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The Relationship Among Beginning And Advanced American Sign Language Students And Credentialed Interpreters Across Two Domains Of Visual Imagery: Vividness And Manipulation, Linda Stauffer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Given the visual-gestural nature of ASL it is reasonable to assume that visualization abilities may be one predictor of aptitude for learning ASL. This study tested a hypothesis that visualization abilities are a foundational aptitude for learning a signed language and that measurements of these skills will increase as students progress from beginning ASL students to advanced language learners and, ultimately to credentialed interpreters. Participants in this study consisted of 90 beginning and 66 advanced ASL students in five interpreter education programs in four southern states along with 68 credentialed interpreters. Students and interpreters were administered the Vividness of Visual …

A Parent's Choice, Jill Hoffman

Linguistics

In one rural Alaska school district, parents have a choice to place their child in an English only school or a Yup'ik immersion school. In the English only school, all subjects are taught in English. In the dual immersion school, English is introduced at third grade and progressively increases with each grade level until the sixth grade, when students exit the program. The researcher will seek to find why parents choose to place their child in the English only school or in the Yup'ik Immersion School. This inquiry is to help the researcher understand the thoughts and perceptions that are …

Focus On Form In Writing In A Third Grade Yugtun Classroom, Catherine Moses

Linguistics

This present research attempts to discover the effectiveness of focus on form in a Yugtun First Language third grade classroom. The procedures for this particular research included two series of tasks, each focusing students' attention on a particular grammatical structure. The series includes a pretest, a discovery phase, a teacher guided mini lesson, a paired task, an individual post task and a delayed post task. Data include students' scores on the pre, post and delayed post test as well as video recordings of whole class activities, and audio recordings of student dyads as they work on the collaborative task. In …

Focus On Form Through Singing In A First Grade Yugtun Immersion Classroom, Carol S. Oulton

Linguistics

This study examines the impacts of singing as a focus on form in the Yugtun genitive endings. Genitive case endings refer to the case of ownership, such as in the sentence "My mother's eyes." The belief of this research is that singing will help the students to focus on form in the oral performance of the first grade second language learners of Yugtun. All the students in the classroom participated in the study. Their accuracy and progression were measured prior to teaching two songs with a pretest interview. After teaching of the songs, the students composed couple songs where the …

Can We Remain Yup'ik In These Contemporary Times? A Conversation Of Three Yugtun-Speaking Mothers, Veronica E. Michael

Linguistics

The Yup'ik people of southwestern Alaska are experiencing language shift from Yugtun to English. This study is a conversation between three Yugtun speaking mothers who are trying to understand this shift and wondering if they can maintain their identity, and that of their children, in this changing world. The study takes place in the village of Kuiggluk. Data collection included a research journal and focus group discussions. In this study, I have tried to paint a picture of who we are as Yup'ik mothers in our contemporary lives. Qayaruaq, Mikngayaq and I carry with us our own mothers' teachings, while …

Investigating A Yup'ik Immersion Program: What Determines Success?, Jean Renee Green

Linguistics

This research stems from my connectedness to a particular village, which will be referred to as Naparyaraq1. Unlike the majority of research on Alaska Native language issues, which primarily are from the point of view from an outsider, this research is unique in that my role as a community member has allows me an insider perspective of our Yup'ik Immersion Program. When dealing with Indigenous language issues, it is important that the impetus for change and improvements come from the local people. The primary goal of the Naparyaraq Immersion Program resulted from the communities desire to create change Community members …

Yuraq: An Introduction To Writing, Sally P. Samson

Linguistics

Teacher research conducted at Ayaprun Elitnaurvik Charter School in Bethel, Alaska introduced 1819 kindergarten students to writing through Yuraq (Eskimo dancing). Within the teacher research, the case study followed four emergent writers as they developed in their writing abilities, how they connected Yuraq with writing, and their progression through their second language skills. The study followed two stories: the teacher's story and the students' story. The study found that Yuraq aided in writing instruction to second language learners, that there are aspects of the 6+1 Traits in Yuraq, and that students progressed in their L2 as well.

Kuiggluk Speech Community, Barbara Amos-Andrew

Education

This thesis explores language shift in the Kuiggluk speech community through interviews, observation, and surveys. Kuiggluk is a Yup'ik community in Southwestern, Alaska that is undergoing language shift from the indigenous language, Yugtun, to English. The interviews examine four mothers and their daughters' speech patterns and their schooling and cultural history. The observations reflect the four girls' speech patterns and their daily conversations. The surveys examine the Kuiggluk youth's speech patterns and goals for Yugtun more broadly.

The Influence Of Positive Mother-Child Verbal Interactions On Adolescent Mothers' Literacy, Heather-Lee M. Baron

Education

The purpose of this six-month qualitative microethnographic case study was to determine what influence a family literacy program based on positive mother-child verbal interactions would have on the participating adolescent mothers' literacy skills. The design of the program was founded on the Hart and Risley study (1995) and their findings regarding the five categories of significant family experiences that enhance children's vocabulary: language diversity, feedback tone, symbolic emphasis, guidance style, and responsiveness. These experiences stress the importance of affirmative interactions between children and their parents. The three adolescent mothers who participated in the study were single, white, of low socioeconomic …

Niugneliyukut (We Are Making New Words): A Community Philosophy Of Language Revitalization, April Gale Counceller

