Digital Commons Network^™

Mary's River Kalapuyan: A Descriptive Phonology, Yvonne P. Hajda

Dissertations and Theses

The thesis is an attempt to apply procedures of descriptive linguistic analysis to a body of material phonetically transcribed by Leo J. Frachtenberg in the Mary's River dialect of the central Kalapuyan language. In 1913-14 Frachtenberg collected thirteen volumes of myth texts in Mary's River, twelve from William Hartless and one from Grace Wheeler; in addition, there were notes to the texts, three volumes of grammatical notes, and some ethnographic material. The phonetic transcription was carried out in the pre- phonemic tradition of recording everything the speaker said as accurately as possible. There was no attempt to elicit forms in …

The Development Of A Model For Identifying, Diagnosing And Correcting Dyslexic Problems In Third Grade Nigerian, Catherine Maffiong Essien

Dissertations and Theses

The Nigerian educational system is humanistic, nationally centered and open to all cultural, ethnic and tribal influences. The policy of Nigeria is to realize mass and practical education. However, the present system is highly selective and academically oriented. This study is done while education in Nigeria is in a period of revolution. Radical changes have been taken to keep up the national demand for progress and power.

Dyslexia, one of the leading causes of reading difficulties, is a term still unknown to some educators in Nigerian schools. This stems mainly from the fact that Nigerian public schools lack sufficient personnels …

A Descriptive Study Of Thai Nonverbal Communication, Suriya Smutkupt

Dissertations and Theses

Nonverbal communication is especially significant in the area of intercultural communication. Familiar signals often signify and convey different and unexpected messages, usually out-of-awareness, and then unfamiliar stimuli cause confusion and uneasiness. This is a report of Thai NVC, which intends (1) to describe selected Thai nonverbal behavior, (2) to relate these to appropriate time and context, (3) to explain a cultural component that makes the behaviors acceptable and/or mandatory, and (4) to report how Thai nonverbal behaviors may affect intercultural and cross-cultural communication.

Selected Thai nonverbal messages are described: (1) nonverbal signals: the sign language of wai, the kinesthetic …

A Comparison Of The Vocabulary Ability Of Four- And Five-Year-Old Bilingual Mexican-American Children With That Of Monolingual Anglo-American Children, Amparo Abila

Dissertations and Theses

This study sought to investigate the Spanish and English receptive pictorial vocabulary of four- and five-year-old bilingual Mexican-American children. The performance of bilingual Mexican-American children on the Mexican-American Inventory of Receptive Abilities--MIRA (Nelson-Burgess and Meyerson, 1975) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test--PPVT (Dunn, 1959) was compared to that of monolingual Anglo-American children of the same relative age range and socioeconomic level.

An Investigation Of The Performance Of Black Children Age 3.6 To 6.0 On Three Subtests Of The Illinois Test Of Psycholinguistic Abilities, George Edward James

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to compare language performance on three subtests of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) of a Black population of children ages three years six months through six years in Portland, Oregon, with the standardizing population of the ITPA. These subtests are Auditory Reception, Grammatic Closure, and Verbal Expression.

The null hypotheses tested were:

1. There is no difference in scores on the Auditory Reception subtest of the ITPA between the standardizing test population and that of Black children ages three years six months through six years in Portland, Oregon.
2. There is no difference in …

New Odessa, 1882-1887: United We Stand, Divided We Fall, Helen E. Blumenthal

Dissertations and Theses

The Oregon Territory and later the State of Oregon have had a well-deserved reputation for encouraging free thought and liberal ideas. By tradition, Oregon has been the scene of rugged individualism, a proving ground for ideas and movements. The commune of New Odessa was one of the lesser known attempts of a group of immigrants coming from persecution in Russian to a new way of life in America.

This thesis is a study starting with the background of Russian Jewry, the social climate in the United States and particularly Oregon which allowed for the development of communes, the story of …

The Effects Of An Innovative Curriculum On The Attitudes Of "Educationally Disadvantaged" Freshman College Students, Julius William Wilkerson

Dissertations and Theses

Educational research literature suggests the expectations for success in college for youth from "educationally disadvantaged" backgrounds are tragically small. Reasons offered for this have included the lack of requisite academic preparation, lack of motivation, lack of appreciation for the value of a college education. The general purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of an innovative instructional technique in promoting the development of positive attitudes about self-worth, and academic achievement, for "disadvantaged" students. Specifically, this study attempted to identify the structure of attitudes of "educationally disadvantaged" students in the Portland State University support service program (Operation PLUS) about …

