Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Information Structure In Standard Arabic Verbal Sentences, Salem Albuhayri

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates Information Structure (IS) in relation to the clausal architecture in Standard Arabic (SA). The attention is confined to word order variation and its role in structuring discourse. The structural positions with potential information structure import are argued to appear at the edg-es of phases, namely vP and CP. It presents an analysis which brings together the minimalist scheme as embodied in Chomsky (2000, onwards) and the cartographic approach to discourse as embodied in Rizzi (1997, 2001) and Cinque (1999). First, in chapter (‎2) a distinction is made be-tween VSO and SVO clauses, in which I propose that …

Evaluative Discourse As Community Identity Among Expatriates In Shenzhen, China, Karyn Harding

Theses and Dissertations

Expatriates are a modern-day community built by a rapid advance towards globalization. Expatriates are now likely to be self-initiated; that is, they chose to live in a foreign country rather than having been sent there by an employer, and they are changing the face of the global job market. However, their social interactions have not been the subject of much previous study. This paper delves into the ways that expatriates build and maintain their communities. In this case, participant observation and discourse analysis are used to study an expat community living in Shenzhen, China. As a group not defined by …

Phonology And Morphology Of Bolgo, Katie Ann Tikka

Theses and Dissertations

Bolgo [bvo] is a language spoken in central Chad. It is a Bua language within the Adamawa branch of the Niger-Congo language family. This thesis provides an overview of the phonology and morphology of Bolgo, focusing on the underdocumented Bolgo Dugag dialect. The data on which the thesis is based consist of original research; approximately 600 nouns, 350 verbs, and 50 adjectives were elicited, as well as a number of phrases and sentences.

A significant aspect of Bolgo phonology is its ATR harmony system, which contains nine phonemic vowels. In this harmony system, words contain either the +ATR vowels /i/, …

A Text-Based Exploration Of Topics In White Hmong Grammar, Katherine Ann Birnschein

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis traces the historical development of the understanding of White Hmong grammar, comparing, contrasting, and synthesizing the extant analyses. It then responds to these analyses, based exclusively on a corpus of interlinearized texts included as appendices. It proposes new elements in the grammar including an indefinite article, a potential prefix (the perfective aspect marker), and several aspect markers that have grammaticalized from adverbs. It resolves conflicting descriptions of the constituent order of the noun phrase. It clarifies a number of incomplete or inaccurate descriptions including the lexical and structural ambiguity of constructions involving the homophones of tau (a lexical …

Impact Of Intercultural Competence On Communicative Success In L2 Environments(With Reference To Missionaries Of The Church Ofjesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints), David Milford Lucero

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the impact of cultural competence on success in completing key missionary tasks. Qualitative survey results are supported by data from an intercultural effectiveness assessment and a Mandarin Chinese listening proficiency test to describe themes related to missionary communicative success and to explore correlations between intercultural effectiveness and listening proficiency. Missionary communicative tasks are clarified into themes:"obtaining referrals,"obtaining teaching opportunities," and"helping people make and keep commitments." Factors perceived as associating with communicative success include"feeling and communicating love" and receiving"spiritual guidance." The effect of training on intercultural competence is also described. The intercultural effectiveness subcategory of positive regard is …

Expository Language Sample Assessment Of Spanish- English Bilingual Middle-School Children, Rachel Ann Eggert

Theses and Dissertations

Because of the possible bias and limitations in using standardized assessments, it is advantageous to assess school-age children who are bilingual using additional descriptive assessments, including language sampling. Choosing expository discourse language sampling to assess this population is beneficial because it is the standard form of discourse in a classroom setting and provides a more complex language sample. Using expository discourse language sampling, this study assesses the oral expository discourse language skills of Spanish- English bilingual middle school students who have learned English as a second language. The study found that expository discourse was a feasible way to assess the …

Constituent Order And Participant Reference In Napo Quichua Narrative Discourse, Larinda Moffitt

Theses and Dissertations

Napo Quichua is a Quechuan language variety spoken along the Napo River in Northern Peru and Southern Ecuador. This thesis presents a description of the constituent order and participant reference system of oral narrative discourse. The primary data source for this study consists mostly of folk tales told by native speakers, with a few autobiographical accounts.

