Linguistics Commons^™

A Jewel Inlaid: Ergativity And Markedness In Nepali, Luke S. Lindemann

Linguistics Graduate Dissertations

Nepali presents with a complex case marking pattern in which ergative case is obligatory in perfective transitive clauses, disallowed in unaccusative intransitive clauses and copular clauses, and varies with the nominative elsewhere. Where ergative marking is variable, its usage correlates with a variety of semantic and pragmatic factors. The purpose of this investigation is to precisely delineate the grammatical domains for which ergative marking is variable and to provide a unified analysis of the semantic and pragmatic factors that correlate with its expression.

The study of pragmatic phenomena requires the implementation of multiple strategies for collecting language data. The data …

Affix Ordering And Templatic Morphology In Mandan, Ryan Kasak

Linguistics Graduate Dissertations

Mandan [ISO: mhq] is a Siouan language traditionally spoken in northwestern North Dakota on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The language no longer has any L1 speakers, and fewer than a dozen L2 speakers remain. This dissertation provides a description of the phonological and morphological systems of the language, as well as contextualizes these systems within a formal framework. The data come from an assembled corpus of over five hundred pages of transcribed traditional narratives and twenty hours of recordings of those narratives done in the 1970s, which is supplemented by data from more recent fieldwork done in the early …

Understanding High School English Learners’ Chronic Absenteeism, Patricia A. George

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Chronic absenteeism has significant implications for both the individual student and society at large and has been receiving attention for over a century. Every school day counts. Regular attendance provides students with opportunities to learn and has a strong link to achievement. Conversely, poor attendance has serious implications for high school students. For each subgroup of students there is a similar pattern: the likelihood of chronic absenteeism increases as students progress through high school. Notably, the U.S. Department of Education found English learners experience higher chronic absenteeism than their non-English learner peers when they reach high school. Furthermore, compared to …

Discursive Leadership: Exploring The "Black Box" Challenge In Transcultural Leadership Studies, Christopher Patrick Brown

Dissertations

The increasingly globalized U.S. workforce includes significant numbers of adult immigrants integrating into the North American professional sphere. As such, it is important to have concrete ways to study and interpret different cultures’ thinking about teamwork, and their models of enacting shared leadership and communication in a multicultural context. Since 2006, hundreds of millions in federal grant funding has been invested in university-based language and culture programs focused on training government personnel and heritage populations in the languages and cultures of the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia. Little is known about the performative strengths and challenges of the …

Methods Of Teaching Latin: Theory, Practice, Application, Morgan A. Nicoulin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I present a way to effectively blend modern theories of language acquisition and the contemporary practice of teaching Latin. I intend to demonstrate that a curriculum is able to balance both traditional and innovative philosophies by adapting Second Language Acquisition Theory’s idealized way to learn a language to fit the realistic limitations of the classroom. I begin with a discussion of the history of language pedagogy, focusing on Latin’s influence on the study of language learning from antiquity to present. Next, I present the key topics in SLA and the practical implications of this research for today’s …

Second Language Acquisition Of American Sign Language Influences Co-Speech Gesture Production, Jill Weisberg, Shannon Casey, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Karen Emmorey

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Previous work indicates that 1) adults with native sign language experience produce more manual co-speech gestures than monolingual non-signers, and 2) one year of ASL instruction increases gesture production in adults, but not enough to differentiate them from non-signers. To elucidate these effects, we asked early ASL–English bilinguals, fluent late second language (L2) signers (≥ 10 years of experience signing), and monolingual non-signers to retell a story depicted in cartoon clips to a monolingual partner. Early and L2 signers produced manual gestures at higher rates compared to non-signers, particularly iconic gestures, and used a greater variety of handshapes. These results …

Defining Employer Supported Learning Opportunities, 21cleo Research Team

21CLEO Research Project Blog Posts

The 21st Century Learning Ecosystem Opportunities (21Cleo) research team has been hard at work! In our last two blog posts, we reported on a field review of learning opportunities from a process perspective (how we chose the literature we reviewed) and from a product perspective (what we are learning from this literature).

