Digital Commons Network^™

Hykss: Hybrid Keyword And Semantic Search, Andrew J. Zitzelberger, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Del T. Scott

Faculty Publications

Keyword search suffers from a number of issues: ambiguity, synonymy, and an inability to handle semantic constraints. Semantic search helps resolve these issues but is limited by the quality of annotations which are likely to be incomplete or imprecise. Hybrid search, a search technique that combines the merits of both keyword and semantic search, appears to be a promising solution. In this paper we describe and evaluate HyKSS, a hybrid search system driven by extraction ontologies for both annotation creation and query interpretation. For displaying results, HyKSS uses a dynamic ranking algorithm. We show that over data sets of short …

Variables Affecting L2 Gains During Study Abroad, Wendy Baker-Smemoe, Dan Dewey, Jennifer Brown, Rob A. Martinsen

Faculty Publications

Second language (L2) gains during study abroad have been related to several variables including length of stay (Llanes, 2011), language use (Martinsen, Baker, Dewey, Bown, & Johnson, 2010), and social network development (Isabelli‐ García, 2006), among others. However, most studies have investigated only a few predictors in single study abroad programs. While these findings are helpful, larger scale studies are needed to better understand the variables that contribute to L2 gains across several different cultures and learner groups. The current study examines predictors of L2 gain of more than 100 native English speakers who participated in study abroad in Mexico, …

Teachers And Teacher Aides Initiating Five-Year-Olds Into Science, Anne M. Thwaite

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Apprenticing children into discourses necessary for success at school begins at a very early age. In this paper I look at five-years-olds being introduced to Science and Technology while at the same time being involved in talk around literacy. The various adults who surround the children engage differentially in talk and action while merging the discourses of literacy and science. Data for this study were obtained during the course of the project ‘Early literacy through science in Indigenous and culturally diverse communities’, funded by Edith Cowan University in Australia from 2009–2010, in which the author was involved as a researcher. …

Earthy Concreteness And Anti-Hypotheticalism In Amazonian Quichua Discourse, Janis B. Nuckolls, Tod D, Swanson

Faculty Publications

This paper attempts to weave together a number of strands of research conducted by the authors among Amazonian Quichua-speaking people in the Napo and Pastaza provinces of eastern Ecuador. We are attempting to elucidate something that we have both observed, which we are calling an earthy concreteness in the orientation of Runa, which privileges the contextualization of utterances, thoughts, and ideas to such an extent that statements about typical behaviors and generalizations are perceived to be both morally and aesthetically objectionable. This orientation is therefore highly problematic for hypothetical questioning, which is a major tool for social scientific research. In …

Mythologizing Change: Examining Rhetorical Myth As A Strategic Change Management Discourse, Jacob D. Rawlins

Faculty Publications

This article explores how rhetorical myth can be used as a tool for persuading employees to accept change and to maintain consensus during the process. It defines rhetorical myth using three concepts: chronographia (a rhetorical interpretation of history), epideictic prediction (defining a present action by assigning praise and blame to both past and future), and communal markers (using Burkean identification and rhetorically defined boundary objects to define a community). The article reports on a 3-year ethnographic study that documents the development of a rhetorical myth at Iowa State University’s Printing Services department as it underwent changes to its central software …

Language In Human Life: A Ge Course Targeting English Language Learners, Gail Shuck

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

The presenter will describe a cross-cultural course, Language in Human Life, designed to meet several university needs: 1) To provide a course for non-majors that fulfills a long-standing gap in general education courses at the presenter’s institution that introduce students to linguistic thought, 2) to be a magnet course for speakers of English as an additional language in order to allow all students to learn about each others’ languages, and 3) to offer a linguistically accessible course for lower-proficiency users of English that is taught by an instructor with ESL expertise but that fulfills a university requirement for all students. …

Language And The Law, Tineke Scholten

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

This is an upper division course that has been certified as a General Education Course in the area of “Lifelong Learning”. The course also is part of a “Social Justice” GE Path, which encourages students to select their GE courses around a particular theme. The course draws students from a variety of undergraduate majors, including Psychology, Business Law, Political Science, History and Sociology.

