Digital Commons Network^™

Dpal-Bert: A Faster And Lighter Question Answering Model, Lirong Yin, Lei Wang, Zhuohang Cai, Siyu Lu, Ruiyang Wang, Ahmed Alsanad, Salman A. Alqahtani, Xiaobing Chen, Zhengtong Yin, Xiaolu Li, Wenfeng Zheng

Faculty Publications

Recent advancements in natural language processing have given rise to numerous pre-training language models in question-answering systems. However, with the constant evolution of algorithms, data, and computing power, the increasing size and complexity of these models have led to increased training costs and reduced efficiency. This study aims to minimize the inference time of such models while maintaining computational performance. It also proposes a novel Distillation model for PAL-BERT (DPAL-BERT), specifically, employs knowledge distillation, using the PAL-BERT model as the teacher model to train two student models: DPAL-BERT-Bi and DPAL-BERT-C. This research enhances the dataset through techniques such as masking, …

Revisiting The Notion Of Vicarious Cause: Allure, Metaphor, And Realism In Object-Oriented Ontology, Jon Cogburn, Niki Young

Faculty Publications

We revisit the notion of vicarious causation in Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) in order to first show that Harman has articulated two iterations of his account that are in tension with one another; one is found in his earlier paper "On Vicarious Causation,"while the other is contained in his later writings following the publication of Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. This involves a critical assessment of his developing theory of metaphor in a way that encourages sympathetic revision in the service of improving his non-correlationist view of intra-objective relations.

The Incompatibility Of The Commons And The Public, Roy L. Heidelberg

Faculty Publications

In this essay I consider the conceptual conflict between the public as a modern political category and the idea of the commons. By linking the idea of the public to an early exposition that explicitly sought a distinction between the commons and the public, I show how the generalization inherent in the public contravenes the particularity of the commons. This poses important political problems for how a modern commons or a modern notion of the commons is conceived and also allows for a nuanced understanding of the political challenge posed against the commons itself.

A Sociolinguistic Study Of Pronominal Expression In Cali, Rafael Orozco, Margareth Marmolejo, Róbinson Grajales

Faculty Publications

This sociolinguistic investigation analyzes variable subject pronoun expression in the PRESEEA-Cali corpus, which is socially stratified in terms of speaker’s gender, age and educational level. We explored 6409 tokens seeking to determine the effects of six predictors: 3 internal and 3 external. Results uncover the highest pronominal rate (28,6%) found to date in a continental Andean highland speech community. The linguistic conditioning shows the strongest effect of grammatical person and number of the subject; specifically, uno is the pronoun that most strongly favors overt subjects. The social conditioning reveals a strong effect of speaker’s age with the youngest speakers disfavoring …

Subject Pronoun Expression In Andean Colombian Spanish: The Preseea-Cali Corpus, Rafael Orozco, Margareth Marmolejo Caicedo, Róbinson Grajales

Faculty Publications

This preliminary investigation explores subject pronoun expression in the PRESEEA-Cali corpus. We explore the effects of five predictor variables (2 social 3 linguistic) on 4425 tokens. Findings reveal the highest pronominal rate (29.7%) found in a continental Latin American speech community. The linguistic conditioning uncovers that grammatical person and number of the subject exerts the strongest conditioning force among all the predictor variables explored. Specifically, uno constitutes the pronoun that most strongly favors overt subjects. The social conditioning reveals that women promote overt subjects, as occurs in the Caribbean region, but contrary to findings in Medellín. Moreover, the effects of …

Understanding And Addressing The Individualized Emotional Impact Of Aphasia: A Framework For Speech-Language Pathologists, Tyson G. Harmon

Faculty Publications

Emotion plays an integral role in communication and has long been considered relevant to aphasia rehabilitation. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs), however, may sometimes wonder how or whether to address emotional responses. The purpose of the present tutorial was to (1) present a framework that clinicians can use to understand individualized emotional responses in aphasia and (2) discuss examples of how the framework informs practical strategies that SLPs can use to provide emotional support to PWA. Drawing upon a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotions perspective combined with emerging research in aphasia, I show that emotion impacts and is impacted by both language processing …

Movement, Economy, Orientation 20th Century Shifts In North American Language, Monica Nesbitt, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick

Faculty Publications

How are regional varieties of English faring in the US?

Ample evidence shows that canonical regional variables are undergoing _____

• “reversal” in Cincinnati and Philadelphia (Strassel & Boberg 1996, Fruehwald 2017)

• “decline” and “fall” in Michigan (Rankinen et al. 2019, Nesbitt 2021)

• “rejection” and “retreat” in Raleigh (Dodsworth & Kohn 2012; Dodsworth & Benton 2017)

Nesbitt (2021: 359) observes that “[T]he Baby Boomer–Gen X transition appears to be a pivotal transition throughout the country [and] appears to be of great importance to North American dialects in general.”

