Morphology Commons^™

Enhanced Explicit Vocabulary Learning Compared To Implicit Grammar Learning In Adults, Leah Brainin, Marc Joanisse

Western Research Forum

Compared to young children, the language learning process is much more difficult and less successful in adulthood. Little is known about how non-linguistic cognitive processes contribute to these age-dependent differences. We argue that language learning involves both explicit declarative memory processes to learn vocabulary and implicit procedural memory processes to learn grammatical patterns. In this preliminary study, we aimed to quantify the relative contribution of declarative versus procedural learning in adults via an artificial language learning task. Participants ages 18 to 29 heard novel singular and plural words associated with images of common objects. The grammar of the language consisted …

Distributional Effects Of Gender Contrasts Across Categories, Timothee Mickus, Olivier Bonami, Denis Paperno

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics

This paper proposes a methodology for comparing grammatical contrasts across categories with the tools of distributional semantics. After outlining why such a comparison is relevant to current theoretical work on gender and other morphosyntactic features, we present intrinsic and extrinsic predictability as instruments for analyzing semantic contrasts between pairs of words. We then apply our method to a dataset of gender pairs of French nouns and adjectives. We find that, while the distributional effect of gender is overall less predictable for nouns than for adjectives, it is heavily influenced by semantic properties of the adjectives.

Final Vowel Devoicing In Blackfoot, Samantha Leigh Prins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents a study of final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot, an indigenous language of Montana and Alberta. Previous research on final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot variously suggests word-final, phrase-final, and utterance-final vowel devoicing processes (e.g. Taylor 1965, Bliss & Gick 2009, Frantz 2017), though, the conditioning environment for this phenomenon had not been a research focus prior to this study. The present study investigates intonation units (IUs) as the conditioning domain for final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot.

Final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot is investigated here by examining the common word-final suffixes –wa (3SG.AN) and –yi (4SG) in two recordings …

Non-Manual Articulators In Irish Sign Language Verbs: An Analysis With Data Mining Association Rules, Robert G. Smith, Markus Hofmann

Conference Papers

The Signs of Ireland (SOI) corpus (Leeson et al., 2006) deploys a complex multi-tiered temporal data structure. The process of manually analyzing such data is laborious, cannot eliminate bias and often, important patterns can go completely unnoticed. In addition to this, as a result of the complex nature of grammatical structures contained in the corpus, identifying complex linguistic associations or patterns across tiers is simply too intricate a task for a human to carry out in an acceptable timeframe. This work explores the application of data mining techniques on a set of multi-tiered temporal data from the SOI corpus. Building …

Peaze Up! Adaptation, Innovation, And Variation In German Hip Hop Discourse, Matt Garley

Publications and Research

In this study, I investigate the stylistic use of various forms of the hip hop leave-taking peace in a 12.5-million-word corpus (2000-2011) of German-language Internet hip hop discussions. The English orthography is compared with a number of hybrid variants including, e.g., , , and . I analyze the distribution of these variants over time by comparison to use of the form in an American hip hop forum. I complement these results with a qualitative analysis of peace and its variants as situated in discourse, drawing a connection between linguistic features, discursive use, and corpus distribution. The discourse of German hip …

The Variable Expression Of Transitive Subject And Possesor In Wayuunaiki (Guajiro), Andres M. Sabogal

Linguistics ETDs

In Wayuunaiki, verbal affixes cross-reference clausal arguments in various ways. Most notably, there are two ways to express transitive subjects, and two ways to express possessors. Much like voice alternatives, the variable expression of subject and possessor impart different perspectives on a situation type, but unlike traditional voice categories, syntactic valence remains equal. This dissertation characterizes these constructions with a specific question in mind: what do these two cross-referencing alternations communicate and what influences their usage? To answer these questions, I consider the linguistic properties observed in the usage of these constructions in narratives (Jusayú 1986, 1994), and informal conversations. …

Acquisition Of Catalan And Spanish Morphosyntax In The Catalan-Spanish Bilingual Context, Adriana Soto-Corominas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation investigated the acquisition of Catalan and Spanish morphosyntax by early Catalan-Spanish bilinguals living in Catalunya, a province of Spain with widespread societal bilingualism. Specifically, it focused on the acquisition of six clitic pronouns in Catalan that have different representations in Spanish. Of the six, partitive en, oblique en, locative hi, and oblique hi do not have direct counterparts in Spanish, and correspond to ellipsis in the adult grammar. The accusative neuter clitic ho and masculine clitic l constitute a distinction based on specificity and gender not made in Spanish and both correspond to Spanish lo …

The Role Of Criticality Of Gene Regulatory Networks On Emergent Properties Of Biological Systems, Hyobin Kim

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The relationship between criticality of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and dynamics of GRNs at a single cell level has been vigorously studied. However, the relationship between the criticality of GRNs and properties of multicellular organisms at a higher level has not been fully explored. Here we aim at revealing potential roles of the criticality of GRNs at a multicellular and hierarchical level, using a random Boolean network as a GRN. We perform three studies. Firstly, we propose a GRN-based morphogenetic model, and delve into the role of the criticality of GRNs in morphogenesis at a multicellular level. Secondly, we include …

Constraints On Izāfa In Sorani Kurdish, Ali Salehi

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This study examines the distribution and the status of the izāfa particle in Sorani Kurdish (Central Kurdish). It uses a corpus-based analysis to investigate the forms and the pattern of distribution of the izāfa particle in Sorani, a dominant dialect of Kurdish among the Western Iranian languages. The study details an investigation of the appearance of izāfa in various NPs using a variety of data mostly from the corpus but supplemented by the grammaticality judgments of native speakers. I show that next to parallel properties seen in other Western Iranian languages, Sorani Kurdish izāfa shows a form alternation. I examine …

A Bayesian Investigation Of Factors Shaping The Network Structure Of Inflection Class Systems, Jeff Parker, Robert Reynolds, Andrea D. Sims

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics

No abstract provided.

