Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Southern Language, Ideology, And Identity In A High School Sorority, Sara Lide

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the language practices of high school sorority members in a mid-sized city in the U.S. South. Specifically, it describes how economically privileged, white, female youth in the Young Ladies’ Society of Midway (YLSM) used Southern language to position themselves and others in relation to widely and locally circulating ideologies of language, region, gender, and class. Drawing on sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological methods, this study addresses the issues of how Southern language practices and language ideologies relate and how indexical meanings and social identities emerge through linguistic interaction. As a study that examines the language of a group …

Radical Reflection: Toward The Transformation Of Everyday Teaching And Learning In English Composition, Royal Brevvaxling

Theses and Dissertations

Education is a necessary component in the emancipatory transformation of current capitalist society, with its exploitative social relationships, to one which is based on promoting and supporting human growth and potential. A libertarian education, as Paulo Freire writes of it, "must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students" (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 59).

An additional impediment to developing education useful for this transformation is the separation of thought from action in educational theory and practice. The field of composition studies similarly operates according to …

The Effect Of Computer-Based Pronunciation Readings On Esl Learners' Perception And Production Of Prosodic Features In A Short-Term Esp Course, Caitlin Jolley

Theses and Dissertations

Recent studies on pronunciation teaching in ESL classrooms have found that the teaching of suprasegmentals, namely stress, pausing, and intonation, has a great effect on improving intelligibility (Derwing, Munro, & Wiebe, 1998; Kang, Rubin, & Pickering, 2010; Morley, 1991). The current project describes the development and implementation of computer-based pronunciation materials used for an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) program. The pronunciation program made use of cued pronunciation readings (CPRs) which used suprasegmentals and were developed for English as a second language (ESL) missionaries at the Provo, Utah, Missionary Training Center (MTC). Because there was no pronunciation program in place …

The Phonetics And Phonology Of Bora Tone, Amy Roe

Theses and Dissertations

Bora is a Witotoan language spoken in Peru and Colombia. It has an unusual mixed tone/stress system in which L is the specified tone and H the unspecified tone. In this thesis, I describe the underlying tone patterns of noun and verb roots and show how their surface representations change in different phonological environments. I examine noun stems with seven different suffixes and one prefix and verb stems with thirteen different suffixes.

Disyllabic noun roots have three surface tone patterns: L∅, ∅L, and ∅∅. Additionally, Bora has a low boundary tone that associates to the right edge of noun phrases. …

Verbal Fluency: Norms For The Lakota Population In Semantic And Phonemic Fluency Tasks, Larissa M. Jordan

Theses and Dissertations

The Lakota language in western South Dakota is spoken by a people group with a rich cultural and religious heritage. The Lakota language, still spoken by elderly Lakota people, is slowly vanishing as the majority of people in younger generations are no longer learning Lakota and with it the semantic knowledge of how Lakota speakers view the world. This study was completed to gather semantic information about the animals that bilingual Lakota English speakers name in English and in Lakota.

An additional objective of this study was to develop normative data for the Lakota people on phonemic (letter P) and …

A Description And Analysis Of Four Metarepresentation Markers Of Indus Kohistani, Beate Lubberger

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes and analyzes four markers of Indus Kohistani, a language spoken in Northern Pakistan that has received little attention so far. The markers discussed are lee, a "hearsay" evidential that does however not mark every reported speech, karee, a grammaticalized quotative and complementizer that is also found in purpose and reason clauses, in naming and in similarity constructions, če, a complementizer borrowed from Pashto, and loo, a marker that indicates utterances a speaker wishes her audience to convey to a third party.

Relevance Theory, an inferential theory of communication, distinguishes between utterances that are …

Handshapes In Afghan Sign Language, Justin Power

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents aspects of handshapes in Afghan Sign Language [afg]. Afghan Sign Language is a Deaf sign language found in Afghanistan (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2014).

Signs in Afghan Sign Language contrast based on the handshape parameter. Furthermore, handshapes contrast based on selected fingers, thumb configuration, arrangement, and aperture. The thesis gives evidence for the selected fingers features [one], [two], [three], and [four]; for the thumb configuration features [opposed], [radial], and [contacting]; for the arrangement features [spread], [joined], and [crossed]; and for the aperture features [open] and [closed].

Of the 22 expected feature combinations, 18 are found in the …

Consonant Correspondences Of Burmese, Rakhine And Marma With Initial Implications For Historical Relationships, Heidi A. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a consonantal comparison of the Burmese, Rakhine and Marma languages of Myanmar and Bangladesh, with primary focus on initial and medial consonants. Its main purposes are to provide new data from the Rakhine and Marma languages of Bangladesh and to make some initial observations about the historical relationship between the three languages based on compiled consonant correspondences.

Although much literature is available on the Burmese language as the primary representative of the Southern Burmish languages, little information is available on Rakhine and Marma. This thesis thus extends previous work on the family tree to these two close …

Placing Wardak Among Pashto Varieties, Dennis Walter Coyle

Theses and Dissertations

Wardak is one variety of the Pashto language. Most of its approximate one million speakers live in Wardak Province, which is just south of the capital city, Kabul, of Afghanistan. While all Wardaks think of themselves as Pashtun, the Wardak speech variety is considered different from other Pashto varieties. Is Wardak a dialect of Pashto, or is there evidence for it being a variety separate from Pashto? Pashto has been developed with an alphabet going back four hundred years and an extensive literature, which includes an education curriculum that is taught in the primary schools. Does the existing literature and …

The Pronominal Clitics Of Logar Ormuri, Jeremy Hawbaker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a description of the system of pronominal clitics in the Logar dialect of Ormuri, an Iranian language of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Logar dialect is based in the Logar province of Afghanistan and is near to extinction. The thesis studies grammatical constraints on the occurrence of pronominal clitics in Ormuri sentences. It also investigates discourse factors that influence when a pronominal clitic is used to refer to an entity in the situation that is being talked about, rather than a noun, an independent pronoun, or zero anaphora. My analysis is based on a corpus consisting of fifty-five …

Subordination In Sarikoli, Deborah Kim

Theses and Dissertations

Sarikoli [srh] is an Iranian language spoken in Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County in northwest China. This thesis describes three types of subordinate clauses in Sarikoli: 1) relative clauses, 2) complement clauses, and 3) adverbial clauses. The relative clause and complement clause structures are briefly compared with those found in related Iranian and Pamir languages (Persian, Tajik, Shughni, Rushani, and Wakhi).

Sarikoli relative clauses are placed before the head noun. Common nouns, proper nouns, demonstratives, and genetic terms may be relativized, but pronouns are generally not relativized. A wide range of syntactic functions are allowed for the common argument in both …

U.S.- Educated Multilingual Students In Community College: Transitioning From Esl To English 101, Melinda S. Harrison

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on U.S.-educated multilingual students as they transition from a community college academic English as a Second Language program to and through a semester-long first-year composition course. Research on non-native English speakers has indicated that U.S.-educated multilingual students have both similar and varied background and literacy experiences compared to native English speakers and international students; they also often present unique literacy needs compared to their peers. These various and shifting similarities and differences sometimes complicate placement and instruction in college courses.

My case study focused on three U.S.-educated multilingual students' experiences in the final semester of a community …

A Statistical Approach To Syllabic Alliteration In The Odyssean Aeneid, Cory S. Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

William Clarke (1976) and Nathan Greenberg (1980) offer an objective framework for the study of alliteration in Latin poetry. However, their definition of alliteration as word initial sound repetition in a verse is inconsistent with the syllabic nature both of the device itself and also of the metrical structure. The present study reconciles this disparity in the first half of the Aeneid by applying a similar method to syllable initial sound repetition. A chi-square test for goodness-of-fit reveals that the distributions of the voiceless obstruents [p], [t], [k], [k^w], [f], and [s] and the sonorants [m], [n], [l], and [r] …

The Effects Of Quantitative And Qualitative Feedback On Speaking Fluency Development, Carlos Eduardo Dos Santos

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effect of two forms of feedback (qualitatitive and quantitative) on the development of the spoken fluency of English language learners. Sixty-five intermediate- high students from 22 countries and 11 native languages enrolled in an intensive English language program at the English Language Center, Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, participated.Throughout the 11-week course, the treatment group (consisting of 33 participants) received feedback on a weekly basis during speaking assessment tasks. The first form of feedback consisted of a quantitative analysis of their spoken fluency. This analysis, performed by PRAAT acoustic analysis software, measured several key features: …

An Intonational Description Of Mayan Q'Eqchi', Karl Olaw Christian Wagner

Theses and Dissertations

Q'eqchi' is one of many Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala, C.A. This study provides the first Tone Break and Indices (ToBI) transcription system (Silverman et al., 1992) labeling of Q'eqchi' within the Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) model of intonation (Liberman, 1975; Pierrehumbert, 1980; Ladd, 1996). As an exploratory study into the basic intonation patterns of the language, observations were made on a variety of phenomenon relating to the intonational structure and contour pattern of the language. Three native male speakers of Q'eqchi' each provided 75 spoken sentences designed to best observe the basic patterns of intonation in the language. Each spoken utterance …

Tesol Employment Ads In China And South Korea: Personal Characteristics, Knowledge, And Skills Identified In Full-Time Ads Posted For International Instructors, Jae-Song Lee

