Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Evolutionary Cartographies Of Language Diversification: Quantitative Approaches To The Geolinguistic Mapping Of The Kayanic Languages (Central Borneo), Deandré A. Espree-Conaway

Theses and Dissertations

Why are there so many languages in the world and how did this diversity come about? Every day, humans around the world speak over 7,000 languages. One of the most impactful theories describing the processes and mechanisms of language diversification is that of the Linguistic Niche Hypothesis (Lupyan & Dale 2010). The Linguistic Niche Hypothesis suggests that languages adapt to their environments (Lupyan & Dale 2010: 1). Lupyan and Dale describe it, stating that "just as biological organisms are shaped by ecological niches, languages structures...adapt to the environment (niche) in which they are being learned and used" (2010: 1). Taking …

A Course In Legal English And U.S. Law For Undergraduate Japanese Law Students, Leonard George Leverson

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, I discuss the design of a Legal English and U.S. Law course for undergraduate Japanese law students visiting for a semester at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s English Language Academy. I review how I went about analyzing the students’ needs and wants and the factors affecting their motivation. I explain my philosophy of second language teaching, in particular, that second language teaching should contain an element of play. I describe how I sought to introduce a play element in the course through such techniques as watching law-related movies, role play activities, Kahoot quizzes, and pronunciation drills. Course design …

Code Choice And Stance Taking By Two Mahragānāt Performers: A Case Of Social Identity Construction In Egyptian Public Discourse, Yasmine Abusamra

Theses and Dissertations

Mahragānāt [festivals] is a relatively new genre of Egyptian street music that broadly represents working-class values and culture. Performers are aware of their unprivileged origins and feature the concerns and interests of Egyptian slums in their songs. Their vocals are linguistically fixated on local urban realities of the working class and often express loyalty to singers’ neighborhoods. This qualitative study explores code choice in selected songs of two artists, Muhammad Ramadan and Ahmad Ali, and its relation to social class. Both performers overtly promulgate their unprivileged urban origin and employ their lyrics to reframe and negotiate their position in society …

Let’S Talk: The Dual Process Model Of Supportive Communication In Peers, Erica Marie Szkody

Theses and Dissertations

Supportive messages occur within most relationships. Researchers have found strong relationships between social support and various physical and psychological health outcomes, but the specific mechanisms at work have yet to be fully explored. Many factors contribute to whether a supportive interaction is processed as helpful or supportive by the recipient including relational factors, message content, past experiences, etc. For peer dyads, the context and supportive messages individuals provide their peer may inhibit or contribute to their perception of their peer’s supportive behavior. The current study examined the impact of contextual factors (such as family communication patterns and relationship quality) on …

A Community-Engaged Narrative Inquiry Photovoice Project Examining The Health-Impacting Experiences Of Older Adult Russian And Spanish-Speaking Immigrants In Southeastern Wisconsin, United States., Maren Hawkins

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Among the nearly 10 million older adult immigrants in the United States, most come from Mexico and speak Spanish. Moreover, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking immigrants from the Former Soviet Union already residing in the United States, the current war in Ukraine is fueling mass emigration of Ukrainian and Russian-speakers from Ukraine. Thus, in this study we sought to examine the health-impacting experiences of older adult Russian and Spanish-speaking immigrants in Southeastern Wisconsin. Design & Methods: This was a Community-Engaged Participatory Narrative Inquiry Photovoice Project and applied the Older Adult Immigrant Adapted Model for Health …

Weaving Ethnic Identity: Discovering The Threads Of Multilingual Diversity In The Fabric Of Group Identity Among Karen Communities Of Denver, Colorado, Charity J. Seidler

Theses and Dissertations

How do Karen immigrants use language within Colorado communities? My thesis answers this question through narrative case studies of six S’gaw Karen women. Many Karen refugees, who flee the decades-long conflict within their homeland in Myanmar (Burma), find themselves navigating life first in Thailand, and eventually in the United States as foreign-language speakers. These refugees encounter numerous linguistic and cultural barriers in their new U.S. homeland, where it is difficult to function in many domains if they do not have the opportunity to learn much English upon arrival.

