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Nasalization In Huajuapan Mixtec, Stephen A. Marlett

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

No abstract provided.

Seri Vowels And The Obligatory Contour Principle, Stephen A. Marlett, Mary B. Moser

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

No abstract provided.

Writing, Teacher Training, And Grammar, Jim Meyer

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

In many English syntax courses aimed at future middle and high school teachers of English, we perpetuate grammar separated from any meaningful context. We ought instead to use the students' own writing as the basis for the syntactic analysis of English; this allows them to break out of the workbook mode of teaching and learning and encourages them to see syntax as a dynamic field of research.

The Paragraph: Towards A Richer Understanding, Jim Meyer, Brendan Cooney

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

Paragraph analysis has typically proceeded by doing autopsies on polished final texts. In a fuller analysis, however, we must consider the choices the writer made before arriving at the final text. In this paper we examine a college student's paper, first examining an analysis based on vocabulary changes (Vocabulary Management Profile) and second referring to an interview with the writer about her paragraphing choices.

Dakota Sioux Objects, Thomas M. Pinson

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

This article is a study of certain syntactic and morphological processes in Dakota Sioux within the Relational Grammar framework. There are three main topics dealt with as they relate to verb agreement: advancements to direct object, Possessor Ascensions, and Clause Union. All three of these topics distinguish between direct objects, indirect objects and obliques.

Verb agreement is examined and shown to consist of two distinct systems: person agreement and number agreement. These two systems give empirical evidence to the support of the multilevel relational network of Unaccusative and Reflexive clauses. It is also shown that an analysis which posits advancements …

Nontonal Floating Features As Grammatical Morphemes, James S. Roberts

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

The concept of floating tones is no longer controversial in tonal analysis; important insights into the morphology of numerous tonal languages have relied on the positing of morphemes that are composed simply of prosodically unlicensed tones. Employing data from three of Africa's four major language families, this paper builds on this notion by recognizing the existence of nontonal floating features -- morphemes composed solely of phonological features that have no segmental support. The first example, from Kanembu (Nilo-Sarahan, Chad), shows that the [+ATR] feature is the sole marker of incompletive aspect in the verb. Again, in Mafa and Podoko (Chadic, …

The Existential Use Of Positional Verbs In Texmelucan Zapotec, Charles H. Speck

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

In Texmelucan Zapotec there is no single verb with just an existential meaning. Rather, eleven positional verbs cover the same range of meaning that one verb covers in other languages. Each of these eleven verbs may occur as predicate of the locative clause, the existential clause or the possessive clause, and none of them occur as predicate of the attributive clause or of the identifying clause. This article explores the syntax of clauses determined by these predicates and the semantic parameters by which the Zapotec speaker controls their use. The results are then compared with what is known about existential …

Variability In Negation In African American Vernacular English, Tracey L. Weldon

Faculty Publications

For quantitative sociolinguists, one of the goals of investigating variability in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is to understand better the nature of the grammar. Specifically, researchers have been interested in whether the variation observed in AAVE is inherent to a single system or the result of interaction between two separate systems of AAVE and Standard English (SE). Variability in negation is an area of the AAVE grammar that has received minimal attention, but one that may offer some interesting insights into the nature of the system or systems at work. This article provides a framework to describe the variability …

Finding The "Two" In Diglossia, John C. Paolillo

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

Sociolinguists generally agree that a diglossic situation is one in which a single speech community employs two or more varieties of language, a H(igh) variety and a L(ow) variety, for different communicative purposes. Ferguson’s (1959) classic definition also includes a structural component: the two forms of language are varieties of the same language, and hence related, but “highly divergent” from one another, more so than a dialect in relation to its standard language. However there is little agreement on this point, and different researchers give different characterizations of how divergent H and L must be. The theoretical status of intermediate …

Lexical Borrowing, Creolization And Basic Vocabulary, George L. Huttar

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

This paper is concerned with two sets of questions, one from semantics and cognitive linguistics, one from diachronic linguistics and in particular creole studies. From the cognitive-semantic side, we are dealing with issues of “basic” vocabulary: what sorts of lexical items, or, more precisely, what sorts of concepts, are, in some useful sense or other (say, psychologically more salient), more “basic” than others? From the diachronic linguistics side, the issues concern likelihood of change through contact: “For what sorts of concepts are lexical items most readily replaced by items from new sources, and which ones are more resistant to such …

Primary Stress Assignment In Brazilian Portuguese, Susan Gary Walters

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

Brazilians display a great interest in the prosody of their own language. Much classroom time is spent counting syllables, enumerating detailed rules for stress assignment and memorizing rules of diacritics used in the orthography (e.g., Cegalla 1991). Stress assignment and its rules are one of the topics covered on the vestibular, the nationwide university entrance exam (Savioli 1991:131ff). Students in elementary schools study syllable structure and division. Even by the second grade they know such words as paroxítono ‘a word whose stress falls on the next to last syllable’ and antepenúltimo ‘antepenultimate’. The problem is that many of the rules …

