Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Isaiah 53: Grammatical, Structural And Exegetical Observations, Felipe Braz Federson

Masters Theses

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 is a famous passage from the Tanakh that contains important grammatical constructions in Hebrew which, if translated incorrectly, can lead to erroneous exegetical and theological conclusions. Among these problems, the Servant’s relationship with the other characters in the passage is addressed. Through an analysis of the literary context and the structure of the text, not only are several exegetical possibilities substantiated, but two prototype translations are also provided, one based on the Leningrad Codex and another based on the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa).

Youtube Video Essays As Critical Remixed Scholarship, Michelle L. Arendt

Student Research Symposium

YouTube videos have contributed primary and supplementary instructional materials to traditional classrooms since the 2010s (Sylvia & Moody, 2022). These internet-native materials are more successful than their traditional counterparts due to their recontextualization which melds dissemination with the semiotic landscape of web 2.0 culture.

Preferential treatment towards long-form, research-based content has facilitated the development of the YouTube video essay format: a grassroots practice that unapologetically embeds identity, pop culture, and humor with rigorous scholarly praxis and remediation of major elements of academic discourse (Davis, 2022). Videos of this type regularly reach “audiences which may rival or dwarf the enrollment of …

Investigating The Production And Perception Of Lexical Stress In English As A Second Language: A Cue-Weighting Approach, Natalia Irene Minjarez Oppenheimer

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Cue-Weighting Transfer Hypothesis states that (a) listeners weight acoustic cues according to how informative they are in signaling a lexical contrast in their L1, and (b) that listeners transfer their cue weightings from the L1 to the L2, using those cues that are important in the L1 to perceive lexical stress in the L2 (Tremblay et al., 2021). Most of the Spanish-English bilinguals in our region are highly proficient in both languages, but differ in their language dominance spectrums. That is, they can handle both languages with ease, but are usually more dominant in one of them. Because of …

Deficit-Oriented Language Use: Understanding The Effects Of Deficit-Oriented Labeling On First-Generation Students, Jeff Foulkes, Jeff Foulkes

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this sequential mixed methods study was to describe how first- generation undergraduate college students perceive that deficit-oriented and strengths- based language has impacted them during their first year of study. A further purpose of this study was to identify how these students overcome the negative influences that are associated with deficit-oriented language.

Methodology: A sequential mixed methods research design was chosen to address the research questions for this study. Using a convenience sampling approach, the survey was disseminated to all first-year students in a specific program at a single university. Once the quantitative survey data were …

Causal Influence Of Linguistic Learning On Perceptual And Conceptual Processing: A Brain-Constrained Deep Neural Network Study Of Proper Names And Category Terms., Phuc T U Nguyen, Malte R Henningsen-Schomers, Friedemann Pulvermüller

Journal Articles

Language influences cognitive and conceptual processing, but the mechanisms through which such causal effects are realized in the human brain remain unknown. Here, we use a brain-constrained deep neural network model of category formation and symbol learning and analyze the emergent model's internal mechanisms at the neural circuit level. In one set of simulations, the network was presented with similar patterns of neural activity indexing instances of objects and actions belonging to the same categories. Biologically realistic Hebbian learning led to the formation of instance-specific neurons distributed across multiple areas of the network, and, in addition, to cell assembly circuits …

Who Are You? The Relationship Between Language And Personality, Gwendolyn Cooley

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The relationship between language and personality is one that has been ruminated upon for decades, leading to a plethora of often contradictory scholarship. This project examines that relationship from an outsider perspective, utilizing both existing research and original questionnaire data to draw conclusions about how one's second language learning impacts personality.

Foreign Language Instruction: Commonalities From Kindergarten To College, Bethany A. Tafoya

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Kindergartners learn much differently than high schoolers or college students. Yet, when it comes to foreign language (FL) instruction, adult learners are often back at square one, like kindergarteners. Though learning capacity and maturity differ greatly between kindergarten and college, are there any common threads in the method of instruction across all these levels? This project was carried out by observing foreign language classrooms from kindergarten to college, identifying the main means of instruction in each class, and analyzing whether any commonalities exist between all the levels. Language is universal, and in an increasingly global world, contact with other languages …

School Psychologists Supporting Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Families Through The Evaluation Process, Jacqueline A. Oluoch

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

This study examined factors that predicted higher cultural skills in practicing school psychologists, and if these skills could be improved through a professional development session. Participants were school psychologists who attended a cultural skills professional development workshop during the National Association of School Psychologists Annual Convention 2024. A Mann-Whitney test was used to examine the change in cultural skills pre- and post-workshop. Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to examine cultural skills by career stage and work settings. The results showed an overall increase in cultural skills post-workshop. Working in public schools or non-public schools was not related to higher cultural skills …

