Digital Commons Network^™

Nature Or Nurture In English Academic Writing: Korean And American Rhetorical Patterns, Sunok Kim

Theses and Dissertations

For many years, linguists, ESL writing teachers, and especially students have puzzled over the phenomenon where non-native English writers' sentences are grammatically correct, but their paragraphs and complete essays often appear illogical to native English speaking readers. From the perspective of Kaplan's original contrastive rhetoric theory where American rhetoric is "linear," Korean L2 writers' apparently circular rhetoric causes problems. Even though Korean writers are trying to write paragraphs that are logical for native English readers, this illogical output results in Korean ESL students being perceived as poor writers. In order to discover more about the nature of the rhetorical problems …

Above, On, Or Shang (上)? Language And Spatial Representations Among English–Mandarin Bilinguals, Wei Xing Toh, Lidia Suãrez

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study investigated if exposure to spatial language could affect spatial cognition in English-Mandarin bilinguals by focusing on contact/noncontact distinctions, an area that has been a source of contention in the language-and-thought literature. Sixty-three participants were first primed with sentences containing spatial terms (e.g., above, on) before performing a spatial decision task. Approximately half of the participants (n = 33) were primed in English; for the remaining participants (n = 30), primes comprising Mandarin spatial terms―which mark spatial distinctions differently than in English (e.g., shang in Mandarin signifies both above and on in English)―were employed instead. Our findings revealed that …

Advancing Digital Skills For Problem Solving In Technology-Rich Environments, Jill Castek, Gloria Jacobs

Presentations and Publications

Digital and disciplinary literacies are not simply tools or cognitive behaviors. They have the potential to provide opportunities for students to better understand themselves, their communities, and their world. The presentation examines ways of conceptualizing and understanding digital literacies and disciplinary learning and consider implications for teacher education and community outreach efforts.

The Interactional Production Of Race And Religious Identity In An Urban Catholic School, Robert Jean Leblanc

Journal of Catholic Education

This paper describes how students in an urban Catholic school draw on racial and religious categories to construct classroom-specific identities during coursework. When students engage with each other in classroom discussions, they use broadly circulating, institutional, and event-level categories to position one another, and in doing so articulate who may speak and participate in class talk. This paper draws from interactional ethnographic data, showing how Vietnamese American and African American students used different religious and racial categories to delimit the interactional floor during class time and in the process exclude speakers.

La producción de las interacciones de la identidad racial …

From Lingua To Glossa: Linguistics In Fair Open Access, Johan Rooryck

Open Access Day

Johan Rooryck with be presenting from a remote location via GoToMeeting.

A description of his presentation is below:

Open Access publishing is often said to be the future of academic journals, but the actual move from a subscription model to an Open Access model is not easily achieved. The transition from Lingua to Glossa provides proof of concept that it can be done. This transition was made possible by our model of Fair Open Access, a model for flipping subscription journals to Open Access. This model has 3 main features:

1. Discipline-based: Linguistics in Open Access (LingOA, www.lingoa.eu) helps flipping …

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Single Versus Concurrent Systems: Nominal Classification In Mian, Greville G. Corbett, Sebastian Fedden, Raphael Finkel

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The Papuan language Mian allows us to refine the typology of nominal classification. Mian has two candidate classification systems, differing completely in their formal realization but overlapping considerably in their semantics. To determine whether to analyse Mian as a single system or concurrent systems we adopt a canonical approach. Our criteria – orthogonality of the systems (we give a precise measure), semantic compositionality, morphosyntactic alignment, distribution across parts of speech, exponence, and interaction with other features – point mainly to an analysis as concurrent systems. We thus improve our analysis of Mian and make progress with the typology of nominal …

Cloud‐Based Text Analytics Harvesting, Cleaning And Analyzing Corporate Earnings Conference Calls, Michael Chuancai Zhang, Vikram Gazula, Dan Stone, Hong Xie

Commonwealth Computational Summit

No abstract provided.