Negotiating Quotidian Justice In The Science Classroom, Christopher Irwin, Joshua Ellis

Faculty Publications

In this conceptual paper, we explore how science teachers might enact social justice through their everyday science instruction. Drawing on empirical literature and our own K-12 teaching experience, we develop a heuristic for mapping classroom discourses to engage in action and reflection to change both the world of the classroom community, and the world beyond the school. We suggest how this heuristic can be used for justice-oriented science teaching independently of (or as a supplement to) any existing frameworks for science teaching to promote social justice. Our proposed model for social justice through disciplinary science teaching frames justice not as …

‘Routines’ And ‘Formulaic Language’ In Conversation Analysis (Author's Extended Data), Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Faculty Publications

Though the field of conversation analysis (CA) was founded upon examinations of interactional “routines” such as conversation openings and closings, conceptualizing and categorizing communicative phenomena as “formulaic” is anathema to CA. This chapter details how, since its inception, CA work has empirically elucidated how participants to recorded episodes of naturally occurring social interaction actively and collaboratively accomplish conversational activities as ‘routine’ or not by selecting from available action alternatives, spontaneously coordinating their selections vis-à-vis one another. Taking a multimodal CA approach, this chapter reviews state-of-the art literature on how people open and close in-person and telephone conversations, showing the immense …

Initial Exploration Of Zero-Shot Privacy Utility Tradeoffs In Tabular Data Using Gpt-4, Bishwas Mandal, George Amariucai, Shuangqing Wei

Faculty Publications

We investigate the application of large language models (LLMs), specifically GPT-4, to scenarios involving the tradeoff between privacy and utility in tabular data. Our approach entails prompting GPT-4 by transforming tabular data points into textual format, followed by the inclusion of precise sanitization instructions in a zero-shot manner. The primary objective is to sanitize the tabular data in such a way that it hinders existing machine learning models from accurately inferring private features while allowing models to accurately infer utility-related attributes. We explore various sanitization instructions. Notably, we discover that this relatively simple approach yields performance comparable to more complex …

Neurosymbolic Ai Approach To Attribution In Large Language Models, Deepa Tilwani, Revathy Venkataramanan, Amit P. Sheth

Faculty Publications

Attribution in large language models (LLMs) remains a significant challenge, particularly in ensuring the factual accuracy and reliability of the generated outputs. Current methods for citation or attribution, such as those employed by tools like Perplexity.ai and Bing Search-integrated LLMs, attempt to ground responses by providing real-time search results and citations. However, so far, these approaches suffer from issues such as hallucinations, biases, surface-level relevance matching, and the complexity of managing vast, unfiltered knowledge sources. While tools like Perplexity.ai dynamically integrate web-based information and citations, they often rely on inconsistent sources such as blog posts or unreliable sources, which limits …

Parental Support Challenges For K-12 Student Online Engagement, Qi Guo, Charles R. Graham, Jered Borup, Bobbie Sandberg, Richard E. West

Faculty Publications

This research seeks to understand parental support for online students. Using a survey, this study examined perceptions from 567 parents from eight online K-12 programs in a Midwestern state regarding their support for students’ online affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement. Guided by the Academic Communities of Engagement Framework, our analysis identified eight main challenges parents faced when supporting their online student: (a) focus; (b) keeping on pace; (c) lack of motivation; (d) lack of organization, learning materials, live sessions, and support from online schools; (e) lack of feedback, support, and communication from teachers; (f) parents in need of additional skills …

Language Change At The Intersections Of Movement, Economy, And Orientation, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick, Monica Nesbitt

Faculty Publications

A growing amount of research on North American English varieties shows that many sociolinguistic variables peaked among the Baby Boomer Generation (born approximately 1946–64). By “peak,” we mean that a linguistic phenomenon in one community has reached its point of greatest intensity and is maximally divergent from realizations of that same variable in most other North American communities. Similarly, we also find studies that describe a “cliff” beginning among Generation X (born approximately 1965–82) such that after generations of relative stability, local dialect features are lost. Nesbitt (2021, 359) observes that “the Baby Boomer–Gen X transition appears to be a …

What Are University Students Doing With Language?: A Proportional Description Of University Student Mode And Register Use, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

The extent to which university students read, write, speak, and listen in a range of registers is not completely understood, but such descriptions could lead to better designed curriculum for English learners. The purpose of this study is to estimate the proportions of time American university students spend reading, writing, speaking, and listening in various registers. The present study combines diary and survey techniques to describe the language use behavior for 53 university students. The results indicated that nearly half of university student language use time is spent listening (49.5 %), followed by reading (20.7 %), writing (18.2 %), and …

