Digital Commons Network^™

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 investigations.

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …

A Liminal Examination Of Always Already Meaning Within Language, James Richard Starr

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis juxtaposes Plato's allegory of the cave with Jacques Derrida's concept of the always already aspect of meaning, a concept derived from Ferdinand de Saussure's work. This theoretical investigation examines the implications of universal Signified forms of word meanings for postmodern composition theory.

Missing Topics In Malagasy Headlines, Ileana Paul

French Studies Publications

No abstract provided.

Bilingualism In Gibraltar: Focus Constructions Of Bilingual Spanish-English Grammars And The Syntax-Discourse Interface, K. Elaine Mcilwraith

Digitized Theses

Current investigations on bilingualism have shown a tendency for bilingual grammars to display a divergence from monolingual target grammars at the syntaxdiscourse interface. Generally, the grammars studied have been those of first or second generation bilinguals. In order to argue that this divergence is an inevitable characteristic of bilingual grammars, further exploration of various types of bilinguals is necessary. The present investigation examines the discourse operator, focus, in neutral and presentational contexts. Neutral focus is determined by syntax whereas presentational focus is determined by the activation of FocP by the syntax-discourse interface. Results show that the following hypotheses were supported …

Bilingualism In Gibraltar: Focus Constructions Of Bilingual Spanish-English Grammars And The Syntax-Discourse Interface, K. Elaine Mcilwraith

Digitized Theses

Current investigations on bilingualism have shown a tendency for bilingual grammars to display a divergence from monolingual target grammars at the syntaxdiscourse interface. Generally, the grammars studied have been those of first or second generation bilinguals. In order to argue that this divergence is an inevitable characteristic of bilingual grammars, further exploration of various types of bilinguals is necessary. The present investigation examines the discourse operator, focus, in neutral and presentational contexts. Neutral focus is determined by syntax whereas presentational focus is determined by the activation of FocP by the syntax-discourse interface. Results show that the following hypotheses were supported …

F1 And Center Of Gravity Interplay In The Maintenance Of Phonological Height Within A Statistical Model Of A Communal Grammar: The Case Of Foodo [Atr] Acoustics, Colleen G. Anderson

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

This paper presents the notion of an idealized or communal grammar as a statistical model of mode, mean or median as emerging from a representative number of a population, rather than in individual speech, per se. Like other languages with a 9-vowel Cross Height Vowel Harmony (CHVH) system, the most reliable correlate of ATR is F1; [+ATR] vowels have lower F1 values than their [-ATR] counterparts, while F2 differences show considerable variation across speakers. F1, however, fails to maintain phonological height differences as the [+ATR] mid vowels of level 3 overlap in acoustic space with the [-ATR] high vowels of …

A Perception Study On The Third Tone In Mandarin Chinese, Rui Cao, Priyankoo Sarmah

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

This experimental study examines the role of the shape of the pitch contour in the perception of the Mandarin Chinese tone 3.2 A set of stimuli was constructed by varying the pitch of tone 3 on two conditions: (1) varying the duration of the dip (or turning point) and (2) varying the timing of the turning point (duration of the slope). The manipulated pitch contours of tone 3 were presented to the native speakers of Mandarin Chinese in two sets: (a) a set of speech stimuli and (b) a set of non-speech stimuli. The participants of the experiment were asked …

Argument Realization Of Chinese Result And Phase Complements, Han-Chun Huang

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

This paper discusses result complements and phase complements in Chinese, both of which are postverbal elements. Despite their surface similarity, they are different with respect to argument realization. While the result complements allow complicated argument realization (in terms of semantic host, verbal transitivity, and subcategorization of objects), the phase complements function as lexical aspect markers, or Aktionsarten, and do not participate in argument realization. I adopt a constructional approach, particularly Boas’s (2003) event-frames and linking rules. Inverted causative resultative constructions in Chinese are also discussed. They are strong evidence for “constructional participants” that interact with event participants in determining syntactic …

Review Of Creating Language Crimes: How Law Enforcement Uses (And Misuses) Language By Roger W. Shuy, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

