Digital Commons Network^™

"Ya Know Frenchy, You Talk A Broken Language": An Analysis Of Syllable-Coda Phonetic Realizations In Creole African American Vernacular English, Rachel Rose Mentz

LSU Master's Theses

Creole African American Vernacular English or CAAVE is a variety of English spoken by African Americans of French ancestry who live primarily in the French Triangle of Louisiana. Dubois and Horvath (2003b) have previously published on glide absence in CAAVE and have suggested that CAAVE is a unique dialect of English. They attribute CAAVE’s glide absence to the contact of Creole African Americans with diverse groups of English speakers and not to language interference from French. This research further pursues these hypotheses by studying the phonological realization of word final syllable-codas for six old male speakers of CAAVE. The reduction …

The Realization Of L2 Speech Events: A Quantitative Study Of Korean Speakers Of L2 English With Respect To Formality And Proficiency, Nevin Liddy

LSU Master's Theses

Guided written conversations were studied from English speakers at four different proficiency levels. They were analyzed according to their speech act realization, speech event realization, and conversation management (as reflected by three levels of speech acts: primary, secondary, and complementary). All four proficiency levels were found to be capable in the formulation of speech acts and events, demonstrating access to certain discourse principles at all levels. Language proficiency was found to effect the way in which a speech event was realized to a greater degree than the level of formality was found to effect the way in which the speech …

Irrationality And Human Reasoning, Michael Aristidou

LSU Master's Theses

In his account of intentional interpretation, Donald Davidson assumes that people are mostly rational. Several psychological experiments though, reveal that human beings deviate drastically from the normative standards of rationality. Therefore, some psychologists arrive to the conclusion that humans are mostly irrational. In this thesis, I raise some objections to both points of view. On the one hand, ascribing rationality to humans in an a priori manner seems a suspicious position to adopt, considering the empirical data that show otherwise. On the other hand, the validity of the experiments and what exactly they test can also be put in question, …

Methods For Estimating Long-Distance Dispersal, Ran Nathan, Gad Perry, James T. Cronin, Allan E. Strand, Michael L. Cain

Faculty Publications

Long-distance dispersal (LDD) includes events in which propagules arrive, but do not necessarily establish, at a site far removed from their origin. Although important in a variety of ecological contexts, the system-specific nature of LDD makes "far removed" difficult to quantify, partly, but not exclusively, because of inherent uncertainty typically involved with the highly stochastic LDD processes. We critically review the main methods employed in studies of dispersal, in order to facilitate the evaluation of their pertinence to specific aspects of LDD research. Using a novel classification framework, we identify six main methodological groups: biogeographical; Eulerian and Lagrangian movement/redistributional; short-term …

Rules And Fuzzy Rules In Text: Concept, Extraction And Usage, D. H. Kraft, M. J. Martín-Bautista, J. Chen, D. Sánchez

Faculty Publications

Several concepts and techniques have been imported from other disciplines such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to the field of textual data. In this paper, we focus on the concept of rule and the management of uncertainty in text applications. The different structures considered for the construction of the rules, the extraction of the knowledge base and the applications and usage of these rules are detailed. We include a review of the most relevant works of the different types of rules based on their representation and their application to most of the common tasks of Information Retrieval such as …

From Shiloh To Savannah: The Seventh Illinois Infantry In The Civil War, B. Franklin Cooling

Civil War Book Review

Military Memoir

A newly annotated edition of Ambrose's account

Jonathan Swift Bounces A Head, Regina Janes

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Effeminate Pacifists And War-Mongering Women Thoughts On War And Peace In The Long Eighteenth Century, Kathryn R. King

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

"The Alphabet Of Nature" Writing As Trope In Early Modern Scientific And Philosophical Discourse, Nicholas Hudson

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Eve's "Sweet Converse" Conversational Patterns In Paradice Lost, Alice Mathews

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Poems By Eminent Ladies The Encyclopedic Anthology Of 1755, Chantel Lavoie

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Caller Id, Plamen Ivanov Arnaudov