Cloud-Based Text Analytics: Harvesting, Cleaning And Analyzing Corporate Earnings Conference Calls, Michael Chuancai Zhang, Vikram Gazula, Dan Stone, Hong Xie

Commonwealth Computational Summit

Does management language cohesion in earnings conference calls matter to the capital market? As a part of the research on the above question, and taking advantage of the modern IT technologies, this project:

• harvested 115,882 earnings conference call transcripts from SeekingAlpha.com
• parsed and structured 89,988 transcripts using regular expressions in Stata
• analyzed 179,976 text files using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which
• saved almost 2 years (675 days) of the project time

Una Entrevista Con José Plácido Ruiz Campillo Sobre La Gramática Operativa Y Cognitiva Y Su Estado En La Enseñanza Del Español Como Lengua Extranjera, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Cultural Re-Presentation And Translation : Chinese And English Anthologies Of Tang Poetry, Chi Man, Cecilia Chan

Lingnan Theses

Due to its unique prestige, classical Chinese poetry written during the Tang dynasty is often anthologised. These anthologies serve various purposes (e.g. recreational, educational, or both), but they are generally expected to feature works high in aesthetic value, and represent the culture wherein they are produced. While the functions of anthologies are seldom contested, representations of Tang poetry in anthologies have many different manifestations.

Using China’s most famous anthology, Tangshi sanbaishou 唐詩三百首, as an opening case study, research shows that within its home culture, the anthologising of Tang poetry has a long history by itself, and anthologists negotiate between ideological …

The N170 Erp Component Differs In Laterality, Distribution, And Association With Continuous Reading Measures For Deaf And Hearing Readers, Karen Emmorey, Katherine J. Midgley, Casey B. Kohen, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Phillipp J. Holcomb

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

The temporo-occipitally distributed N170 ERP component is hypothesized to reflect print-tuning in skilled readers. This study investigated whether skilled deaf and hearing readers (matched on reading ability, but not phonological awareness) exhibit similar N170 patterns, given their distinct experiences learning to read. Thirty-two deaf and 32 hearing adults viewed words and symbol strings in a familiarity judgment task. In the N170 epoch (120–240 ms) hearing readers produced greater negativity for words than symbols at left hemisphere (LH) temporo-parietal and occipital sites, while deaf readers only showed this asymmetry at occipital sites. Linear mixed effects regression was used to examine the …

Vowel Formant Dispersion Reflects Severity Of Apraxia Of Speech, Dirk B. Den Ouden, Elena Galkina, Alexandra Basilakos, Julius Fridriksson

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Background: Apraxia of Speech (AOS) has been associated with deviations in consonantal voice onset time (VOT), but studies of vowel acoustics have yielded conflicting results. However, a speech motor planning disorder that is not bound by phonological categories is expected to affect vowel as well as consonant articulations.

Aims: We measured consonant VOTs and vowel formants produced by a large sample of stroke survivors, and assessed to what extent these variables and their dispersion are predictive of AOS presence and severity, based on a scale that uses clinical observations to rate gradient presence of AOS, aphasia, and dysarthria. …

Maps For Sherbro Area, George Tucker Childs

The Sherbro Language and Culture of Sierra Leone

Maps pertaining to Sherbro language and culture.

Spanish In Contact With Islander Creole, Falcon Restrepo-Ramos

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Perspectives On Language From Street Produce Vendors In Cape Town: An Examination Of Education, Trading, And Development In The Informal Sector, Hannah Oldham

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Language is vital for the functioning of societies, from education to economic interactions. Language of education presents challenges in Africa due to colonial linguistic legacies and the diversity of indigenous African languages. While education trains learners for work in the formal economy, the South African formal cannot absorb all the available labor. The informal economy therefore provides vital work and income to millions of South Africans and immigrants. Language use in the informal sector was studied, including the education and work traders had before working as street produce vendors.