Constructing A Grammatically Enriched Children's Book, Rebecca Ebert

Honors Projects

The intended purpose of this book is to serve as a grammatically rich resource of the grammatical structure: third person singular present tense. It is targets preschool age children with or at risk for a specific language impairment (SLI). More specifically, this book can be used as a clinical tool by speech-language pathologists in order to assist those with language delays in acquiring this difficult structure. Third person singular present tense is a morpheme that is acquired later in child language development due to its complexity, rarity and acoustic factors. Creating a clinical resource with an abundance of third person …

Verbal -S Productions In The Structured Writing Samples Of Variable Aae-Speaking Fourth-Grade Students With And Without Language Impairment, Jacklyn High Felton

Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers in speech-language pathology and ethnolinguistics have worked to gain knowledge about typical and atypical language patterns of African American children who are identified as African American English (AAE) dialect speakers. Much progress had been made, but limitations in this field of knowledge have persisted, especially for AA children who demonstrate variable use of AAE, presumably through the process of assimilation in the school setting. Therefore, more information is needed to provide diagnostic markers for deviations in typical language development for variable AAE-MAE speakers. Prior empirical research has found that third- and fourth-grade AAE-speaking children with typical language development overtly …

Saisiyat Morphology, Daniel Kaufman

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Vanilla Sequence-To-Sequence Neural Nets Cannot Model Reduplication, Brandon Prickett

OWP Linguistics

This paper presents results from a series of simulations that attempted to teach a vanilla sequence-to-sequence neural network a reduplication process. These attempts did not succeed, suggesting that added machinery is necessary for connectionist models to perform such a task.

Laki Verbal Inflection, Sahar Taghipour

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This thesis mainly examines inflectional morphology of verbal paradigms in Laki, which is considered as one of the Southern varieties of Kurdish language. The association of form and content of morphological markings are viewed from a realizational angle, in which exponents (morphological forms) are associated with the morphosyntactic properties via the application of rules of exponence, appealed by paradigm functions (Stump 2001) and ordered into rule blocks (Anderson 1992). In particular, I applied the paradigm linkage theory proposed and fully developed by Stump (2002 and 2016) to account for Laki verbal paradigms. In this study, it is claimed that alignment …

The Declensions Of Modern Eastern Armenian: A Paradigm Function Morphology Approach, Malachi W. Oyer

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

In traditional grammar, the inflection of a word’s different forms based on the possible morphosyntactic property combinations of the language can be ordered into a tables. Words of the same part of speech often can be grouped together when they inflect in similar fashions. These similar groups are represented by a single word that expresses the morphosyntactic property set possible for that part of speech. These groups are called declensions. These declensions are not always complete sometimes there is a particular morphosyntactic property set that does not have a corresponding form (word). This is known as defectiveness. One approach that …

Morphological Knowledge And Early Writing Ability, Hyla Rubin

Hyla Rubin

This study assesscd the morphological knowledge of kindergarteners and first graders in relation to their early writing ability. hlorphological knowledge was investigated bemuse, in order to write, children need to understand that words are composed of morphemes and phonemes, and because poor writers have particular difficulty with inflected forms of words. Kindeqarteners and f m t graders were grouped by their implicit understanding of morphology and were given tests of dictated spelling and morphological analysis. First graders with poor implicit morphological knowledge omitted more inflectional morphemes in writing and wcre less able to identify base morphemes in spoken words than …

The Development Of Morphological Knowledge In Relation To Early Spelling Ability, Hyla Rubin

Hyla Rubin

This study assessed the morphological knowledge of kindergarteners and first graders in relation to their early spelling ability. Morphological knowledge was investigated because, in order to spell, children need to understand that words are composed of morphemes and phonemes, and because poor spellers have particular difficulty with inflected forms of words. Kindergarteners and first graders were grouped by their implicit understanding of morphology and were given tests of dictated spelling and morphological analysis. First graders with poor morphological knowledge omitted more inflectional morphemes in spelling and were less able to identify base morphemes in spoken words than kindergarteners and first …

Adquisición De Los Contrafactuales Pasados En Español: Mapeo De Formas – Significados En Las Interfaces Morfología – Sintaxis – Semántica – Pragmática, Diana Patricia Botero Ibarra

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study focuses on the acquisition of the compound form of the Pluperfect Subjunctive to express counterfactual meaning in the past through conditional clauses. The aim was to examine in which instances we can find the greatest difficulty in the acquisition and what are the sets of information that stem from universal mechanisms.

This study included two experiments: Experiment 1 consisted of a sentence completion task and a written production task to investigate morphological recognition and morphological written production of subjunctive and conditional forms. Experiment 2 included an interpretation and context task, a sentence selection task, and a picture-matching task …

Verbing And Nouning, Grace Gomashie, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton