Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Who Are You? The Relationship Between Language And Personality, Gwendolyn Cooley

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The relationship between language and personality is one that has been ruminated upon for decades, leading to a plethora of often contradictory scholarship. This project examines that relationship from an outsider perspective, utilizing both existing research and original questionnaire data to draw conclusions about how one's second language learning impacts personality.

Language Planning, Education, And Linguistic Identity In The Republic Of Ireland, Margo Digiacinto

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper explores Irish-Gaelic language policy in educational domains in the Republic of Ireland and how educational policy connects to the greater language revitalization movement of the Irish language. The history of language policy since Ireland's independence in 1922 is presented for context, along with statistics and background information about the status of the Irish language in the country overall and in Gaeltacht communities. Then, the paper explores the three main educational contexts in which Irish is learned: English medium education, Irish medium education, and Gaeltacht schools. Potential solutions are then put forth to address some of the challenges students …

Verb Strings And Other Weavings: An Exploration Of Grammatical Structures, Visual Arts, And Language Teaching, Mae Bash

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In language education, visual arts are sometimes used as a tool to inspire communication and convey cultural concepts. However, limited research has looked into the application of visual arts in the classroom for the exploration of linguistic patterns. Both languages and weavings are complex systems governed by distinct sets of rules, yet they still permit infinite unique productions. This project explores this relationship by presenting five bandweavings, each of which is designed based on the rules and structures of different languages. These weavings show that it is possible to connect art and language through practical, structural methods, not only abstract …

Khahir: A Constructed Language, Kate Panza

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project provides a generative grammar, or description of a language’s rules such that a theoretically infinite number of expressions can be made, of the new language Khahir. Information from the major domains of linguistics – phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics – was synthesized and applied to create a linguistically logical and internally consistent language unrelated to any existing language. Throughout history constructed languages, or conlangs, have been used for a variety of purposes including ease of communication, experimentation in the field of linguistics, and enrichment of a fictional world, but this project, in particular, sought to focus …

'Wokespeak' Woes, Natalie Anderson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This capstone project is a linguistic investigation into the impact of inclusion-related word use on political activism and performative allyship.

Effects Of Orthographic Silent ‘L’ On Preceding Vowel Duration, Sylvia Cohen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper discusses the preliminary results of a phonetics/phonology study investigating the effects of orthographic (written) ‘l’ on the pronunciation of English words like ‘walk’ and ‘talk’. These words would typically be transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wak/ and /tak/, with no /l/ sound present; however, there is some reason to suspect that the written ‘l’ is salient in speakers’ mental representations of these words and may influence their pronunciation. In English (as well as many other languages) vowels before voiced consonants have longer durations than vowels before voiceless consonants. Experimentation by Walsh (1985) has indicated that this …

Nadshedu: Constructing A Fictional Language, Anna Steinhilber

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

My purpose for this project was to create my own conlang. Conlang stands for ‘constructed language’ and refers to any language that has been purposefully designed rather than evolving naturally. Conlangs can be created for communicative purposes, like the international auxiliary language, Esperanto, for fictional or artistic purposes like Klingon or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish, or for linguistic purposes, like Kēlen, a language without verbs. Conlangs are much older than you might think. There are examples of artificial languages dating back to the 12th century, like the Lingua Ignota created by St. Hildegard of Bingen, although most artistic languages began to …

(Not) Speaking Spanish: Explicit Pronunciation Instruction In The Online High School Classroom, Brahm Vanwoerden

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Students in the language classroom often face a variety of challenges inherent to the process of learning a second language as an adult. These range from lack of sufficient motivation to structurally uninspired curriculum and are often amplified in the case of a drastic shift in environment. Such a shift took place rapidly over the course of 2020, transforming thousands of classrooms into virtual versions of themselves in a matter of weeks. Students began to receive vastly different quantities and types of language input and interacted with the language in substantially affected ways. Factors that previously played a large role …

Competing Semantic And Phonological Constraints In Novel Binomials, Eli George

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This experiment investigates why certain pairs of words, called “frozen binomials” always appear in the same order. It uses an electronic survey that asks subjects to determine what order they would prefer to say pairs of certain words. Specifically, the experiment tests whether it is the sound of the words or the meaning of the words that determines their order. While the data was inconclusive, it does suggest the existence of deeper rules for the ordering of these words.

The Syntax Of Guaraní: A Pronominal Argument Analysis Of A Noteworthy Indigenous Language, Emily Hillman

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Broadly speaking, I examine the syntax of Guaraní, an indigenous language of Paraguay, and offer my analyses of complex syntactic questions in relation to the language. My research stems from a paper that I wrote in the fall of 2018 that led to many questions and preliminary hypotheses related to argument marking and the Guaraní verb. Under the direction of Dr. Kristin Denham, I answer these questions through a pronominal argument (PA) analysis of Guaraní. I defend the position that Guaraní is a PA language by examining data from prior literature and native speakers. Throughout my paper, I consider discussions …

The Linguistic Capital Of Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Season 1, Holly Lund