Six interviews were conducted: two near the Cape Town taxi rank, …

Structure Of Wamesa (Ling 067) Syllabus, Emily Gasser

Digital Humanities Curricular Development

Wamesa is a member of the under-studied South Halmahera-West New Guinea subgroup of the Austronesian language family, with roughly 5000 speakers in West Papua, Indonesia. This course will rely on both primary data, including my fieldnotes and recordings, and published work to look at the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language. We’ll also look at Wamesa as it compares to its sister languages within SHWNG, and see what it can tell us about linguistic theory. Finally, we’ll take a look at the cultural and political context in which Wamesa is spoken. This course will utilize theoretical tools of linguistic …

Homeworks 1, 2, 5, And 10, Emily Gasser

Digital Humanities Curricular Development

In these assignments, students use the Wamesa Talking Dictionary and other related dictionaries in the Cenderawasih Bay corpus to discover the phonetics, phonology, and morphology of the Wamesa language, and to learn about digital lexicography as part of a language documentation project.

It​ ​Is​ ​Time​ ​To​ ​Tackle​ ​Aspect!​ ​Some​ ​Insights​ ​To​ ​Help​ ​Clear​ ​Up The​ ​Tense/Aspect​ ​Mystery, Andreas Schramm

School of Education and Leadership<br>Faculty Publications

In this article, Dr. Andreas Schramm draws on the research of his graduate students, colleagues, and from his own recent sabbatical to describe what makes the tense-aspect system in English notoriously challenging to teach and learn, and to show that it can nonetheless be explicitly taught. Drawing from his experience as an English learner and one-time English teacher in training, he shares anecdotes and practical tips to help English as a Second and Foreign Language teachers unpack the meaning of tense and aspect for their learners.

A Correlational Study: Personality Types And Foreign Language Acquisition In Undergraduate Students, Frank Capellan

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality types and second language acquisition. The study addressed a problem that is inadequately investigated in foreign language acquisition research; specifically, personality traits as predictors of language learning in college students studying Spanish as a foreign language. The researcher conducted one sample t-tests to assess statistically significant differences between mean personality type score and the test value, as well as, a multiple linear regression analysis. A convenient sample of college students (n=52) completed the Neris Personality Type Indicator at the beginning of the course, and took several examinations throughout …

Language Attitudes [Linguistics], Leigh Garrison-Fletcher, Bede Mccormack, Walter Sistrunk

Open Educational Resources

This scaffolded assignment in two parts aims to engage students with the topic of how language and society are related. Framed by the global learning core competency and written ability in its entirety, Part I asks students to focus on their own language/dialect or variety and consider the kinds of attitudes that exist towards students’ language/dialect. Part II asks students to choose a language /dialect they are not familiar with and research the attitudes that exist about that language/dialect.

LaGuardia’s Core Competencies and Communication Abilities

Main Course Learning Objectives:

Explain ways in which language and society are related

Learning To Read English, Charles A. Perfetti, Lindsay N. Harris

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Killing Of Death: Denying The Genocide Against The Tutsis, Kee En Chong

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Motivating Morphological Constituents: A Learning-Based Analysis Of Hebrew, Navajo, And Spanish, Ignacio Lorenzo Montoya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In both description and theory, a variety of linguistic structures have been posited to account for a multitude of linguistic patterns. In the sub-field of morphology, such units include roots, stems, and morphemes. Previous research that has explored the motivation for linguistic structures and constructs in phonology and syntax has raised questions about the nature of these linguistic structures and constructs. Such work, however, has not focused on morphological constituent structure, a gap which the present dissertation addresses through a focused examination of the evidence motivating morphological constituents in Hebrew, Navajo, and Spanish.