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this master's project was to investigate the types of personal characteristics, knowledge, and skills TESOL employers are seeking in foreign job candidates in today's biggest EFL job markets, specifically in China and South Korea. First, the literature review introduces the enormous development of the EFL job market in these two countries and some challenges these two countries faced in their attempt to hire foreign EFL teachers. A total of 303 job advertisements were gathered from two Internet sources (Dave's ESL Café and TESOL.org) that met all the established criteria for choosing a reliable data source during a …

How We Feel About How We Talk: A Language Attitude Survey Of Utah English, David Matthew Savage

Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown that Utah English is a distinct variety of English, particularly as spoken in the Wasatch front region (Lillie 1998). It is characterized by particular linguistic features, including tense/lax vowel mergers before tautosyllabic /l/ (Di Paolo and Farber 1990) and the oral release of glottal stops in certain environments (Eddington and Savage 2012). The features of this variety have been studied; however, not much research has been done about the positive or negative attitudes people hold toward it. Casual observation indicates that Utahans themselves may judge speakers of this variety more harshly than do people from other regions. …

Ontosoar: Using Language To Find Genealogy Facts, Peter Lindes

Theses and Dissertations

There is a need to have an automated system that can read family history books or other historical texts and extract as many genealogy facts as possible from them. Embley and others have applied traditional information extraction techniques to this problem in a system called OntoES with a reasonable amount of success. In parallel much linguistic theory has been developed in the past decades, and Lonsdale and others have built computational embodiments of some of these theories using Soar. In this thesis we introduce a system called OntoSoar which combines the Link Grammar Parser using a grammar customized for family …

Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback: Achieving Manageability, Angela Shelley

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides reflections on a practice of corrective feedback known as dynamic Written Corrective Feedback (dynamic WCF). First addressing 20 years of concerns regarding the highly-debated topic of feedback in second language (L2) writing and then outlining dynamic WCF as a pedagogical practice founded on four principles, the thesis finally introduces a recently developed handbook for instructors. This handbook presents the four foundational principles of dynamic WCF (timeliness, manageability, meaningfulness, and constancy) to first-time instructors and supports the implementation of dynamic WCF to optimize benefit and enhance manageability in written corrective feedback.

Lessons Learned: The Process Of Creating And Evaluating An Adult Literacy Curriculum For College Transition, Meredith Leigh Packard Gravett

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis documents the process of developing and evaluating a curriculum written for adult literacy students transitioning from their current literacy goals to academic and occupational pursuits. The curriculum, titled the Basic College Skills Transition Curriculum (BCS Transition Curriculum), was written for students at Project Read, a non-profit adult literacy program located at the Provo Library in Provo, Utah. The model used to design this curriculum is a variation on the ADDIE model (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation), including the reiterative steps of research and evaluation. The lesson plans and materials in the BCS Transition Curriculum include the topics …

Determining Dictionary And Usage Guide Agreement With Real-World Usage: A Diachronic Corpus Study Of American English, Amanda Kae Fronk

Theses and Dissertations

Dictionaries and, to a lesser extent, usage guides provide writers, editors, and users of American English information on how to use the language appropriately. Dictionaries, in particular, hold authority over correct usage of words. However, historically, usage guides and dictionaries were created using the knowledge of a small group of people. Lexicographers like Noah Webster set out to prescribe a proper way of using American English. To make these judgments, they often relied on a combination of study and idiosyncratic intuitions. A similar process took place in creating usage guides. Though these manuals profess to explain how the language is …

Variación Sociosintáctica Del Modo Subjuntivo En El Español Hablado En La Ciudad De Milwaukee: Un Estudio Entre Hispanohablantes De Puerto Rico, Maria Del Pilar Fernandez Pedraza

Theses and Dissertations

El propósito de la presente investigación es comparar el uso del subjuntivo en español entre dos grupos de hablantes que residen en la ciudad de Milwaukee. Con el fin de caracterizar las distinciones modales de dichos hablantes, se llevaron a cabo entrevistas informales a 16 participantes pertenecientes a dos generaciones diferentes. Se entiende como primera generación aquellos hablantes, monolingües o bilingües, nacidos en Puerto Rico, quienes llegaron a la ciudad en su juventud o edad adulta. Como segunda generación se toman personas bilingües que nacieron en Milwaukee, cuyos padres, al menos uno, tiene origen puertorriqueño. El corpus fue analizado a …

A New Paradigm For Punctuation, Albert Edward Krahn

Theses and Dissertations

This is a comprehensive study of punctuation, particularly the uses to which it has been put as writing developed over the centuries and as it gradually evolved from an aid to oral delivery to its use in texts that were read silently. The sudden need for standardization of punctuation which occurred with the start of printing spawned some small amount of interest in determining its purpose, but most works after printing began were devoted mainly to helping people use punctuation rather than try to discover why it was being used. Gradually, two main views on its purpose developed: it was …

