Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Spectrums, Subgroups And School-Lunch: The Linguistic Capital Of Students With Autism, Scott Belden

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are known to have difficulties with pragmatic language. There is, however, a subpopulation of those with ASD that exhibits a high competency with pragmatic language. It can be difficult for researchers to find natural contexts to record these high-functioning individuals and examine their spontaneous use of pragmatic language. Additionally, there is a need to move beyond analyzing the cognitive abilities of these individuals to a sociolinguistic exploration of how they use pragmatic abilities to form and navigate social groups.

The research involved in this thesis included audio-visual recordings of 14 high school students with …

Case And Pragmatic Status Markers In Embera Katío, Bethany Winter Carlson

Theses and Dissertations

In previous research on the Embera languages of the Chocó genus of Colombia and Panama, many different terms have been applied to one or all of the morphemes ba, ta and ra that frequently mark noun phrases and dependent clauses, and some of these descriptions have been conflicting. This study summarizes the previous analyses and compares them to language data from a corpus of texts and elicited material. The result is an analysis in which ba has three functions, marking ergative case, instrumental case and reason; ta marks focus on absolutives; and ra marks pragmatic topic and syntactic topics. …

Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Learning For Deaf Learners Of Foreign Sign Languages, Benjamin J. Cavaletto

Theses and Dissertations

Deaf people have as great or greater need and desire to learn foreign languages as their hearing peers. Currently it is difficult for these learners to find courses and materials that are appropriate for their learning needs. Especially difficult is finding courses or learning materials for learning sign languages, which are more motivating and more accessible for Deaf learners than spoken languages. Additionally, evidence is presented that learning a foreign sign language can act as a bridge to learning a spoken language from the same region. The study presented in this thesis tested the efficacy of a computer-assisted vocabulary learning …

Falam Immigrants In America: Motivations For Language Use, Maintenance, And Shift, Hannah Reeves

Theses and Dissertations

Using a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach, I explore immigrants' individual motivations for language use, language shift and language maintenance. I met with 25 immigrants to the US who are native speakers of Falam, a language from Myanmar, to learn their reasons for Falam and English usage as well as their desires for Falam usage in the US. I used the Perceived Benefit Model of Language Shift's taxonomy of motivations to classify each motivation expressed. Among Falam immigrants to America, I found that solidarity-related and communicative motivations are behind language maintenance while economic and communicative motivations are behind language shift. …

Deixis In Shughni: Grammatical And Semantic Considerations, Katja S. Mueller

Theses and Dissertations

Shughni is one of the best documented and described languages of the Pamirs. Linguistic research so far has focused on the verbal system of Shughni grammar but no detailed study has been done on the deictic system of the language. In this thesis I will describe grammatical and semantic aspects of the deictic system in Shughni.

During the course of the project I observed natural conversations, and listened to stories and discussions, and additionally I elicited sentences or conversations in order to clarify structures or understanding of previous observations.

In this thesis I describe the grammatical structures of Shughni deixis …