Digital Commons Network^™

España Ante El Mundo: Spain's Colonial Language Policies In North Africa, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

During its presence in Northern Morocco and the Western Sahara, Spain lauded its colonial policies, and relations with the native populations in general, as being more successful than those of the other colonial power present in the region, France. While it is true that France’s educational policies were narrowly aimed at forming acquiescent elites of the Maghrebi societies, Spain’s policies in turn were severely conditioned by a hyper-awareness of existing ethno-religious divisions, a product of the prominence of religion in the historical relations between Iberia and the Maghreb. In this essay, I discuss the differences in Spain’s educational policies between …

Tutors: Tutoring Strategies And Organizing Learning, Jill Castek, Gloria Jacobs, Kimberly D. Pendell, Drew Pizzolato, Stephen Reder, Elizabeth Melissa Withers

Research Briefs and Case Studies

The Tutoring Strategies and Organizing Learning Brief describes the strategies that tutors used to foster successful engagement with technology among a wide variety of learners. The Research Briefs series highlight key findings about how underserved adults acquire digital literacy skills, and include quotes from participants and practitioners. The Briefs are designed to be accessible by practitioners, program administrators, and policy makers to inform and enhance digital literacy programs.

A Corpus Study Of Requests In Naturally Occurring Spoken American English: A Context Analysis Approach, Lynnelle Rhinier Brown

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

Given the variety of ways that speakers of American English can make requests, relatively little has been discovered on why speakers choose the forms they do. Using data from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English, this study investigates what requestive forms American speakers use as well as the contextual conditions that occur with these forms. The study identifies categories of requestive forms, including let statements, if statements, modal statements, need/want statements, imperatives and modal interrogatives and the contextual parameters that occur with them, including social distance, social power, contingency, entitlement, sequential positioning, among others. These forms demonstrate patterns …

I Told Him/Her/It/Them?: The Problem Of Epicene Pronouns, Natalie Hall

Undergraduate Research Journal

To determine how Americans have naturally been using epicene pronouns, as opposed to the dictates of prescriptive grammar rules, this study focuses on speech patterns and informal writing. Because of their natural resistance to prescriptions, these two forms of communication tend to be more indicative of the epicenes most commonly used by Americans. 1 In this study, I seek an answer to the question of which epicene is used the most by Americans in speech and informal writing. I will use this information to determine the effectiveness of efforts to change prescriptions and traditions of epicene pronoun usage. After presenting …

Laki Verbal Morphosyntax, Sedigheh Moradi

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Most western Iranian languages, despite their broad differences, show a common quality when it comes to the verbal agreement of past transitive verbs. Dabir-moghaddam (2013) and Haig (2008) discuss it as a grammaticalized split-agreement to encode S, A, and P, which is sensitive to tense and transitivity, and uses split-ergative constructions for its past transitive verbs. Laki shows vestiges of the same kind of verb-agreement ergativity (Comrie 1978) by using a mixture of affixes and clitics for subject and object marking.

In this thesis, I investigate how the different classes of verbs show agreement using four distinct property classes. Considering …

Queering The Production Of Sexual Knowledge: Narrative Strategies, Gender Politics And The Promise Of Feminist Focus Groups, Madeline J. Hunsicker

Honors Theses

Dominant public discourses structure our interpretations of sexual acts in decidedly gendered ways, shaping our understandings of sexual experiences and embodiment. As a result, current understandings of term such as “virginity” evoke cultural standards of womanhood, whiteness, monogamy, and tradition that both reflect and reinforce contemporary society’s hetero-patriarchal relations of power. The narratives available for girls and women to make sense of the first sexual experiences are policed by dominant sexual discourses that privilege male pleasure (Kozma, 56-59), which can limit the narratives of actual sexual experiences and subjugate gynogentiric discourses of sexual knowing (Medley-Rath 26). In the absence of …

Spanish-English Bilingual Adolescents' Attitude Towards Home Language: Effects On Narrative Language, Rebecca M. Hunt

Masters Theses

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship between use of English as a second language in academic and social settings, and attitude towards home language (Spanish) in bilingual adolescents in a Central Illinois high school. In addition, the study evaluated the possible relationship between home language attitude and the structure of a personal narrative. Participants included include 11 Spanish-English bilingual high school students who resided in Spanish-speaking homes. Participants completed a questionnaire pertaining to self-rated proficiency of English and Spanish, frequency of use in various settings, and attitude towards English, Spanish, and bilingualism. English narrative samples …

Providing Objective Metrics Of Team Communication Skills Via Interpersonal Coordination Mechanisms, Celine De Looze, Brian Vaughan, Finnian Kelly, Alison Kay

Conference papers

No abstract provided.

A Variationist Approach To Code-Switching And Lexical Borrowing : The Case Of Limonese-Spanish Bilinguals In Puerto LimóN, Costa Rica, Ashley Laboda

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The current study aims to contribute to the body of research on variation in the speech of bilinguals in language contact situations, as well as the ongoing discussions of creoles in contact with languages other than their lexifiers. Bilingual production of lone lexical Spanish insertions and multiword Spanish insertions in otherwise Limonese Creole (Limonese) speech are analyzed, and both linguistic and extralinguistic factors are considered. Previous studies have measured lone word integration in bilingual corpora and have shown that lone lexical insertions are integrated into the recipient language as borrowings almost categorically regardless of frequency (nonce or more frequent than …

Estudio SociolingüÍStico De Las LíQuidas En El EspañOl Hablado En La Ciudad De GuantáNamo, Yaima Aimee Centeno

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Este estudio examina la variación de /l/ y /r/ mediante 32 entrevistas sociolingüísticas llevadas a cabo en la ciudad de Guantánamo, Cuba. Además, investiga la influencia del contexto fonológico, el nivel académico, la edad y el sexo en el uso de ciertas variantes de /r/ y /l/. Los factores lingüísticos internos considerados fueron: el contexto lingüístico (posición final de sílaba o final de palabra) y el segmento lingüístico. También se consideraron factores sociales tales como: el nivel académico, la edad y el sexo.

Student Teachers’ Cognition About L2 Pronunciation Instruction: A Case Study, Michael Burri

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

In view of the minimal attention pronunciation teacher preparation has received in second language (L2) teacher education, this study examined the cognition (i.e. beliefs, thoughts, attitudes and knowledge) development of 15 student teachers during a postgraduate subject on pronunciation pedagogy offered at an Australian tertiary institution. Findings revealed that, as a result of taking the subject, student teachers’ cognition shifted from teaching individual sounds (i.e. segmentals) to favouring a more balanced approach to pronunciation instruction. That is, teaching the melody of the English language (i.e. suprasegmentals) was seen as important as teaching segmentals. Non-native speakers’ self-perceived pronunciation improvement, an increase …

The Effectiveness Of Teaching Methods In Traditional Amish Schoolhouses In Lawrence County, Tn, Ann Marie Paley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Amish community at Ethridge in Lawrence County, Tennessee is one of a handful in Tennessee, and, with a population of 1,500 and more than ten church districts, is the largest in the South and one of the top 20 in the nation. This particular Amish community was colonized when three families led by Dan Yoder, Joe Yoder, and Joseph Gingerich moved to the area from Ohio in the mid-1940s due to problems with the establishment of their own schools. Swartzentruber Amish are a subgroup within Old Order Amish society and occupy a distinct place on the conservative end of …

Use And Perception Of Taboo Language In College-Age Females, Kathleen M. Uhlman

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Thinking Outside The (Archival) Box: Innovative Uses Of Jules Henry’S Field Notes, Miranda Rectenwald

WashU Libraries Presentations

This poster presents a case study of how archived documents provide multi-faceted, dynamic opportunity for teaching and learning in both academia and indigenous communities. Anthropologist Jules Henry compiled extensive language and cultural field notes in the 1930s while living among the Xokleng Laklãnõ (Brazil) and Pilaga (Argentina) communities. Until recently, these documents and photographs archived at Washington University in St. Louis were seldom used. However, by starting a collaborative digital project with Unicamp State University (São Paulo, Brazil) a number of innovative uses have emerged. Examples include: The Unicamp Linguistics Department is working with the Xokleng Laklãnõ to turn the …

Being Japanese In English: The Social And Functional Role Of English Loanwords In Japanese, Shalina Omar

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates native speaker attitudes towards English loanwords in Japanese and the ways in which these loanwords are used. The imperialism and hegemony of English can often cause anger or worry for the preservation of the cultural identity of the borrowing language. However, the results from a 9-page sociolinguistic questionnaire suggest that English loanwords are overwhelmingly seen as useful and necessary and are generally associated with positive attitudes. Additionally, many native Japanese speakers feel that loanwords provide more options for expression, both functionally and as a possible pragmatic tool for performing Japaneseness. On the other hand, overuse of loanwords—especially …