The theoretical framework of this dissertation follows …

A Discussion Of Delimitative In Mandarin Chinese, Qi Zhang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates how delimitative marking in Mandarin Chinese is better considered as an instance of verb-phrase modification instead of aspect marking. The study investigates data with verb reduplication cases caused by delimitative marking from both syntactic and semantic points of view. Through observations and analyses, it is found that delimitative marking does not have the same distribution as other aspect markers, but rather shows resemblance to temporal modifiers syntactically. Semantically, instead of providing a viewpoint as other aspect markers do, delimitative indicates the temporal length (shortness) of the event. In addition, it is found that delimitative marking has strict …

Measuring Social Interaction During Study Abroad: Quantitative Methods And Challenges, Dan Dewey, Dan Dewey

Faculty Publications

This paper examines ways of measuring (assigning numbers to) social interaction and language use during study abroad. It reviews the development of instruments for such measurement and describes some of the connections that have been made between quantitative measures of social second language use and language development while abroad. Measures addressed include the Language Contact Profile, language logs, the Social Network Questionnaire, the Study Abroad Social Interaction Questionnaire, online social media, photo elicitation, mobile phone surveys, and other computational methodologies. The paper encourages mixed methods for clearer and more elaborate understanding and more detailed documentation of tools and procedures for …

Escalating Language At Traffic Stops: Two Case Studies, Jamalieh Haley

Dissertations and Theses

In recent years, the public has seen a rise in recorded footage of violent encounters between police and Black American citizens, partially due to technology such as cell phones, dash-cameras, and body-cameras. This linguistic study examines how these encounters get escalated to the point of violence by asking 1) what kind of directives were used, 2) how were they responded to, 3) how the directives contributed to escalation, and 4) how might power and authority have played a role. I use two case studies to analyze directives and their responses. Findings reveal that repetition of directives on the part of …

Loanwords In Context: Lexical Borrowing From English To Japanese And Its Effects On Second-Language Vocabulary Acquisition, Andrew Michael Sowers

Dissertations and Theses

Research has shown that cognates between Japanese and English have the potential to be a valuable learning tool (Daulton, 2008). Yet little is known on how Japanese learners of English produce cognates in context. Recently, studies have argued that cognates can cause a surprisingly high number of syntactic errors in sentence writing activities with Japanese learners (Rogers, Webb, & Nakata, 2014; Masson, 2013). In the present study, I investigated how Japanese learners of English understood and used true cognates (words that have equivalent meanings in both languages) and non-true cognates (words where the Japanese meaning differs in various ways from …

Comparison Between Mexican And American Parentese: A Qualitative Case Study, Elayna S. Dyke

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This single case study examines possible cultural implications of the current definition of Parentese, also called caretaker speech, based on the personal accounts of a person who is bilingual in both English and Spanish. This case study was conducted in one interview in order to find possible differences in Parentese with the Spanish language in Mexican culture in contrast to Parentese in the English Language in American culture. The purpose of this study was to find if there were differences between parentese between these cultures, and in which ways they were different. According to the subject’s personal experiences within her …

Logical Form And The Vernacular Revisited, Andrew Botterell, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

We revisit a debate initiated some fifteen years ago by Ray Elugardo and Robert Stainton about the domain of arguments. Our main result is that arguments are not exclusively sets of linguistic expressions. Instead, as we put it, some non-linguistic items have ‘logical form’. The crucial examples are arguments, both deductive and inductive, made with unembedded words and phrases.

Influence Of Predicate Sense On Word Order In Sign Languages: Intensional And Extensional Verbs, Donna Jo Napoli, R. Sutton Spence, R. Müller De Quadros

Linguistics Faculty Works

We present evidence for the influence of semantics on the order of subject, object, and verb in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) sentences. While some have argued for a prevailing pattern of SVO in Libras, we find a strong tendency for this order in sentences that do not presuppose the existence of the verb’s object, but not in sentences that do, which instead favor SOV. These findings are coherent with those of a recent study on gesture. We argue that the variable influence of the relevant predicates is particularly salient in sign languages, due to the iconic nature of the visual …