Napo Quichua is an SOV language with a relatively high degree of variation in constituent order. Constituent order variations are motivated by the guiding principles of information structure, including showing focus, highlighting information, and backgrounding information. Constituent order and participant reference also interact to …

Using Context To Communicate: Romanian Sign Language Learners And Their Communication Strategies, Rebecca Melville

Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the communication strategies used by second language learners of Romanian Sign Language (LSR), including learners of different proficiency levels, and investigates whether the learner’s proficiency level affects the kinds or variety of communication strategies they use. Unlike previous studies of communication strategies by language learners, it focuses on learners of a signed rather than a spoken language.

The study consisted of two tasks—the first being a structured task where the learner was given a list of ten words to communicate to an interlocutor (a Deaf native signer). The second task was less structured and asked the …

Dialect Transfer For L2 Arabic Learners, Jozeca Lathrop

Theses and Dissertations

With rising numbers of Arabic language learners studying abroad, language programs face two challenges that are unlike many other commonly-studied languages. First, dialects of spoken Arabic vary significantly across the span of North Africa and the Middle East, so in choosing a location to study abroad, learners are also choosing a particular dialect of Arabic on which to focus their attention. Second, Arabic is diglossic, so written and spoken varieties are significantly different from each other. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is used for most written material, media, and some formal settings, while Colloquial Arabic (CA) is used for informal spoken …

L1 And L2 Reading Behaviors By Proficiency Level: An English-Portuguese Eye-Tracking Study, Larissa Grahl

Theses and Dissertations

The process of reading in a second language is an under-studied area of research on second language processing. Researchers have found similarities and differences between first- and second-language reading (Koda, 2007; Artieda, 2017; Walter, 2007), and many believe that readers’ successful reading behaviors in their L1 reflect their reading patterns in the L2 (Yamashita, 2007; Cummings, 1991; Sparks & Ganschow, 1995). Others claim that a certain threshold level of L2 language proficiency is necessary before L1 reading ability transfers to L2 reading (Clark, 1978; Cummings, 1991). Eye tracking technology has enabled researchers to investigate early and late reading measures, the …

Modality, Control And Restructuring In Arabic, Yasser Albaty

Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation examines theories of modality and control with data from Standard Arabic (SA). In particular, I show that complementations of particular modal and control verbs in SA are not clausal, but smaller phrases. This challenges proposed accounts in the literature of modality in SA as well as theories of control within Minimalism. I alternatively argue for a novel account of both constructions that posits a monoclausal (i.e., restructuring) structure.

First, Chapter 2 investigates modality verbs in SA and shows that subjunctive complements of modality do not exhibit the properties of clausal complementation. I examine the syntax-semantics properties of modality …

Poetics, Not Pragmatics: Understanding Metaphors In A Poetic Context, Savannah Marciezyk

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this paper is to explain why the leading theories of metaphor fail when applied to metaphors which appear in poems. The ability to understand the true meaning of a metaphor in conversations relies on understanding speaker intention and extralinguistic context. This paper argues that because such material is not available to the reader of a poem, theories which rely heavily on pragmatics to explain metaphors cannot be successfully applied to metaphors which appear in poems. This paper makes use of the views on metaphor by John Searle and Paul Grice, and discusses how meaning is constructed in …

Logical Form In The Second Language: An Investigation Into Quantification In Interlanguage, Abdel-Rahman Abu Helal

Theses and Dissertations

In coping with variability in morphological production in L2 acquisition, which represents a

challenge for the parameter (re-)setting theories, Lardiere (2008) proposed the feature reassembly hypothesis in which sequential difficulty in L2 acquisition of morpho-syntactic features

is captured by the processes of (re-)assembly and mapping of features onto their morphological

realizations. Slabakova (2009, 2013) incorporated Lardiere’s proposal in establishing a scale of

difficulty in learning semantic properties (e.g. definiteness) which is based on whether

reassembly is needed and whether the universal meaning is obtained by overt morphology or

context (See also Ramchand & Svenonius, 2008). In considering the truth-conditional aspect …

The Acquisition Of Morphology In Moroccan Heritage Speakers In France, Amal El Haimeur

Theses and Dissertations

There are two major perspectives regarding heritage speakers’ (henceforth HS) ultimate attainment. Some researchers on HS in the U.S. conclude that HS have incomplete grammars (Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky, 2013). It is argued that heritage languages (henceforth HL) do not fully develop (Montrul, 2016), and they are not completely acquired because of shifting to a dominant language (Benmamoun et al., 2013). Other researchers argue that HS’ grammars are complete, but simply different as monolingual and HS experience different linguistic realities (Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012). While there is abundant research on Arabic as a HL in the U.S., research …

