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Linguistics

Brigham Young University

Theses and Dissertations

2015

Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Syriac Rhetorical Particles: Variable Second-Position Clitic Placement, Patrick Brendon Pearson Dec 2015

Syriac Rhetorical Particles: Variable Second-Position Clitic Placement, Patrick Brendon Pearson

Theses and Dissertations

Investigation on second-position clitic phenomena has steadily increased since Wackernagel’s (1892) observations. Researchers have applied contemporary clitic typology to various Semitic languages though Syriac has received little attention. This thesis identifies a group of Syriac rhetorical particles and describes their categorization as clitics, versus words or affixes. It establishes each of the Syriac particles as second-position clitics and provides evidence of this conclusion from a state-of-the-art digitized corpus of Syriac literature. Extending previous Syriac analyses, this thesis describes the nature of attachment of these second-position clitics as enclisis to either the first word or the first constituent/phrase of their domain. …

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A Corpus-Based Analysis Of Russian Word Order Patterns, Stephanie Kay Billings Dec 2015

A Corpus-Based Analysis Of Russian Word Order Patterns, Stephanie Kay Billings

Theses and Dissertations

Some scholars say that Russian syntax has free word order. However, other researchers claim that the basic word order of Russian is Subject, Verb, Object (SVO). Some researchers also assert that the use of different word orders may be influenced by various factors, including positions of discourse topic and focus, and register (spoken, fiction, academic, non-academic). In addition, corpora have been shown to be useful tools in gathering empirical linguistic data, and modern advances in computing have made corpora freely available and their use widespread. The Russian National Corpus is a large corpus of Russian that is widely used and …

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A Qualitative Analysis Of The English Language Teaching Practices Of Latter-Day Saint Missionaries, Rachel Tui Smith Dec 2015

A Qualitative Analysis Of The English Language Teaching Practices Of Latter-Day Saint Missionaries, Rachel Tui Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the teaching practices of recently returned Latter-day Saint (LDS) missionaries who voluntarily taught the English language on their full-time missions' serving for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout various parts of the world. The analyses performed in this research offer an insider's perspective by looking at a large selection of qualitative data gathered directly from these missionaries to provide evidential insight into what those practices are, including the most effective and the most ineffective teaching practices as principally perceived by the missionaries themselves. Thus far, there has been no research reported or data gathered …

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The Development Of An Esp Vocabulary Study Guidefor The Utah State Driver Handbook, Kirsten M. Brown Dec 2015

The Development Of An Esp Vocabulary Study Guidefor The Utah State Driver Handbook, Kirsten M. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project details research conducted and the method employed to create a tool for acquiring the technical vocabulary from the Utah Driver Handbook. Technical terms were compiled into a vocabulary tool for English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. ESL programs within the state have noted the need for materials to help learners acquire this vocabulary. The tool will assist ESL learners preparing for the written driving exam by reinforcing the vocabulary through various iterations, including flash cards, simplified definitions, and an L1 gloss. Learners preparing for the exam will be able to study difficult vocabulary terms using the …

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The Vocabulary Research Database: A Compilation Of State-Of-The-Art Academic Vocabulary Research, Melissa Ann Young Nov 2015

The Vocabulary Research Database: A Compilation Of State-Of-The-Art Academic Vocabulary Research, Melissa Ann Young

Theses and Dissertations

The Vocabulary Research Database (VRD) is a research tool comprised of a compilation of state-of-the art academic research in the field of vocabulary acquisition and pedagogy. The VRD has flexible search features that allow users to obtain higher granularity than is possible with other free databases and online search options currently available, making the results more relevant and manageable. These features include the ability to constrain results by date, author, publication, sub-topics, keywords, citation numbers, journal impact factors, and participant ages. It is anticipated that the ability to manipulate results, combined with relevant and current content, will provide language professionals …

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Idioms As A Measure Of Proficiency, Kyle Hugh Vanderniet Nov 2015

Idioms As A Measure Of Proficiency, Kyle Hugh Vanderniet

Theses and Dissertations

This purpose of this thesis is to explore the relationship between idiomatic knowledge and second language proficiency. As the amount of research directly related to this topic is sparse, an in-depth discussion of relevant research and definitions comprises the first part of this paper. Two studies are then presented here that test the relationship between idiomatic knowledge and second language proficiency. A new definition for idioms proposes that all non-compositional phrases, popularized by usage, that is stored, retrieved, and employed as a single lexical unit. The results from more than 400 participants across two studies indicate that the two constructs …