Overcoming Gender: The Impact Of The Persian Language On Iranian Women’S Confessional Literature, Farideh Dayanim Goldin

English Faculty Publications

[From the Introduction] The idea that language embodies patriarchal thought processes, severing women writers from the written language and from their own words, was first elaborated by the French feminist theorists Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous. Irigaray argues, for example, that language generally denies women a distinct subjectivity, with the result that the voice of women has largely been excluded from mainstream cultural discourse (Donovan). In this chapter, I juxtapose this theory to the obstacles faced by Iranian women writers of life narratives. Is it possible that Persian could have impeded Iranian women’s literary aspirations, especially in the genre of …

The Effects Of A New Method Of Instruction On The Perceptions Of Appalachian English, Michelle L. Compton

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This paper evaluates whether students’ perceptions of Appalachian English improve through a method of instruction that uses dialect literature in the classroom. Most existing methods of instruction tend to portray dialects as wrong, incorrect, or in some way less rule-governed than Standardized English, despite the numerous studies that have demonstrated otherwise (e.g., Labov 1969, Wolfram 1986). The data from this study derives from two groups of students enrolled in introductory composition and communication at the University of Kentucky. Each group is given a pre-test to determine attitudes toward Appalachian English and Standardized English. An experimental group is then exposed to …

The Shawnee Alignment System: Applying Paradigm Function Morphology To Lexical-Functional Grammar's M-Structure, Nathan Hardymon

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Shawnee is a language whose alignment system is of the type first proposed by Nichols (1992) and Siewierska (1998): hierarchical alignment. This alignment system was proposed to account for languages where distinctions between agent (A) and object (O) are not formally manifested. Such is the case in Shawnee; there are person-marking inflections on the verb for both A and O, but there is not set order. Instead, Shawnee makes reference to an animacy hierarchy and is an inverse system. This thesis explores how hierarchical alignment is accounted for by Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), and also applies Paradigm Function Morphology to …

Urdu Resultive Constructions (A Comparative Analysis Of Syntacto-Semantic And Pragmatic Properties Of The Compound Verbs In Hindi-Urdu)‎, Razia A. Husain

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Among Urdu’s many verb+verb constructions, this thesis focuses on those constructions, which combine the stem of a main content verb with another inflected verb which is used in a semantically bleached sense. Prior work on these constructions has been focused on their structural make-up and syntactic behavior in various environments. While there is consensus among scholars (Butt 1995, Hook 1977, Carnikova 1989, Porizka 2000 et al.) that these stem+verb constructions encode aspectual information, to date no clear theory has been put forward to explain the nature of their aspectual contribution. In short, we do not have a clear idea why …

Perceptual Dialectology Of New England: Views From Maine And The Web, Benjamin Graham Jones

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Research into the dialects of the New England states (Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont) has traditionally split the region into distinct geographic regions based upon variations in production, primarily along an East-West border. Generally, such regions have been considered relatively stable in terms of their variation (Labov, Ash and Boberg 2006); however, recent work in the area has found that the traditional dialect boundaries have begun to shift (c.f. Stanford, Leddy-Cecere and Baclawski 2012). Such research has focused on very specific regional changes in production, ignoring the perceptual salience of the features observed to be in …

Scribblescholar Was Here: Confessional Notes Of A Vandal Academic, Clay Shields

Theses and Dissertations--English

As a (former) vandal-punk in the academy, I often fear succumbing to Ivory Tower Stockholm syndrome. The identities I perform, vandal-punk and scholar, ideologically clash to the point that they often feel irreconcilable. By codemeshing the high-low discourses associated with these adopted cultures, I attempt to disrupt any hierarchal privileging of either, instead searching for a way to live with and harness both.

Mississippi Asl Project, James Corey Blount

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

American Sign Language (ASL) is a manual language used by many deaf people in the United States and Canada. For much of its existence, ASL was believed to be a system of rudimentary gestures and signs based on the English language. However, studies that analyzed the linguistic properties of this signed ‘mode’ (Stokoe, 1960) legitimized that it was a language independent of spoken language, with its own system of principles and elements to construct meaningful utterances. Like any language, ASL is influenced by the social demographics of its users. Social demographics such as ethnicity, geographic location, age, gender, and socioeconomic …

Stories From The Old West End Of Boston: An Analysis Of Evaluative Devices In Oral Narrative, Melanie N. Platt

