Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Developmental Stages Of The Acquisition Of Arabic By Adult English-Speaking Learners: Processability Theory And The Formulaic Language, Abdellatif Oulhaj

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study is to look at the developmental stages of the acquisition of Arabic as a foreign language by adult English learners. Processability theory (Pienemann, 1998, 2005) is adopted to investigate in detail whether the acquisition development will follow the hierarchy as stated by PT. The study targeted agreement within seven grammatical structures. The structures belong to three procedural levels of the hierarchy (stages three to five).

Six adult learners participated in this study. They were tested via different tasks to elicit data either to support the predictions of PT hierarchy, or to disconfirm it. Two participants …

A Machine-Aided Approach To Generating Grammar Rules From Japanese Source Text For Use In Hybrid And Rule-Based Machine Translation Systems, Sean Michael Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Many automatic machine translation systems available today use a hybrid of pure statistical translation and rule-based grammatical translations. This is largely due to the shortcomings of each individual approach, requiring a large amount of time for linguistics experts to hand-code grammar rules for a rule-based system and requiring large amounts of source text to generate accurate statistical models. By automating a portion of the rule generation process, the creation of grammar rules could be made to be faster, more efficient and less costly. By doing statistical analysis on a bilingual corpus, common grammar rules can be inferred and exported to …

Spectrums, Subgroups And School-Lunch: The Linguistic Capital Of Students With Autism, Scott Belden

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are known to have difficulties with pragmatic language. There is, however, a subpopulation of those with ASD that exhibits a high competency with pragmatic language. It can be difficult for researchers to find natural contexts to record these high-functioning individuals and examine their spontaneous use of pragmatic language. Additionally, there is a need to move beyond analyzing the cognitive abilities of these individuals to a sociolinguistic exploration of how they use pragmatic abilities to form and navigate social groups.

The research involved in this thesis included audio-visual recordings of 14 high school students with …

The Development Of An Esp Vocabulary Study Guidefor The Utah State Driver Handbook, Kirsten M. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project details research conducted and the method employed to create a tool for acquiring the technical vocabulary from the Utah Driver Handbook. Technical terms were compiled into a vocabulary tool for English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. ESL programs within the state have noted the need for materials to help learners acquire this vocabulary. The tool will assist ESL learners preparing for the written driving exam by reinforcing the vocabulary through various iterations, including flash cards, simplified definitions, and an L1 gloss. Learners preparing for the exam will be able to study difficult vocabulary terms using the …

Syriac Rhetorical Particles: Variable Second-Position Clitic Placement, Patrick Brendon Pearson

Theses and Dissertations

Investigation on second-position clitic phenomena has steadily increased since Wackernagel’s (1892) observations. Researchers have applied contemporary clitic typology to various Semitic languages though Syriac has received little attention. This thesis identifies a group of Syriac rhetorical particles and describes their categorization as clitics, versus words or affixes. It establishes each of the Syriac particles as second-position clitics and provides evidence of this conclusion from a state-of-the-art digitized corpus of Syriac literature. Extending previous Syriac analyses, this thesis describes the nature of attachment of these second-position clitics as enclisis to either the first word or the first constituent/phrase of their domain. …

A Corpus-Based Analysis Of Russian Word Order Patterns, Stephanie Kay Billings

Theses and Dissertations

Some scholars say that Russian syntax has free word order. However, other researchers claim that the basic word order of Russian is Subject, Verb, Object (SVO). Some researchers also assert that the use of different word orders may be influenced by various factors, including positions of discourse topic and focus, and register (spoken, fiction, academic, non-academic). In addition, corpora have been shown to be useful tools in gathering empirical linguistic data, and modern advances in computing have made corpora freely available and their use widespread. The Russian National Corpus is a large corpus of Russian that is widely used and …

A Qualitative Analysis Of The English Language Teaching Practices Of Latter-Day Saint Missionaries, Rachel Tui Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the teaching practices of recently returned Latter-day Saint (LDS) missionaries who voluntarily taught the English language on their full-time missions' serving for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout various parts of the world. The analyses performed in this research offer an insider's perspective by looking at a large selection of qualitative data gathered directly from these missionaries to provide evidential insight into what those practices are, including the most effective and the most ineffective teaching practices as principally perceived by the missionaries themselves. Thus far, there has been no research reported or data gathered …

Identity Phauxnetics, Nathan T. Jones

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the construction of identity and authenticity through sociophonetic variation, focusing on British Hip Hop artist Amy Winehouse. Prior work on British vocal artists’ phonetic variation has relied upon regional categorical frameworks (Trudgill, 1983; Carlsson, 2001) and found variation to be evidence of production errors and speakers’ misidentification of targeted speech patterns, resulting in summative interpretations of conflict between speakers’ discreet identities and speech pattern categories. More recent work has attended to linguistic processes within cultural movements influenced but not strictly delimited by sociolinguistics’ canonical categories of region, class, race, etc. Within the context of the Hip Hop …