From Three-Pillars To Three-Environments: Shifting The Paradigm Of Sustainability In Civil And Construction Engineering, Xiaomei Wang, Andrew South, Clifton Farnsworth, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

This research explores the usage of sustainability in literature and presents ‘three environments’ for addressing sustainability in the Civil and Construction Engineering (CCE) disciplines. Scholars have increasingly studied sustainability and sustainable development across CCE disciplines as the importance of sustainability awareness and action in society has increased. However, the vastness of its conceptual breadth and depth in CCE research is difficult to holistically evaluate. As a result, CCE researchers often focus on specific aspects of sustainability applied to discrete contexts, or address sustainability in broad aspirational terms and guiding motivations. This research utilized a rigorous analytical corpus linguistics approach for …

Demographic Change, Migration, And The African American Vowel System In Georgia, Jon Forrest, Margaret E. L. Renwick, Joseph A. Stanley, Lelia Glass

Faculty Publications

The theme of this volume is generational trends in language change, with an emphasis on the Baby Boomer to Gen X transition as an important period of time. Many studies have found sharp changes in vowel systems in communities after the Baby Boomer Generation on the East Coast (Thiel and Dinkin 2020) and in the Midwest (Nesbitt 2021). Though we know a great deal about the geographic consistency of the Baby Boomer to Gen X transition, in all of these cases, the focus has been on White speakers and regional varieties. Besides the general importance of including a breadth of …

A Corpus-Based Comparison Of Keywords And Themes From The Book Of Mormon And The Bible, Brett James Hashimoto, Joshua Cowley

Faculty Publications

The Book of Mormon has been studied for its thematic, literary, and theological content using almost exclusively qualitative methods (e.g., Turley, 2019; Morrill, 2017). However, scholars have conducted little analysis comparing it to the Bible, even though those who view it as scripture consider it directly comparable in purpose. (e.g., The Book of Mormon, 2015; McConkie, 1985). The present study applies quantitative linguistic analysis to statistically derive the distinctive language from the two volumes of scripture and identifies the key themes and language from the two books. To accomplish this, corpora of The King James Version of the Bible (66 …

Neurological Evidence For The Contextindependent Multisensorial Semantics Of Ideophones In Pastaza Kichwa: An Fnirs Study In The Ecuadorian Amazon, Dan Dewey, Jeffrey J. Green, Janis Nuckolls, Auna Nygaard, Tod D. Swanson

Faculty Publications

Ideophones – imitative words using the stream of speech to simulate/depict the rise and fall of sensory perceptions and emotions and temporal experiences of completiveness, instantaneousness, and repetitiveness – have been characterized as semantically empty and context dependent. The research reported here tested a simple schematic for the semantic categories of Pastaza Kichwa ideophones by tracking neurological responses to ideophones categorized as VISUAL, MOTION, and SOUND. Seventeen native speakers of Pastaza Kichwa listened to audio clips of ideophones extracted from sentential contexts. Subjects’ neural activity was assessed using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Results demonstrate that these posited semantic categories activate areas …

Teaching Positive Psychology Lessons In An Intensive English Program, Carolee Rogers, Benjamin L. Mcmurry, Dan Dewey

Faculty Publications

This article investigates the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) in an intensive English program for non-matriculated university students. Interventions based on the PERMA model were implemented through weekly 65-minute lessons given during the first class of each week. These were followed by short daily activities during the rest of the week. Using positive psychology topics as the content, students concurrently engaged in language learning activities. Each participant was asked to complete a questionnaire at the end of the semester consisting of five open-ended questions relating to the PPIs, the lessons, the activities, the topics, and how they felt the …

Here-, There-, And Every Where-: Exploring The Role Of Pronominal Adverbs In Legal Language, David Chandler, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

Many have claimed that pronominal adverbs, such as hereby, thereafter, and wherein, are a frequent, distinctive, and problematic in their use in legal language (Tiersma, 1999; Mellinkoff, 2004). The purpose of this study is to examine those claims empirically. In the present study, the prevalence of PAs in legal registers is compared to more general registers of contemporary American English to determine the extent to which these words are distinctly legal. The study will also explore why different types of PAs may be (in)frequent in specific legal registers to better understand their use. The frequency of PAs was extracted from …

The Original Meaning Of The Sixteenth Amendment, David Gamage, John R. Brooks

Faculty Publications

The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution enshrines Congress’s “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.” Challenges to the exercise of that power have typically turned on whether the thing being taxed is “income” or not. In the most recent example, the 2024 Supreme Court case of Moore v. United States, taxpayers argued that the Sixteenth Amendment only authorizes taxation of realized income—that is, that gain from appreciated property can only be taxed as “income” when there has been a sale or conversion of that property.

