Digital Commons Network^™

Order Of Operations In Sociophonetic Analysis, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

In modern sociophonetic data analysis, a researcher makes numerous decisions when processing their data. Many of the “big” decisions include how data is collected, how audio is transcribed, how these transcriptions are aligned to the audio, and how acoustic measurements are extracted. Once a spreadsheet of numbers has been generated, further decisions must be made regarding normalization, detecting and handling outliers, and excluding tokens irrelevant to the research question. This paper takes a closer look at this second group of decisions—those made after acoustic measurements have been extracted—and shows that the order in which they are applied can have significant …

Multidimensional Signals And Analytic Flexibility: Estimating Degrees Of Freedom In Human-Speech Analyses, Stefano Coretta, Joseph V. Casillas, Joseph A. Stanley, Timo B. Roettger

Faculty Publications

Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis that can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time. Even greater flexibility is to be expected in fields in which the primary data lend themselves to a variety of possible operationalizations. The multidimensional, temporally extended nature of speech constitutes an ideal testing ground for assessing the variability in analytic approaches, which derives not only …

How Sample Size Impacts Pillai Scores: And What Sociophoneticians Should Do About It, Joseph A. Stanley, Betsy Sneller

Faculty Publications

Pillai scores in Sociolinguistics

• A way to quantify overlap in multiple dimensions (e.g., F1, F2, duration) (Hay et al., 2006; Nycz & Hall-Lew 2013)
• Some concern about unequal vowel categories sizes (Johnson 2015; convo on Twitter June 2, 2021)
• Our solution: a big simulation to show exactly what impact sample size has on Pillai scores

The Simulation

1. Start with a single bivariate normal distribution.

2. Sample two “vowel classes” from this distribution. – Ground Truth is they’re merged.

3. Calculate the Pillai score – Should be close to 0 because they’re merged!

4. Repeat many, many times.

Generational Change In Formant Trajectories: The Low-Back-Merger Shift In Longview, Washington, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

How have vowel formant trajectories changed as part of the LBMS?

As the front lax vowels lower and centralize, their formant dynamics change

• Specifically, F2 is less dynamic, resulting in a “bounce” shape in F1-F2 plots.
• More evident for lower vowels than higher ones.

Formant dynamics may change as global position changes (but not always).

• Especially true with BAT and BET here.
• BIT mostly unclear.
• BAN did not have substantial changes in vowel dynamics.

Homogeneity And Heterogeneity In Western American English, Joseph A. Stanley, Jessica Sheperd, Auna Nygaard

Faculty Publications

The Low-Back-Merger Shift (Becker 2019)

Description:

• BAT, BET, BIT lower and retract
• Arguably a chain shift
• Triggered by BOT-retraction
• Typically BAT shifts the most
• BET and especially BIT less shifted

Previous accounts are based on isolated, independent studies.

“Clearly, collecting the same type of data from all sites would be optimal in allowing us the most reliable cross-region assessment.” (Fridland et al. 2017:172)

This study is a direct response to that call.

Methods:

Speakers:

• Recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (“MTurk”; cf. Kim et al 2019)
• 85 speakers

Procedure:

• Read 132 sentences and a 300-item wordlist
• Submitted audio 10 sentences at …

Reading Rate Gain In A Second Language: The Effect Of Unassisted Repeated Reading And Intensity On Word-Level Reading Measures, Grant Eckstein, Krista Rich, Ethan Lynn

Faculty Publications

Repeated reading is a popular intervention used to help struggling readers by exposing them to the same text multiple times. While the approach has been effective in L1 and some EFL settings, little research has explored its effectiveness compared against a control group or among ESL learners. Our study examined reading rate gains using words per minute and four eye-tracking measures with 46 mid-intermediate ESL learners grouped into three 14-week treatment groups: a control group that read 26 text passages (about two per week) just once through, another that read the same passages twice in each sitting, and a third …

Do People With Apraxia Of Speech And Aphasia Improve Or Worsen Across Repeated Sequential Word Trials?, Tyson G. Harmon, Adam Jacks, Katarina L. Haley, Jessica D. Richardson, Elizabeth H. Lacey, Peter Turkeltaub

Faculty Publications

Purpose:

During motor speech examinations for suspected apraxia of speech (AOS), clients are routinely asked to repeat words several times sequentially. The purpose of this study was to understand the task in terms of the relationship among consecutive attempts. We asked to what extent phonemic accuracy changes across trials and whether the change is predicted by AOS diagnosis and sound production severity.