Phonologically Conditioned Allomorphy And Ur Constraints, Brian W. Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation provides a new model of the phonology-morphology interface, focusing on Phonologically Conditioned Allomorphy (PCA). In this model, UR selection occurs during the phonological component, and mappings between meanings and URs are encoded as violable constraints, called UR constraints (Boersma 2001; Pater et al. 2012). Ranking UR constraints captures many empirical generalizations about PCA, such as similarities between PCA and phonological alternations, the existence of defaults, and the interaction of PCA and phonological repairs (epenthesis, deletion, etc.). Since PCA follows from the ranking or weighting of constraints, patterns of PCA can be learned using existing learning algorithms, and modeling …

Rightward Movement: A Study In Locality, Jason Overfelt

Doctoral Dissertations

The irregular behavior of rightward movement presents a challenge to theories that treat such configurations as the direct product of the mechanism responsible for leftward movement. For example, rightward movement appears not to be subject to certain island constraints and famously appears to be subject to stricter locality conditions than leftward movement. This dissertation presents investigations of two particular instances of rightward movement in English: Heavy-NP Shift (HNPS) and Extraposition from NP (EXNP). I argue that, by identifying the proper analyses for these phenomena, we can begin to attribute their apparent differences from leftward movement as the products of more …

Audible Voice In Context, Airlie S. Rose

Doctoral Dissertations

The term audible voice refers to the sound of the text experienced by the reader during silent reading. It was coined by Elbow in his Landmark Essays to help the field of composition wrestle more productively with the concept of voice in writing. In this dissertation, voice is not a metaphor. Drawing on contemporary work in psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and consciousness studies, it examines the phenomenon of audible voice as a form of inner speech[1]. The premise of this study is that the experience of audible voice by the reader is a unique intersection of the individual's inner landscape …

Progressive Place Assimilation In Optimality Theory, Andrew Lamont

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis presents an investigation into progressive place agreement in clusters through the lens of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004; McCarthy & Prince, 1995, 1999). A large typology of such languages is presented and examined to detail a broad swath of phenomena. The main line of inquiry over this typology is how direction of assimilation is formally represented. This work argues that simple phonological mechanisms explain the cross-linguistic effects including an agreement constraint and conflicting faithfulness constraints.

The Vocabulary Research Database: A Compilation Of State-Of-The-Art Academic Vocabulary Research, Melissa Ann Young

Theses and Dissertations

The Vocabulary Research Database (VRD) is a research tool comprised of a compilation of state-of-the art academic research in the field of vocabulary acquisition and pedagogy. The VRD has flexible search features that allow users to obtain higher granularity than is possible with other free databases and online search options currently available, making the results more relevant and manageable. These features include the ability to constrain results by date, author, publication, sub-topics, keywords, citation numbers, journal impact factors, and participant ages. It is anticipated that the ability to manipulate results, combined with relevant and current content, will provide language professionals …

Idioms As A Measure Of Proficiency, Kyle Hugh Vanderniet

Theses and Dissertations

This purpose of this thesis is to explore the relationship between idiomatic knowledge and second language proficiency. As the amount of research directly related to this topic is sparse, an in-depth discussion of relevant research and definitions comprises the first part of this paper. Two studies are then presented here that test the relationship between idiomatic knowledge and second language proficiency. A new definition for idioms proposes that all non-compositional phrases, popularized by usage, that is stored, retrieved, and employed as a single lexical unit. The results from more than 400 participants across two studies indicate that the two constructs …

Ideographs And American Mass Media: Understanding The Narrative On The Israel-Palestine Conflict And Its Influence On Publics, Savanna Lynn Fowler

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the American mass media's narrative on the Israel-Palestine conflict to understand the power of ideographs and their influence on specific publics. I focus on two popular ideographs in mass media reporting,and, in order to examine how these ideographs are utilized to construct a narrative for the media's publics, the political ideologies they represent, the agendas they further, and the consequences their narrow use has on developing counterpublics and emerging alternative narratives around the conflict. I focus my attention on the mass media's coverage of a sixteen day Israeli shelling in Gaza and how public consent is acquired …

Pragmatics And Semantics In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Karece Lopez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined scalar implicature to investigate semantic bases of pragmatic language impairment in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Scalar implicatures are inferences made by listeners, whereby they strengthen the weaker meaning of a term that can be represented on a scale (Grice, 1975; Horn, 1992). Scalar terms include: some/all; or/and; numerals. These inferences depend on understanding a speaker's intent and having the cognitive skills necessary to process such information in real time. Informativeness is the value a listener places on having to derive an implicature and assumes that the listener perceives the speakers intentions. Cognitive effort includes the …