The Use Of Discursive Features As A Representation Of Voice And Identity In L2 Writing: A Case Study Of Multilingual Graduate Students, Demet Yigitbilek

Theses and Dissertations

Considering the constant increase in the number of international students studying in the US universities, it is important to address the issue of self-representation in writing as there are classrooms where students are still assumed to be native English speakers by default (Matsuda, 2006). Therefore, academic writing practices of multilingual writers can easily be seen as divergences from the ‘standard’ rather than conscious acts. However, since languages are at the core of who we are (Anzaldúa, 2001), how we use our linguistic repertoires in writing should be seen as representation of our multilingual and diverse identities. This thesis, then, presents …

Acquisition Of The English Copula By Arabic Speaking Esl Learners: Evidence For Feature Reassembly, Jenna Steiner

Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to identify whether the acquisition of the English copula by Arabic- speaking learners of English provides evidence for a performance or representational- based account of errors. The representational theory tested in this study is the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli & Mastropavlou, 2007) which proposes that language learners have only partial access to Universal Grammar (UG), making some language structures unacquirable for second language learners. The performance theory tested in this study is Feature Reassembly (Lardiere, 2008), which proposes that the source of errors lies with the mapping of features onto morphology rather inside the core computational component of …

The Distribution Of [ʍ]: An Acoustic Analysis Of Sociophonetic Factors Governing The Wine-Whine Merger In Southern American English, Keiko Bridwell

Theses and Dissertations

In US English, the merging of the voiceless labiovelar glide [ʍ] and its voiced counterpart [w] has been an ongoing process over the past century, originating in central port cities on the Atlantic seaboard and gradually spreading to include the bulk of the continental US. While described by many sources as still present in Southern American English, the so-called wine-whine merger shows evidence of nearing its completion as its usage becomes increasingly rare even within the Southeast, even as the segment [ʍ] is interpreted as a feature of Southern speech. Despite this fact, very little research has been conducted on …

The Interaction Of Individual Working Memory Capacity With Cognitive Linguistics-Based And Translation-Based Instructional Treatments During The Acquisition Of Polysemous L2 Spanish Spatial Prepositions, Joseph F. Letexier

Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigated three areas in SLA related to the acquisition of polysemous L2 Spanish spatial prepositions. These three areas were (1) the effect of instructional method on the acquisition of productive knowledge of polysemous L2 Spanish spatial prepositions, (2) the effect of working memory capacity on the acquisition of productive knowledge of polysemous L2 Spanish spatial prepositions, and (3) the effects resulting from the interaction of working memory capacity with instructional method on the acquisition of productive knowledge of polysemous L2 Spanish spatial prepositions. The target learners were adult L1 English speakers 18 years of age or over …

Implementing Mental Contrasting To Improve English Language Learner Social Networks, Hannah Trimble Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The present study looks at how utilizing mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII), a form of self-regulation, impacts the social networks of English language learners’ in a study abroad (SA) setting. Over 100 English language learners (ELLs) form the treatment and control groups for this study. This research compares the social network measures between students who used MCII and those who did not over the course of one 14-week semester in an intensive English program in the United States. It also examines students' perception of this self-regulation strategy. Additionally, the impact of MCII on students who are in their first …

The Effects Of Repeated Reading On The Fluency Of Intermediate-Level English-As-A-Second-Language Learners: An Eye-Tracking Study, Krista Carlene Rich

Theses and Dissertations

Most would agree that reading fluency is a concern of every L2 teacher. Repeated reading (RR) positively affects fluency development, supported by much research with L1 children. However, relatively little focus has been given to L2 RR. Most research on RR in L2 settings has focused on audio-assisted RR, used insufficient data collection methods prone to human error, and taken place in an EFL setting. In our experiment, we used eye–tracking as a direct mode of measurement of the effects that RR has on early and late reading measures. In this study, 30 intermediate-level English language learners studying in an …

Sociocultural Identification With The United States And English Pronunciation Comprehensibility And Accent Among International Esl Students, Christinah Paige Mulder

Theses and Dissertations

Sociocultural identity is defined for this study as the element of identity affixed to a social or cultural group. Previous research on sociocultural identity has recognized the need for further study of its effect on second language performance, particularly pronunciation. Previous studies have found contradictory results when studying the relationships between sociocultural identity and various measures of second language pronunciation. This thesis takes a quantitative correlational approach to the study of sociocultural identification with the United States and English pronunciation comprehensibility and accent in a group of 68 international students learning English in the United States. Participants completed a survey …