Effects Of The Relationships Between Forms Within And Across Paradigms On Lexical Processing And Representation: An Experimental Investigation Of Russian Nouns, Jeffery R. Parker

Faculty Publications

The frequency and distribution of forms within a lexeme’s paradigm affect how quickly forms are accessed (e.g., Kostić, 1991; Milin, Filipović Đurđević, & Moscoso del Prado Martín, 2009; Moscoso del Prado Martı́n, Kostić, & Baayen, 2004). The distribution of forms across paradigms, in contrast, has received little experimental attention. Theoretical studies investigate the distribution of forms across paradigms because forms vary in how predictive they are of other (unknown) forms. Such investigations have uncovered typological tendencies (e.g., Ackerman & Malouf, 2013; Stump & Finkel, 2013) and contribute to explanations of language-specific phenomena (e.g., Sims, 2015; Parker & Sims, To appear). …

I Feel Like That One Complementizer Is Not Enough, Aidan Kaplan

Yale Working Papers in Grammatical Diversity

This study presents a description and analysis of an instance of syntactic microvariation, which I call the like that construction. In this construction, an embedded CP is apparently introduced by two complementizers or complementizer-like elements, as in I feel like that we’re going to win the game. This construction is found to be acceptable to speakers from all over the US, with no apparent geographic constraints, while it is also unacceptable to many speakers. Using judgments from a consultant who accepts this construction as well as examples drawn from the Internet, I show that the syntactic properties of like …

Fictional Narrative Skills Of Preschool-Age Bilingual Children With Typical Language Development, Lydia Bias

Honors Projects

Oral narrative retells are commonly used in assessment to examine language and literacy development in young children. Due to the increasing number of bilingual children in the United States, it is necessary to understand typical development in order to assess and intervene when needed. English story retells from eight preschool-age Spanish-English bilingual children were analyzed in the present study using the Narrative Assessment Protocol. Analyses were conducted to examine differences in narrative microstructure at two time points. In the present study, a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Sum test which is a nonparametric statistical measure was used to determine whether there was …

Using Electrophysiology To Investigate Changes In Brain Activation In Individuals With Chronic Stroke, Sarah G. Dalton

Linguistics ETDs

Many individuals who have experienced a stroke also experience persistent decrements in several domains, such as sensorimotor, language, and cognition. While rehabilitation for these deficits is helpful even decades after a stroke, there is limited information available to determine the most effective pairing of treatment with individual deficits. Further, despite decades of neuroimaging research, our understanding of optimal recovery patterns following stroke is relatively poor. In order to improve outcomes for individuals living with chronic deficits due to stroke, neurophysiological biomarkers corresponding to recovery patterns and treatment response are needed. Electroencephalography (EEG) holds great potential for identifying biomarkers as it …

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Opening Statements In Trial: Reconsidering The Classical Canon Of Invention, Andrew Chandler

Undergraduate Theses

This analysis of 21 opening statements probes at current persuasive practices employed by trial attorneys through the lens of mainstream legal advice and an expanded definition of rhetorical invention – one which includes both discovery and creation. An evaluation of such practice reveals the utility, and furthermore the duty of the advocate, to draw upon an expanded realm of available arguments.

American And British Speech Differences In Low Socioeconomic Status Homes, Jennifer Markfeld

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Background: Infants living in low socioeconomic status (SES) homes display lower developmental functioning by 12 months than mid- and high-SES infants, and speak fewer words on average as they grow older. Maternal speech is especially important for language development and has been found to be the largest predictor of SES-related differences in children’s vocabulary. Although there are documented differences between British and American infant language development, for example American infant lexicons are typically larger than age matched British infants, there is little research looking at caregiver speech across these countries in low SES groups.