Interpretation Of Overt Pronouns In L1 And L2 Japanese: The Role Of Context, Marisa A. Nagano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the interpretation of Japanese overt 3rd person pronouns by native (N=21) and advanced L1-English/L2-Japanese (N=20) speakers, using interpretation, reaction-time, and eye-tracking data. Previous studies have investigated L1 and L2 pronoun interpretation in null-subject languages like Spanish, Italian, and Greek, finding that L1 speakers tend to show a topic-shift effect for overt pronouns more often than L2ers (Sorace, 2011). Similar studies on Japanese, which allows null subjects but also differs greatly from these languages, have been mixed; crucially, several studies found no antecedent bias for overt pronouns by L1 speakers to begin with (Okuma, 2012; Ueno & Kehler, …

Roles Of Shifting Attention, Alternating Attention And Inhibition On Temporary Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution And Use Of Context In Younger And Older Adults, Youngmi Park

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Twenty-four younger adults (20-35 years, mean: 25.88) and thirty-four older adults (65-79 years, mean: 71.82) read sentences via a word-by-word self-paced reading paradigm. Study 1 examined how older and young adults resolve sentences containing Noun Phrase (NP) and Verb Phrase (VP)-attached Prepositional Phrases (PPs) yielding temporary syntactic ambiguity, and which cognitive factors (working memory capacity, inhibition, shifting attention, alternating attention, and cognitive processing speed) contribute to temporary syntactic ambiguity resolution.

Study 2 was designed to investigate how both age groups utilize contextual information while resolving PP-attachment, and which cognitive functions play a role in the use of referential context during …

Is Cue-Based Memory Retrieval 'Good-Enough'?: Agreement, Comprehension, And Implicit Prosody In Native And Bilingual Speakers Of English, Elizabeth Pratt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on structural and prosodic effects during reading, examining their influence on agreement processing and comprehension in native English (L1) and Spanish-English bilingual (L2) speakers. I consolidate research from three distinct areas of inquiry'cognitive processing models, development of reading fluency, and L1/L2 processing strategies'and outline a cohesive and comprehensive processing model that can be applied to speakers regardless of language profile. This model is characterized by three critical components: a cognitive model of memory retrieval, a processing paradigm that outlines how resources may be deployed online, and the role of factors such as prosody in parsing decisions.

The …

Learning Functional Prepositions, John Stewart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In first language acquisition, what does it mean for a grammatical category to have been acquired, and what are the mechanisms by which children learn functional categories in general? In the context of prepositions (Ps), if the lexical/functional divide cuts through the P category, as has been suggested in the theoretical literature, then constructivist accounts of language acquisition would predict that children develop adult-like competence with the more abstract units, functional Ps, at a slower rate compared to their acquisition of lexical Ps. Nativists instead assume that the features of functional P are made available by Universal Grammar (UG), and …

/N/:/R/ Correspondences In Albanian Dialects: Understanding The N>R Sound Change, Katie Albany

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Albanian language is an Indo-European language that constitutes a separate branch in the Indo-European language family. There are two major dialects, Geg and Tosk, spoken in present day Albania that are mutually intelligible. There are morpho-syntactic differences between the two dialects and shared words provide evidence for a number of sound changes applying in certain contexts in Tosk. The focus of this paper is n > r sound change in Tosk applying to the nasal /n/ in an intervocalic position followed by an unstressed vowel. The lenition rule has been prolific diachronically, but stopped applying some time between the 13 …

English Negative Concord, Negative Polarity, And Double Negation, Frances Kathleen Blanchette

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In Negative Concord (NC) sentences, single negative meanings are expressed by two or more negative words. English speakers that use NC also employ Double Negation (DN), where two negatives yield a logical affirmative. The same speakers also use Negative Polarity Item (NPI) constructions, where words like anything and anybody depend on a preceding negation (e.g. 'I didn't eat anything' vs. 'I ate anything'). This dissertation accounts for the distributions of NC, NPI, and DN constructions in English.

I apply the theory of NPIs in Postal (2005) and Collins and Postal (2014) to NC and DN. These authors argue that some …

A Morphological Study Of The Antonymous Compounds In Chinese: How The Word Class Changes And Why, Yihan Zhou

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The majority of Chinese words are compounds. Among compounds, there is a special kind of compounds. It is made up of two antonymous morphemes. The antonymous compounds undergo functional shift. In 40% percent of the cases, the compounds have different word classes from the morphemes. The thesis investigated how the functional shift happens and why it happens.

Based on the critique of the definitions of antonymous compounds used in others’ studies, the thesis comes up with a broad definition. With the help of primary sources such as dictionaries, secondary sources, and the definition, the thesis collects 292 antonymous compounds.

