Digital Commons Network^™

Toward A Theory-Based Natural Language Capability In Robots And Other Embodied Agents : Evaluating Hausser's Slim Theory And Database Semantics, Robin Kowalchuk Burk

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Computational natural language understanding and generation have been a goal of artificial intelligence since McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester and Shannon first proposed to spend the summer of 1956 studying this and related problems. Although statistical approaches dominate current natural language applications, two current research trends bring renewed focus on this goal. The nascent field of artificial general intelligence (AGI) seeks to evolve intelligent agents whose multi-subagent architectures are motivated by neuroscience insights into the modular functional structure of the brain and by cognitive science insights into human learning processes. Rapid advances in cognitive robotics also entail multi-agent software architectures that attempt …

Discursive Construction Of Identities Of Young Homosexual Males., Zainon Shamsudin

Student Works (2010-2019)

This dissertation reports a study addressing the issue of identity construction of four young Malay homosexual men in Malaysia.  Through their narrative discourse of their life experiences and aspirations, this study explores these participants‟ linguistic repertoire and discursive strategies in the formation, negotiation, and establishment of their identities. The narrative data were gathered through a semi-structured interview-cum-conversation which allowed the participants to express sentiments about their lives in a heterosexual dominated society.  Using an adapted framework of discourse-historical approach of Critical Discourse Analysis proposed by Reisigl and Wodak (2009), this study analyzed the participants‟ emergent language use and discursive strategies …

Instructors' Attitudes Toward The Use Of Technology At The University Of Mississippi, Julia Emilia Bussade

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the Spanish and Portuguese Instructors' attitudes toward technology at the University of Mississippi. In this mixed method study, with a very limited number of participants ( N = 20), attitudes were analyzed by combining the results of all three instruments that composed this research project: a survey, class observations and personal interviews. The results from the triangulation of these three instruments showed that the instructors have a positive attitude toward technology.

This particular investigation adapted and employed two dimensions to assess teachers' attitudes toward technology: (1) anxiety, fear and/or aversion; and …

The Effect Of De-Contextualized Multimedia Software On Taiwanese College Level Students' English Vocabulary Development, Yaw-Liang Yan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Computer technology has been applied widely as an educational tool in second language learning for a long time. There have been many studies discussing the application of computer technology to different aspects in second language learning. However, the learning effect of both de-contextualized multimedia software and sound gloss on second language students had been rarely explored. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of computer-assisted language learning (call) on de-contextualized multimedia software vocabulary learning and retention for college level students in Taiwan. One-hundred-fifty-five participants completed this experiment. The control group class was taught in a regular classroom. …

Tag Dictionaries Accelerate Manual Annotation, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Marc A. Carmen, Paul Felt, Robbie A. Haertel, Peter J. Mcclanahan, Eric K. Ringger, Kevin Seppi

Faculty Publications

Expert human input can contribute in various ways to facilitate automatic annotation of natural language text. For example, a part-of-speech tagger can be trained on labeled input provided offline by experts. In addition, expert input can be solicited by way of active learning to make the most of annotator expertise. However, hiring individuals to perform manual annotation is costly both in terms of money and time. This paper reports on a user study that was performed to determine the degree of effect that a part-of-speech dictionary has on a group of subjects performing the annotation task. The user study was …

A Probabilistic Morphological Analyzer For Syriac, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Peter J. Mcclanahan, George Busby, Robbie A. Haertel, Kristian Heal, Kevin Seppi, Eric K. Ringger

Faculty Publications

We define a probabilistic morphological analyzer using a data-driven approach for Syriac in order to facilitate the creation of an annotated corpus. Syriac is an under-resourced Semitic language for which there are no available language tools such as morphological analyzers. We introduce novel probabilistic models for segmentation, dictionary linkage, and morphological tagging and connect them in a pipeline to create a probabilistic morphological analyzer requiring only labeled data. We explore the performance of models with varying amounts of training data and find that with about 34,500 labeled tokens, we can outperform a reasonable baseline trained on over 99,000 tokens and …

A Structural And Functional Analysis Of Codeswitching In Mi Vida Gitana 'My Gypsy Life,' A Bilingual Play, Gustavo Javier Fernandez

Dissertations and Theses

The present study analyzed the language in the script of the bilingual play Mi Vida Gitana 'My Gypsy Life' (Malán, 2006) in order to better understand issues relating to codeswitching (CS). The analysis was done from a structural and a functional perspective and utilized various models developed by renowned CS scholars.