Method:

One hundred thirty-three participants were assigned to four diagnostic groups based on quantitative metrics (aphasia plus AOS, aphasia-only, and aphasia with two borderline speech profiles). Each participant produced four multisyllabic words 5 times consecutively. These productions were …

Standardizing Assessment Of Spoken Discourse In Aphasia: A Working Group With Deliverables, Tyson G. Harmon, Brielle C. Stark, Manaswita Dutta, Laura L. Murray, Lucy Bryant, Davida Fromm, Brian Macwhinney, Amy E. Ramage, Angela Roberts, Dirk B Den Ouden, Kris Brock, Katy Mckinney-Bock, Eun Jin Paek, Si On Yoon, Charalambos Themistocleous, Hyunsoo Yoo, Katharine Aveni, Stephanie Gutierrez, Saryu Sharma

Faculty Publications

Purpose: The heterogeneous nature of measures, methods, and analyses reported in the aphasia spoken discourse literature precludes comparison of outcomes across studies (e.g., meta-analyses) and inhibits replication. Furthermore, funding and time constraints significantly hinder collecting test-retest data on spoken discourse outcomes. This research note describes the development and structure of a working group, designed to address major gaps in the spoken discourse aphasia literature, including a lack of standardization in methodology, analysis, and reporting, as well as nominal data regarding the psychometric properties of spoken discourse outcomes. Method: The initial initiatives for this working group are to (a) propose recommendations …

Evaluating The Use Of The L1 In A French Language Classroom, Joyce Esther Hiaumiti Guidi

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have explored how different balances of first language (L1) and target language (TL) use in a foreign language classroom impact students' fluency and proficiency in TL acquisition. Research has shown that the use of the L1 in a foreign language classroom is done in order to determine the most effective way to raise the proficiency of second language learners to the level that is expected within their classrooms (Lee & Muncie, 2006). The use of the L1 is not something that is uncommon, even in the highest levels of foreign language instruction, although some believe it could inhibit learner …

The Last Nephite Scribes, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

This paper leverages the insights of modern scholars on the scribal schools of the ancient near east to identify and track the Nephite scribal school across the ten centuries of the Nephite dispensation. Mormon tells us his abridgment only includes a hundredth part of the Nephite history available to him on the Large Plates of Nephi. That being the case, it is especially impressive that his abridgment tracks the responsibility for maintaining and preserving the Nephite record and other sacred objects—the responsibility of the scribes—across that millennium without gaps. Mormon and his son Moroni were themselves trained scribes who could …

Blended Language Learning: The Decision-Making Process In Designing A Blended Portuguese Course, Camellia Hill

Theses and Dissertations

This study identifies how content specialists, instructors, and instructional designers made decisions about what content to teach in person and what to teach online for a second year Portuguese university course. Qualitative vignettes around three course design participants highlight emergent themes and course artifacts from their interviews that show how they made decisions about what learning opportunities to do online and what to leave in person. The blended language course involved Canvas learning management system with two additional main technology tools used in development: GoReact and H5P. The results are subdivided to reflect the views of the instructional designer, the …

A Language Analysis Of The London, Harrow Obituary From 1940 To 1950, Michaela Rappleyea

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the vocabulary and phrases used in obituaries written in London during World War II and in the first five years following the war. During the war, both the length and content of the obituaries was significantly different, as the subjects and manner of death during those years was also significantly different. During the post-war years, the subjects and content followed a lengthier format and were generally for older community members who died of natural causes. This change in structure was affected by the nature and frequency of death. The tone of the writing was …

Text Posts As Folk Ethnopoetics, Tracy Vogel

Final Projects

About grammar in social media. A PowerPoint focusing on how living internet grammar clarifies performance to the reader, similar to an ethnopoetic score.

Online Appendix: Who Are(N’T) Our Students?, Dianna Murphy, Hadis Ghaedi

ScholarsArchive Data

*Scroll to bottom of page to download images

The document is an appendix to the article "Who Are(n’t) Our Students?" by Dianna Murphy, Hadis Ghaedi published in RLJ Vol. 71, No. 3 . It provides high-resolution images which, due to their large size, are not legible in the print edition.

