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The Motivations For Meaning: A Study Of Persuasive Appeals In Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Lawrence Arthur Lannoo

Theses and Dissertations

In 1976, one of the most violent and controversial films of that decade was released in American movie theaters. The film, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, was heralded by some film scholars as a masterpiece.

However, others criticized the film for its graphic presentation of urban violence. This criticism intensified when John Hinckley, Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, apparently motivated by his love for a character in the film, played by Jodie Foster.

The director of Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese, responded to the criticisms of the violence in his film. He suggested that he was not trying …

Yoknapatawpha County In China: A Study Of Faulkner's Short Stories In Translation., Xian Liu

Theses and Dissertations

Since the meaningful impact of a word is context-dependent, this study investigates the cultural and semantic contexts of William Faulkner's short stories in both English and Chinese to determine whether the original is successfully "echoed." As controversial as Walter Benjamin's theory on translation is, "echoing" the original refocuses a literary translation on the overall effect rather than isolated wording. Despite its questionable practicality, it serves as the basic criterion in this study, which evaluates the quality of a translation through comparing the effect of the original with that of the translated in paralinguistic aspects such as voice, style, and dialect.Faulkner …

The Hakluyt Stage: Travel, Narcissism, And The Narrative., Thomas Palakeel

Theses and Dissertations

In this quincentenary year of the Columbus landfall, as the theorists debate the limitations of Western civilization, my dissertation critiques the narratives collected by Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616) who sought to enter the geographical and ethnographic discourse of the late Renaissance by inscribing the emergent English nation as the custodian of modern civilization. The English rhetoric of civility in the New World has taken the form of a series of monologic narratives, forced inscriptions that seek to normalize the history of colonization, slavery, and imperialism.My study of the narratives in Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1598) reveals the cultural narcissism of the English …

The Past As Prologue: A Qualitative Study Of The Roles Of Biography And Teachers' Beliefs In The Practice Of Teaching., Renate Schulz

Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the complex interplay of biography, beliefs and teachers practice, and reveals the enormous power of the personal and the past to inform and shape the present practices of teachers. For this study, two experienced and reflective high school English teachers were identified. Their teaching styles as well as their responses to the introduction of a new curriculum were very different, and this research was undertaken in order to gain a clearer understanding of how teachers' beliefs influence the way they shape the curriculum to make it uniquely their own, and how the personal figures in teachers' …

A Comparative Study Of Selected Women's Studies Programs In The Upper Mid-West., Sandra Jo Parsons

Theses and Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study is to gain a more complex understanding of women's studies programs in the selected sample in terms of: the activities of the Director; selected departmental and program information; instructor information; program evaluation methods; and the major strengths and concerns as perceived by each of the responding programs.In addition to the review of the related literature, two methods were used in the compilation and analysis of the data used in this study--collecting information from the selected universities and colleges with a questionnaire designed by the researcher; plus statistical analysis of the data to allow the …

Goals And Indirect Objects In Seri, Stephen A. Marlett

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

From the introduction: "A significant group of Seri verbs display a sensitivity to whether a Goal is singular or plural. (I use the term 'Goal' as a cover term for 'Recipients', 'Addressees', etc.) A verb such as [...] 'give', for example, has the subcategorization frame [1 3/Sg]; that is, it accepts only a subject and an indirect object, and the indirect object must be singular. With such verbs, if the Goal is plural, it must appear as a relational noun phrase (an Oblique).

"The data which appear in this paper of typological interest. I argue that Seri has Indirect Objects, …

Obligatory Dative Clitic Doubling In Spanish, Karol Joy Hardin

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

From the introduction: "This study investigates the phenomenon of obligatory dative doubling, examining data based upon a critique of two analyses of clitic doubling in Spanish within different grammatical frameworks. Previous analyses propose that dative clitic doubling is obligatory whenever the NP in indirect object position is not a semantic Recipient/Addressee (Goal). J. Albert Bickford's (1985) proposal within Relational Grammar and Osvaldo Jaeggli's (1982) account within Government and Binding are two representative analyses of the phenomenon which argue that conditions for doubling are based upon the thematic role of the superficial indirect object NP. Due to an incomplete corpus of …

Front Matter For Sil-Und Work Papers Vol. 37 (1993)

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

No abstract provided.

Role And Reference Grammar, Robert D. Van Valin Jr.

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

From the introduction: "Role and Reference Grammar [RRG] (Van Valin 1993a) may be termed a "structural-functionalist theory of grammar"; this locates it on a range of perspectives from extreme formalist at one end to radical functionalist at the other. RRG falls between these two extremes, differing markedly from each. In contrast to the extreme formalist view, RRG views language as a system of communicative social action, and consequently, analyzing the communicative functions of morphosyntactic structures has a vital role in grammatical description and theory from this perspective. Language is a system, and grammar is a system in the traditional structuralist …

Seri Kinship Terminology, Mary B. Moser, Stephen A. Marlett

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

From the introduction: "The Seri language contains over fifty kinship terms, and as such represents one of the most highly elaborated kinship systems described to date. A list of these terms was given in Kroeber 1931, although Kroeber's list was (understandably) incorrect in certain ways. Our discussion of the Seri kinship terminology centers around, but is not limited to, the set of obligatorily possessed noun stems which are inflected with the following possessive prefixes. [...]

"This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we discuss various kinds of terms which, although used to refer to kinsmen, are special in …

Quiegolani Zapotec Phonology, Susan Regnier

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

From the introduction: "Quiegolani Zapotec (henceforth QZ) words contain initial consonant clusters of two or even three consonants and most of these consonant clusters show a decreasing slope of sonority. This violates sonority constraints proposed by Greenberg in 1978 and further discussed by Bell and Saka (1983). This, however, is understandable when viewed from a diachronic perspective. This will be discussed in section 6.4.