The course investigates the role that language and linguistics play in the legal written and oral discourse. In doing so, it hopes to serve two purposes: (1) to illustrate and explicate essential qualities of natural languages and …

Needed Research On The Englishes Of Appalachia, Bridget L. Anderson, Jennifer Cramer, Bethany K. Dumas, Beverly Olson Flanigan, Michael Montgomery

Linguistics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Non-Native Speaker Attentional Capacity And The Processing Of English Phrasal Verb Constructions, Aubrey Dillard

Theses and Dissertations

The effect of syntactic and semantic complexity on attention and processing in second language acquisition (SLA) has long been of interest to both practitioners and researchers of SLA. Theoretical models of attention in SLA (Schmidt 1990, Tomlin and Villa 1994, Robinson 1995) have spurred a great deal of empirical research in the field, and VanPatten's (1994, 2004, 2007) work on the effect of attention to form and meaning on comprehension of input has been very influential in the field. From a language processing viewpoint, Clahsen and Felser (2006, 2009) have hypothesized that the different ways in which native and nonnative …

A Prequel To Law And Revolution: A Long Lost Manuscript Of Harold J. Berman Comes To Light, John Witte Jr., Christopher J. Manzer

Faculty Articles

The late Harold Berman was a pioneering scholar of Soviet law, legal history, jurisprudence, and law and religion; he is best known today for his monumental Law and Revolution series on the Western legal tradition. Berman wrote a short book, Law and Language, in the early 1960s, but it was not published until 2013. In this early text, he adumbrated many of the main themes of his later work, including Law and Revolution. He also anticipated a good deal of the interdisciplinary and comparative methodology that we take for granted today, even though it was rare in the …

Time, Perspectives, Verbs, And Imagining Events, Jeffrey P. Hong

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

During the processing of verbs, readers form internal representations of the events described by those verbs. Two key elements in the construction of event representations are temporal information, given by the verbs that describe the represented events, and the visual perspective from which the events are represented. The current study is composed of two experiments aimed at examining the roles these two factors play in event representation. Specifically, the study aimed to determine how temporal information and visual perspective are represented during event imagination.

Experiment 1 investigated the role of temporal information associated with verbs, given by grammatical aspect (GA) …

Examining The Intersection Of The Cognitive Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Bilingual Brain, Irina Rabkina

Scripps Senior Theses

Two conflicting findings characterize cognitive processing accompanying bilingualism. The “bilingual advantage” refers to improved cognitive performance for bilingual compared to monolingual participants. Most bilingual advantages fall under the umbrella of cognitive control mechanisms, most frequently demonstrated using the Stroop task and the Simon task (e.g., Bialystok, 2008; Coderre, Van Heuven, & Conklin, 2013). The “bilingual disadvantage,” on the other hand, refers to bilinguals’ diminished performance on tasks that require word retrieval or switching between languages. This study examined the intersection of the bilingual advantage and the bilingual disadvantage to investigate whether they stem from a single cognitive control process. The …

Needed Research On The Englishes Of Appalachia, Bridget L. Anderson, Jennifer Cramer, Bethany K. Dumas, Beverly O. Flanigan, Michael Montgomery

English Faculty Publications

Information about the 79th annual meeting of the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) organized by Jennifer Cramer at the University of Kentucky on April 2012 in Lexington, Kentucky. Topics discussed at the meeting includes current state of research studies on linguistic processes in Appalachia, traditional dialectological and ethnographic. The meeting also featured panel experts including Bridget L. Anderson, Michael Montgomery and Walt Wolfram.

The (Statistical) Power Of Mechanical Turk, Amelia Kimball

Purdue Linguistic Association Symposium

In this paper, I argue for the use of Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) in language research. AMT is an online marketplace of paid workers who may be used as subjects, which can greatly increase the statistical power of studies quickly and with minimal funding. I will show that—despite some obvious limitations of using distant subjects—properly designed experiments completed on AMT are trustworthy, cheap, and much faster than traditional face-to-face data collection. Not only this, but AMT workers may help with data analysis, which can greatly increase the scope of research that one researcher may carry out. This paper will first …

A Unified Analysis Of Classifiers And Reduplication Across Nominal And Verbal Domains, Charles Lam

Purdue Linguistic Association Symposium

This paper discusses the use of classifiers and reduplication in Cantonese. I propose a unified account for the syntax-semantics of both nouns and verbs, based on two functional layers: individuation and quantification. I demonstrate an abstract semantics that handles the interaction between classifiers and reduplication without reference to syntactic categories. Quantification (reduplication) and individuation (classifiers) can be treated as general semantic functions that subsume category-specific functions. The analysis also separates quantification from individuation to provide a natural explanation of durative readings of reduplicated unbounded events.