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English To Asl Gloss Machine Translation, Mary Elizabeth Bonham Jun 2015

English To Asl Gloss Machine Translation, Mary Elizabeth Bonham

Theses and Dissertations

Low-resource languages, including sign languages, are a challenge for machine translation research. Given the lack of parallel corpora, current researchers must be content with a small parallel corpus in a narrow domain for training a system. For this thesis, we obtained a small parallel corpus of English text and American Sign Language gloss from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We cleaned the corpus by loading it into an open-source translation memory tool, where we removed computer markup language and split the large chunks of text into sentences and phrases, creating a total of 14,247 sentence pairs. We …

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Botheration And Recognition Of Prescriptive Rules, Sara D. Smith Jun 2015

Botheration And Recognition Of Prescriptive Rules, Sara D. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Passions flare up around the use and “misuse” of prescriptive rules. Where there is variation in language use, language judgment usually follows—attaching value judgment to linguistic variants forms the foundation of prescriptive ideology in English. Prescriptive attitudes prevail among speakers and writers of English, who feel some pressure to use these forms to avoid a negative judgment. This study surveyed American English speakers using Mechanical Turk to determine which types of rules—spelling, syntactic, morphological, and lexical—bother people the most and inspire the harshest judgments when violated. The surveys asked participants to identify a violated prescriptive rule in a sentence, found …

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Establishing The Viability Of The Multidimensional Quality Metrics Framework, Tyler A. Snow Jun 2015

Establishing The Viability Of The Multidimensional Quality Metrics Framework, Tyler A. Snow

Theses and Dissertations

The Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) framework is a new system for creating customized translation quality assessment and evaluation metrics designed to fit specific translation needs. In this study I test the viability of MQM to determine whether the framework in its current state is ready for implementation as a quality assessment framework in the translation industry. Other contributions from this study include: (1) online software for designing and using metrics based on the MQM framework; (2) a survey of the typical, real-world quality assessment and evaluation practices of language service providers in the translation industry; and (3) a measurement scale …

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The Language And Cross-Cultural Perceptions Of Deception, Brent Logan Laing Jun 2015

The Language And Cross-Cultural Perceptions Of Deception, Brent Logan Laing

Theses and Dissertations

While much research has shown that some linguistic features can indicate a person is lying, this line of research has led to conflicting results. Furthermore, very little research has been done to verify that these supposed linguistic features of deception are universal. In addition, few studies have researched the cross-cultural perceptions of deception, which knowledge could greatly improve the detection of deception across cultures. The current study addresses these gaps in the literature by analyzing and comparing truthful and deceptive discourse of eight native English-speaking Americans and eight non-native English-speaking Ghanaians. The discourse was elicited in one-on-one interviews where each …

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Teaching Practice And Motivation Among Albanian And Japanese Missionaries, Rebekah Susan Hoopes Jun 2015

Teaching Practice And Motivation Among Albanian And Japanese Missionaries, Rebekah Susan Hoopes

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the relationship between the use of motivational strategies by Albanian and Japanese teachers and the observed and reported motivation of missionaries at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Provo, Utah. The aim of this study was to collect baseline data about the motivational strategies already employed by teachers in the Albanian and Japanese areas of the MTC and to explore the relationship that the teachers' use of these strategies has with the motivation of the respective missionaries. The data for this study was collected from seven teachers and …

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Grammatical Features Of Structural Elaboration And Compression Common In Advanced Esl Academic Writing, Gyusuk Yang May 2015

Grammatical Features Of Structural Elaboration And Compression Common In Advanced Esl Academic Writing, Gyusuk Yang

Theses and Dissertations

The present study replicated the research framework of a previous study (Biber, Gray, & Poonpon, 2011) that identifies the grammatical complexity of L1 professional academic prose as strongly favoring a dense use of phrasal nominal modifiers such as prepositional phrases as postmodifiers, attributive adjectives, and nouns as premodifiers which characterize its unique structurally compressed discourse style. The main purpose of the present study was to explore syntactic similarities and differences between L1 professional and L2 student academic writing in terms of their reliance on phrasal/nominal compression features to determine characteristics of the grammatical complexity of advanced ESL academic writing. To …