LSU Master's Theses

As one might expect from a young poet writing at the turn of a millennium, recurrent in "Caller ID" is the theme of struggle with literary tradition and of seeing it as both necessary and constricting to the project of forging one's own creative identity. The collision between history and the self is visible in the often conflicted references to great philosophers and poets of the past as well as in the call for renewal of the body poetic after an envisioned 'end of history' marked by creative sterility and exhaustion. The proposed renewal does not entail destruction of tradition …

Logs, Labor, And Living: An Archaeological Investigation Of African-American Laborers At The Upper And Middle Landing Sawmills At Natchez-Under-The-Hill, Jerame Joseph Cramer

LSU Master's Theses

By combining investigations of two sawmill complexes at Natchez-Under-the-Hill, Mississippi, and ethnohistoric data from contemporaneous mill operations in the region, this thesis analyzes aspects of two mid-nineteenth century lumber operations. It focuses not only on the machinery and technology involved in these operations, but also on the individuals, many of whom were enslaved prior to the Civil War, whose skills and labors provided the backbone for these early milling enterprises. The data for this research were derived from archival documents, oral testimonies, and artifacts recovered from archaeological survey and excavation. The archaeological data comes from excavations carried out at the …

Feathers And Tuxedos: An Analysis Of Political Cartoons About Indian Gaming, Michael Stephan Nasirov

LSU Master's Theses

Feathers and Tuxedos: An Analysis of Political Cartoons About Indian Gaming is an exploration into the changing stereotypes of Indians in illustrated media. Beginning with general issues such as poverty and media coverage, this thesis continues to cover chronologically the origins of modern Indian gaming and the resulting expenditure of profits into social welfare of the tribes and the continuous three-way battle between state, federal, and Indian sovereign rights. Normative U.S. societal reactions to Indian gaming are contrasted with their Indian counterpoints. Cartoons allow for a visual representation of contested relationships, including recent imagery of well-to-do entrepreneurs profiting at the …

The Body Politic: Burial And Post-War Reconciliation In Baton Rouge, Leah Wood Jewett

LSU Master's Theses

Historians typically agree that reconciliation between the white North and South took place between the period of 1898 (Spanish-American War) and 1913 (before World War I). To test this hypothesis and identify when reconciliation took place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I will use the burial of R. L. Pruyn in the Baton Rouge National Cemetery. Pruyn served as a U.S. soldier during the Mexican War and a Confederate soldier during the Civil War. Anthropologists have studied rituals, beliefs, and practices associated with death since early in the discipline. Archaeologists, in particular, have focused on this aspect of culture, in large …

Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphisms Characterization Of Sea Oats (Uniola Paniculata L.) Accessions From Southeastern Atlantic And Gulf Coasts Of The United States, Neil Prieto Parami

LSU Master's Theses

Uniola paniculata, commonly known as sea oats, is a C4 perennial grass capable of stabilizing sand dunes. The genetic relationship and diversity among U. paniculata accessions from southeastern Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States was established by amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis. One hundred ninety U. paniculata plants belonging to nineteen different accessions were selected to represent eight locations; Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Twelve AFLP EcoRI+MseI primer combinations generated a wide range of polymorphisms (42-81%) with a mean of 59%. EcoRI-CAG+MseI-CGA, EcoRI-ACT+MseI-CTC and EcoRI-CAG+MseI-ACG have the highest polymorphic rate at …

The Novelty Of Improvisation: Towards A Genre Of Embodied Spontaneity, David Alfred Charles

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Improvisation has often been viewed and valued in terms of its service and resemblance to scripted traditions of theatre. Such a stance seriously undermines the significance and impact of this global performance modality, and has resulted in improvisatory modes being largely ignored or downplayed in modern historical accounts of theatre. This dissertation examines improvisation on its own terms, seeking to understand its unique features, functions and potentials, while freeing it from the heavy shadow of its scripted counterpart. To this end, the theories of literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, provide important methodological guideposts and allow the silhouette of the improvisational impetus …