For the structural analysis, I utilized concepts and ideas put forth in the three-tiered typology created by Muysken (2000) and the Matrix Language Frame model developed by Myers-Scotton (1993). The results of this portion of the study showed that some form of CS, whether occurring between turns or within …

Up To D[Eb]Ate On Raising And Control, Part 1: Properties And Analyses Of The Constructions, Susannah Kirby, William D. Davies, Stanley William Dubinsky

Faculty Publications

This is the first part of a two-part article that reviews a number of the current debates regarding raising and control constructions. The issues addressed in this part include the syntactic attributes governing their distribution; the characterization of the relevant silent elements; the empirical properties which may distinguish/unify two classes of constructions (on either syntactic or semantic grounds).

A Discourse Analysis Of The Periphrastic Imperfect In The Greek New Testament Writings Of Luke, Carl E. Johnson

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

Motivated by Bloomfield's belief that linguistic variation is not without motivation, this paper seeks to determine the distinction between the morphological imperfect and periphrastic imperfect of Koine Greek within the New Testament writings of Luke.This study suggests that: 1. The periphrastic imperfect occurs only within narrative sections of the New Testament and is most prominent in the writings of Luke.2. The number of periphrastic imperfects has been recently over reported.3. The periphrastic imperfect is a more marked form of Koine Greek which developed in accordance with general rules of grammaticalization.4. The discourse function of periphrastic imperfects has not been previously …

A Revised Phonology Of Kabiye Segments And Tone, Cecile Mamalinani Padayodi

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

This study suggests revisions to the segmental and tonal phonology of Kabiye following a reanalysis of consonants, vowels, and tones in the speech of 7 male native speakers. Acoustic investigations are also included to illustrate some phonetic aspects of segments and tone. Data were elicited through three speech styles - wordlists, short phrases, and storytelling - later transcribed and analyzed. Revisions are made to the phonetic and phonemic inventories of consonants and vowels, as well as to the inventories of the underlying tonal melodies on noun roots, verb roots, and noun suffixes, as indicated by the results of the current …

The Translator's Assistant: A Multilingual Natural Language Generator Based On Linguistic Universals, Typologies, And Primitives, Tod Jay Allman

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

The Translator's Assistant (TTA) is a multilingual natural language generator (NLG) designed to produce initial drafts of translations of texts in a wide variety of target languages. The four primary components of every NLG system of this type are 1) the ontology, 2) the semantic representations, 3) the transfer grammar, and 4) the synthesizing grammar. This system's ontology was developed using the foundational principles of Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory. TTA's semantic representations are comprised of a controlled, English influenced metalanguage augmented by a feature system which was designed to accommodate a very wide variety of target languages. TTA's transfer grammar …

A Library And Its Community: Exploring Perceptions Of Collaboration, Phoebe Vincenza Daurio

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores perceptions of interorganizational collaboration through an investigation of the opinions and actions of a public library and three community-based organizations. Interorganizational collaboration is often viewed as an effective strategy for accomplishing objectives that would not otherwise be possible with a single organization. Particularly for complex societal issues such as adult literacy, researchers and practitioners believe collaboration between organizations is necessary in order to achieve desired outcomes. Public libraries are engaging in collaborations also to extend their reach, establish the library’s relevance, increase community involvement, and advocate for their position as a community asset.

This thesis is a …

Argument Constructions And Language Processing: Evidence From A Priming Experiment And Pedagogical Implications, David Eddington, Francisco Ruiz De Mendoza

Faculty Publications

The notion of argument construction is widely accepted in Cognitive Linguistics circles as a highly explanatory theoretical construct. It has recently been incorporated into the Lexical-Constructional Model (LCM; Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal 2007, 2008), a theoretical approach to meaning construction that integrates argument constructions into a broader model that incorporates meaning dimensions traditionally dealt with in the domain of pragmatics and discourse analysis. The LCM has an argument level of description, in the form of constructional templates, which are in general equivalent to the argument constructions postulated in Goldberg’s (1995, 2006) Construction Grammar, although there are crucial differences in …

The Perception And Production Of Spanish Pure Vowels By Native English Speakers, Lauren Erickson

Honors Program Theses

Quantitatively measuring a person’s fluency in a second language (L2) is difficult, but analysis of formant movements during vowel production may provide a more accurate way of measuring the accuracy of acquiring a native-like production of the L2. This study examined the accuracy with which two groups of native English speakers perceived and produced the Spanish vowel /e/ and diphthong /ei/, and compared their results with the results from a group of native Spanish speakers. For the perception portion of the study, participants were asked to correctly identify matching sounds, and the number and percentage of correct responses were compared …

Anthropomorphism In Sign Languages: A Look At Poetry And Storytelling With A Focus On British Sign Language, R. Sutton-Spence, Donna Jo Napoli

Linguistics Faculty Works

The work presented here considers some linguistic methods used in sign anthropomorphism. We find a cline of signed anthropomorphism that depends on a number of factors, including the skills and intention of the signer, the animacy of the entities represented, the form of their bodies, and the form of vocabulary signs referring to those entities. We consider four main factors that allow signers to anthropomorphize the whole range of entities (from animate to inanimate): the linguistic base that allows such play, the ability of the nonmanuals to anthropomorphize even when the manual articulators are signing in an ordinary way, the …