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A Diachronic Analysis Of North And South Korean Monophthongs: Vowel Shifts On The Korean Peninsula, Jessica M. Morgan Mar 2015

A Diachronic Analysis Of North And South Korean Monophthongs: Vowel Shifts On The Korean Peninsula, Jessica M. Morgan

Theses and Dissertations

The linguistic situation on the Korean peninsula is one ripe for research. For the past 70 years the two halves of the peninsula have been isolated from one another, thus creating two very different environments for development and change within the Korean language. It is hypothesized that due to conflict, divide, and social turmoil on the peninsula, the Korean language will have undergone a period of change in the last 70 years. This particular investigation looks at North and South Korean monophthong systems for evidence of a phonological shift. Studies of North Korea's language planning (Yong, 2001; Kumatani, 1990) will …

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The Role Of Pronunciation In Speaking Test Ratings, Rui Ma Mar 2015

The Role Of Pronunciation In Speaking Test Ratings, Rui Ma

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the weight of pronunciation in a speaking proficiency test at an English as a Second Language (ESL) Intensive English Program (IEP) in America. As an integral part of speaking, beliefs, practices, and research of pronunciation teaching have experienced shifts over the decades (Morley, 1991). Most studies concerning speaking have focused on intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness of speaking, with attempting to address the role of pronunciation in oral communication. However, the degree to which pronunciation is weighed in determining speaking proficiency levels is unclear (Higgs & Clifford, 1982, Kang, 2013). In an effort to contribute to the understanding …

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A Motivational, Online Guide To Help English Language Learners With The Development,Implementation, And Evaluation Of Their Individual Pronunciation Improvement Plans, Sofia Laura Carreno Galdame Mar 2015

A Motivational, Online Guide To Help English Language Learners With The Development,Implementation, And Evaluation Of Their Individual Pronunciation Improvement Plans, Sofia Laura Carreno Galdame

Theses and Dissertations

Intelligibility is one of the major concerns among ESL learners due to its impact on their ability to communicate with native speakers of English (Derwing & Munro, 2005). Even though pronunciation is often addressed in classrooms, it is difficult to tackle all intelligibility issues relevant for each student. Therefore, it is crucial for ESL learners to spend some extra time outside of class improving their pronunciation. Faced with a daunting task of regulating and taking charge of their own learning, they often have questions with respect to what exactly they need to work on, what activities will help them achieve …

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Parameters That Affect The Comfort Levels Of Native English Speakers Communicating With Non-Native English Speakers, Kayla Marie Nymeyer Mar 2015

Parameters That Affect The Comfort Levels Of Native English Speakers Communicating With Non-Native English Speakers, Kayla Marie Nymeyer

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores how native English speakers (NESs) are affected by the backgrounds of non-native English speakers (NNESs) when it comes to being comfortable interacting with then in English. Speech samples of 12 NNESs were gathered from the Level Achievement Tests conducted at Brigham Young University's English Language Center. There were six speakers who spoke Spanish as their first language (L1) and six speakers who spoke Chinese as their L1. In each L1 group, there were two Low proficiency speakers, two Mid proficiency speakers, and two High proficiency speakers. The speech samples were included in a Qualtrics survey which was …

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Conditional Sentences In Egyptian Colloquial And Modern Standard Arabic: A Corpus Study, Randell S. Bentley Mar 2015

Conditional Sentences In Egyptian Colloquial And Modern Standard Arabic: A Corpus Study, Randell S. Bentley

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the difference between conditional phrases in Egyptian Colloquial (EC) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It focuses on two different conditional particles 'iḏa and law. Verb tenses featured after the conditional particle determine the difference between EC and MSA usage. Grammars for EC and MSA provide a prescriptive approach for a comparison with empirical data from Arabic corpora. The study uses data from the ArabiCorpus along with a corpus of Egyptian Colloquial that were compiled specifically for this study. The results of this study demonstrate that each particle (‘iḏa and law) and register (EC and …

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