The …

The Phenomenology Of Second Language Acquisition: Poiesis And The Emergence Of The Multilingual Subject, Courtney E. Scarborough

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study explores relationships between second language acquisition (SLA), poetic language, and embodied cognition and its connection to second language speakers’ linguistic self-formation, or their distinct ways of speaking and thinking. In particular, this study examines processes by which second language (L2) learners’ subjective realities are constructed and demonstrates that these processes are inherently poetic, emerging from a combination of the constraining structures of the language system and second language speakers’ phenomenological experiences. The context of the study is a poetry-making activity the researcher designed and took place in the English Department Writing Center at California State University, San Bernardino. …

Why Get Lost In Translation? On The English Translations Of Wen Yiduo's Poems, Choi Yung Ng

Theses & Dissertations

The debate over the translatability of poetry has been a long-standing issue for decades. Relatively few discussions, however, have focused on the concrete reasons of poetry being translatable (or untranslatable). Moving beyond traditional ways of elucidating the matter through theoretical argument, this study aims to investigate the question of poetry translation in a more solid, empirical manner by looking into linguistic and language-based aesthetic differences between Chinese and English, in particular their prosodic features and capacities. Part One seeks to answer the question “Why does poetry get lost in translation?” from a linguistic and language-based aesthetic perspective, using the English …

Experiencing In Japanese: The Experiencer Restriction Across Clausal Types, Masashi Hashimoto

Doctoral Dissertations

Adjectives of sensation and emotion (Experiencer adjectives) in Japanese can take only the speaker as their experiencer subject in declarative root sentences and the addressee in interrogative root sentences in conversation. This constraint, which I call the Experiencer restriction, is lifted in other various clauses, however. This dissertation examines the Experiencer restriction across clausal types under scrutiny, and presents two analyses of the phenomenon, following the claim by Krifka (2001, 2004), Speas and Tenny (2003) and others that speech acts are syntactically realized. First, I introduce the phenomenon and give a brief review of its analyses which were made before …

Exploring Adult Punjabi-Speaking Immigrants’ Path To English Language Acquisition: A Case Study, Pankaj Sharma

All Theses And Dissertations

Punjabi-speaking immigrants to the United States find many successes and face many challenges as they strive to become full citizens of their new communities. There are success stories and obstacles faced by immigrants as they embark upon a journey from another country. This study examined what major obstacles Punjabi speaking immigrants face when they immigrated from India, including poverty, lack of employment, and stress specifically related to moving from the Punjabi to English language that ultimately affect the acculturation process for the entire family. The study also looked at support received by Punjabi immigrants from others in the community and …

Language Policy In Turkey And Its Effect On The Kurdish Language, Sevda Arslan

Masters Theses

For many decades the Kurdish language was ignored and banned from public use and Turkish became the lingua franca for all citizens to speak. This way, the Turkish state sought to create a nation-state based on one language and attempted to eliminate the use of other languages, particularly Kurdish, through severe regulations and prohibitions.

Firstly, this thesis traces the language planning policies in the 20th century which resulted in the invisibilization and denial of Kurdish through an attempted linguicide. Through decade long oppressions which resulted in mass killings, arrests, re-location of Kurds, monopolization of education in Turkish and eventually the …

Case And Pragmatic Status Markers In Embera Katío, Bethany Winter Carlson

Theses and Dissertations

In previous research on the Embera languages of the Chocó genus of Colombia and Panama, many different terms have been applied to one or all of the morphemes ba, ta and ra that frequently mark noun phrases and dependent clauses, and some of these descriptions have been conflicting. This study summarizes the previous analyses and compares them to language data from a corpus of texts and elicited material. The result is an analysis in which ba has three functions, marking ergative case, instrumental case and reason; ta marks focus on absolutives; and ra marks pragmatic topic and syntactic topics. …

Perception Training Of Thai Learners: American English Consonants And Vowels, Siriporn Lerdpaisalwong

Theses and Dissertations

ABTRACT

PERCEPTION TRAINING OF THAI LEARNERS:

AMERICAN ENGLISH CONSONANTS AND VOWELS

by

Siriporn Lerdpaisalwong

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor Hanyong Park

Many studies have revealed that ESL and EFL Thai leaners have difficulty producing and perceiving certain English consonants and vowels. The difficult consonants are /b d g v θ ð z tʃ ɹ l/ (Burkardt, 2005; Francis & McDavid, 1958; Jotikasathira, 1999; Lerdpaisalwong & Park, 2012, 2013; Richards, 1968; Wei & Zhou, 2002). The difficult vowels are /ɪ i ʊ u/ (Richards, 1968; Tsukada, 2009; Varasarin, 2007). Previous studies have showed that laboratory perceptual …