Cross-Linguistic Metonymies In Human Limb Nomenclature, Kelsie E. Pattillo

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a cross-linguistic lexical study of metonymic change in human limb nomenclature. The data analyzed for this study make up both synchronic and diachronic databases. The synchronic data come from a sample of 153 non-Indo-European languages from 66 language families and are balanced for genetic and areal influence. The diachronic data are made up of a large collection of Indo-European etymologies. By comparing the metonymic patterns found in the Indo-European historical data with the synchronic cross-linguistic data, this dissertation explores to what extent the patterns of change found in Indo-European are cross-linguistic tendencies.

In addition to showing how …

Interpreting Standard Usage Empirically, Jacob F. Frandsen

Theses and Dissertations

Writers, editors, and everyday language users look to dictionaries, style guides, usage guides, and other published works to help inform their language decisions. They want to know what is Standard English and what is not. Commentators have been prescribing and proscribing certain usages for centuries; however, their advice has traditionally been based on the subjective opinions of the authors. Recent works have analyzed usage by relying wholly or partly on statistical and descriptive data rather than traditional opinion alone; however, no work has presented statistical usage data in a user-friendly and consistent format. This study presents a statistically based methodology …

Automatic Readability Detection For Modern Standard Arabic, Jonathan Neil Forsyth

Theses and Dissertations

Research for automatic readability prediction of text has increased in the last decade and has shown that various machine learning methods can effectively address this problem. Many researchers have applied machine learning to readability prediction for English, while Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has received little attention. Here I describe a system which leverages machine learning to automatically predict the readability of MSA. I gathered a corpus comprising 179 documents that were annotated with the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) levels. Then, I extracted lexical and discourse features from each document. Finally, I applied the Tilburg Memory-Based Learning (TiMBL) machine learning system …

The Effect Of Age On Second Language Acquisition In Older Adults, Charisse Alaine Major

Theses and Dissertations

A primary purpose of second language (L2) research is to determine what factors hinder or help L2 acquisition. One aspect that has a strong effect on L2 proficiency is learners' age of onset of acquisition (AOA) (Johnson & Newport, 1989). These studies and others suggest that younger learners are more adept than older learners at learning an L2, especially to a near-native level. However, some older learners can become quite proficient in an L2 (Ioup, et al. 1994; Bialystok, 1997; Bongaerts, 1999), although learners who have acquired the L2 over the age of 30 are rarely studied. Why is it …

A Modified Approach To The Implementation Of Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback, Brooke Elizabeth Eddington

Theses and Dissertations

Grammatical accuracy in second language (L2) writing is one of the key issues that English as a Second Language (ESL) learners struggle with, both in intensive English language programs and continuing after their university matriculation. Numerous instructional methodologies exist that center around the concept of error correction—how can or should ESL instructors correct grammatical errors in L2 students' writing to best facilitate improvements in written linguistic accuracy? Error correction in L2 writing has been a controversial issue for over a decade (e.g., Ferris, 1999; Truscott, 1996), and in an effort to contribute to an understanding of this controversial topic, this …

Rhetorical Ripples: The Church Of The Subgenius, Kenneth Burke & Comic, Symbolic Tinkering, Lee A. Carleton

Theses and Dissertations

Humor has long been an effective way to engage difficult sociopolitical topics in a way that avoids polemical confrontation and provides opportunity for pleasure, catharsis and self-knowledge. In the context of today’s polarized politics and protest, creative satirical performance that deploys “symbolic tinkering” can provide a “comic frame of reference” that, according to Kenneth Burke, more effectively conveys its message while providing reflexive insight. The satirical Church of the SubGenius naturally practices this rhetorical frame in their multimedia creations. Using the lens of Burke’s Attitudes Toward History, this essay is an analysis of SubGenius rhetoric with a focus on …

Non-Native Speaker Attentional Capacity And The Processing Of English Phrasal Verb Constructions, Aubrey Dillard

Theses and Dissertations

The effect of syntactic and semantic complexity on attention and processing in second language acquisition (SLA) has long been of interest to both practitioners and researchers of SLA. Theoretical models of attention in SLA (Schmidt 1990, Tomlin and Villa 1994, Robinson 1995) have spurred a great deal of empirical research in the field, and VanPatten's (1994, 2004, 2007) work on the effect of attention to form and meaning on comprehension of input has been very influential in the field. From a language processing viewpoint, Clahsen and Felser (2006, 2009) have hypothesized that the different ways in which native and nonnative …