The Role Of The Input In Young Children’S Speech Production Is Modulated By Syllable Position, Yuanyuan Wang

Purdue Linguistic Association Symposium

The aim of the current study is to investigate the role of the input on an English-speaking child’s production of fricatives in onset and coda positions. Transcript data from a child-mother dyad from Providence Corpus (Demuth, Culbertson & Alter 2006) in CHILDES database (MacWhinney 2000) was examined. The child and the adult production frequency of fricatives in both onset and coda positions were calculated. The results suggested the role of the input in child’s production was modulated by syllable position; more specifically, the child’s production of fricatives was predicted by the mother’s input frequency better in coda position than in …

Proceedings Of The 9th Pla Symposium, Charles Bradley, Charles Lam, Mengxi Lin

Purdue Linguistic Association Symposium

This is the combined conference proceedings of the 9th annual Purdue Linguistics Association (PLA) Symposium.

Engagement Differences For 2-Year-Olds Identified As Late Talker, Brianna E. Hendrickson, Shari L. Deveney

Special Education and Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

The investigators compared engagement in language-rich activities for 2-year-olds identified as late talkers and their typically developing peers. Participants included twelve 2-year-old children ranging in age from 24- to 33-months of age (M = 27 months; SD= 2.906), three were identified as being typically developing, five were identified as having expressive-only language delay, and four were identified as having expressive and receptive language delay. From videotaped interactions, child behaviors were coded as unengaged (e.g., uninvolved with any specific people, objects, or symbols), onlooking (e.g., watching researcher or parent activity, but not taking part), person engaged (e.g., involved solely …

Truth Is, Sentence-Initial Shell Nouns Are Showing Up Bare, Laurel Smith Stvan

Linguistics & TESOL Faculty Publications & Presentations - Archive

In one subtype of English shell noun construction, the noun serves as the subject in a pre-clausal unit, e.g., “The thing is.” Shell noun NPs have mainly been investigated synchronically, often as case studies of particular noun types, with the bare forms only ever briefly noted. Data from COCA and COHA was examined to collect the range of sentence-initial bare form shell nouns, to track any changes in their use occurring between 1810 and 2012. The findings suggest that, referentially, these abstract bare forms function differently than bare concrete count nouns, and distributionally, that bare shell forms are used increasingly …

Position Class Preclusion: A Computational Resolution Of Mutually Exclusive Affix Positions, Rebecca O. Hale

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

In Paradigm Function Morphology, it is usual to model affix position classes with an ordered sequence of inflectional rule blocks. Each rule block determines how (or whether) a particular affix position is filled. In this model, competition among inflectional rules is assumed to be limited to members of the same rule block; thus, the appearance of an affix in one position cannot be precluded by the appearance of an affix in another position. I present evidence that apparently disconfirms this restriction and suggests that a more general conception of rule competition is necessary. The data appear to imply that an …

Pronominal Complex Predicates In Colloquial Persian, Ghazaleh Kazeminejad

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Pronominal complex predicates in colloquial Persian are periphrastic constructions with an idiosyncratic syntactic pattern. They show a peculiar behavior compared to the regular agreement system in Persian, and they are the only construction in Persian which requires the obligatory presence of a pronominal enclitic. This work is an attempt to analyze this construction in order to find its function. For this purpose, a lexical semantic classification of them was proposed, which helped in presenting a new analysis. It was found out that this construction is used to express a particular diathesis in which the topic of the sentence (determined according …

Effect Of Age, Education, And Bilingualism On Confrontation Naming In Older Illiterate And Low-Educated Populations, Sameer Ashaie, Loraine Obler

Publications and Research

We investigated the effects of age as well as the linked factors of education and bilingualism on confrontation naming in rural Kashmir by creating a culturally appropriate naming test with pictures of 60 objects.We recruited 48 cognitively normal participants whose ages ranged from 18 to 28 and from 60 to 85. Participants in our study were illiterate monolinguals (� = 18) and educated Kashmiri-Urdu bilinguals (� = 30). Hierarchical multiple regression revealed that younger adults performed better than older adults (� < 0.01) and the age effect was quadratic (age²). It also showed Age X Education and Age X L2 Speaking interactions predicted naming performance.The Age X …

