Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Semantics (3)
- Linguistics (2)
- #KRKTR (1)
- ASL (1)
- Accessibility (1)
-
- Action learning (1)
- Action research (1)
- Agency (1)
- Allies (1)
- American Sign Language (1)
- Anthropology (1)
- Apache (1)
- Appreciative inquiry (1)
- Art (1)
- Article Acquisition (1)
- Asylum (1)
- Backward chaining (1)
- Calibration (1)
- Chronotope (1)
- Civil rights (1)
- Civil society (1)
- Climate change (1)
- Collective intelligence (1)
- Communication (1)
- Communication intelligence (1)
- Community interpreting (1)
- Community of practice (1)
- Computational phonology (1)
- Conference interpreting (1)
- Conflict (1)
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Fragments And Clausal Ellipsis, Andrew Weir
Fragments And Clausal Ellipsis, Andrew Weir
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates the syntactic and semantic properties of fragments -- utterances which consist of a constituent smaller than a clause. Examples include short answers, such as What did he eat? --- Chips, as well as cases which do not respond to any overt question; for example, saying The train station, please on entering a taxi. I defend Merchant 2004's proposal that, underlyingly, fragments contain clausal structure: the fragment answer chips is elliptical for he ate chips, with he ate being present in the syntax but unspoken. I argue that challenges to ellipsis-based accounts of fragments can be …
Computational Communication Intelligence: Exploring Linguistic Manifestation And Social Dynamics In Online Communication, Xiaoxi Xu
Doctoral Dissertations
We now live in an age of online communication. As social media becomes an integral part of our life, online communication becomes an essential life skill. In this dissertation, we aim to understand how people effectively communicate online. We research components of success in online communication and present scientific methods to study the skill of effective communication. This research advances the state of art in machine learning and communication studies. For communication studies, we pioneer the study of a communication phenomenon we call Communication Intelligence in online interactions. We create a theory about communication intelligence that measures participants’ ten high-order …
Computational Modeling Of Learning Biases In Stress Typology, Robert D. Staubs
Computational Modeling Of Learning Biases In Stress Typology, Robert D. Staubs
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation demonstrates a strong connection between the frequency of stress patterns and their relative learnability under a wide class of learning algorithms. These frequency results follow from hypotheses about the learner's available representations and the distribution of input data. Such hypotheses are combined with a model of learning to derive distinctions between classes of stress patterns, addressing frequency biases not modeled by traditional generative theory. I present a series of results for error-driven learners of constraint-based grammars. These results are shown both for single learners and learners in an iterated learning model. First, I show that with general n …
Comprehending Each Other: Weak Reciprocity And Processing, Helen Majewski
Comprehending Each Other: Weak Reciprocity And Processing, Helen Majewski
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation looks at the question of how comprehenders get from an underspecified semantic representation to a particular construal. Its focus is on reciprocal sentences. Reciprocal sentences, like other plural sentences, are open to a range of interpretations. Work on the semantics of plural predication commonly assumes that this range of interpretations is due to cumulativity (Krifka 1992): if predicates are inherently cumulative (Kratzer 2001), the logical representations of plural sentences underspecify the interpretation (rather than being ambiguous between various interpretations). The dissertation argues that the processor makes use of a number of general preferences and principles in getting from …
Contrastive Topic: Meanings And Realizations, Noah Constant
Contrastive Topic: Meanings And Realizations, Noah Constant
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation develops a theory of contrastive topics (CTs)—what they mean, and how they are realized. I give a compositional semantics for CT constructions, built on the idea that CT marks anaphora to a complex question in the discourse. The account allows us to maintain an inclusive view of what counts as a contrastive topic, making reasonable predictions about sentences with CT phrases of difference types, in various combinations, and across various speech acts. Empirically, the dissertation focuses on contrastive topic marking in English and Mandarin Chinese. In English, CT phrases are typically realized with a “rising” prosody. I offer …
The Grammar Of Individuation And Counting, Suzi Lima
The Grammar Of Individuation And Counting, Suzi Lima
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation investigates the linguistic expression of individuation, counting, quantifying and measuring in Yudja (Juruna family), a Tupi language spoken in Brazil. Based on elicitation data and experimental studies with children and adults, three main topics are explored: (i) the semantic properties of numeral constructions and their compatibility with notional count and notional mass nouns; (ii) the semantics of container phrases and their interaction with numerals, and finally (iii) the semantics of nominal quantifiers. Relying on the principles of mereotopology (Casati and Varzi 1999, Varzi 2007), the main claim of this dissertation is that in Yudja all nouns can be …
Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent
Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent
Doctoral Dissertations
What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …
The Definite Article System In L1-English L2-Spanish Learners, Diego Ardura
The Definite Article System In L1-English L2-Spanish Learners, Diego Ardura
Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014
Previous studies on the acquisition of definite plurals in Child and Second Language Acquisition have found strong evidence on how transfer can affect the L2-acquisition of articles. Nevertheless, these studies presented some limitations. First, they failed to consider other variables that could interfere with transfer in the acquisition of the article system. And second, the methodology used to test the participants’ implicit knowledge of article system was very similar in all studies (Truth-Value Judgment Task). In order to fill these two gaps in the literature, the present study uses a listening comprehension task to test how the mass/count distinction …
Canadian Raising With Language-Specific Weighted Constraints, Joe Pater
Canadian Raising With Language-Specific Weighted Constraints, Joe Pater
Joe Pater
The distribution of the raised variants of the Canadian English diphthongs is standardly analyzed as opaque allophony, with derivationally ordered processes of diphthong raising and of /t/ flapping. This paper provides an alternative positional contrast analysis in which the pre-flap raised diphthongs are licensed by a language-specific constraint. The basic distributional facts are captured with a weighted constraint grammar that lacks the intermediate level of representation of the standard analysis. The paper also provides a proposal for how the constraints are learned, and shows how correct weights can be found with a simple, widely used learning algorithm.
Canadian Raising With Language-Specific Weighted Constraints, Joe Pater
Canadian Raising With Language-Specific Weighted Constraints, Joe Pater
Linguistics Department Faculty Publication Series
The distribution of the raised variants of the Canadian English diphthongs is standardly analyzed as opaque allophony, with derivationally ordered processes of diphthong raising and of /t/ flapping. This paper provides an alternative positional contrast analysis in which the pre-flap raised diphthongs are licensed by a language-specific constraint. The basic distributional facts are captured with a weighted constraint grammar that lacks the intermediate level of representation of the standard analysis. The paper also provides a proposal for how the constraints are learned, and shows how correct weights can be found with a simple, widely used learning algorithm.