Articulation Error Rates For Oral Reading Tasks In Children With Developmental Apraxia Of Speech, Kenneth Jerry Arkell

Dissertations and Theses

Recently, there have appeared in the literature treatment approaches for the disorder of developmental apraxia of speech in children. These treatment approaches make use of the visual modality, and specifically use reading stimulus materials to improve articulation skills. Several authors have endorsed this use of reading materials in the treatment of developmental apraxia of speech in children including Morley (1965); Rosenthal (1971); Rosenbek and Wertz (1972); and Rosenbek et al. (1974). These treatment approaches have been offered via the literature without the benefit of empirical verification that children with DAS will make fewer articulation errors while reading aloud than they …

Chronological Age, Mental Age And Socioeconomic Status Variance In Expressive Preposition Acquisition Of Young Children, Arthur J. Heckel

Dissertations and Theses

The present study was designed to determine the ages at which a sample of children between eighteen and forty-two months verbally and correctly express the fourteen prepositions known to be acquired by age four, using the Revised Expressive Preposition Test (REPT). The REPT was administered to sixty children chosen from day care centers and private homes within the metropolitan area of Portland, Oregon. There was no preference as to the sex, intelligence of the child or socio- economic status of the child's family. A statistical analysis was performed to determine the correlation between HEPT scores and the child's chronological age, …

Location Of Dyspraxic Characteristics In Children With Severe "Functional" Articulation Disorders, Sara Miller Mitcham

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if children labeled as “severe” functional articulation disordered, who had been enrolled in public school speech programs for one year or more, exhibited dyspraxic-like characteristics.

Twenty individuals between the ages of 8 and 11 were chosen from the Gresham Public Schools, Lynch Public Schools, Portland Public Schools, Rockwood Public Schools and the Crippled Children’s Division, University of Oregon Medical School to serve as subjects for the three groups in this study. Eight subjects who comprised the experimental group were "severe" functional articulation disorders and were selected from the public schools. Each misarticulated …

Effects Of Colors, Noun Position, And Verb Proximity On The Acquisition Of Direct Objects, Ronald M. Dohr

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study is to determine if colors can differentially be applied as teaching tools for pre-school children. Previous studies have shown that pre-school children are easily distracted in language development by external stimulation. Studies have also shown that brighter color hues can arouse and facilitate performance of subjects on given tasks. This experiment is an attempt to measure performance of word manipulation by usage of colors. Three independent variables have been selected as stimuli to measure direct object acquisition. Measurement of color, noun position, and verb proximity will be assessed in connection with subject performance on given …

A Comparative Study Of The Reponses By Varying Socioeconomic Groups On General Knowledge And Categorization Tasks, Margo I. Keller

Dissertations and Theses

This study sought to determine if there are any "cultural" or economic level patterns of behavior in responding to tasks involving categorizing pictures and recalling general knowledge. The Daberon School Headiness Device (1972), which contains subtests for general knowledge and categorization, was used to assess four groups of children: 1) lower-SES white, 2) lower-SES black, 3) middle-SES white, and 4) middle-SES black. This study involved thirty black and thirty white children between the ages of five years and five years, eleven months. All subjects were screened to determine race, age, auditory acuity, speech intelligibility, subject cooperation, and socioeconomic status (SES). …

Attendance At Out-Patient Clinics As A Function Of Risk Taking For Alcoholics, John Ketcham Fryer

Dissertations and Theses

Many-psychotherapists feel that the capacity to risk is a necessary ingredient for change. Whether that change occur in a person seen in a professional context or in a person who views new behavior as being more rewarding, risk and change go hand in hand. Coleman (1972) described this relationship in the following way:

Life often poses problems in which the pursuit of increased satisfactions involves giving up present hard-won security and taking new risks. For the neurotic, this is likely to prove an especially anxiety-arousing conflictful situation [p. 226].

Why should this be true? It seems that one of the …

Teaching Language To Hearing Impaired Children Who Have Had No Previous Language Experience, Catherine Collins Lu

Dissertations and Theses

This paper purports to give (1) a systematic review of the background and theoretical development leading to the evolvement of the modern approach of language instruction for the hearing impaired child, and (2) a comparison of the grammatical and the developmental schools from the instructional point of view.