Experiential Learning In Language Revitalization, Anthony Tran

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

Language revitalization plays a crucial role in preserving cultural diversity and identity. It serves as a conduit to reconnect communities with their ancestral roots, promoting cultural continuity and helping create a sense of belonging. Furthermore, it offers a stand against the often destructive impacts of colonization and globalization, which frequently result in language loss. In this report, I narrate my enriching journey as a student researcher, working on language revitalization alongside Dr. Tania Granadillo during an my summer internship. This unique experience extensively involved language study, understanding colonialism, and significant personal growth in self-management skills, epitomized by a challenging yet …

Page, Tate Cromwell "Piney," 1908-1984 (Fa 1397), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1397. Papers of Page, former Dean of the College of Education at Western Kentucky University, primarily concerning his work documenting the people, places, history and folklore of the Ozarks region in Arkansas where he was raised. Also includes his photographs of historic structures, made mostly in western Kentucky.

Critical Analysis Of Anti-Asian Hate In The News, Benardo Douglas Relampagos

Dissertations and Theses

Since 2019, the United States has had an increase in violence against Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities along with an increase of mainstream anti-Asian racist rhetoric. Between 2021 and 2022, The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism reported an overall 164% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes (Report to the Nation, 2021). While racism against black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities has been the topic of an ever-growing body of critical discourse, prior to 2019 few publications had addressed racism and injustice regarding language choices and discourse in the context of anti-Asian rhetoric in the US, specifically …

Verb Strings And Other Weavings: An Exploration Of Grammatical Structures, Visual Arts, And Language Teaching, Mae Bash

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In language education, visual arts are sometimes used as a tool to inspire communication and convey cultural concepts. However, limited research has looked into the application of visual arts in the classroom for the exploration of linguistic patterns. Both languages and weavings are complex systems governed by distinct sets of rules, yet they still permit infinite unique productions. This project explores this relationship by presenting five bandweavings, each of which is designed based on the rules and structures of different languages. These weavings show that it is possible to connect art and language through practical, structural methods, not only abstract …

A Method For Generating A Non-Manual Feature Model For Sign Language Processing, Robert G. Smith Dr, Markus Hofmann Dr

Articles

While recent approaches to sign language processing have shifted to the domain of Machine Learning (ML), the treatment of Non-Manual Features (NMFs) remains an open question. The principal challenge facing this method is the comparatively small sign language corpora available for training machine learning models. This study produces a statistical model which may be used in future ML, rules-based, and hybrid-learning approaches for sign language processing tasks. In doing so, this research explores the emerging patterns of non-manual articulation concerning grammatical classes in Irish Sign Language (ISL). The experimental method applied here is a novel implementation of an association rules …

The Distribution Of Tone In Shanghainese Monosyllables: An Optimality Theory Approach, Jamie Xu

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

This paper aims to create an Optimality Theory ranking of tonal phonology constraints in Shanghai Chinese (Shanghainese) monosyllables. Previous research on tonal phonology in Shanghainese preceded the more recent research on Optimality Theory which may provide new principles to justify the language’s tonal phonology system. I use inputs composed of High (H) and Low (L) tone combinations and 8 constraints, (3 faithfulness and 5 markedness constraints) to motivate the distribution of tones in Shanghainese monosyllable in four environments: KV, GV, KVʔ, GVʔ. The faithfulness constraints include DEP, MAX, and IDENT. The markedness constraints include *KL, *GH, POLARITY, [AGREE]ʔ, and *L/ʔ. …

Multilingual Schoolscapes Of Elementary Schools In East Tennessee, Olivia Campbell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study investigates how three elementary schools in East Tennessee align their schoolscapes with their multilingual populations. The study involved taking pictures of signage in these elementary schools and analyzing them for multilingualism. The findings indicate that there is limited presence of multilingual signage in the schools despite the presence of diverse students. While the schools are making efforts to be inclusive with their signage, there is clearly more room for improvement.