Honors Theses and Capstones

The following presents an overview of various evaluative devices found in a series of oral narratives from former residents of the West End of Boston, Massachusetts. In working with an archivist at the West End Museum, I was able to read through interviews, each conducted with residents that were displaced from the West End after the urban renewal project of the late 1950s. These interviews were recorded for the purpose of collecting each resident’s experience growing up in the neighborhood. After reading through each interview I found several instances of narrative speech. I conducted a narrative analysis, based on Labov …

Using Cognitive Word Games To Promote Lexical Memory Access And Vocabulary Retrieval In Second Language Learners, Kejkaew Thanasuan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Fluency in a second language (L2) is one of the most important skills for the modern world. However, adults learning a new language face many obstacles, including motivation, time, and other challenges in learning. Technology learning tools may help solve these problems. In this dissertation, I tested the effectiveness of cognitive word games as a vocabulary learning method, with the main goal of investigating how different word games including a crossword paradigm task, a free association task and a word-stem completion task were effective at improving vocabulary memory access. The games selectively increased semantic (meaning) or orthographic (spelling) associations in …

Hip-Hop Rhymes Reiterate Phonological Typology, Jonah Katz

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Comparing Student Assessments And Perceptions Of Online And Face-To-Face Versions Of An Introductory Linguistics Course, David M. Johnson, Chris C. Palmer

Faculty Articles

This article examines the issue of whether linguistics is better suited for a face-to-face (F2F) environment than an online teaching environment. Specifically, it examines assessment scores and student perceptions of the effectiveness of an introductory linguistics course at an undergraduate state university that has been taught multiple times in both online and F2F modes. To study this issue data was collected about the types of students enrolled in either version of the course, including their GPAs and course grades. A survey with both closed- and open-ended questions was also used to ask students about their experiences and perceptions of the …

I Accidentally This Thesis Because East: The Influence Of The Internet On Spoken Language In Eastspeak, Emma S. Manning

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines the variety of English spoken in East Dorm at Harvey Mudd College. It describes aspects of the syntax and phonology of Eastspeak, focusing in particular on how Eastspeak has been influenced by the language of the internet. This includes tendencies toward brevity and language play, as well as the use of specific constructions used on the internet, and playful pronunciations that are influenced by creative misspellings used online. Specific Eastspeak phenomena discussed include conversion, deletion, and unusual determiner and quantifier use.

A Snohomish Telling Of “The Seal Hunters”, Deryle W. Lonsdale

Faculty Publications

Oral-based indigenous cultures have stories that persist over time, though some variation may exist in various details and in overall context. Related cultures in particular have similar stories, and assessing the similarities and differences across their tellings of these stories provides valuable historical and cultural background. In the case of endangered languages and cultures, every telling of every story provides important insight. This article presents a recently discovered archived account of a Snohomish version of “The Seal Hunters”, a captivating story that has many variant forms across Salish cultures. The story was written down in the nineteenth century by an …

Lexical Processing And Affix Ordering: Cross-Linguistic Predictions, Jeffrey R. Parker, Andrea D. Sims

Faculty Publications

Rich cross-linguistic variability in the strictness of affix ordering raises questions about how universal and language-specific factors interact to determine affix combinability patterns. While focus has been primarily on the interaction of semantic scope and language-specific formal factors, in this paper we take a first step towards a cross-linguistic, typological perspective on a different potential influencing factor: lexical processing. Based on a corpus study, we show that derivational suffix ordering is less constrained in Russian than in English. And significantly, statisticaldistributional evidence also suggests that Russian words are overall more likely to be decomposed during lexical access. This hints that …

Solving Russian Velars: Palatalization, The Lexicon And Gradient Contrast Utilization, Jeffery R. Parker

Faculty Publications

Палатализованные («мягкие») задненебные согласные в русском языке имеют особый статус, поскольку их появление можно предсказать лишь частично. Эти согласные являются примером часто встречающихся фонологических отношений, в которых звуки могут быть словоразличительными, но используются лишь в некоторых контекстах и/или словоформах. Такие «промежуточные фонологические отношения» (ОоШзткЬ 1995) представляют собой проблему для традиционных фонологических теорий, в которых звуки делятся на предсказуемые (аллофоны; содержатся в грамматике) и непредсказуемые (фонемы; содержатся в лексиконе). Таким образом, для научно-теоретической классификации вышеуказанных промежуточных фонологических отношений необходимо будет пересмотреть существующие предположения о природе и количестве информации, содержащейся в лексиконе. В данной статье я показываю, что и мягкие, и твердые …