The Effects Of Anxiety On Second Language Acquisition, Jingjing Tu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anxiety occurs in second/foreign language learning. A large body of previous research has demonstrated the effect of language anxiety on second/foreign language learning. Many studies have found anxiety has a debilitating effect on language learning. Factors associated with anxiety have also been investigated widely. This study focuses on the effects of the interlocutor(s) and communication contexts on language anxiety experienced by a group of ESL students studying at a flagship university in the Southeastern United States. A background questionnaire and an adapted instrument called Second Language Speaking Anxiety Scale were utilized in order to report the anxiety that students experienced …

Study Abroad: An Essential Part Of Language Acquisition, Emillie Kenne

Honors Program Theses

The present qualitative study will demonstrate and provide evidence from personal interviews that other students had similar invaluable experiences after studying abroad. Two direct quotes from these interviews portray the impact studying abroad had on them. Lisa, a participant in the present study, stated, “It is impossible to explain to someone the emotions of living in a strange place with strange people and learning to love them in such a short amount of time.” Another participant, Rachel, expressed that, “You have lived experiences nobody here can ever understand, and you made memories you can try to share with people, and …

Egiazko Misterioa Euskararen: La Politique Linguistique, Les Methodes Educatives, Et La Revitalisation De La Langue Basque En France Et En Espagne Du Vingtieme Siecle Jusquau Present, Rose Cooper-Finger

Scripps Senior Theses

The Basque people and their language have been politically oppressed for centuries. I examine the history of the Basque language and how its oppression and revitalization have been shaped by the language policies of France and Spain, the two countries spanned by the Basque country. I focus my research and predictions on the French Basque Country, which is currently subject to a more oppressive language policy than Spanish Basque Country. The number of Basque-speaking bilinguals in the French Basque Country is decreasing and attitudes regarding instruction of the language have become more apathetic. I explore governmental, community, and combined efforts …

Staying Alive: Dynamic Equivalence Theory And Film Adaptation, Sarah Welch

Honors Projects

Translation is a task that must be done every day in order for the world to function. A perfect translation is impossible, because there is no way to provide exact equivalents of meaning in different languages. However, methods such as dynamic equivalence focus on conveying the message of a text in terms that a new recipient audience can understand. Dynamic equivalence could apply to all textual translations, not just Bible translation. If this is the case, then dynamic equivalence may be applied to adaptations of different types of text, such as book to film adaptations. Film adaptations are popular, largely …

Linguistic And Audio-Video Collections In Ethnobiology, K. David Harrison, Karim Sariahmed , '13

Linguistics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Gyalthang Southern Khams Tibetan: A Case Study Of Language Attitudes And Shift In Shangri-La, Simon Peters

Anthós

I begin by offering some highlighting certain aspects of Tibetan language variation with particular attention to the local Gyalthang variety. In the following section I introduce Gyalthang’s touristic Old Town and the language situation there, exploring how the highly divergent nature and mutual unintelligibility of Tibetan language varieties inform stakeholder language attitudes. I place Gyalthang Tibetan into the UNESCO framework for assessing language vitality to explore the interactions of these attitudes and the implications they have for the maintenance of the local Tibetan variety. I conclude with a discussion of what language shift in Gyalthang reveals about language shift in …

Book Review: Understanding The Misunderstandings In Pilot-Controller Dialogue, Jason M. Newcomer

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Misunderstandings in any environment can be detrimental, if not counterproductive, to the intentions, expectations, or objective(s) of any communication, but in complex airspace congested by heavy traffic, pilot-controller transmissions, and various meteorological phenomena, they can be catastrophic. Barshi and Farris combine 45 years of aviation experience, 20 years of related research, and advanced education with sound methodology to deliver a well-balanced combination of theoretical and practical work to the fields of aviation, human factors, and psychology. Though Misunderstandings in ATC Communications, the authors guide readers through a series of experiments, literature, and transcribed air traffic control recordings to explore …

Exploring The Explanatory Power Of Semitic And Egyptian In Uto-Aztecan, Dirk Elzinga, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

The factors that influence English speakers to classify a consonant as ambisyllabic are explored in 581 bisyllabic words. The /b/ in habit, for example, was considered ambisyllabic when a participant chose hab as the first part of the word and bit as the second. Geminate spelling was found to interact with social variables; older participants and more educated speakers provided more ambisyllabic responses. The influence of word-level phonotactics on syllabification was also evident. A consonant such as the medial /d/ in standard is attested as the second consonant in the coda of many English words (e.g. lard), as well …