How Political Aspirations Conceived A Dramatic Linguistic Shift, Sean Mcconnell

Student Works

The 1066 Norman Conquest presents a specific instance of how conflicting political ambitions stimulated a substantial historical and social shift. On the political front, King Harold II and William the Conqueror possessed differing motives in their quest for the English crown. The political conflict witnessed contention between two groups that spoke entirely different languages: the Anglo-Saxons speaking Old English and the Normans speaking Norman French. The Norman victory in 1066 would have long-lasting implications for England and the English language. After the Normans conquered, Old English lost its prominence in England, initiating a linguistic transitional period. As a consequence of …

The Would-Chuck Construction, Grace Teuscher

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

In Standard American English sentences, only one modal verb is typically allowed. However, in certain varieties of English, most notably the Double Modal Construction, spoken mainly in the American South, more than one modal is allowed. This thesis provides a syntactical analysis of a currently under-researched construction—the Would- Chuck Construction. Here, four modal verbs are allowed in the English middle field: first is typically will, followed by the perfect have, which is then followed by another modal and another perfect auxiliary. This results in a sentence resembling “I will have should have pet the cat.” When the linear order of …

Between Verb And Preposition: Diachronic Stages Of Coverbs In Mandarin Chinese, Glynis Jones

Masters Theses

Mandarin Chinese has long been known to possess a category of words known as ‘coverbs’ in the literature, which sit in the gray area between verb and preposition. Li and Thompson (1974) describe the historical origins of Mandarin coverbs to be full transitive verbs, despite their modern state being decidedly less verbal. They also note that coverbs are a non-homogenous class. This thesis works to establish categories of coverbs in Mandarin Chinese and their distance from true verbhood in order to understand the diachronic shift that coverbs are currently undergoing before our very eyes. I will draw on the work …

Language Ideologies In Transgender Communities In The U.S. South, Archie Crowley

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how metalinguistic discussions within transgender communities in South Carolina are shaped by experiences, identities, and ideologies related to intersecting social dimensions, specifically, gender, age, race, and regional identity. Based primarily on 20 ethnographic group and individual interviews with 41 transgender individuals living in South Carolina, as well as over 24 months of participant-observation in two trans organizations, the analysis illustrates how trans South Carolinians simultaneously navigated changing norms of community language use, expectations of regional linguistic practices, and mainstream discussions of trans linguistic affirmation. I draw on these sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological methods to examine how discourses …

Norms Of Public Argumentation And The Ideals Of Correctness And Participation, Frank Zenker, Jan Albert Van Laar, Bianca Cepollaro, Anca Gâță, Martin Hinton, Colin Guthrie King, Brian N. Larson, Marcin Lewinski, Christoph Lumer, Steve Oswald, Maciej Pichlak, Blake D. Scott, Mariusz Urbanski, Jean H.M. Wagemans

Faculty Scholarship

Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politically legitimate deliberative outcome. In principle, both ideals are mutually coherent. If the information needed for a correct deliberative outcome is distributed among agents, then maximising participation increases information diversity. But both ideals can also be in tension. …

Semantic Orientation Of Crosslingual Sentiments: Employment Of Lexicon And Dictionaries, Arslan Ali Raza, Asad Habib, Jawad Ashraf, Babar Shah, Fernando Moreira

All Works

Sentiment Analysis is a modern discipline at the crossroads of data mining and natural language processing. It is concerned with the computational treatment of public moods shared in the form of text over social networking websites. Social media users express their feelings in conversations through cross-lingual terms, intensifiers, enhancers, reducers, symbols, and Net Lingo. However, the generic Sentiment Analysis (SA) research lacks comprehensive coverage about such abstruseness. In particular, they are inapt in the semantic orientation of Crosslingual based code switching, capitalization and accentuation of opinionative text due to the lack of annotated corpora, computational resources, linguistic processing and inefficient …

Partnership Between Iraqi Families With Refugee Backgrounds And School Professionals, Ashraf Alamatouri

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Research shows that partnerships between families and school professionals can be an important factor in student educational outcomes and that such partnerships exist less for families with refugee backgrounds than for native-born Americans. There are gaps in the literature around linguistic factors and advocacy styles that could influence the relationship between families with refugee backgrounds and school professionals, especially for Arabic speakers. The purpose of this study was to deeply analyze one Iraqi family’s interactions with school professionals in the U.S. to answer the following research question: What linguistic factors and advocacy behaviors facilitate and impede the formation of a …

Uky Slang Collection Project, Zada Komara

Lewis Honors College Research Data: Linguistics

The UKY Slang Collection Project is an ongoing effort (Fall 2021-present) to document the use of slang (group-specific language of informal register) primarily among college students at the University of Kentucky. The project is administered by Dr. Zada Komara (Lewis Honors College) as part of HON 140 Knowledge and Society, a foundational seminar about epistemology and ontology. This original research is performed by Lewis Honors College students. The project aims to document slang, both ephemeral and persistent, as a means of investigating students’ lived experiences of college, language evolution, and social identities among UKY student communities. Slang in the …

The Beauty Of Hip-Hop Culture: Linguistic Connections Through Music, Poetry, And Literature, Aminah Patel