A Phonological Awareness Intervention For At-Risk Preschoolers: The Effects Of Supplemental, Intensive Small-Group Instruction, Lisa Oliver Guidry

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Results from phonological awareness research on assessment and intervention support two major suppositions. First, findings from correlational studies revealing that young children's phonological sensitivity is related to the future development of reading skills (Lonigan et al., 1998) validate early screening of phonological awareness to identify children who may be at risk for encountering reading difficulties. Second, experimental studies examining the effectiveness of phonological awareness instruction demonstrate that young children's phonological sensitivity can be promoted, thereby altering patterns of initial weaknesses (Bentin & Leshem, 1993; O'Connor et al., 1995b; Torgesen & Davis, 1996; Warrick et al., 1993) The purpose of this …

Cultural Competence Of Faculty Of Baccalaureate Nursing Programs, Lorinda J. Sealey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the level of cultural competence among faculty teaching in baccalaureate nursing programs in Louisiana and to identify associated factors. A survey was mailed to all 313 faculty members identified as actively involved in teaching in any baccalaureate nursing program in Louisiana and 163 valid responses were obtained. The Cultural Diversity Questionnaire for Nurse Educators, a researcher designed instrument intended to measure cultural competence, was the instrument used. It included Likert-type items organized into five subscales representing the components of cultural competence according to Campinha- Bacote’s model of cultural competence (i.e., cultural awareness, …

Will The Real Jesus Please Stand Up?: Bridging The Divide Between The Jesus Seminar And Its Opponents Through A Burkeian Approach, Carol Melissa Hopson-Sparks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study employs a Burkeian cluster-agon analysis approach to analyze the rhetoric of four members of the Jesus Seminar; namely, Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and John Shelby Spong as well as that of two of the Jesus Seminar’s critics; Luke Timothy Johnson and N. Thomas Wright. Specifically, this study sought to discern the orientations or perspectives held by each of the examined rhetors in an effort to locate common ground or similar foundations within two seemingly disparate points of view. In doing so, this study creates a third perspective, or corrective, based on the orthopraxis approach of …

"Above The Noise And The Glory": Tiers Of Propaganda In Great War Literature, Margaret L. Clark

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

"Above the Noise and the Glory:" Tiers of Propaganda in Great War Literature illuminates the literary responses of Rupert Brooke, Mary Borden, Alice-Dunbar Nelson and Willa Cather to the manner in which the threat to one's cultural community, as well as personal and physical landscape, transforms a nation's, and even a world's, people from a state of complacency or purposelessness to one of jingoistic fervor. Prompted and inspired by personal, political and cultural forces, these writers mobilized early twentieth-century private citizens' spirits of nationalistic pride and solidarity. Individual chapters place within historical and literary contexts how war propaganda, particularly British …

Reticent Romans: Silence And Writing In La Vie De Saint Alexis, Le Conte Du Graal, And Le Roman De Silence, Evan J. Bibbee

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Apart from discourse and yet somehow part of it, silence is a powerfully ambiguous linguistic phenomenon that blurs the lines between presence and absence. Eluding the material aspects of oral and written language, it is only perceptible as the gaps or spaces between words. Nonetheless, it plays a role in all linguistic productions: although silence itself cannot be directly communicated, it can influence communication. In a literary text, silence may takes on many different guises, including rhythmic hesitations, rhetorical omissions, and poetic oppositions that mimic the audible gaps of spoken language. The visual, aural, and fictional interaction of all these …

The History Of Russian Vaudeville From 1800 To 1850, Alexander V. Tselebrovski

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

 There is no significant scholarly work on the history of the Russian vaudeville. The author of the dissertation makes an attempt to explore the history of vaudeville in Russia from 1812, when the first original vaudeville was written by A. Shakhovskoi, to the 1850s, when vaudeville as a genre was finalized as a form and brought to its classic completion. Two phases of the history of vaudeville in Russia, aristocratic and democratic-raznochinnyi, are considered in close connection with the political, social, and cultural events of Russian society of the time. The first phase embraces the period from 1812, when …

Disarming The Externalist Threat To Self-Knowledge, Gabriel Guy Cate

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine various attempts to disarm the externalist threat to self-knowledge. That threat is engendered by a certain causal theory of meaning and reference, which suggests that empirical investigations may be required to know the contents of our own thoughts. It is claimed, then, that direct, non-inferential self-knowledge of our own mental states, is not possible if externalism is true. The leading compatibilist strategies that attempt to reconcile these apparently conflicting theses are explored and criticized. I conclude by offering what I take to be the essential features of a more successful compatibilist strategy.