Occam's Razor

The standup comedian serves two apparently universal functions: as a licensed spokesperson he is permitted to say things about our society that we want and need to have uttered publicly, but which would be too dangerous and too volatile if done without the mediation of humor; and as a comic character he can represent, through caricature, those negative traits which we wish to hold up to ridicule, to feel superior to, and to renounce through laughter" (Mintz 1977). So states an article published in American Humor in 1977. While not explicitly discussed, Mintz's implications are clear: women are not funny. …

The Fuck Is Going On? The Grammaticalization Of Taboo Words In English, Laura E. Munger

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This study examines the grammaticalization of the verb “fuck” to the periphrastic interrogative “the fuck”. I use various forms of data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the Corpus of Historical American English to analyze (1) the evolution of “fuck” from a concrete lexical verb to an item diversified in meaning and part of speech, (2) the development of the phrase “what the X” from “what the devil”, and (3) the specific grammaticalization of “the fuck” as an interrogative. These processes are then discussed in terms of specific principles of grammaticalization which they illustrate.

Change In The Usage Of 老 In Chinese Vernacular Literature, Matthew Taylor Horn

Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award

This paper looks at the change in usage of the Chinese character lao (老) in vernacular literature of the Tang, Ming, and Xiandai (modern) periods. It is mainly a quantitative study of the change in lexical meaning of lao due to its grammaticalization as well as its morphological change from a free to bound morpheme. These changes will be studied in relation to lao’s affixation.

The Language Of Non-Normative Sexuality And Genders, Emily Bolam, Samantha Jarvis

Scholars Week

This project is about how asexual, intersex and transgender identities challenge normative ideas about what it means to be human. Our research primarily focused on how language used in the medical community influences societal perceptions of non-normative identities. Western culture is pervasively heteronormative, meaning that there is a narrow idea of what constitutes a “normal” human being, which is typically heterosexual and limited to a binary gender system. While society is making strides with accepting non-hetero sexual identities, there persists the notion that humans are inherently sexual beings. Asexuality, an orientation characterized by a lack of sexual attraction, challenges this …

Metathesis And Reanalysis In Ket, Edward J. Vajda

Modern & Classical Languages

This article provides and overview of key morphological traits in Ket and other Yeniseian languages (Kott, Yugh). It first identifies and describes several key features inherited from Proto-Yeniseian (polysynthetic prefixing verb structure, possessive prefixes, phonemic tones). Next it discusses other features that arose or were influence areally by prolonged contact with the surrounding suffixal agglutinating languages (case suffix systems, encliticization of possessive prefixes, repositioning of the finite verb’s semantic head toward the verb word’s leftmost edge). Finally, five morphological features are considered that appear to be anomalous from a typological perspective as they cannot be shown to have been inherited …

/Ɡizəskɪfi/ (Give Me A Clue) - Linguistic Features Of Scottish Accents And Dialects, Sarah Knudsen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Powerpoint presentation describing the author's research, conducted in Scotland, regarding Scottish dialectal features and the sociolinguistic connotations associated with the dialects. Outside research is also incorporated.

The Structure Of Coordination, Laurel G. (Laurel G.) Evans

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The analysis of coordination (and especially the structure of coordination) is a matter of dispute within syntactic theory. Prior to the 1980s, coordination was largely ignored by the syntactic field. Syntacticians have yet to reach a consensus with regard to the structure and properties of coordination. It's rather remarkable that an element as basic to language as coordination (in English, coordination can be signaled by "and," "or," and "but") has been largely ignored within linguistics except by semanticists. The most extensive analyses put forth at this point are those of Jose Camacho (1997, 2003) and Janne Bondi Johannessen (1998).

In …

A Reanalysis Of Double Object Constructions: Varying Approaches With Varying Results, Adam Bollen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In the field of syntactic theory, there are several enigmas that continue to baffle researchers. One such construction in English is the Double Object construction. Though most native and non-native English speakers are aware of the existence of this construction, many are unaware of the conundrum it presents to syntacticians. Observe the following example sentences: (1) Mary sent a letter to Jim. (2) Mary sent Jim a letter. While the grammaticality of these sentences is unquestioned, the precise inner workings on a syntactic level are the topic of much debate. Quandaries that arise include the applicability of current branching and …

Comprehension, Irritation And Error Hierarchies, Shaw N. Gynan

Modern & Classical Languages

There are several recurrent themes in the study of native speaker attitudes toward inter­language. First among them treated in a recent review by Ludwig is comprehensibility, that is, the ease with which the native speaker can comprehend nonnative speech.' Research in the area of native speaker attitudes toward nonnative speech reviewed in Ludwig has shown that formal errors are not well related to comprehensibility of interlanguage. "Irritation" is also a topic of considerable interest. An assumption underlying the study of irritation is that even if nonnative speech is comprehensible, the form of the message may be associated with a negative …

Review Of: Spanish And Portuguese In Social Context By J. Bergen And G. Bills (Eds.), Shaw N. Gynan

Modern & Classical Languages

This collection of thirteen papers from the Seventh Colloquium on Hispanic Linguistics (1980) is the fourth published by Georgetown University. As in the three previous volumes, the reports in this one represent slightly over half of those presented. Unlike previous published proceedings, the present one deals with aspects of a single theme. Interesting hypotheses are forwarded concerning the relationship between social factors and history of Spanish language acquisition, bilingualism, and Spanish and Portuguese phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon.