Digital Commons Network^™

Swahili Word Order Choices: Insights From Information Structure, Mohamed Yusuf Mwamzandi

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

Cross-linguistic pragmatic studies have shown non-canonical word order can often be explained if information structure is taken into consideration. This dissertation explores word order variation in Swahili (SVO, Bantu) adnominal demonstratives and reciprocal constructions under the auspices of information structure. I investigate how the notion of topic may explain word order variation in these two structures.The term `adnominal demonstrative' refers to demonstratives that co-occur with nouns such as huyu mtu `this person' as distinguished from pronominal demonstratives such as huyu `this'. The issue to be determined is what influences the demonstrative use in pre or postnominal position. The data consists …

Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Linguistic uses of ‘sisterhood’ provide a window into disparate understandings of relationality among virtual and actual interlocutors in women’s development across vectors of caste, class, ethnicity and nationality. In this essay, I examine the trope of ‘sisterhood’ as it was employed at a women’s development project in Janakpur, Nepal, in the 1990s. I demonstrate that the use of this common signifier of kinship with culturally disparate ‘signifieds’ created a confusion of meaning, and differential readings of the politics of relationality. In my view, ‘sister,’ as used at this project, was a multivalent, strategically deployed, and divergently interpreted term. In particular, …

Hawking Hyphens In Compound Modifiers, Joan Ames Magat

Faculty Scholarship

The first principle of legal writing is surely its clarity — visible actors (unless the action matters more), uncluttered syntax, and, of course, logical structure. But the little things can matter to clarity, too — such as deliberate punctuation that signifies. In the language of law, in which compound nouns are rife, the reader can feel adrift as to where modifiers end and the noun begins. (Consider government-subsidized health flexible-spending arrangement without those hyphens.) Hyphens help. Whether an author cares to hyphenate the noun is his call; but hyphenating compound modifiers (also called phrasal adjectives, though they may include adverbs …

Relative Clause Processing: Evidence From Russian, Iya Khelm Price, Jeffrey Witzel

Linguistics & TESOL Faculty Publications & Presentations - Archive

Studies on relative clauses (RCs) in a number of languages have shown that object-extracted RCs (ORCs) are more difficult to process than subject-extracted RCs (SRCs). SRC-ORC processing asymmetry has been attributed to: • Structural expectations (Levy, 2008) • Memory-based integration effects (Gibson, 2000) • RC subject vs. object extraction difficulty differences (Lin & Bever, 2006) In many languages, word order differences between SRCs and ORCs make it difficult to test among these accounts. Russian allows SRCs and ORCs to have the same linear word order (with case-marking distinguishing between the RC types).

Long-Distance Attraction Effects In Subject-Verb Agreement Processing, Nathan Eversole, Jeffrey Witzel

Linguistics & TESOL Faculty Publications & Presentations - Archive

No abstract provided.

Attitudes To Storytelling Among Adult Esl Learners, Mi-Ryoung Kim, Theresa Mcgarry

ETSU Faculty Works

This study investigated tertiary second language learners’ attitudes toward storytelling as a classroom activity. Instruction and practice in storytelling were given to 26 international undergraduates for ten weeks. Questionnaires were administered before and after the treatment to assess learners’ interest in storytelling and beliefs about its effectiveness as a learning task. The results of the pre-treatment questionnaire showed that while participants’ interest in storytelling was very low, their expectations of its effectiveness were relatively high. Asian or low proficient participants indicated higher interest than Europeans or high proficient learners. The results of the post-treatment questionnaire showed that participants’ attitudes changed …

Appalachian Migrant Stances, Bridget L. Anderson

English Faculty Publications

The article explores the economic and industrial opportunities for Appalachian native speakers in the industrial Midwest countries after the World War I. Topics discussed include the characteristics of migration diaspora in Appalachian migrants, the Southern migrants metropolitan area lifestyle in Detroit, Michigan and the impacts of ethnographic factors to Appalachian migrants. Other topics include the social and identifiable factors for migrants.

The Signs We Speak: An Exploration Of The Loss Of Precision And Meaning In Language Today., Emilie Finney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My interest is in the beauty and power of language. I have sought to understand language on a systemic level. I have broken language down to alter signified meaning, exalted extinct words, mourned the loss of formal language, and explored the confines of common vernacular. My artwork addresses meaning within the context of Semiotics and Linguistics. I have investigated the Semiotic theories and philosophies of Roland Barthes, Jacques Ranciere, Pierre Guiraud, and Erving Goffman. As outlined by Roland Barthes, our language is a semiotic system used to communicate meaning. My work is also informed by the rules of Linguistics and …

Struktur Dan Makna Pariwara : Analisis Wacana Dalam Akhbar Bahasa Cina Di Malaysia, Yee Piyan Chang

Student Works (2010-2019)