Drop-Out Study, Chemawa Indian School, Terry Farrow, Gordon Oats

Dissertations and Theses

Repeated inquiries and statements are made about the number of American Indian students who drop out or are pushed out of school. The Waxes noted that while drop-out rates are difficult to calculate because of a shifting population and absence of centralized, accurate records, current figures indicate that about one-half of those who enter the primary grades drop out before entering high school. Furthermore, only about a third of those entering school actually graduate. A study of Pima and Papago schools revealed much the same trends. Seven percent of the children ages six to eighteen are not enrolled in any …

Charles E. Borden: His Formulation And Testing Of Archaeological Hypotheses, Ellen Wallace Robinson

Dissertations and Theses

Analysis of Borden's papers, including unpublished (to 1975), to discover logic used to formulate and test hypotheses. Available data and explanatory patterns shown. Work characterized as search for Northwest Coast chronology with three periods: Early. Evidence from stratigraphy, geology, historical linguistics, ethnographies, study of spatial distribution of similar artifacts. Middle. Application of 0-14 dating to test and correct earlier hypotheses. Recent. Sequences of hypotheses to explain complex, puzzling phenomena involving many basic sciences. Papers shown to be series of retroductions, moving from puzzling phenomena to hypotheses from which the phenomena would follow as a matter of course.

A Comparison And Item Analysis Of Responses Between Black Children And Language Delayed White Children On The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Kevin N. Cole

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to compare PPVT scores of Black children and language delayed White children in order to determine whether the patterning of errors can be differentiated between the two groups. The study involved twenty Black children and twenty language delayed White children between the ages of six years, six months, and seven years, six months. The subjects were from families of lower socioeconomic status. The White subjects were given the Utah Test of Language Development to establish degree of language delay.

The study was designed to determine whether either the language delayed White subjects or the …

The Historical Imagination Of Francesco Petrarch: A Study Of Poetic Truth And Historical Distortion, Sally Scholz

Dissertations and Theses

In the continuing debate among historians over the nature, if not the actual existence, of the Italian Renaissance, the life of Francesco Petrarch has played a major role. Petrarch was an outspoken critic and commentator on the state of fourteenth-century society. His opinions have been cited by all scholars interested in the origins of the "Renaissance Mind."

The concern of this paper will be to discuss the sources, development, and purpose of Petrarch's historical imagination. By tracing the course of Petrarch's life I have tried to expose the various factors bearing on his psychological development. His "exile" from Italy, early …

Chicanos In Oregon: An Historical Overview, Richard Wayne Slatta

Dissertations and Theses

Spaniards were the first Europeans to explore the Pacific Northwest coastline, but the only evidence of these early visits is a sprinkling of Spanish place names commemorating the intrepid voyagers. The more than four centuries of recorded history since that time are nearly devoid, of references to Spanish-speaking people, especially Mexicans and Americans of Mexican descent (Chicanos). Even the heavy influx of Chicano migrant farm workers in the 1950's and 1960's failed to attract the attention of historians or social science researchers. By 1970, the Spanish-language population had become Oregon's largest ethnic minority and was exerting influence in most areas …

An Investigation Of The Development Of The Phonemes /T/ And /K/ In The Speech Of Preschool Children, Glenn Douglas Weybright

Dissertations and Theses

Research regarding children's instrumental articulation development has provided the speech clinician with schedules of speech sound development. These developmental tables list ages when specific phonemes are mastered by normal children. Such schedules tend to give the impression that certain sounds must be developed before others can occur. Menyuk (1972) has expressed a similar point of view regarding phonemes /t/ and /k/. She has hypothesized:

1. that phoneme /t/ must develop before phoneme /k/; and
2. that sound element initial /t/ is mastered at an earlier age than initial /k/. The present investigation was designed to operationally test the validity of Menyuk's observations. …

An Investigation Of The Influence Of Dialectal Interferences On The Nsst Scores Obtained By Portland Black Children, Margaret Jeanne Callahan

Dissertations and Theses

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if dialectal interference as described by Walter Wolfram was exhibited by black children in Portland, Oregon when given the NSST by Laura Lee. This author was concerned with syntactical interferences on the expressive portion of this test.

A secondary purpose of this investigation was to provide suggested norms for differentiating children with language deficits from children with language differences.

Seventy black children with normal speech and language were selected from two public schools, a Head Start Center and a day care center. These children were between the ages of 3-0 to …

A Beginning Investigation Into The Language Development Of The Deaf Child Compared To That Of The Hearing Child: Some Problems And Solutions In Data Collection, Sallie Ann Frye

Dissertations and Theses

This paper will attempt to present what factual material is available comparing language development in the deaf with normal language development. It will discuss problems which have become apparent in the search for this data and some solutions to the problems. Preschool language development will be taken up first, followed by a consideration of school age written and oral language, and concluding with a discussion of associations as they affect the verbal behavior of the deaf child.