Language Maintenance In Utah: Spanish Heritage Speakers' Attitudes And Language Use, Perla Y. Escobar Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

The current study quantitatively and qualitatively investigated Spanish maintenance among 45 Spanish heritage language (SHL) speakers in Utah who completed a survey about their linguistic background, their attitudes toward Spanish, their self-rated Spanish proficiency, and their current Spanish usage. Nine participants were also interviewed to expound on their linguistic experience. Previous studies on language maintenance (Alba et al., 2002; Carreira & Kagan, 2011; Lanier, 2014; Lynch, 2000; Mejías et al., 2002; Potowski, 2004; Silva-Corvalán, 1994; Zentella, 1997) have analyzed different sociolinguistics factors that relate to Spanish maintenance and usage in areas with high Hispanic populations. Nevertheless, little research has been …

The Formation Of The Diminutive In Brazilian Portuguese, Cristina M. Newell

Theses and Dissertations

Although the Portuguese diminutive has been analyzed for centuries, there is a lack of descriptive experimental data regarding how native speakers form the diminutive including participants from each state in Brazil. For this study, 1,053 native speakers from each of the 26 states and the federal district of Brazil filled out an online survey, providing information about their age, gender, birth state, and current state of residence in Brazil. Participants selected the form(s) of the diminutive which they would use for 60 test words. Results indicate that the most influential factors in the formation of the diminutive are the age …

Figures Of Virtue: Margaret Fell And Aemilia Lanyer's Use Of Decorum As Ethical Good Judgment In The Construction Of Female Discursive Authority, Kirsten Marie Osmani

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding how the Renaissance rhetorical curriculum taught style as behavior makes it possible to unite the study of women writers' identities with formal criticism. Nancy L. Christiansen shows that early modern humanists built on the Isocratean tradition of teaching rhetoric as an ethical practice because they adopted and developed lists of rhetorical figures so extensive as to encompass all human discourse, thought, and behavior. For them, knowing, selecting, and applying these various forms was the ethical practice of good judgment, also called decorum. This type of decorum plays an important role in the rhetorical function of two key texts by …

Trademarks And Genericide: A Corpus And Experimental Approach To Understanding The Semantic Status Of Trademarks, Richard B. Bevan

Theses and Dissertations

Genericide is the process by which a trademarked term is used generically by the public and ultimately loses its legal trademark protections. The linguistic methods that courts have used to determine whether a given term is in the process of or has undergone genericide have historically relied on dictionaries. However, there has a been recent push to use corpus linguistics as a tool to aid in that determination for not only trademarks but word meaning in general (Hoopes, 2019; Lee & Mouritsen, 2018). In addition to corpus data, I argue that the use of experimental data via a linguistic questionnaire …

Witnessing "Story Truth" And The Narrative Of The Resurrection: Reintegration After Crisis In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Hayley E. Langton

Theses and Dissertations

Sarah Bachelard describes crisis as a turning point during which all previous frameworks collapse. The narrative structure of the resurrection reveals the influential role of narrative in reintegrating such crises back into a place of meaning and wholeness. Using the resurrection narrative as an interpretive framework for Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried reveals how "story truth" acknowledges the transcendent meaning that lies beyond all texts and circumstances, and so reintegrates crisis and redeems meaning for Tim and his fellow soldiers. The transcendent and transformative qualities of story truth illustrate the latter's innately spiritual nature, even within secular texts. Story …

A Brief History Of Writing From The Perspective Of Restoration Scripture, Noel B. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

This paper brings together selected insights of modern epigraphers who study the languages and texts of the ancient near east to illuminate how we should understand the composition and history of central texts in the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

A Strategy For Correcting Errors In Automated Formant Extraction, Lisa M. Johnson

Faculty Publications

Sociophonetic vowel analysis relies heavily on measurements of resonant frequencies, particularly of the first and second formants. Automated formant estimation using linear predictive coding (LPC) algorithms in software like Praat greatly increases efficiency compared to hand measurements and allows researchers to analyze more data than was possible before this technological advancement. However, many authors have noted LPC analysis is prone to certain types of errors (e.g., Di Paolo, Yaeger-Dror, & Wassink, 2011; Harrison, 2013; Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006; Strelluf, 2019; Styler, 2017). In one common error, which I call “faulty low F2” (FLF2), LPC identifies a spectral peak between …

In The Beginning: Genesis 1-3 And Its Significance To The Latter-Day Saints, Dan Belnap, Daniel L. Belnap

Faculty Publications

This volume begins with the same event the Bible itself does—the Creation. The Creation narrative and the Garden of Eden narrative that immediately follows have been the subject of much study throughout the years. Over the past century, particular attention has been given to the similarities between it and other ancient Near Eastern Creation narratives. For Latter-day Saints, the Creation and Garden of Eden narratives play central roles in their worship practices, the narratives themselves laying down the plan of salvation God ordained for all his children. In this first chapter, Dan Belnap describes what creation meant to those of …

Anticipatory Tonal Variations Can Facilitate Spoken-Word Recognition: A Visual World Eye-Tracking Study, Jeffrey Jack Green, Yan Sun, Chilin Shih