Communication Strategies Used By Chinese Students From China In Spoken English., Liu Qing Hua

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study evaluates the use of Communication Strategies which are employed by Second Language Acquisition (SLA) learners. A comprehensive review of the relevant literature from the last decade is done with focus on the particular consideration given to the different ways in which Communication Strategies have been defined under the corresponding influences in regard to the organization of strategy taxonomies. This study also seeks to examine how learners of second language perform in communicative tasks especially where they are confronted with linguistic problems and communication barriers. It also aims at identifying the communication strategies used by the students from China …

Extraversion And Oral Proficiency In Esl, Joshua Boyd Howard

LSU Master's Theses

Extraversion has been proposed as an influence on the success of a second language learner, although studies in this area have produced mixed results (Dewaele & Furnham, 1999; Marin-Marin, 2005; Wakamoto, 2007). Through a narrative retell task, the current study investigated the effects of extraversion on the spoken English performance of 25 native speakers of Spanish. Extraversion was measured with a Spanish version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire or EPQ (1975). Narratives were elicited using the wordless picture story Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Drawing on the work of Dewaele (1998), Dewaele and Pavlenko (2002), and Oya, Manalo, and …

El Análisis De Errores Ortográficos De Estudiantes Filipinos En El Aprendizaje De Español Como Le Y Su Aplicación Didáctica, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La presente investigación fue presentada en 2006 en la Universidad de Salamanca, como memoria final del Máster en Enseñanza de Español como Lengua Extranjera. Este estudio se realizó en la Universidad de Filipinas y en el Instituto Cervantes de Manila, para el que se encuestó a un total de 258 informantes. La tesis principal de la investigación partía de la hipótesis de que los errores ortográficos cometidos por los estudiantes filipinos de español eran fruto de unas dificultades específicas que no coincidían con las causas de los errores ortográficos que generan este tipo de error en los estudiantes nativos, especialmente …

A Study Of The Aspectual Complements Of 'Begin' And 'Start', Xinzheng Zhao

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract The main purpose of this thesis is to study the aspectual complements of the aspectualizers begin and start. Aspectualizers are verbs that give aspectual readings to the sentence. I started with a summary of Freed’s (1978) analysis. In this summary, semantic differences among seven aspectualizers that take to V and V-ing complements were explained. The semantic distinction between to V and V-ing was also discussed. Following the summary, a brief research on aspectual complements was conducted. Based on Freed’s analysis, I first examined the difference in meaning and in frequency of occurrence between the to V and the V-ing …

The Effects Of Planning On The Narrative Writings Of Malaysian Tertiary Level Students., Sim Biow Yee

Student Works (2010-2019)

Based on Kellogg’s model of writing, this study investigated the effects of planning on fluency, complexity and accuracy in the narrative writings of average proficiency undergraduates. 30 Malaysian students undertook the task of writing a narrative with the aid of a set of pictures and writing prompt, under three different conditions. No planning (NP) participants were instructed to write without planning time but with limited writing time. Pre-task planning (PTP) participants were given limited planning and writing time. Within-task planning (WTP) participants had unlimited writing time but no planning time. Results indicated that pre-task planning was beneficial in increasing fluency …

Maf'ulat Dalam Bahasa Arab : Satu Analisis Dalam Surah Yasin., Che Ku Mah Hussain Che Ku Abdullah

Student Works (2010-2019)

The absolute aim and objective of this research is to study and to explain the all five types of ‘mafulat’ in Arabic Language. They are ‘maf‘ul bih, ‘maf‘ul mutlaq’, ‘maf‘ul ma‘ah’, ‘maf‘ul fih’ and ‘maf‘ul lah’. The variety of its standard and uses has shown the flexibility and maturity of Arabic Language which is able to accommodate the need of broad meanings. This research elaborates and analyses the types of ‘maf‘ulat’ in details so that it will be easily understood by the readers. This research also analyses the use of ‘maf‘ulat’ in Yasin verse. The study of ‘maf‘ulat’ in this …

The Interdependence Of Modality And Theory Of Mind, Danielle Rachel Alfandre

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Modality is traditionally defined as the expression of possibility or necessity. In English, modality is expressed by the modal auxiliaries such as can, would, should, or might; adjectives and adverbs such as possible, necessary, maybe, and absolutely; or phrasal verbs such as going to or have to. Theory of Mind (ToM) is broadly defined as the ability to attribute thoughts and beliefs to other people. ToM is usually expressed using propositional attitude verbs such as think as in Mary thinks that it will rain. Hegarty (2006, 2010) proposes that propositional attitude verbs are covertly modalized and can be analyzed using …

