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Humor Recognition: A Comparative Analysis, William T. Argent

Dissertations and Theses

There are various approaches to the explanation of humor in the field of humor research. Some of these theories, while providing interesting insight into the phenomenon known as humor, remain limited in their ability to account for how humor is recognized. Others do not even address the issue. This thesis compares five different theories in humor research by analyzing the humorous short story "My Watch" by Mark Twain. These theories are: 1. a typological approach to humor, 2. a social- functional model, 3. incongruity theory, 4. Grice's Cooperative Principle taken from linguistic pragmatics, and 5. the General Theory of Verbal …

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 46, No. 1, Jean-Paul Benowitz, John Lowry Ruth, Paula T. Hradkowsky, Monica Mutzbauer

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• The Mennonites of Pennsylvania: A House Divided
• "Not Only Tradition, but Truth": Legend and Myth Fragments Among Pennsylvania Mennonites
• Mennonite Women and Centuries of Change in America
• "It is Painful to Say Goodbye": A Mennonite Family in Europe and America

A Contrastive Study Of The Rhetorical Structure Employed In English Texts By Native Speakers Of English And Native Speakers Of Spanish, Susan Clark Wykel

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

It has often been observed that students of English as a second language not only speak with a foreign accent but write with a distinctively foreign accent as well. Two apparently conflicting theories have been proposed to account for both success and failure in the acquisition of standard written English rhetorical patterns at the discourse level. On the one hand, Kaplan (1966) claims there is negative transfer of culturally based rhetorical norms from the first language into rhetorical practices in the second. On the other hand, Cummins (1980) points to positive transfer of cognitive/academic language proficiency. In other words, there …

Interrelations Of Prosody, Clause Structure And Discourse Pragmatics In Tarifit Berber, Clive W. Mcclelland Iii

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

The interconnections that exist among prosody, clause structure, and discourse pragmatics have been noted by many linguists (e.g., Halliday 1967; Givon 1983; Longacre 1983). These interconnections have included such phenomena as pausing after a paragraph or episode, and other interconnections have concerned characteristics of certain types of discourse such as narrative in which the use of intonation indicates topic and/or focus. Still others pertain to changes in clause structure which characterize certain sections of a discourse, such as peak, where clauses may display unusual word ordering, inflection, and unique intonation (Longacre 1983). However, few of these interconnections have been studied …

Training Nonconventional Autoclitic And Tact Relationships In Children, Ingolfur Bergsteinsson

Dissertations

To some extent, one understands a complex aspect of human language if one can produce that kind of language in children who have not already acquired it. Skinner’s (1957) concept of autoclitic secondary verbal behavior is the most complex of his various verbal units, and until recently has not been the subject of experimental analysis. Howard and Rice (1988) made the first attempt to generate an autoclitic repertoire in preschool children, and the present study is an attempt to corroborate and extend their findings. They worked with the autoclitic “like” which identifies the accompanying primary verbal behavior as a form …

Review Of Language Conflict And Language Planning, Edited By Ernst Håkon Jahr, Nancy C. Dorian

German Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Vol. 19 No. 2 (1996): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Books Received And Book Notices, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Book Listing for the Vol 19, No 2 Edition of the Pacific Studies Journal

Vol. 19 No. 2 (1996): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Contributors: Vol 19 No. 2, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Contributors list of Vol. 19 (1996): Pacific Studies Full Issue 2

Lingua Franca And Vernacular: Language Use And Language Change On Sikaiana, William W. Donner

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Japanese Students' Perception Of Their Language Learning Strategies, Michiyo Ozawa

Dissertations and Theses

Students' use of language learning strategies (LLSs) is affected by their educational backgrounds and academic requirements, and so are their attitudes toward language learning. This study investigates Japanese students' perception of their English LLSs in different language environments: Japan and the United States.

A group of 43 Japanese students from Otemae College participated in a cultural study program at Portland State University. The group consisted of 28 students who studied for two terms (ST Group) and 15 students who studied for three terms (LT Group).

In this study, a combination of a self-assessment questionnaire, dialogue journals, and a card-ranking activity …

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 45, No. 3, Susan L. F. Isaacs, Donald Roan, Debora Kodish, Lois Fernandez, Karen Buchholz, Susan Fellman Jacob, Ron Schlegel, Mindy Brandt

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Folklife at the Margins: Cultural Conservation for the Schuylkill Heritage Corridor
• The Goschenhoppen Historians: Preserving and Celebrating Pennsylvania German Folk Culture
• The African American Festival of Odunde: Twenty Years on South Street
• Joanna Furnace: Then and Now
• Port Clinton: A Peek Into the Past

A Search For Inflectional Priming Reveals An Effect Of Discourse Type On The Lexical Access Of Inflected Verbs, Gregory Thomson, Bushra Adnan Zawaydeh

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

A cross-modal priming experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that lexical access of verbs marked with a specific inflectional suffix would be facilitated by immediately prior exposure to semantically and contextually unrelated verbs with the same suffix. Such priming was not detected. Rather it turned out that bare root forms showed an absolute advantage over inflected forms in this experimental paradigm. However, an unanticipated finding appeared: responses to inflected forms were affected by the kind of discourse that was being auditorily attended to at the same time of the visual lexical decision. There was no such effect of the …

On Generating The Greek Noun Phrase, Cheryl A. Black, Stephen A. Marlett

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

This article examines the basic noun phrase of Koine Greek and proposes an analysis which is consistent with current views on phrase structure within X-bar theory. The fact that the syntactic distribution of quantifiers, demonstratives and descriptive adjectives is different leads to the (not surprising) proposal that these are distinct word classes in Greek, as in many other languages. The distribution of articles is given serious attention and is found to support the relatively recent proposal (the DP hypothesis) that the traditional noun phrase is best analyzed as a determiner phrase which may then take an NP as its complement.