Age, Intelligence, And Socioeconomic Status Variance In Preposition Acquisition By Children, Georgie Hustead

Dissertations and Theses

Numerous linguistic studies have been done to substantiate the importance of prepositions in the English language. However, no normative studies have been done on the acquisition of expressing prepositions.

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if there were demonstrable trends which would indicate a need for normative data on the acquisition of twenty-six prepositions tested on the Expressive Preposition Test (EPT). The study set out to determine at what age levels a given percentage of the prepositions were expressively acquired and if the socioeconomic status (SES) of the child’s family would be a determiner as to the age …

Occupational Prestige Among Chinese In The San Francisco Area, Linda Fong

Dissertations and Theses

The aim of our study is to understand Chinese attitudes towards occupational prestige in order to be able to counsel families and youth in career goals, and to maximize potentials and enhance life chances. Our purpose is.to arrive first at an occupational ranking or rating since there is none to be found in the literature/on which more specific studies could later be compared. Another purpose is to see whether there I were major differences between traditional and modern Chinese, and find what traits were associated with differences in attitudes and expectations, as further indices of appropriate approaches to social services.

A Spectrographic Analysis Of Bahasa Indonesia Vowel Phonemes Under Primary Stress In Cvc Words, Ingrid T. Hanna

Dissertations and Theses

This study is an investigation into the nature of the vowel phonemes of Bahasa Indonesia in monosyllabic words, under primary stress, and consisting of a consonant followed by vowel followed by a consonant. Bahasa Indonesia is the national language of the Republic of Indonesia. All of the material in the literature relating to the vowel quality of this language is highly impressionistic. Some of the descriptions are comparisons with vowels in various modern Indo-European languages rather than scientific descriptions of strictly Indonesian vowel quality.

Effects Of Semantic Associational Strength And Verbal Sequence Length On The Auditory Comprehension Of Aphasic Adults, Laurel J. Brown

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of semantic associational strength (SAS) upon adult aphasics' auditory comprehension abilities. Twenty-eight adult aphasics (25 males and 3 females) and 12 normal control subjects were presented three experimental tasks, each containing 45 items. Experimental task 1 contained single word picture sets of high SAS, moderate SAS, and low SAS words. Experimental task 2 contained two word picture sets of high, moderate, and low SAS words, and experimental task 3 contained three word picture sets of high, moderate, and low SAS words. Subjects heard one, two, and three word verbal sequences …

The Origin Of Property In Land: Paul Vinogradoff And The Late Xixth Century English Historians, Caroline Phillips Stoel

Dissertations and Theses

One of the problems which has intrigued English historians for over a hundred years is that of the position of the common man in early England. Was he a freeman working land held communally by the village, or was he a serf laboring upon the land of an overlord? Since this question of freedom is inextricably interwoven with landholding concepts the problem may also be stated another way: Did private property in land exist from the earliest times, or is that institution the result of centuries of appropriation by individuals of land originally belonging to the commmunity as a whole? …

An Experimental Study And Analysis Of Saudi-Arabian - American Proxemic Behavior As Observed In Homogeneous And Heterogeneous Dyadic Interactions, Gary D. Robinson

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is an attempt to refine the analysis of an empirical study in intercultural proxemic behavior research conducted by Watson and Graves and is, as well, a partial and modified replication of that study. The hypothesis of this, study is that Arabs will exhibit significant differences in proxemic behavior from Americans, with Arab's being closer and more direct in their proxemic, behavior than Americans. To test this hypothesis eighteen Saudi-Arabian and eighteen American male students were observed as two groups of nine homogeneous dyads and as one group of eighteen heterogeneous dyads.

Seven-minute dyadic interactions in a controlled, laboratory …

Verbal Sequencing Ability As A Predictor Of Reading Disability, Paul Elmer Quin

Dissertations and Theses

Early identification of children with reading and learning problems seems imperative. By using early identification predictors, a high risk group of children with possible reading problems could be located. This would facilitate placement and appropriate educational strategies for this group of children. By proper placement and planning, educators then would be able to set up remedial and/or preventive programs for these children before the pattern of unsuccessful attempts and improper training becomes irreversible. This study was designed to determine if verbal sequencing ability was a valid predictor of reading ability for a group of 31 preschool children. Secondarily, the investigation …

Transactional Analysis Jargon In Time Limited Groups, Diane Jones, Earl Eyre, Joan Logan

Dissertations and Theses

There are three assumptions in the field of psychology about Transactional Analysis that are examined in this thesis: first, TA has an identifiable language, composed of common, easily understood terms; second, it is assumed that people who wish to use TA theory must first learn the language; third, once the language is learned, it is thought that these people can put it to use in their lives.