Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effect Of Shadowing In Learning L2 Segments: A Perspective From Phonetic Convergence, Ruqayyah Althubyani

Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to investigate the role that phonetic convergence plays in the acquisition of L2 segments. In particular, it examined whether phonetic convergence towards native speakers could help Arabic-speaking second-language (L2) learners of English improve their pronunciation of four problematic English segments (/p, v, ɛ, oʊ/). To do so, the study went through several phases of experimental studies. Phonetic convergence was first explored in the productions of Arabic L2 learners towards five different English native model talkers in non-interactive setting. Five XAB perceptual similarity judgments and acoustic measurements of VOT, vowel duration, F0, and F1*F2 were used to evaluate …

Measuring Cross-Cultural Engagement Of Those Using The Growing Participator Approach, Cheryl Lea Cross

Theses and Dissertations

The Growing Participator Approach (GPA) is a language-learning approach used among global professionals living cross-culturally. Developer Greg Thomson claims that through the GPA, learners grow as active participants in their new culture by learning language primarily in relationship. Because cultural participation is central to GPA, measuring social engagement is the most appropriate form of evaluation. This research seeks to answer the questions: (1) Does focused language learning using the GPA correspond with a high degree of social integration in the host community? (2) Does the use of scales from other academic fields help evaluate social engagement for language learners?

For …

The Iconicity And Non-Arbitrariness Of Body Locations In Four Unrelated Sign Languages, John Samson

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I show that universally, there is a strong tendency for signs located on the body to have an iconic or non-arbitrary motivation, especially in their original form. I analyze sign language dictionaries from four unrelated sign languages and establish an iconic or non-arbitrary link between the form of the signs and their meaning, and classify those links according to 8 categories of body location iconicity and 3 categories of non-arbitrariness. The strength of this tendency depends on the percentage of signs that are shown to have an iconic or non-arbitrary link. For the data analyzed here this …

Investigating Information Structure And Word Order In Latin Poetry: An Analysis Of Epigrams, Justin Riley Soderholm

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the epigrammatic verses of the Latin poet Marcus Valerius Martialis (Martial). The emphasis is on the order of basic constituents and information structure, in particular, the concepts of sentence articulation and focus structure as modelled by Lambrecht (1994).

I categorize clauses from roughly 200 lines of epigrammatic verse by the sentence articulations topic-comment, in which propositions have predicate focus, identificational, in which propositions have argument focus, and thetic, in which whole propositions are in focus. For each articulation, I also present various examples demonstrating the variety of word orders in each. Additionally, this study examines some patterns …

Klon Pronouns In Their Typological And Linguistic Context Within Wallacea, Eastern Indonesia, Johnny Marshel Banamtuan

Theses and Dissertations

Klon is a typologically SOV Timor-Alor-Pantar (Papuan) language, spoken by around 10,000 people on the islands of Alor and Pantar in eastern Indonesia. Like most SOV languages, Klon has postpositions, possessor before possessed, and sentence-final question particles. NPs are left-headed, with attributive modifiers, numerals, quantifiers, relative clauses, and demonstratives following the head noun. Klon has both pre-verbal and post-predicate verb modifiers. Preverbal modifiers can only modify verbal predicates. The language is aspect-prominent, with no grammatical tense. Like many SOV languages, Klon has clause-final standard negation, often occurring as bipartite negation.

Klon syntax pivots around the Undergoer. Only Undergoers are indexed …

Complex Predicates In Southern Turkmen: A Role And Reference Grammar Analysis, Nathaniel Andrew Shaver

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses the concepts of nexus and juncture, as articulated by Role and Reference Grammar, to examine complex verbal constructions found in four collected texts. These texts were collected from four Southern Turkmen (or Turkmen of Afghanistan) speakers. Through transcribing, glossing, and analyzing these texts, a number of complex predicates were identified. These were then described according to their various nexus juncture types. Three nexus juncture varieties were represented in the collected texts. These include clausal coordination, clausal subordination, and core cosubordination. Although not represented in the texts, it was possible to elicit three other provisional nexus juncture varieties. …

University Students' Perceptions Of Writing Assessment, Hanan Alaa Hegazi

Theses and Dissertations

Instructors and students are the pillars of higher education. There is substantial interest in teachers’ beliefs, preferences, and perceptions in language assessment research, with an emphasis on writing assessment. Additionally, there is a growing body of research investigating students’ perceptions of assessment. However, research that examines how students perceive writing assessment is limited. Therefore, this study investigates two aspects: (a) students’ perceptions of their writing ability and (b) their perceptions of writing assessment in an English-medium private university in Cairo. This study adopts a mixed-methods approach for data collection, which involved distributing student questionnaires, conducting semi-structured interviews, and collecting writing …