Faculty Publications

The acoustics of speech sounds can vary dramatically depending on phonetic context, yet listeners can reliably process spoken language in a rapid and seemingly effortless manner. Previous research suggests that acoustic variations in speech can actually facilitate, rather than disrupt, the processing of spoken language, and sometimes listeners can even use fine-grained acoustic cues in the unfolding speech signal to predict the sound(s) of an upcoming word. For example, it has been reported that listeners fixate their eyes on target words faster when the pre-target word contains compatible vowel-to-vowel coarticulation cues [1, 2]. Similarly, pitch accents have been found to …

Full Issue

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

Uptake Processes In Academic Genres: The Socialization Of An Advanced Academic Writer Through Feedback Activities, Shakil Rabbi

Journal of Response to Writing

Academic socialization has been a common framework in writing studies for decades. Recent scholarship on rhetorical genre studies and feedback on writing can develop this paradigm in generative ways. In particular, examining how writers take up feedback as they write in genres can inform how writing pedagogy understands such activities. This study examines and interprets the case of a graduate student as she works with in-person and textually mediated feedback in research group meetings and reviewers’ letters. Approaching graduate students as advanced academic writers—simultaneously performing the role of expert and learning the content needed to be a full member of …

Professors’ Views Of Content Transformation In Students’ Paraphrasing, Ling Shi

Journal of Response to Writing

This study explores how paraphrasing transforms and integrates meaning from reading into writing. Findings are based on interviews with 27 professors who commented on 8 paraphrases written by graduate students. Both student writers and professors were selected from across cultural (Chinese and North American) and disciplinary (soft and hard) contexts. Results indicate that the participating professors tended to accept paraphrases that involved a selection or interpretation of the original source that accurately represented the source text, rather than those that contained a misunderstanding or additional ideas. The professors also suggested that students could add an explanation for the content transformation …

Towards A Better Understanding Of The Complex Nature Of Written Corrective Feedback And Its Effects: A Duoethnographical Exploration Of Perceptions, Choices, And Outcomes., Eva Kartchava, Yushi Bu, Julian Heidt, Abdizalon Mohamed, Judy Seal

Journal of Response to Writing

Despite a large body of research into the benefits of corrective feedback (i.e., teachers’ reactions to students’ incorrect use of the target language), little is known about how new and experienced second-language (L2) teachers supply feedback to writing and what factors guide their decisions. This paper is a collaborative effort of 1 teacher-educator and 4 graduate students to examine the process of providing written corrective feedback (WCF) to university-level L2 learners. Findings point to complexities involved in WCF provision and the importance of examining CF holistically, as preservice teachers’ corrective choices and learners’ responses to them are often interlinked.

Acknowledgments: …

Student Engagement With Teacher Written Corrective Feedback In A French As A Foreign Language Classroom, Maria-Lourdes Lira-Gonzales, Hossein Nassaji, Kuok Wa Chao Chao

Journal of Response to Writing

This paper reports on an exploratory multiple-case study conducted to examine 6 French as a foreign language (FFL) learners at a university in Costa Rica and their affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagements with teacher written corrective feedback (WCF). We collected data through students’ writings (drafts and revisions), semistructured interviews, and stimulated recall interviews. We used the students’ writings to examine students’ behavioral engagement, and we used the semistructured and stimulated recall interviews to determine how students engaged cognitively and affectively with WCF. Findings revealed that although most participants initially reported mixed feelings and, at times, negative emotions upon the receipt …

Spanish Writing Learners’ Stances As Peer Reviewers, Emilia Illana-Mahiques, Carol Severino

Journal of Response to Writing

This study explores the attitudes and perceptions about online peer review of 18 Spanish learners enrolled in a third-year college Spanish writing course. Students participated in peer review training, wrote a personal narrative, and completed two online peer review sessions before submitting their final narrative. Using data from questionnaires, interviews, a peer review simulation task, and the first author’s journal, this qualitative study investigates students’ approaches to peer review and the different practices they employ when commenting on their peers’ drafts. Results show that even though students receive the same training, they interpret and enact that training differently. Students position …

We Gather Together: September 9-10 Meetings In New York City, Dan Shea

Newsletter of the Jussi Björling Societies of the USA & UK

For members of the Jussi Bjorling Society, the anniversary date of September 9 this year was more than usually fraught with memories of that 1960 day, whether that had been experienced personally or was simply a historical fact associated with a favorite singer's life story. To mark the occasion, there had been anniversary radio programs the previous weekend from Vermont and California, see for instance the interesting list of selections played during Peter Fox Smith's 4-hour tribute on the afternoon of September 4, at http:// www.vpr.net/episode/49386/. Mr. Smith conducts an anniversary program like this every year on the Saturday preceding …