-known asymmetry between their tolerance of initial versus final lapse; the former being extremely rare and the latter being quite common. Lunden (to appear) proposes that final lengthening plays a role in this asymmetry, as the additional inherent phonetic duration of the final syllable can contribute to the continuation of a perceived rhythm, even in the absence of actual final stress. She notes this effect of final lengthening should only be available in languages that use duration as a cue to stress. However, some languages are described as having different cues to primary and secondary …

Vowel-Length Contrasts And Phonetic Cues To Stress: An Investigation Of Their Relation, Anya Hogoboom, Jessica Campbell, Mark Hutchens, Nick Kalivoda

Arts & Sciences Articles

The functional load hypothesis of Berinstein (1979) put forward the idea that languages which use a suprasegmental property (duration, F0) contrastively will not use it to realise stress. The functional load hypothesis is often cited when stress correlates are discussed, both when it is observed that the language under discussion follows the hypothesis and when it fails to follow it. In the absence of a more wide-ranging assessment of how frequently languages do or do not conform to the functional load hypothesis, it is unknown whether it is an absolute, a strong tendency, a weak tendency or unsupported. The results …

Duration, Vowel Quality, And The Rhythmic Pattern Of English, Anya Hogoboom

Arts & Sciences Articles

Languages with binary stress systems frequently tolerate a stress lapse over the final two syllables, but almost none tolerate a word-initial stress lapse. Lunden (to appear) argues that this lapse asymmetry can be explained by the presence of word-level final lengthening, which can then create the perception of prominence alternation in languages that use duration as stress correlate. The results of a production and a perception study with English speakers are presented which compare /a/s that occur under stress lapse to /a/s in non-stress-lapse positions. While word-final unstressed /a/ is always longer than non-final unstressed /a/, it is significantly longer …

Position And Stress As Factors In Long-Distance Consonant Metathesis, Anya Hogoboom, Kelsey Renoll

Arts & Sciences Articles

Long-distance consonant metathesis is less common than the metathesis of adjacent segments but is shown to occur in multiple languages (e.g. Māori kāheru∼" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; line-height: 0; font-size: 20px; overflow-wrap: normal; word-spacing: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 1px 0px; position: relative;">∼∼kārehu ‘spade’) As words tend to be short, and examples rare, it is difficult to assess the tendencies of long-distance consonant metathesis. This paper gives the results of a production experiment with five-syllable nonce words set up to examine …

Syllable Weight And Duration: A Rhyme/Intervals Comparison, Anya Hogoboom

Arts & Sciences Articles

Steriade (2012) proposed intervals as a more appropriate syllable weight domain than rhymes. This study explores how interval weight cashes out as duration across word positions and compares this to a rhyme-based account. The data reported on in Lunden (2013), from native speakers of Norwegian (a language in which (C)VC syllables are heavy only non-finally) is reanalyzed with intervals. Lunden found that syllable rhymes in all three positions, if taken as a percentage of the average V rhyme in that word position, fell into a coherent pattern for weight. It is shown that interval durations allow for a similar, albeit …