A Backwards Binding Construction In Zapotec, Cheryl A. Black

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Many of the Zapotecan languages have a unique way of signalling coreference between the subject and the possessor of the object: the subject is null. Such a construction is upsidedown or backwards from commonly described anaphora constructions and its analysis is therefore problematic to current theories. This paper describes the construction and underlines the theoretical problem by arguing against any obvious alternative analyses. An analysis is proposed where it is the tail (rather than the head) of the chain of coreferent elements that is identified, suggesting that this is another place where parameterization is needed.

Improving Communicative Competence In The Teaching Of English As A Foreign Language In Taiwan, Jen-Chieh Chang

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Developing The English Communicative Competence Of Junior College Students In Taiwan: A Curriculum Design Project, Shu-Hsien Huang

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of The Applicability Of Implementing Canada's Immersion Model In A Language Minority Educational Setting In The United States, Lisa Anne Simmers

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Integration Of The American English Lexicon: A Study Of Borrowing In Contemporary Spoken Japanese, Bradford Michael Frischkorn

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 45, No. 2, Thomas E. Gallagher Jr., Robert Troy Boyer, Amos Long Jr., Christine M. Mueseler, Catherine Anne Jacobs, Hugo A. Freund

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Occupational Folklife
• A Fine-Tooth Comb: Atlee Crouse Carries on a Family Tradition
• "Lime and Manure": Agricultural Practices Among the Pennsylvania Germans
• Alcoa, New Kensington: "It was More Than a Job - It was a Way of Life"
• Women's Work: Textile Manufacturing in the Lackawanna Valley
• Working the Seams: African American Professional Performers Moving Between White Public Culture and African American Private Culture

Election Day Puzzle, 1996, Jeremiah Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Jeremiah Farrell's famous 1996 Election Day Puzzle. The puzzle was released the day before the results of the election were announced and the answer to 39 across could have been either CLINTON or BOBDOLE.

The Question Of 'Cultural Language' And Interdialectal Norm In 16th Century Slovakia: A Phonological Analysis Of 16th Century Slovak Administrative-Legal Texts, Mark Richard Lauersdorf

Linguistics Faculty Book Gallery

There is not general agreement among scholars on the degree or type of standardization, or better, normalization, exhibited by Slovak texts before the 18th-19th century codifying efforts of Anton Bernolák, Ľudovít Štúr and their followers. Indeed, disagreement on this issue is greater the earlier the time period under consideration. The present study focuses on the 16th century and the degree and type of standardization/normalization exhibited in a corpus of 152 administrative-legal texts (judicial and municipal records, official correspondence, account books, etc.) from all four major Slovak dialect regions – Moravian, West, Central and East Slovak. The author examines the textual …

Russian Noun Stress And Network Morphology, Dunstan Brown, Greville Corbett, Norman Fraser, Andrew R. Hippisley, Alan Timberlake

Linguistics Faculty Publications

We present a network morphology analysis of Russian noun stress. Nouns have a default fixed stem stress, but some nouns have nondefault stress that may deviate in a way that is determined by the form’s position within the paradigm: different declensions prefer particular patterns as their nondefault choices. Membership of a particular declension, it is argued, constrains the rang eof possible stress patterns. Stress is represented as a hierarchy with limited deviation in terms of number and, less often, case. Indices in the declension hierarchy are addressed to nodes in the stress hierarchy. These indices correspond to rank orderings that …

Russian Expressive Derivation: A Network Morphology Account, Andrew R. Hippisley

Linguistics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Families And The Co-Construction Of Shared Experiences: A Narrative Approach, Angela S. Jacobs

Masters Theses

This study examines how families co-construct joint accounts of shared experiences. Two foster families participated in the study, and were asked to recall information about the decision-making process of becoming a foster family. Through the use of narrative, each foster parent created an individual, detailed chronology of events that took place, including emotional reactions to events, types of decisions made, conversations held with each other as well as all outsiders, and any conflicts that arose during this process. Through conversational discourse, each family transformed individual experiences into one co-created story.

To understand how these individuals came to create such experiences, …

Meigu County Yi Tone, Andy Eatough

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

No abstract provided.

Front Matter For Sil-Und Work Papers Vol. 40 (1996)

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

No abstract provided.

Verb Agreement And Case Marking In Burushaski, Stephen R. Willson

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Burushaski verb agreement and case marking phenomena are complex and have not been described adequately by any current theory of syntax. In particular, no explanation has yet been given as to why a variety of nominals can trigger agreement in the verbal prefix. In some cases the apparent subject triggers this agreement, in others the direct object appears to do so, in others the indirect object, in others the possessor of the direct object, in others a benefactive or source nominal. Also the constraints on the usage of ergative, absolutive and oblique case, and other indicators of grammatical relations on …

Strategy Use In Process Writing: A Survey Of Esl Students' Strategy Use In L1 Writing And In L2 Writing, Mei-Ya Jung

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Nowadays, an increasing number of students from different countries study in the United States. These English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students have to use English as a necessary tool to make instruction comprehensible and to express their own meaning in the academic context. Of the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), writing is generally recognized as most difficult to acquire. This paper examines the question whether students' first language (L1) writing skills may be available for them to use in the process of second language (L2) writing.