The six case studies are based on recorded sociolinguistic qualitative open interviews. …

The Word-Level Prosodic System Of Mangghuer, Teresa Ellen Arthur

Theses and Dissertations

Mangghuer’s prosodic system has been described as a stress system (Slater 2003), and alternately, because of a few minimal pairs, as a system that is undergoing tonogenesis. (Dwyer 2008). This thesis looks at new data to evaluate both of these claims. I analyze the prosody of native words and confirm that Mangghuer has a stress system. Duration is one of the indicators of stress, which has not been mentioned in previous literature. Potential minimal pairs are considered, including the minimal tone pairs that Dwyer found; her minimal pairs are not minimal pairs in my data. However, one set of nativized …

A Phonological Analysis Of Asu, James Passetti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides an analysis of the phonology of Asu, a small and endangered Nupoid language of Nigeria. The corpus of data used for the analysis comes from more than two hours of recordings of a word list for the language, provided to me by the historian and anthropologist Constanze Weise.

The Asu language recognizes only two syllable structures, CV and CGV. The only syllables without onsets are formed by four noun class prefixes [è-,ē-, à-,ā-], that create Asu nouns without onsets word-initially.

The phonemic inventory of consonants consists of seven pairs of corresponding voiced-voiceless obstruents at the labial, alveolar, …

Verticality Metaphors In Classical Hebrew Revisited: Refining The Analysis Using Primary Metaphor Theory, Andrew Scott Hodge

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis applies a new theory to old data. It reanalyzes VERTICALITY metaphors for distress in Classical Hebrew using Primary Metaphor Theory. Previously, this pattern of metaphors in Hebrew was analyzed by King (2012) within the general framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. This study focuses on the ways that Primary Metaphor Theory radically changes the organization of conceptual structure as dictated by Conceptual Metaphor Theory and as used by King in his analysis of Hebrew VERTICALITY metaphors. The reorganization of conceptual structure following Primary Metaphor Theory hinges on the assumption that conceptual structures with direct, independent experiential motivations also have …

Illusory Vowels And The North Kyungsang Korean Vowel Merger In English Loanword Adaptation Into Korean, Jiyeon Song

Theses and Dissertations

Our auditory perceptual processing is optimized for the sound patterns of our native language. Consequently, when non-native segments are perceived, speech “illusions” often occur. This well-known phenomenon, known as the perception of illusory vowels, occurs when listeners of a borrowing language (BL) perceive vowels that do not exist underlyingly in the source language (SL).

Illusory vowels have often been considered to be the default vowel in a language: /ɨ/ in Korean, /u/ in Japanese, /ə/ in English, /e/ in Spanish, and /i/ in Brazilian Portuguese. This raises the question of how vowel systems affect the quality of illusory vowels. For …

“When You Out In Open Spaces”: Copula Absence In Afro-Texan English And The Origins And Development Debate, Brandon Davis Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is perhaps the most studied variety of American English, and interest in its origins and development has raised enough questions to launch a thousand studies. Naturally, positions on AAVE’s origins and development have become increasingly nuanced since the debate’s inception. Increasingly, AAVE is treated less like a monolith, and interest in the dimensions of its regional diversity has grown. No position on AAVE’s origins and development can be taken seriously if it fails to consider its capacity for areal differentiation. Indeed, most positions on AAVE’s origins and development now strongly assert the likelihood of multiple …

Assessing L2 Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (Eca) Learners’ Intercultural Communicative Competence, Ahmed Said Mohammed Elgebaly

Theses and Dissertations

This study assesses L2 Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) Learners' Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). The study participants were 19 L2 (ECA) learners who completed one semester at least in Egypt. The participants were only from two proficiency levels; the advanced and high-intermediate levels. The current study used a mixed methodological approach for data collection, beginning with an ICC test and concluding with a series of follow-up semi-structured interviews with ten participants. The ICC test employed in the current study was created based on a model that includes ten features of the ICC. The current study's findings revealed that although high-intermediate learners …

Effective Communication In League Of Legends, Mia Sue Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

Video games which provide a unique system for quick and efficient communication create an ideal environment for the development of need-driven language. Players in League of Legends engage in different forms of communication to influence the behavior of their allies to achieve their goals. These players utilize and expand upon a built-in ping system which uses a combination of button presses and mouse clicks to send simple messages to allied players. They combine these pings with standard text chat features to develop a language unique to their environment.