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis enters the developing conversation in the linguistic domain about the culture and struggles of the Black community. It explores the collectivist perspective of the Black community in the 20^th and 21^st century through the umbrella of Linguistics and its subfields. Collectively, the literary and musical works in this study demonstrates the frustrations of the Black community—including its correlation to antebellum slavery—the lamentations of oppression, which showcases in a collection of poems and their syntactical aspects, and the Black pride emulating from the societies. Despite the clear correlation between Hip-Hop culture and literary works from the early …

Neo-Whorfian Examination Of Cross-Linguistic Temporal Discounting Behavior, Piper Connelly

Scripps Senior Theses

This study examines differences in temporal discounting tendencies in German and French participants (recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk) through the lens of Neo-Whorfian cognition and the Linguistic Savings Hypothesis (Chen 2013). The LSH proposes that tendencies towards future-oriented economic decisions can be cognitively explained by literal morphosyntactic conventions of one’s native language. Our experiments (sooner-smaller/larger-later choices, endowment-investment task) failed to produce results aligning with the LSH, but uncovered the importance of controlling for risk appetite when specifically investigating intertemporal choice. There are several fruitful improvements to consider for the future, such as stricter sampling, taking richer detail of time preferences, …

What Mcculloch V. Maryland Got Wrong: The Original Meaning Of 'Necessary' Is Not 'Useful', 'Convenient', Or 'Rational', Steven Calabresi, Gary S. Lawson, Elise Kostial

Faculty Scholarship

McCulloch v. Maryland, echoing Alexander Hamilton nearly thirty years earlier, claimed of the word “necessary” in the Necessary and Proper Clause: “If reference be had to its use, in the common affairs of the world, or in approved authors, we find that it frequently imports that one thing is convenient, or useful . . . to another.” Modern case law has translated that understanding into a rational-basis test that treats the issue of necessity as all but nonjusticiable; The Supreme Court has never found a congressional law unconstitutional on the ground that it was not “necessary . . . …

Multilingualism And Memory: Investigating Possible Differences In The Abilities Of Monolingual And Multilingual College Students, Clara E. Barned

Honors Projects

This study investigated whether there is a difference in the memories of monolingual and multilingual undergraduate students using simple memorization tasks. There were 46 participants, 30 of which were monolingual (only knew one language) and 16 of which were multilingual (knew two or more languages). There was found to be no significant difference between the performance of the two groups, with the data generating a p-value of 0.557. This study further suggests related avenues of research and ways in which the study could be improved in the future.

Examining Variability In Spanish Monolingual And Bilingual Phonotactics: A Look At Sc-Clusters, Katerina A. Tetzloff

Doctoral Dissertations

Current models of generative phonology have failed to address the variability that is observed in bilingual language patterns patterns. This dissertation addresses exactly that issue by examining the perception of Spanish sC-clusters in Spanish monolinguals and English-Spanish bilinguals. Surface sC-clusters in onset position are prohibited in Spanish and are repaired by inserting a prothetic /e/ (sC $\rightarrow$ esC). English differs in that it allows sC-cluster onsets, and the structure of the sC-cluster has been shown to differ based on the sonority profile (i.e., s+stop clusters are bisyllabic, s+liquid clusters are tautosyllabic). A batch version of a Harmonic Grammar Gradual Learning …

What Did You Expect? An Investigation Of Lexical Preactivation In Sentence Processing, Jon Burnsky

Doctoral Dissertations

Language users predictively preactivate lexical units that appear to the comprehen- der to be likely to surface. Despite ample language experience and grammatical competence, it appears that language users tend to preactivate verbs in some contexts, called role-reversal contexts, that would create plausibility violations if they were to actually appear; these verbs assign thematic roles to their arguments in such a way that it leads to implausibility. These anomalous predictions provide a window into the mechanisms underlying lexical preactivation and are the case study that this dissertation focuses in on. This dissertation is an exploration of what linguistic information is …

The Communicative Function Of Gender In Italian, Joseph C. M. Davis

Publications and Research

An analysis of gender in modern literary Italian based on attested examples from various genres. The evidence-based hypothesis, thoroughly noncanonical, proposes a system of morphologically signaled meanings, and these are not the traditional categories "feminine" and "masculine." Even the familiar and misleading term "gender" is replaced. The analysis concerns primarily what is typically called "grammatical gender, although it stands to inform too the use of Italian in communication having to do with human cultural gender. The analysis concerns primarily what might be called "variable gender" (essentially adjectives) although it stands to inform too the problem of "invariable gender" (essentially, nouns).