In this Article we argue—based on the original …

Stem Pathways For Rural Youth: Experience Sampling Feedback And Scoring Manual, Amanda Bastoni, Sam Catherine Johnston, Andrew D. Coppens, Jayson Seaman, Cindy Hartman

Faculty Publications

This Pilot and Feasibility project involved CAST, a non-profit education research organization, the University of New Hampshire (UNH), and outdoor-recreation and informal STEM community-based youth-serving organizations in New Hampshire (NH). The research investigated the contributions of youth's participation in outdoor recreation in developing high school aged students' STEM identities and considerations of careers in STEM. The study addressed three questions: How can outdoor recreation be used as an informal STEM learning context to broaden participation for underrepresented rural youth who face known barriers to the traditional learning experiences necessary for developing positive STEM identities? How can outdoor recreation be used …

Triangulating The Likelihood Of Confusion: Linguistics And Consumer Surveys, Eric D. Derosia, Jesse Egbert, Thomas Lee

Faculty Publications

This Article highlights contributions that linguistic analysis can offer in the assessment of the likelihood of confusion in trademark infringement cases. Parties in such cases often engage an expert witness to conduct a survey that measures the likelihood of consumer confusion. We show how an expert linguist can provide important, nonintuitive dynamics of corroboration. We introduce “expert triangulation” as a conceptual framework to analyze whether, and to what extent, experts in linguistics and consumer surveys can corroborate one another. That is, having two different sources of empirical evidence which lead to similar conclusions should be a benefit to the courts, …

Supreme Court Litigators In The Age Of Textualism, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s approach to statutory interpretation has moved in a textualist direction over the last several decades, but there is little systematic information on how litigators’ briefing practices have changed during this era of textualist ascendancy. This Article examines thirty-five years’ worth of party briefs (over 8,000 briefs total), explores the briefs’ use of interpretive tools (including differences across categories of attorneys), and compares the briefs to the Court’s opinions.

This examination yields several valuable findings. Although the briefs show a textualist shift, they differ from the Court’s opinions in a few ways. The magnitude of the textualist shift …

The Delegation Doctrine, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

Despite the focus on the Court’s recent major questions cases, signs of an emergent delegation doctrine can also be found elsewhere. Most significantly, seeds of a delegation doctrine have been planted within the Court’s Chevron jurisprudence. The Court’s increased reluctance to grant Chevron deference to administrative agencies--and its insistence that courts first conclude that interpretive authority has been delegated before deferring to any agency interpretation—rests on the same core premise as the Court’s recent major questions doctrine decisions. It also suggests that the “new” major questions doctrine is not as new as it might seem, but rather a logical outgrowth …

Expression Of Customer (Dis)Satisfaction In Online Restaurant Reviews: The Relationship Between Adversative Connective Constructions And Star Ratings, Matthew J. Baker, Brett James Hashimoto

Faculty Publications

Online restaurant reviews contain expressions of customer expectations in prose as well as in star ratings that indicate overall customer satisfaction. In prose, one way customers communicate that expectations are or are not met is through a grammatical construction called adversative connectives (ACs) (i.e., constituents such as but, although, however, and even though). In the present study, we examine the relationship between star ratings and customers’ use of ACs by employing a combination of content analysis, mixed-effects models, and thematic analysis in a corpus of nearly 35,000 online reviews for restaurants located in the United States. The results reveal an …

Immediate Repeated Reading Has Positive Effects On Reading Rate For English Language Learners: An Eye-Tracking Study, Jennifer Hemmert Hansen, Grant Eckstein, Troy L. Cox, Steven G. Luke, Krista Rich

Faculty Publications

Fluent and skillful reading in English requires efficient and automatic letter and word recognition. Dysfluent reading can affect motivation for reading in English language learners, thereby limiting access to a wealth of language input from written texts. Extensive research of repeated reading in first language (L1) settings has been shown to increase reading rate, while comparatively little research has been done on repeated reading in second language (L2) settings. The objective of this eye-tracking study was to accurately document early and late reading processes in an immediate repeated reading exercise to observe how repeated reading affects reading rate in adult …

Putting Students In Their Place. The Role Of Placement Testing In Language Programs, Troy L. Cox, Matthew P. Wilcox

Faculty Publications

A perennial issue that nearly all language programs face with the arrival of new students is: where is the best place for each student to begin their course of study within our curricular structure given their current language abilities? When students have no previous language learning experience, the decision seems easy: place them in the beginning- level class. But when students have prior experience, deciding where they belong becomes more complicated given the wide range in the quality and quantity of previous exposure and the level of ability attained. Programmatic exigencies and resources may constrain student placement even further.

In …

Enhancing The Textbook’S Cultural Content Within The University Museum: Students’ Perceptions Of Two Activities, Nausica Marcos Miguel, Megan Hancock

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Africa Si(Gh)Ted In Spanish: An Introduction, Dorothy Odartey-Wellington, Dosinda Garcìa-Alvite

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.