Pariwara (Advertorial) ialah sejenis iklan yang terbentuk daripada gabungan “iklan” dan “rencana”. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meninjau struktur dan pengolahan makna untuk menghasilkan wacana pariwara (advertorial). Kajian analisis wacana (Discourse Analysis) ini menggunakan metodologi kualitatif secara deskriptif. Kerangka konsepsi kajian ini didirikan daripada gabungan Teori Linguistik Sistemik-Fungsional (Systemic-Functional Linguistic Theory) dan Teori Genre (Genre Theory). Konteks kajian ditetapkan di Malaysia dan sampel merupakan pariwara (advertorial) dalam akhbar Bahasa Cina. Sebanyak 32 pariwara (advertorial) daripada empat akhbar Bahasa Cina antara 1 Oktober 2012 hingga 31 Januari 2013 dipilih sebagai sampel kajian. Kaedah pemilihan sampel bertujuan digunakan. Satu senarai semak penilaian dirangka …

Seen And Not Heard: The Relationship Of Orthography, Morphology, And Phonology In Loanword Adaptation In The German Hip Hop Community Online, Matt Garley

Publications and Research

In this study, a particular development in language behavior, the use of the -ed suffix from English in both participle and non-participle contexts, is investigated in the domain of the German hip hop community. This morphological-orthographic feature is analyzed from a linguistic and distributional standpoint in a 12.5 million word corpus of German hip hop discussion, revealing its patterns of use over a decade in both contexts within this community, along with supplemental examples from YouTube videos. This corpus analysis is paired with a case study of a discourse event between two forum participants negotiating the use of this form, …

Is Shakespeare Still In The Holler? The Death Of A Language Myth, Jennifer Cramer

Linguistics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Compounding And Incorporation In The Ket Language: Implications For A More Unified Theory Of Compounding, Benjamin C. Smith

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Compounding in the world’s languages is a complex word-­‐formation process that is not easily accounted for. Moreover, incorporation is equally complex and problematic. This examination of compounding and incorporation in the Ket language seeks to identify the underlying logic of these processes and to work towards a typology that captures generalizations among the numerous ways in which languages expand their lexicons through these processes. Canonical Typology provides a framework that does just this. A preliminary canonical typology of compounds is proposed here, one that subsumes a range of compounds as well as incorporation. For this reason, the Ket language, which …

Inferential-Realizational Morphology And Affix Ordering: Evidence From The Agreement Patterns Of Basque Auxiliary Verbs, Parker Brody

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

“No aspect of Basque linguistics has received more attention over the years than the morphology of the verb.” (Trask 1981:1)

The current study examines the complex morphological agreement patterns found in the Basque auxiliary verb system as a case in point for discussion of theoretical approaches to inflectional morphology. The traditional syntax-driven treatment of these auxiliaries is contrasted with an inferential, morphology-driven analysis within the Paradigm Function Morphology framework. Additionally, a computational implementation of the current analysis using the DATR lexical knowledge representation language is discussed.

An Ontology-Driven Reading Agent, Deryle W. Lonsdale, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle

Faculty Publications

Textual data—from manuscripts to publications to website content—contains much of extant human knowledge. Unfortunately, the ability to harvest and effectively use this information beyond simple search/retrieval is greatly hampered by the scale of the “reading” problem: there is too much for any one person to read, and computers are not entirely adept at comprehending all information—explicit and implicit—contained in natural language text. Developing increased capability in this area is the focus of ongoing “machine reading” and “reading the web” research initiatives. Interested parties include businesses, the military, and intelligence-gathering agencies. Our own ongoing work with the Church Family History Department’s …

Classifying Idiomatic And Literal Expressions Using Topic Models And Intensity Of Emotions, Jing Peng, Anna Feldman, Ekaterina Vylomova

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We describe an algorithm for automatic classification of idiomatic and literal expressions. Our starting point is that words in a given text segment, such as a paragraph, that are highranking representatives of a common topic of discussion are less likely to be a part of an idiomatic expression. Our additional hypothesis is that contexts in which idioms occur, typically, are more affective and therefore, we incorporate a simple analysis of the intensity of the emotions expressed by the contexts. We investigate the bag of words topic representation of one to three paragraphs containing an expression that should be classified as …

The Abd Of Orthography Testing: Practical Guidelines, Elke Karan

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

Developing an orthography for a previously unwritten language may prove to be more of a challenge than anticipated. Orthography testing can help field workers and the speech community identify issues which warrant special attention. Subsequent testing will reveal whether or not various factors have been taken into consideration and challenges overcome. Findings might indicate that the orthography functions well or that it requires additional thought, revision, and /or additional testing.

Few how-to helps on orthography testing exist. Drawing from various resources, the author provides practical guidelines and resources for field workers who are planning to engage in orthography testing activities.