Using data gathered from publicly available Twitch streams, I analyze how players …

Li Xei: A Phonology Of An Understudied Bahnaric Language In Central Vietnam, Stephanie Lynn Person

Theses and Dissertations

Li Xei is an understudied North Bahnaric language spoken in the province of Quảng Nam in central Vietnam. Li Xei speakers are officially considered members of the Giẻ Triêng ethnic group (also written Jeh Trieng), although Li Xei's exact position within the North Bahnaric branch is unknown. This thesis analyzes 1,591 audio recordings of two native speakers of Li Xei, consisting of single words and multiple-word compounds, to describe its phonemic inventory. In addition, Li Xei reflexes are compared to 774 Proto North Bahnaric reconstructions from Sidwell (2011) to provide a basic description of the most significant sound changes from …

A Grammar Sketch Of Kinamayo, Benjamin James Schmitt

Theses and Dissertations

Kinamayo (Kamayo) is an Austronesian language spoken on the eastern part of the island of Mindanao, Philippines. This thesis presents a grammar sketch of the case system, a preliminary analysis of the voice system, reference phrase structure, and verb tense, modality, and aspect. The theoretical framework used for this analysis is Role and Reference Grammar. Within this framework, Kamayo is best analyzed as a symmetrical voice language in addition to having an antipassive voice. The case system of active and stative verbs observed in Kamayo supports this analysis. Reference phrases are marked by case, which helps identify syntactic arguments and …

Individual Differences In Non-Native Phonological Contrast Learning: The Role Of Perceptual Sensitivity To Sub-Phonemic Variation In Native Categories, Jieun Lee

Theses and Dissertations

The current study explored individual differences in sensitivity to sub-phonemic variation of acoustic cues in the perception of a native language (L1) category in order to test the hypothesis that second language (L2) learners’ different sensitivity to the L2-relevant acoustic dimension in L1 perception could explain individual variability in nonnative phonological contrast learning. In addition, this study also investigated whether the modified High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) paradigm could aid in nonnative phonological contrast learning. The cue-attention switching training was added to the typical HVPT paradigm with multiple talkers, expecting to reallocate learners’ attention away from the less relevant acoustic …

The Syntax And Semantics Of Non-Standard Wh-Constructions In Korean, Okgi Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The following is an investigation of the syntax and semantics of two types of non-standard wh-construction in Korean: one concerns so-called why-like what-interrogatives, where what-questions are construed as why-questions asking for cause/reason/purpose, and the other concerns what-exclamatives, which are used to express a speaker’s emotive attitude toward a certain state of affairs or degree. Both of these wh-constructions are viewed as nonstandard in the sense that they behave differently from standard what-questions. In this dissertation, I aim to provide a syntactically and semantically precise characterization of the two non-standard wh-constructions in Korean.

Korean why-like what-interrogatives, namely mwe-l-interrogatives, raise many theoretical …

The Acquisition Of Morphology And Morphosyntax Of Persian (Farsi) Heritage Language As An Independent Variety In The United States: New Perspectives, Hamideh Sadat Bagherzadeh

Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing body of research from various perspectives in heritage language (henceforth HL) acquisition as an emerging field. Some studies proposed that HL acquisition is a differential acquisition compared with the baseline language (i.e., the language spoken by the parents or caregivers) (Kupisch & Rothman, 2018; Dubiel & Guilfoyle, 2021; Makarova & Terekhova, 2021; Caloi & Torregrossa, 2021; Nagy, 2021), while some other studies focus on a comparison of heritage speakers (henceforth HSs) with monolingual speakers and suggest that HSs acquisition of the baseline language is either incomplete, deficient, or arttrided (Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, 2013; Montrul, 2005, …

"You Will Be Evaluated According To The Following": Language, Race, And International Students At A U.S. Predominantly White Institution, Anusha Anand