The Evaluation Of A Family Literacy Program, Katrina Denise Hopkins

LSU Master's Theses

Based on the literacy need in the state of Louisiana, this project was interested in whether the Ready to Learn: Between the Lions literacy workshop could equip parents to enhance and develop their child’s literacy skills and to enhance family literacy interactions. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of a Ready to Learn literacy workshop in two Baton Rouge Head Start preschool centers, Banks and Southern University. Participants attended workshops once a month from January to April, lasting approximately 30 minutes each. The workshop was evaluated using a pretest/posttest instrument consisting of seven likert-type …

Delta Memories And Delta Days: Facets Of Ladies' Lives As Revealed To A Southern Daughter, Susan E. Probasco

LSU Master's Theses

The Arkansas Delta is a land considered by many to be devoid of beauty and richness of life. However, to a daughter who was the youngest child of the youngest child of a youngest child that was born in the Delta, the region is beautiful, enhanced by the observations of the lives of the women she observed there. An ethnography of the everyday lives of white, middle-class southern women in a small Arkansas Delta town seeks to communicate some of the richness and beauty of their lives, as well as other aspects of culture illustrative of southern culture in general, …

Language, Identity And The Achievement Gap: Comparing Experiences Of African-American Students In A French Immersion And A Regular Education Context, Michelle Georgette Haj-Broussard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Black/White Achievement gap has been a persistent problem in education. Previous research attributed this gap to students' culture (Jenks & Phillips, 1998; Ogbu, 1995a.b) or teachers' expectancy (Rist, 1970). Post-colonial literature suggests that this research itself is oppressive, and that learning is negotiating the "spaces" between students and teachers (Ellsworth, 1997); creating a hybrid "mestiza" space (Anzaldúa, 1987). The openness of immersion to diversity, and its subsequent educational benefits for African-American students (Caldas & Boudreaux, 1999) conforms to this post-colonial perspective. This mixed-methodology study examined both academic achievement and the experiences of Louisiana fourth grade students/teachers in both the …

The Social Context Of Norse Jarlshof, Marcie Anne Kimball

LSU Master's Theses

A series of excavations from 1897 to 1951 showed the site of Jarlshof in Shetland to have been occupied by proto-Pictish, Pictish, and Viking peoples. These inquiries culminated in J.R.C. Hamilton’s 1956 monograph Excavations at Jarlshof, Shetland. In the years since the writing of the monograph, much new information has come to light that relates to the time periods found at Jarlshof. The concern of this thesis is how the new findings relate to Viking Age Jarlshof and how Viking Age Jarlshof relates to this new information. In order to set Viking Age Jarlshof into its overall historical context regarding …

Perceptions Of Stereotypes In Hispanic Children's Literature, Nancy Gomez

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study attempted to determine the accurateness of the representation of the Hispanic culture in children’s books. I interviewed ten people: five non-Hispanic and five Hispanic, and I found that the Hispanic people do not seem to pay as much attention to physical features as non-Hispanic people do. However, they were concerned about the portrayal of the Hispanic culture in traditional ways: the traditional roles of women, the traditional dress, the architecture of the houses and the portrayal of the Hispanic people living in rural areas and being extremely poor. It appears that from the timeline covered by the books, …

Drawing Of The Mind, Buddy Harper

LSU Master's Theses

The rules of drawing I have described are an outline to my method of working. It is to be used like the rules of a game. The thesis paper provides the viewer the basic parameters for looking at my work. The body of work is produced like two people playing a game of chess. I establish the rules and then I develop the work in an investigative manner.