Linguistics

The Alutiiq language on Kodiak Island (Alaska) is severely threatened, with only 37 resident speakers. The Alutiiq communities of Kodiak are engaged in a multifaceted heritage revitalization movement, which includes cultural education, revitalization of arts, and language revitalization. The language revitalization effort includes education, materials development, documentation, and terminology development (creation of new words) as a means of making the language more viable. The Kodiak Alutiiq New Words Council began in the fall of 2007. This language revitalization strategy is new to the Alutiiq community, and little research has been done on Alaska Native or Indigenous terminology development as a …

A Longitudinal Study Of Language And Ideology In Congress, Bei Yu, Daniel Diermeier

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents an analysis of the legislative speech records from the 101st-108th U.S. Congresses using machine learning and natural language processing methods. We use word vectors to represent the speeches in both the Senate and the House, and then use text categorization methods to classify the speakers by their ideological positions. The classification accuracy indicates the level of distinction between the liberal and the conservative ideologies. Our experiment results demonstrate an increasing partisanship in the Congress between 1989 and 2006. Ideology classifiers trained on the House speeches can predict the Senators' ideological positions well (House-to-Senate prediction), however the Senate-to-House …

Front Cover And Publication Information

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue, including the table of contents.

Natural Order, Sir Jeremy Morse

Word Ways

A poem

The Odd Homonym Attack - A New Figure Of Speech, Solomon W. Golomb

Word Ways

Not to be confused with the classical ad hominem attack, our new odd homonym attack consists of replacing the target's actual name with an unflattering homonym. Here are a few examples.

It's Not Easy Being Mondegreen, Don Hauptman

Word Ways

As every card-carrying recreational linguist knows, a mondegreen is a mishearing: a phrase that has been misconstrued, usually with humorous results.

Color Blind - 1, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

While it seems as if the list below is comprised or unrelated words, things are not so black and white here. In fact, this collection is abundantly colorful if you can see through the camouflage. In each instance, you are asked to remove one unspecified letter from what is given and rearrange the remaining letters to reveal a hidden hue. Thus, the excision of "H" from HERD yields RED when the letters E, R, and D are permuted. Performing this type of reconstructive surgery twenty times will reveal the true colors of this quiz.

Numerical Charades Part 1, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

The division of a word into 2 or more groups of letters, each group forming another word, is called charades. BEDEVIL = BED+EVIL. The division of a word into groups of letters which, when assigned their numerical positions in the alphabet, provide group totals which, together, have a generic numerical structure, can therefore be referred to as numerical charades.

Book Review: The Great American Fortune Cookie Novel, Karen Farrell

Word Ways

A book review for Dave Morice's The Great American Fortune Cookie Novel.

Definitive Acrostics, A Anil

Word Ways

These are 'backward' acronyms. Instead of abbreviating a given phrase or company name, etc, they start with the abbreviation given, usually a single word, and use its letters as the initial letters of a phrase created to define or relate to the word. Ideally, no words in the acronym should be related to the head word etymologically.

Look Back!, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Over the years Word Ways has displayed a varied logological corpus. In this column I revisit forgotten ideas, connect seemingly-disparate concepts, and suggest further investigation.

Magic Spells, Jeremiah Farrell

Word Ways

Magic spelling tricks have a special appeal to those of us with a passion for recreational linguistics and mathematics. Provided or course that they are well done. This means that mathematics should be subtle (sometimes the performer does not even fathom it) and the denouement should be dazzling. In a recent letter to us Martin Gardner indicated his top two choices. He was commenting on his Word Ways article "An Amazing Spelling Trick."

"It's My Centennial!" Said Tom Swiftly, Richard Lederer

Word Ways

Starting in 1910, boys grew up devouring the adventures of Tom Swift, a sterling hero and natural scientific genius created by Edward Stratemeyer. Many of Tom's inventions predated technological developments in real life -- electric cars, seacopters, and houses on wheels. In fact, some say that the Tom Swift tales laid the groundwork for American science fiction.

Colloquy

Word Ways

Responses to previously published articles.

Rhyming, End-To-End-Palindromic Verse, Jim Puder

Word Ways

Rhyming, end-to-end-palindromic (RETEP) verse is a relatively recent development in palindromic composition. As its name indicates, RETEP verse is to be distinguished from other varieties of rhyming palindromic verse in which whatever palindromicity exists is not of the end-to-end kind. RETEP verse is arguably the most sophisticated and ambitious form of palindromic writing ever attempted, and it is certainly one of the more challenging ones to try to compose.

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Book Review: May I Have A Word With You?, Karen Farrell

Word Ways

A book review of Steven Kahan's May I Have A Word With You?

When An Ad Becomes A Pipe And Opens A School-Ion Dee-Day, Willy Mwakapenda

Word Ways

Ad

Ad a day

A day and a day

A day

day

When one day closes, another opens

When one day clothes, another wears ...

Punk Whiz 9, A. Anile

Word Ways

Yet another misdefinition pun quiz. Numbers in parentheses are the letters in the answer; (4|4) is a charade, an eight letter word that splits into a four plus four letter pun.

Antigrams From Word Ways: A Retrospective, A. Anil

Word Ways

In the November 2009 Kickshaws, Ove Michaelsen presented a selection of antigrams from various sources, but excluded mention of any from Word Ways. I've presented nearly 200 herein and felt a review of the best of these would give Word Ways due credit and balance out Ove's list. A few of these don't agree grammatically but were apt enough otherwise to forgive and include.

How Many Shiftgrams In A Word-Set?, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

A word possesses a shiftgram if its letters can first be shifted along the alphabet and then transposed to form another word. The classic example MUSIC to QUACK was offered by Alice Gorki and Dimitri Miller in "Sea-Changed Words" in the February 1969 Word Ways.