Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Phonology And Morphology Of The Dar Daju Daju Language, Arthur J. Aviles

Theses and Dissertations

A recurring theme among linguists is the need for more languages to be analyzed and more descriptions to be available for a variety of reasons. The main purpose of this thesis is to provide essential information on the Daju Dar Daju language of Chad, Africa that will assist in future language development work among the Daju Dar Daju people as well as to provide additional information for possible future work among related languages.

Very little work has been done on the Daju languages as a whole and to date almost nothing on the Dar Daju Daju. The Dar Daju Daju …

Subordination, Grounding And The Packaging Of Information In Gojri, Kara Suzanne Fast

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is based on a collection of narratives told by Gujar women in northern Pakistan. It majors on the structure of subordinate clauses, the discourse functions of relative clauses and conjunctive participial clauses, and the function of the most common connectives: tɛ, fir, bas and ǰī.

The position of the relative pronoun indicates whether a relative clause is referring to an activated or a new participant. Relative clauses that appear superfluous indicate that the referent has a significant role to play in the subsequent discourse.

Conjunctive participial clauses may convey information of the same storyline status …

Verbal Tone In Mpyemo, Bradley D. Festen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes the tonal patterns and alternations present in the Mpyemo language (Bantu A.86c – ISO code mcx), with special attention to the verbal system. Rules and autosegmental representations are used to clarify and provide a formal analysis. A tone raising rule causes the underlying two-tone system to display three phonetic levels at the surface. This thesis explores nominalized verbs and verbs in the imperative. In addition, inflected verbs are described, although only a limited set of inflectional morphemes are treated. Thus, I look at verbs with inflectional prefixes for subject agreement, the perfect, and a single verbal auxiliary …

Constituent Order And Participant Reference In Dolnia Hani Narrative Discourse, Karen L. Gainer

Theses and Dissertations

Hani is a language in the Loloish family, spoken primarily in Yunnan Province of southwest China. This thesis presents a description of constituent order and participant reference in written Hani narrative discourse. The primary data source for this thesis consists of three narratives, which are included in the appendices.

Constituent order in Hani is largely constrained by the principle of natural information flow. In order to conform to this principle, some constituents may appear in two or more different positions in the clause, depending on the information structure of the assertion being made. Information structure also influences the use and …

Acoustic Correlates Of Fortis/Lenis In San Francisco Ozolotepec Zapotec, Anita J. Leander

Theses and Dissertations

Analyses of the Zapotec family of languages often divide consonants into categories of strong and weak consonants, more commonly known as fortis and lenis. These given categories usually correspond to voiceless and voiced, respectively. In San Francisco Ozolotepec Zapotec (SFOZ) and Santa Catarina Xanaguía Zapotec (SCXZ), prior analyses describe the fortis/lenis distinction in terms of duration, voicing, and articulatory force. This description parallels other impressionistic descriptions in Isthmus-Valley and Southern Zapotec variants. However, no study has objectively identified the acoustic patterns of the fortis/lenis contrast in SFOZ or in any Southern, Valley, or Isthmus Zapotec language. A previous instrumental study …

Production Of Bangla Stops By Native English Speakers Learning Bangla: An Acoustic Analysis, Dustin D. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Differences in the phonetic and phonological systems of Bangla and English result in negative transfer in the Bangla stop productions of native English speakers. The phonetic realizations of Voice and Aspiration and their interactions with each other are the key factors in this. A production study was carried out focusing on sixteen of the twenty Bangla stops that are distinguished by a four-way voice/aspiration contrast at four different places of articulation, providing a contrastive acoustic analysis of the pronunciation of L1 and L2 adult speakers. Data containing these stops in an intervocalic environment in word-initial, word-medial, and word-final positions was …

Biliteracy And Skills Transfer: Literacy Skills Transfer From Arabic To English Focusing On Lexical Access, Henry J. Hauser

Theses and Dissertations

This research was designed to gain understanding of literacy skills transfer from a first language involving a particular writing system to a second language which uses another, divergent writing system. The author has worked in adult literacy in an area of the Sahara desert where the people's first language is Arabic and the majority of adults were illiterate. The present research utilized this setting to study literacy skills transfer from Arabic to English. Specific questions addressed in the research were: what skills transfer from L1 to L2, at what point should instruction in L2 begin, and can lexical access be …