Theses and Dissertations

As sociolinguists have long noted, racial hierarchies in the United States have been maintained through a hegemonic standard language ideology that assumes white middle-class ways of speaking as “standard” and the linguistic marginalization of non-whites ways of speaking as “nonstandard” (Bonfiglio 2010). This phenomenon is well-documented in studies on the perceptions of racialized international TAs (ITAs), which show that the racializing ideologies about ITAs’ language held by predominantly white, Western undergraduates impact their perception of ITAs’ comprehensibility and teaching ability (Staples, Kang, & Wittner 2014). Other studies on international students have shown that the discrimination that they face is driven …

The Variation Of Metaphor Processing Strategies And The Effects On Reading Skills In L2 English Learners, Shana Scucchi

Theses and Dissertations

Metaphor use and meaning is deeply tied to the culturally-determined conventional use of language. To date, most research regarding metaphor comprehension exists within the realm of first language (L1) acquisition, with little research that examines how learners interpret metaphor in their second language (L2). Thus, little is known about how learners process metaphor constructions in their L2, or how these processing strategies may affect other L2 skills, such as reading abilities.

Gentner (1988) investigated how metaphors are comprehended at various ages using the nominal metaphor X is Y, where Y is the base of the metaphor and X is the …

Lexical And Syntactic Priming In Dialogue, Sarah Campbell Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Speakers engaged in dialogue align with one another across multiple linguistic levels to ensure effective communication. The Interactive Alignment Model (Pickering & Garrod, 2004) suggests speakers align due to automatic priming mechanisms at individual linguistic levels. Syntactic priming is the tendency to repeat a syntactic structure that has been recently comprehended or produced. Although syntactic priming is regarded as an automatic, abstract structural phenomenon, other linguistic factors can influence a syntactic structure’s priming strength. Lexical repetition between structures has been shown to enhance syntactic priming, an effect termed “lexical boost” (Branigan et al., 2000; Healey, Purvery, & Howes., 2014). Another …

The Role Of Force Dynamic Schemas In The Comprehension Of Causal Language, Dawson Petersen

Theses and Dissertations

The current study is an attempt to empirically test the predictions of Talmy’s (1988) force dynamics. Specifically, Talmy argues that causal sentences are understood by reference to basic image schemas, such as Starting and Stopping. While many of the predictions of other cognitive linguistic models, such as Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory, have been tested empirically by psycholinguists (Fischer & Zwaan, 2008; Gibbs, 2006; Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002), force dynamics has received very little empirical attention (I am only aware of Wolff & Song, 2003), in spite of its productivity in formal linguistics.

The current study aims to …

Aprendizaje En Inglés En Línea: Efectos Sobre La Elaboración De Textos Escritos Y Relación Con La Percepción De Los Docentes Sobre La Integración De Tecnología, Yetzy Limarys Díaz Maldonado

Theses and Dissertations

Los estudiantes de una escuela secundaria del área sur de Puerto Rico presentan un bajo aprovechamiento académico en los cursos de ESL para realizar trabajos escritos en inglés. Por lo tanto, esta disertación aplicada fue diseñada con el propósito de examinar el efecto del uso del programa de aprendizaje de idiomas en línea Grammarly sobre la elaboración de textos escritos y la percepción del docente sobre la integración de tecnología.

El diseño de este estudio fue uno cuasi-experimental. El marco teórico que sustenta el estudio se basa en la teoría del procesamiento de información cognitiva de Atkinson y Shiffrin (1968). …

The Axis Of Access: A Quantitative Ethnography Of Presidential Discourse On The Construct Of College Access In The United States, Pamela M. Donnelly

Theses and Dissertations

Federal discourse pertaining to college access requires clarified definition. Use of the college access construct has become commonplace, yet no unified refinement of meaning exists. This study, which covered U.S. presidential communications from January 2009 to October 2021, addressed the abstraction of language as leaders presented ideas, policies, and opinions. Observable trends impacting social mobility for students from underserved populations were of central interest. The research methodology, Quantitative Ethnography (QE), used the tool of Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA). Eight codes were identified through grounded analysis: Affordability, Pathway Program, Underserved Populations, Class Systems, Upward Mobility, Career Readiness, Trajectory, and Career Technical …