1337 W4yz Of {Dollar}P34king: Toward A Unifying Pragmatic Theory Of Virtual Speech Community Building, Tracy Rene Leblanc

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Building a speech community requires building a shared history of communicative interaction. Within a virtual medium, speech community members employ accommodations for the lack of shared physical space that face-to-face interactions provide. These accommodations, amassing through extended discourse, bring to light the communicative strategies that virtual interlocutors employ in order to build community. Drawing from a corpus of unscripted, naturally occurring discourse of a particular virtual speech community, I engage three frames of linguistic analysis in order to recognize the communicative strategies that constitute speech community building. Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995) accounts for the individual cognitive work involved …

A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Mahathir Mohamad's Speeches Against The War On Terror, Azimah Shurfa Mohammed Shukry

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study is a Critical Discourse Analysis of the discursive strategies and argumentative moves deployed by Mahathir Mohamed, former Prime Minister of Malaysia in ten of his speeches that express resistance and challenge towards former U.S. President George. W Bush’s military ideology of ‘War on Terror’ post September 11 2001. The themes of this study are Mahathir’s assessment of the 9/11 attack, his construction of terrorists and terrorism and his description of the political and social actors involved in the context of ‘war on terror’. This study also examines how Mahathir constructs his own position in the speeches, with particular …

Penguasaan Partikal "Al" Bahasa Arab Dalam Kalangan Pelajar Melayu., Ahmad Rushdi Haroon

Student Works (2010-2019)

This research is aimed to see the accuracy of “al” particle among the Malay students. In this research, the writer gave the definition of what the particle is, and explained in detail the types and its functions. There are many types of particles in the Arabic language but this research only focuses on the “al” particle and its main semantic aspect such as the determinant particle, the connection particle and the additional particle. This research further explains the function of each particle and provides examples of its usage in sentences. This research uses a descriptive-observation method throughout the case study. …

I'La:L Dan Ibda:L Dalam Pembentukan Kata Bahasa Arab., Nurul Asyikhin Mohd Hanafiah

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study aims at finding out the close relationship of phonological aspects in the formation of Arabic words through the i„la:l and ibda:l processes. The changes that Arabic words went through while they were being formed were also studied in a great depth. This was done in order to solve any problem which might occur during the changing process that the words went through. The right conceptual framework for the changes was also determined so that it became as a guideline for those who study Arabic. Through this study, the researcher has found out a guideline for all Arabic users …

Gender Differences In Learning Style Preferences And Strategies Of Secondary Students., Anizakiah Makmin

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study aims to identify the learning style preferences and strategies used by a group of 90 Form 2 secondary school students. Gender is one of the variables identified to influence the choice of learning styles and strategies among students. This study hopes to establish whether there are any differences in the learning style preferences and strategies between male and female students in learning English language. Two sets of self-scoring questionnaire based on Reid‟s (1987) Perceptual Learning Style Preference (PLSP) Questionnaire was used to identify the students‟ learning style preferences and Oxford‟s (1986) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) was …

The Perception Of Arabic-Accented English Vowels., Zhang Fan

Student Works (2010-2019)

Evaluation of speech perception is one of the highly focused research areas in the field of phonetics and phonology. However, there is limited research on the perception of the language produced by the Arabic-speakers of English. Since Arabic is the dominant language, it can be assumed that there is an L1 interference in the English produced by the Arabic speakers. Moreover, with the internationalization of education, there has been an increase in the number of foreign students pursuing their higher education in Malaysia. This provides the rationale for conducting a study on the intelligibility of the English spoken by the …

Attitudes Of The Semai Students Towards Learning English., Nor Wardiah Ahmad Hadzri

Student Works (2010-2019)

The purpose of the study is to investigate the attitudes of the Semai students towards learning English. In general, these students are not proficient in the language (English paper, PMR, 2007). The study aims to determine the factors that affect their attitude towards learning English. How social, behavioural, cultural and educational factors affect the students’ attitudes are also examined. The research site is SMK Sri Tapah, Tapah, Perak as a large number of Semai students are registered in the school. About 40 students and five English language teachers (teaching in schools with a large number of Semai students enrolled) were …

Percampuran Kod Dalam Bahasa Mandarin Di Kelantan., Lee Wei Ying

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study examined the phenomenon of mixed code in Mandarin language in Kelantan. The purpose of this study was to explore the extent of the phenomenon of mixed code that occurred in Mandarin language spoken by the Chinese in Kelantan as well as the factors influencing it. To complete this study, the two main methods used by the researcher were observation and questionnaire. Respondents selected by the researcher were Chinese youths in Kelantan who were in the range of 15-30 years of age. The results of this study showed that Chinese in Kelantan often mixed code when interacting in Mandarin …