Phonetic Emphasis In Tamil, James E. Vinton

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

The present paper is based on a study conducted following Balasubramanian’s (1981) method: a native speaker was asked to emphasize a given item in a sentence and instrumental measurements were made as to which phonetic cues the speaker used to accomplish that task. While Balasubramanian asserted that emphasis is marked mainly by an increased length of certain segments, the findings in the present paper indicate that Tamil emphasis is marked by a combination of several phonetic correlates. Some of the confusion about Tamil stress arises from a failure by several authors to distinguish clearly between word-level stress, sentence-level emphasis, and …

Subjectless Sentences In English, Patricia Willess Reiman

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

One of the goals of modern linguistics is to develop a model of Universal Grammar which captures natural language features that are universal, while also accounting for variation among languages. Thus a much-discussed phenomenon in Government and Binding theory is pro-drop (Jaeggli and Safir 1989). Pro-drop is the parameter which determines whether the subject of an independent clause must be overt or may be left empty (Crystal 1991:279). According to the definition given above, it would appear that English is a pro-drop language. However, Crystal (1991:279) cites English as an example of a non-pro-drop language. If this is correct and …

Extraction D'Un Vocabulaire Bilingue: Outils Et Methodes, Deryle W. Lonsdale

Faculty Publications

Cet articele presente les efforts lics a l'elaboration d'un vocabulaire bilingue pour un systeme de traduction. Nous presentons la methodologic suivie pour identifier, normaliser et mettre en correspondance les vocabulaires anglais et francais, puises dans un corpus de textes prealablement traduites: analyse du texte source, compilation d'un index (mots simples et syntagmes), identification et traitement des composes nominaux, integration des ressources terminologiques du client, alignement atomatique des textes source et cible, extraction des traductions du vocabulaire source, redaction du vocabuleire et son recodage en forme de donnees lexicales. Nouse decrivons aussi les outils que nous avons concus et developpes pour …

Large-Scale Machine Translation: An Interlingua Approach, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Alexander M. Franz, John R. R. Leavitt

Faculty Publications

In this paper we discuss the design and development of an interlingua for a large-scale MT project. We also discuss how the resulting KANT interlingua constrains complexity, supports staged development, evolves in a balanced fashion, and seeks maximal coverage. We address issues such as granularity of the data representation, its specification, the types of information it encodes, and how it supports a modular system architecture. Our experience shows that through a careful, reasoned design and implementation effort, it is possible to achieve multilingual target-language generation for extensive technical domains.

Linguistic Theory Applied To Teaching Practice: Looking Through Linguists' Eyes At An Urban Esl Classroom, Caroline Mary El-Kadi

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

The quality of instruction in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs is of utmost concern to urban educators as more and more non-native speakers settle in urban areas and need better language skills to participate fully in American society. Training of ESL instructors is often difficult, given the limited resources of most programs. In ESL, a close study of classroom discourse has long been considered particularly useful, but undirected classroom observation is of limited use because what novices notice in the classroom is often inaccurate or irrelevant. Ways are needed to focus beginning teachers' observations. Over several decades, discourse analysts have devised methods …

Scientific Text Structure Awareness: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Tertiary Students From Different Language Backgrounds, Catherine Mcloughlin

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Research in both first and second language reading has shown that awareness of text structure, or rhetorical organisation is related to superior recall of main ideas from expository prose passages. The present study investigates awareness of scientific text structure among tertiary students from different language backgrounds. In this investigation, four reading passages containing two rhetorical text structures found in scientific discourse, comparison/contrast and problem/solution are employed. Meyer’s (1975) hierarchical content structure analysis was used to analyse the texts into top, high, mid and low level ideas corresponding to main and supporting ideas. The research questions were centred around three major …

Picking Up The Principles: An Applied Linguistic Analysis Of The Legal Problem Genre, Colin J. Beasley

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Legal study requires not only the learning of new content, but also the learning of a new academic discourse with its own lexico-semantic, syntactic, and discoursal features. This thesis explores the answering of legal problem questions as an important and distinct new genre that undergraduates studying law units need to achieve competence in. In order to delineate the general features of this genre, systemic functional linguistic (SFL) analyses were performed on a series of texts (a tutorial question, an assignment question, and an examination question) written by lecturers in the introductory Commerce course Principles of Commercial Law as exemplars of …

Factors Affecting The Learning Of English As A Second Language Macroskills Among Tongan Secondary Students, Mele F. Latu

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study aimed at determining factors which might have impact on the learning of English as a second language macroskills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) by Tongan secondary learners. The study was correlational in design and it worked from a synthetic perspective in that it looked at the way in which many aspects of language are interrelated to make the whole language system. The study looked at learning English language macroskills from a multiple interdisciplinary perspective taking into consideration linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic factors and classroom and bilingual education perspectives. The framework for language use required the learner to know the …

English As An International Language: A Sociolinguistic Analysis Of The Japanese Experience, Marek M. Koscielecki

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This study was designed to investigate the nature of English as an International Language (ElL) in Japan from both a diachronic and a synchronic point of view, drawing some comparison with countries in South East Asia and Africa. Using comparative material from socio-historical and sociolinguistic literature from other countries it was possible to examine the use and cultivation of English in Japan and compare it with that in other countries where English fulfils different roles. The material on Japan was supplemented by research based on data obtained from questionnaires both at the high school level and within business corporations. From …

Review Of "Structure De La Phrase Et Théorie Du Liage" By H.-G. Obenauer And A. Zribi-Hertz, Donna Jo Napoli

Linguistics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Great Tone Split And Central Karen, William G. Kauffman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a comparative reconstruction of the tones and initial consonants of Proto-Central Karen based on the languages Eastern Kayah, Western Kayah, Geba, and Padaung. Other Karen languages are referred to but not studied to the same detail.

The study focuses on the great tone split that affected nearly all the languages of Southeast Asia, including Central Karen. I show that an understanding of the great tone split is crucial if one is to discover the phonological characteristics of Proto-Central Karen syllable-initial consonants.

In agreement with Haudricourt's (1946) analysis of Proto-Karen, I conclude that Proto-Central Karen had three proto-tones …

Review Of "Syntax And The Lexicon" By T. Stowell And E. Wehrli, Donna Jo Napoli

Linguistics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

John Lynch's Review Of Terry Crowley's Beach-La-Mar To Bislama: The Emergence Of A National Language In Vanuatu, John Lynch

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Richard Moyle's Review Of Ingjerd Hoëm, Even Hovdhaugen, And Arnfinn Muruvik Vonen's Kupu Mai Te Tutolu: Tokelau Oral Literature, Richard Moyle

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Interrogatives In Yanomám, Richard A. Thiele

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a general linguistic description of yes-no and information questions in Yanomám (a member of the Yanomami language family of Brazil and Venezuela) in the descriptive/typological tradition, including morphosyntax and semantics, appropriate responses, certain discourse-pragmatic conditions of their use (such as bias and focus), and intonation patterns.

Some things in the Yanomám language that are typologically unusual are an information question system that utilizes just one interrogative word, interaction of temporal-evidential particles with questions, and the occurrence of hortative constructions in questions.

My sources of information include the limited published works and articles on the language, previously unpublished …

Imyan Tehit Phonology, Ronald Gerhard Hesse

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a description of the phonology of Imyan Tehit, a West Papuan language of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, couched in the framework of templatic syllable theory espoused by Junko Itô. It is based on 18 months (1989-1991) of linguistic fieldwork, in which the author and his family lived among the Tehit of Haha village, learning their language and culture.

Imyan Tehit has a maximal syllable template [CCVVC], obligatory onsets except word-initially, and a rare liquid coda. Syllable onset, nucleus, and coda are shown to be equally autonomous sub-syllabic structures. If they are complex or branching, they attract syllable stress. …

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 43, No. 1, Thomas E. Gallagher Jr., James D. Mcmahon Jr., Gary M. Johnston, Monica Mutzbauer, Robert P. Stevenson

Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine

• Causes of Diversity Between Old Order Amish Settlements
• Daniel Danner, Woodturner: An Early 19th-Century Rural Craftsman in Central Pennsylvania
• "Truth Somewhere in the Telling": The Legend of the Wigton Massacre
• The Connections Between Pennsylvania and the Palatinate in Popular 20th-Century German Literature
• The Story of One Old-Time Country Store

Review Of "But, Only, Just: Focusing Adverbial Change In Modern English, 1500-1900" By T. Nevalainen, Donna Jo Napoli

Linguistics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

A Grammar Sketch Of Dəməna, Cindy S. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a description of the morphology and syntax of Dəməna, a Chibchan language of northern Colombia. Dəməna is an SOV language with postpositions and genitive-nominal, noun-adjective word orders.

Unusual features of Dəməna include: case marking suffixes which occur as phrasal affixes, a fusion of person marking and deixis in verbal suffixes, and interaction of temporal and special deixis on question suffixes.

Dəməna exhibits more agreement than would be expected. Causative constructions may contain two different direct object person agreement prefixes side by side on a single verb. In cases of advancement to direct object, the same argument may …