"Further, QZ, like most Zapotec languages, has a lenis-fortis distinction among some of its consonants. However, this distinction is less clear in QZ than in other Zapotec languages and carries a lower functional load."

The Binding Properties Of Quechua Suffixes, David J. Weber

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

From the introduction: "This paper sketches an explicitly non-lexicalist application of grammatical theory to Huallaga (Huánuco) Quechua (henceforth HgQ). I hope to demonstrate the advantages of applying the binding theory to many suffixes that have previously been treated only as objects of the morphology. This is possible only if morphology and syntax are more intimately related than allowed under the lexicalist hypothesis.

Section 2 outlines some basic assumptions (categories, structures, Case assignment, θ-marking, etc.) Section 3 discusses inflection, proposing an analysis of SUBJECT MARKING ANOMALY phenomena. Section 4 argues that HgQ's complementizers are really its case-marking suffixes. Section 5 deals …

Communicative Competence Of Individuals Diagnosed With Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Sandra D. Carr

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Written Communication Acts In Dialogue Journaling Of Language-Learning Disabled Adolescents, Deborah R. Swanson

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Normative Electrolaryngographic Data On Adolescent Females, Ambika M. Thampi

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Auditory Processing, Verbal Ability, And Prose Memory, Danae J. Beattie

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Media Maintenance Of The Status Quo : A Comparative Analysis Of Indian Today (Formerly Lakota Times) And Newsweek, La Royce Batchelor

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Interactive Television In Graduate Business Classes : A Comparison Study, Robyn Bergstrom

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Response Consistency On Semantic Memory Tasks In Senile Dementia Of The Alzheimer's Type, Darrin N. J Sawchuk

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Central Auditory Processing And Word Recall, Gisele M. Manswell

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Making All The Difference: Native American Testimony And The Black Hills (A Review Essay), Frank Pommersheim

North Dakota Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Sacred Hoop: The Hero And Community In Selected Works Of Mari Sandoz, Diane Drake

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the theme of the hero and community in the works of Mari Sandoz. The hypothesis is that Sandoz believed in the concept of a world community so that her works are centered around the hero as community builder. Using the Lakota concept of the sacred hoop as the controlling metaphor for the study, I have asserted that Sandoz has illustrated in her novels, biographies, and histories that true heroes try to build and maintain the sacred hoop of community, but their efforts are continually thwarted by the weaknesses in themselves and society.

The study is organized around …

Inservice Training And Accessing Knowledge: The Perceived Needs Of Parents And Educators Of Children With Special Needs In North Dakota, Randal W. Eckart

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose and procedure. The purpose of this study was to provide a detailed analysis of needs assessment data regarding inservice training and accessing knowledge as perceived by parents, special education teachers, general education teachers, related services providers, and administrators in the state of North Dakota. These five groups were surveyed by the Bureau of Educational Services and Applied Research at the University of North Dakota. Resulting data were statistically analyzed utilizing frequency distributions and percentages to identify perceived needs for accessing knowledge or skills in special education and inservice training.

Conclusions and recommendations. Educators prioritized concerns over programming and instruction …

A Morphophonology Of Komo: Non-Tonal Phenomena, John Paul Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Komo, a sub-Bantu language spoken in northeastern Zaire, exhibits a number of interesting interactions between the morphology and phonology during the process of word derivation. A framework using parametric rule description, underrepresentation of morphemes, and lexical phonology is used in describing non-tonal phenomena of the language. Use of this framework results in optimalizing the description of lexical entries and simplifying the derivation of forms exhibiting complex phonological alternations. Complete paradigms of verbs in a number of tense-aspect-mood configurations are included, even though they may go beyond the requirements of the analysis. This brings to light a language that has not …

Affixes Of Salasaca Quichua With Special Attention To Derivational Affixes Which Attach To Verbs, Kristine E. Waskosky

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a synchronic description of the morphology of Salasaca Quichua (SQ) with extensive examples in interlinear texts. The meaning of each suffix and its order relative to other suffixes is described. A more expanded description is given for each of the deverbalizers (suffixes which create non-finite verbs), especially their use in subordinate clauses.

SQ is a member of the family of languages called Quechua A or Quechua II. It is an agglutinating language with up to six suffixes possible on a single root. Derivational suffixes, of which there are 15 possible for verb formation and 16 for noun …

The Past Of Prologue: A Qualitative Study Of The Roles Of Biography And Teachers' Beliefs In The Practice Of Teaching, Renate Schulz

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

An Observational Study Of One Teacher Supporting Risk-Taking In A Second Grade Classroom, Caroline K. Hagen

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Tone In Komo, John Paul Thomas

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

From the introduction: "My purpose is to continue to comprehensively present and analyze Komo sound patterns as was begun in Thomas (to appear). Whereas that paper is principally concerned with advanced tongue root (ATR) and vowel height harmony, here the concentration is on tonal processes."

Front Matter For Sil-Und Work Papers Vol. 36 (1992)

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

No abstract provided.

Preposed And Postposed Adverbials In English, Stephen H. Levinsohn

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

From the introduction: "Does it make any difference whether an adverbial clause like when the wolf arrived precedes the main verb ore follows it? For example, do (1a) and (1b) (which allude to the tale of "The Three Little Pigs") mean the same? And what about the same sentence with the subordination reversed, as in (1c,d)?

"(1) a. When the wolf arrived, he was picking apples. b. He was picking apples when the wolf arrived. c. When/While he was picking apples, the wolf arrived. d. The wolf arrived when/while he was picking apples.

"The great British linguist J. R. Firth …