Method: This retrospective study compared 10 …

The Relationship Between Language, Emotional Intelligence, And Cultural Sensitivity, Sophia Root

Honors Theses

Knowing multiple languages, having a higher level of emotional intelligence and cultural sensitivity are positive traits to carry in today’s globalizing world. The present study looked at emotional intelligence and cultural sensitivity levels between monolinguals and multilinguals. Participants participated through an electronic survey that included demographic questions pertaining to participant’s language knowledge, and standardized measures for emotional intelligence and cultural sensitivity. Results did not indicate a statistically significant relationship of emotional intelligence between monolinguals and multilinguals. The relationship of cultural sensitivity between monolinguals and multilinguals was also not found to be statistically significant. However, a statistically significant positive correlation was …

More Than Just A Myth: How Shapeshifter Rhetoric Relates To Esl Students 2019, Amber Kent

Master's Theses

The academic analysis surrounding the shapeshifter, or shapeshifter mythologies has, so far, been related to modern issues of violence, militarization, feminism, gender studies, or studies simply focusing on the compilation of shapeshifter myths themselves. This essay will map out the current discussion surrounding shapeshifter mythology to illustrate that it has often fallen into two forms of analysis: that of an anthropological or sociological analysis, where shapeshifter myths were analyzed as a method for understanding different cultures and their development, and that of a poststructural analysis, where shapeshifter myths are analyzed as a means of deconstructing binaries such as good/bad and …

'Lui' And 'Egli' In Il Gattopardo, Joseph C. M. Davis

Publications and Research

A semiotic, discourse-based linguistic hypothesis that bypasses the syntactic category subject and proposes instead contrasting meanings for the pronouns lui and egli provides empirical support for the critical interpretation of the novel Il Gattopardo as being anti-teleological. The hypothesis, which applies to large body of twentieth-century Italian literature, is that egli but not lui bears a linguistic meaning that ties its relevance to a verb. This linguistic hypothesis reveals a significant difference in Tomasi di Lampedusa’s portrayals of the novel’s two characters Don Fabrizio and Don Calogero: one as a character defined by who he is, the other as a …

Modality, Control And Restructuring In Arabic, Yasser Albaty

Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation examines theories of modality and control with data from Standard Arabic (SA). In particular, I show that complementations of particular modal and control verbs in SA are not clausal, but smaller phrases. This challenges proposed accounts in the literature of modality in SA as well as theories of control within Minimalism. I alternatively argue for a novel account of both constructions that posits a monoclausal (i.e., restructuring) structure.

First, Chapter 2 investigates modality verbs in SA and shows that subjunctive complements of modality do not exhibit the properties of clausal complementation. I examine the syntax-semantics properties of modality …

Positioning Of English Language Learners And Its Power On Classroom Learning Opportunities And Interactions, Hawraa Nafea Hameed Alzouwain

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this qualitative study, the researcher investigated four aspects of positioning used by teacher and ESL students in a mid-south state of the United States. This study was based on the Positioning Theory of Davies and Harré (1990). The study aimed to explore various types of positioning used by the participants and how they impacted social interactions among the students and between them and their teacher. The researcher used four questions to outline the scope of the research, focused on: 1) how ELLs’ different positioning in the ESL classroom promoted or limited their learning opportunities; 2) how the ELL teacher …

Poetics, Not Pragmatics: Understanding Metaphors In A Poetic Context, Savannah Marciezyk

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this paper is to explain why the leading theories of metaphor fail when applied to metaphors which appear in poems. The ability to understand the true meaning of a metaphor in conversations relies on understanding speaker intention and extralinguistic context. This paper argues that because such material is not available to the reader of a poem, theories which rely heavily on pragmatics to explain metaphors cannot be successfully applied to metaphors which appear in poems. This paper makes use of the views on metaphor by John Searle and Paul Grice, and discusses how meaning is constructed in …

Stabilizing Forces In Acoustic Cultural Evolution: Comparing Humans And Birds, Daniel C. Mann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Learned acoustic communication systems, like birdsong and spoken human language, can be described from two seemingly contradictory perspectives. On one hand, learned acoustic communication systems can be remarkably consistent. Substantive and descriptive generalizations can be made which hold for a majority of populations within a species. On the other hand, learned acoustic communication systems are often highly variable. The degree of variation is often so great that few, if any, substantive generalizations hold for all populations in a species.

Within my dissertation, I explore the interplay of variation and uniformity in three vocal learning species: budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus), …