The Development Of Case Morphology And Sentential Word Order In Arabic As A Second Language: A Processability Perspective, Abdullah Alsubhi

Theses and Dissertations

Processability theory argues that the development of interlanguage syntactic and morphological structures is guided by general principles, which make up a “language processor”. These principles develop gradually and are implicationally ordered. The theory claims that interlanguage syntactic and morphological structures develop in the order the principles responsible for their production become available to the learner (Pienemann, 1998; Pienemann et al., 2005). This study used these principles as reflected in processing procedures and mapping principles to investigate the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic case morphology and sentential word order. The goal of using these principles was to hypothesize a developmental route …

Just A Little Respect: Authority And Competency In Women's Speech, Bridget Anne Carroll

Theses and Dissertations

Young women have conflicting motivations directing how they use pitch, vocal fry, and uptalk intonation. High pitch and uptalk may emphasize their femininity, but low pitch and vocal fry are associated with better leadership. Thus, it is difficult to predict how young women will speak in a particular situation. This thesis measures how 16 young women used pitch, vocal fry, and uptalk in three different speech styles collected through videoconferencing calls. Surveys determined how the changes in speech affected the listener's judgments of the speaker. The lowest average pitch was in interview style speech and the largest range of pitch …

Participant Reference In Colombian Sign Language Narrative, Martha Lois Gateley

Theses and Dissertations

Much of the research on discourse in sign languages thus far has been carried out on American Sign Language. With this thesis, I add to the current research by comparing what is known about participant reference in American Sign Language with Colombian Sign Language.

This thesis analyzes six separate stories totaling 72 minutes, signed by 5 different native signers of Colombian Sign Language. ELAN (a computer software for annotation) was used to mark all of the referring terms in the subject position and categorize the terms by type (nominal reference, pronominal reference, zero-anaphor, and classifier) and by function (introduction, reintroduction …

Animacy And Intransitivity In Sentence Processing, Peter Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

The distinction between animate and inanimate objects is essential to many cognitive tasks. Research has shown distinct patterns of memory, attention, and language response to animate and inanimate objects. This dissertation examines the effects of noun animacy on sentence processing. I report three psycholinguistic experiments on intransitive constructions, testing how animate and inanimate nouns influence expectations for an intransitive clause. Intransitive verbs fall into types based on thematic role. Unergative verbs assign an Agent role. Unaccusative verbs assign a Theme/Patient role, although a subclass of unaccusative verbs can alternate between intransitive constructions with a Theme/Patient subject and transitive constructions with …

Discourse Strategies In Selected African Suicide Notes, Oluwole Sanni

Theses and Dissertations

The present study aims to investigate the discourse strategies, positioning moves, and sociological variables that characterized the selected African suicide notes. Twenty suicide notes from different African countries constituted the data for the study. The data was deductively analysed using Davis & Harre (1999) positioning theory aside being inductively analysed. The results concluded that the discourse and structural patterns of metaphor, intertextuality, pronouns, presupposition, repetition, if conditionals, and intensifiers were deployed by the African suicide completers to demonstrate agency or/and victimhood. Also, first-order, second-order, third-order, expert and moral positioning were used in the suicide notes for self and other portrayer …

The Syntax Of Negation In Iraqi Arabic, Saja Albuarabi

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of negation in Iraqi Arabic. It investigates the syntactic properties of negation in this dialect by presenting some previously unnoticed empirical facts about this phenomenon and by analyzing its theoretical significance for Arabic syntax in particular and Human language in general. Iraqi Arabic is a cluster of subdialects that show an interesting systematic microvariation in the use of negative expressions. The first goal of this dissertation is to present the syntactic properties of negation in all these subdialects through a detailed description and comprehensive survey. Based on this survey and description, these subdialects, are divided …

A Typology Of Morphological Argument Focus Marking, Aidan Alexander Aannestad

Theses and Dissertations

One of the methods that languages use to indicate which argument (if any) is in focus is morphological; however, there seems to be a major gap in the literature when it comes to understanding the variety and classification of morphological argument focus marking constructions. This thesis is an attempt to fill that gap. I present here both an overview of the types of morphological focus marking constructions found in the world's languages, and a taxonomic classification of said constructions based on the grammaticalisation pathways that result in their genesis. Such constructions include not only the traditional `particle focus' constructions, but …

Information Structure In Mangghuer: A Narrative Text Analysis Of Topic And Focus In A Mongolic Language Of Northwestern China, Cory Christopher Coogan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes information structure in Mangghuer, a Mongolic language spoken in northwestern China. My analysis relies on a set of twenty-three narrative texts published in the 2005 volume, Folktales of China's Minhe Mangghuer (Chen et al. 2005), and I also draw from the text "Lu Buping," published in the 2001 Mangghuer Folktale Reader (Stuart & Zhu 2001). I rely on Lambrecht's (1994) approach to information structure as a theoretical framework to analyze these texts. I also apply methods from Levinsohn's (2015) "Self Instruction-Materials on Narrative Discourse Analysis." Default information structure in Mangghuer is the topic-comment sentence. The default form …

Exploring Aspects Of Reported Speech In Vehicular Jula Of Burkina Faso, Susan Marie Locklin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a systematic description of reported speech in vehicular Jula of Burkina Faso as well as the degree to which several recent models of reported speech would account for the two distinct variations of reported speech found in Jula. The descriptive and theoretical aspects of this thesis speak into the fields of typology, discourse, and pragmatics. Some of the interesting typological aspects of Jula reported speech are the use of logophoric pronouns in one category of reported speech, the fact that a quotative particle is present with both categories of reported speech, and the fact that pronominal cataphors …

Language Archive Records: Interoperability Of Referencing Practices And Metadata Models, Hugh J. Paterson Iii

Theses and Dissertations

With the rise of the digital language archive and the plethora of referenceable content, a critical question arises: “How easy is it for authors to use existing tools to cite the content they are referencing?” This is especially important as people use archived materials as evidence within published language descriptions.

Archived resource metadata is well discussed in language documentation circles; however, bibliographic metadata and its accessibility are less discussed. Discoverability metadata, a subset of archived resource metadata, serves aggregators like OLAC by declaring a resource exists. In contrast, bibliographic metadata functions within documents by declaring where to find a resource …

An Analysis Of The Privileged Syntactic Argument In Three Sayula Popoluca Texts, Corey Havlicek

Theses and Dissertations

Sayula Popoluca is a Mixe-Zoquean language spoken in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The data in this thesis was collected by Lawrence Clark and published in Clark (1961). Using Role and Reference Grammar as described in Van Valin (2005), I show that Sayula Popoluca marks the Privileged Syntactic Argument (PSA) in a clause based upon whether it is the single argument of an intransitive verb (S), the actor of a transitive verb, or the undergoer of a transitive verb. It does this through an increasing markedness in the combination of pronominal prefixes and aspect/mood suffixes, with S being the least …

It’S /Tʃuzdeɪ/, Innit?: Yod Coalescence In British English, Jenna Rose Rees-White

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research on British English (BE) has shown that variation in dialects stems from both regional and social differences (Hughes & Trudgill, 1979; Kwon, 2006; Glain, 2012; and others). For instance, if a speaker identifies as middle- to upper-class in the UK, they are more likely to use RP (Received Pronunciation) than a speaker who identifies with a lower-class social status. This, and other variables, accounts for variability among regionally similar but phonologically different British dialects.

This thesis analyzes the use of Yod Coalescence (YC), a phonological phenomenon that focuses on C-/ju/ sequences and their tendencies to drop yod and …

The Shape Of The Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Testing The Cognate Continuum, Danielle Kristine Fahey

Theses and Dissertations

Items in the mental lexicon have three storage and processing strata, the concept, lemma, and lexeme, which equate to semantic, syntactic and phonological information. Lexical items relate to each other at each stratum. Bilingual lexicons, which contain items from all languages, may contain cognates, items sharing concepts and with overlapping lexemes. Because cognates likely relate at the lemma level also, this research proposed the Cognate Continuum, a categorization of cognates and noncognates in the bilingual mental lexicon. The Cognate Continuum includes three sets of cognates:

(i) true cognates have the closest phonology and syntax.

(ii) lemma cognates have close syntax …

Peering At The Mirror Of Reflection: Agency And Design Thinking In The Development Of Writerly Identities, Elizabeth Louise Jones

Theses and Dissertations

I have always valued reflection highly — as a means of developing as a writer and as a life practice — but I have been disappointed by the lack of thought resembling reflection when asking students to write about their writing practices. This dissertation presents the results of a grounded theory study of student reflective assignments through a direct analysis of the themes which emerge from a set of reflections from a course designed around the topic of games – primarily board, card, and video games. This study differs from much of the previous scholarship on reflection in composition in …

Arreidis ( Roots ): Fala Language And It S Quest For Identity, Claudia Sánchez Sánchez

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, native speakers’, and past academics’ views of Fala are explored, along with the sociolinguistic and ideological dimensions of those views. This dissertation also investigates Fala’s orthographic reform, Fala’s recognition as a language at the regional and national level, and the repercussions it has had on research involving Fala. More generally, I present the case of Fala as an example of the effects that language ideologies can have on minority languages that, like Fala, with a small speaker population, may see themselves unrecognized and forgotten by governmental linguistic policy efforts given their size. In order to do this, …

A Methodological Approach To Utilize Egyptian Colloquial Arabic As A Source For Ancient Egyptian Linguistic Analysis, Ahmed Osman

Theses and Dissertations

Traces of the ancient Egyptian language can still be observed in modern Egyptian colloquial Arabic, which is the form of Arabic adopted by Egyptians as their native spoken language. This thesis aims to better understand the ancient Egyptian language through the analysis of its lexical survivals. It presents a new methodological approach to utilize ancient Egyptian lexical survivals as a source to study the ancient Egyptian language. A selected set of fifty-five ancient Egyptian lexical survivals was computed by matching ancient Egyptian and documented Egyptian colloquial Arabic words having the same semantic fields. While it was generally assumed that the …

The Semantic And Acoustic Voice Features Differentiating Neutral And Traumatic Narratives, Yosef Shimon Amrami

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a quantitative and qualitative exploration of how one linguistically communicates emotions through an autobiographical narrative. Psycholinguistic research has affirmed that linguistic features of a narrative, including semantic and acoustic features, indicate a narrator’s emotions and physiological. This study investigated whether these linguistic features could help differentiate between trauma and neutral narratives and if they can predict autobiographical narratives’ subjective trauma ratings (STR). Qualitative analyses of the positive and negative evaluative statements were also conducted, which indicated the narrators’ thought processes during recall. Twenty-two Spanish-English college students participated in this study and narrated both traumatic and neutral narratives. …

Theory And Practice: Phonological Awareness Instructional Methods Used In Deaf Education, Mary Cantino

Theses and Dissertations

An inequality in literacy rates exists between deaf children and their hearing peers. Research indicates that visual phonic interventions such as Visual Phonics used alongside a phonics program enhances grapheme-phoneme correspondence. That practice in turn improves overall literacy achievement. However, as rates deaf literacy continue to lag ongoing research indicates that teachers may be ill prepared to use research-based interventions. This study seeks to identify the frequency of teacher implementation of Visual Phonics interventions as well as their exposure to these interventions via teacher education and professional development. This study will investigate if the presence of these elements by using …

The Impact Of Individual And Contextual Factors On L2 Writing Development: The Shifts In Written Corrective Feedback During Covid-19, Jordan Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

The novel COVID-19 pandemic has caused a rupture in the trajectory of education worldwide. Students, families and schools are experiencing unprecedented times and are navigating uncharted territory together in how we educate our students. In the U.S., it has been noted that the schism within education as a result of the pandemic is the biggest threat to national security (Choi, 2020), noting the importance of education within our democracy. This includes the trauma experienced by families due to deaths caused by the pandemic, the disproportionality of communities of color losing a parent (Brundage & Ramos-Callan, 2020), and the impact on …

Serving Culturally And Linguistic Students Identified With A Communication Disability In The K-12 Educational Environments, Lashell Dauterman

Theses and Dissertations

As more and more students enter public schools with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds that require services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, facilitators must be more sensitive to the needs, especially in the area of communication. Augmentative and alternative communication devices and other assistive technology are required by law to be utilized with individuals identified as disabled. However, due to the challenges that exist in properly identifying and implementing intervention plans for children who require services as English language learners and special education, communication needs are often misidentified or not provided. Another issue that exists is the lack …

Yolkkh: The Story Of My People, Amna Zelimkha Yandarbin

Theses and Dissertations

The name of my project is: Yolkkh, The Story of My People. With this project I present a series of scarves each one bearing an illustrated scene in order to tell a story – my story and the story of the Noxci people. Noxci are the people who are referred to as “Chechens” by Russians and are generally known by that title. As a Muslim, I have witnessed the way Western media tend to dehumanize my community. In order to contrast this dehumanizing process, I thought that telling the story of my family would help reverse Islamophobic tendencies and raise …