Un Viaje En Cayuco Para Pedir Ayuda: Presentación De Un Texto En Fa D’Ambô, Jaime Raúl Calderón Calderón, Alfonsina Gómez Martínez, Stephen A. Marlett, Nydia Morales Castillo, Kristian Roncero Toledo, Bernardino Tomé Catalán, Rubén Van Bemmelen

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

Se presenta un texto en la lengua fa d’Ambô, ISO 639-3 [fab], lengua criolla basada en el portugués con muy poca documentación, originaria de la isla de Annobón. Situada en el Golfo de Guinea, la isla pertenece a Guinea Ecuatorial. El texto es el resumen de la crónica de un viaje riesgoso hecho a principios de los años setenta del siglo XX. Se relata cómo unos hombres decidieron hacerse a la mar para poder llegar a la costa continental africana, así como la odisea que vivieron. El motivo de este viaje era la urgencia de conseguir alimentos que escaseaban de …

Discursive Leadership And Conceptual Fluency In Non-Native English Speakers' Online Task-Based Dialogues, Umit Boz

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Much research has examined how different patterns of social interaction shape language learners' interactional roles (e.g., collaborative, dominant, passive) in peer-to-peer conversations. However, little or no research has investigated the co-construction of such roles in multiparty, online task-based dialogues within the framework of discursive leadership. For the purpose of this study, discursive leadership is defined as the ability of the interlocutors to (a) shape the discourse via topic introductions and subsequent topic mentions and (b) manage the process of the task through the use of a series of task-oriented speech acts such as directives and assertions. Using a multi-method approach …

Adult Learners Of English Interacting With Native Speaker Teachers And Non-Native Speaker Teachers : Exploring Differences In Students' Language Use, Melody Hallenbeck Nadeau

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This mixed-methods study examined the lived experience of adult English Language Learners (ELLs) in classrooms led by native speaking teachers, compared with their experience in classrooms led by non-native teachers. The socio-cognitive approach to language and emergent common ground framed the development of the English classroom as a Community of Practice, in which students produced varying levels of complex, formulaic, metaphorically dense speech.

Information Structure, Agreement And Disagreement In English And French Asynchronous Online Discussion, Patrick Rodrigue Belibi Enama

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This paper compares and contrasts the ways online discussion participants of French and English language expression realize common ground, agree and disagree on newspaper blogs on politics. For that purpose, a corpus of 365 replies among which 177 in French and 188 in English were collected from Le Monde.fr and nytimes.com, the world's two most popular newspaper websites of French and English expression. Kecskes & Zhang's (2009) socio-cognitive approach was used as theoretical framework to analyze common ground. The findings revealed that pragmatic competence, which was put to use depending on the context of situation, was more widely used than …

Multilingual Trends In A Globalized World (Book Review), Elizabeth M. Kissling

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

This book presents current trends in language education as reflections of and responses to globalization. The intended audience is a diverse group that includes students in linguistics and education, policy makers, educators, and activists. The main thrust of the book is to advocate for bilingual and multilingual education, positioning multilingualism as a resource rather than a problem

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 …

Old English And Old Norse: An Inquiry Into Intelligibility And Categorization Methodology, Eric Martin Gay

Theses and Dissertations

To say that the Old English and Old Norse languages have an interesting history with one another is a declaration of utter understatement. So intertwined were these languages and their people that we, some 1,000 years later, are still attempting to discern the extent of their relationship with one another. As new evidence and the reevaluation of old evidence emerges, research in the historical Germanic languages continues to paint a clearer picture. However, the study of possible Old English and Old Norse mutual intelligibility is a subject that is comparatively new within the field, and as such is still exploring …

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 …

Wicked Intense: The Grammaticalization Of Wicked And Other Intensifiers In New Hampshire, Emma M. Brown

Honors Theses and Capstones

This article presents a synchronic study of wicked and other intensifiers in Southern New Hampshire. Two sets of data were collected: one from the social media website Twitter, and the other from spoken casual interviews conducted by students at the University of New Hampshire. In all, more than 9000 intensifiable adjectives and verbs were collected, with rates of 22 and 24 per cent intensification for the Twitter and spoken data, respectively. The first goal of this paper is to show that one intensifier in particular, wicked, is in the process of grammaticalizing through the mechanisms of desemanticization and extension …

Assessing The Validity Of Can‐Do Statements In Retrospective (Then‐Now) Self‐Assessment, N. Anthony Brown, Dan Dewey, Troy L. Cox

Faculty Publications

In this study, the authors evaluated the strengths and limitations of a self assessment based on ACTFL Can‐Do statements (ACTFL, 2013) as a tool for measuring linguistic gains over an internship abroad in Russia. They assessed its reliability, determined how its items mapped with the ACTFL scale, and measured the degree to which students’ self‐evaluations matched oral proficiency interview (OPI) test results (i.e., predictive validity). Data revealed a high level of reliability. Furthermore, self assessment items ascended in the order of difficulty expected (i.e., Superior items were the most difficult, followed by Advanced), but differences between the means for items …

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.

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 …

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 …