As he states in his preface, Shuy draws on his 30+ years as a linguistics professor at Georgetown University and his 25+ years as an expert witness and legal consultant to create this text that spans the mundane and the riveting, the commonplace and the esoterica of forensic linguistics. In so doing, his book “describes twelve actual cases in which alleged crimes were actually created by the use of various conversational strategies employed by law enforcement and its representatives, where no such crime is actually indicated by the language evidence” (12). When we read the transcripts associated with these cases, …

Language And The Shaping Of The Arab-American Identity, Dalal Saleh Almubayei

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

This study is an attempt to shed light on the interaction between language and the ethnic, cultural, and religious identities of Arab-Americans. It employs two focus groups consisting of Arab-Americans who share a group dialogue about the aspects of language and identity. The groups differ in terms of two variables: age and generation. Participants shared their experiences, life stories, feelings, and perspectives about the role of Arabic and English in their lives. The older participants emphasized a concern of language and ethnic identity loss among their U.S. born children, while younger participants talked about the importance of Arabic to belong …

Cogito Ergo Doceo: A Cross-Case Study Of Latin Teacher Cognition In Technology-Rich Communities Of Practice, Ramã³N Anthony Madrigal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This empirical research study investigated the phenomenon of ancient language teacher cognition in the technology-rich contexts of two secondary teachers of Latin. Although one teacher was an inexperienced teacher working in a traditional, face-to-face classroom in an independent school, the other teacher was an experienced teacher working at a public virtual school. Features of teacher cognition, such as pre-active planning and inter-active decision-making were examined from a communities-of-practice theoretical perspective (Wenger, 1998). An exploratory, sequential mixed-methods research design was implemented in this cross-case study. Among the research findings that emerged from this investigation was the notion of the expedient integration …

Cross-Linguistic Analysis Of Vietnamese And English With Implications For Vietnamese Language Acquisition And Maintenance In The United States, Giang Tang

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Two overall goals of this paper are a) to provide a linguistic basis for promoting first language maintenance of Vietnamese in a larger United States context and b) to stimulate future research in language acquisition of Vietnamese-English speakers. This paper is divided into three sections. Section 1 discusses previous studies on first language (L1) maintenance among Vietnamese Americans. Section 2 presents a cross-linguistic comparison of Vietnamese and English across speech-sound, word, and grammatical language levels. A cross-linguistic analysis may help educators better understand speaking patterns of Vietnamese American students. Based on this cross-linguistic comparison, Section 3 presents potential bi-directional interactions …

Book Review - Lee, S. (2005) Up Against Whiteness: Race, School, And Immigrant Youth, Chang Pu

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

No abstract provided.

‘Plucking The Mask Of Mystery From Its Face’: Jurisprudence And H.L.A. Hart, John Mikhail

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Until recently, little was known of H.L.A. Hart's private life. That has now changed with the publication of Nicola Lacey's A Life of H.L.A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream. Drawing on Hart's notebooks and correspondence, Lacey paints an illuminating portrait of Hart, which reveals that despite his public success he struggled with internal perplexities, including his sexual orientation, Jewish identity, intellectual insecurity, and unconventional marriage. Yet, as critics have noted, the connection between these revelations and the development of Hart's ideas is unclear. Moreover, one cannot help but wonder whether by focusing on these aspects of Hart's personal …

Collected Papers Vol. 1, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Maintaining An Immigrant Heritage Language Other Than Spanish Or English In The Bilingual Culture Of The Rio Grande Valley Of South Texas, Sonia A. Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

A 2005 study in the bilingual Spanish/English Rio Grande Valley of South Texas investigates the language strategies used by immigrant families from China, Greece, Hungary, Japan, the Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, and the Ukraine to preserve their heritage languages and pass them on to their children. Personal interviews determine that all the parents are well-educated and from an above average socio-economic level. This investigation categorizes the various strategies used by the parents. All the immigrant parents emphasize that the main reason they want to preserve the heritage language with their children is to insure that the children can continue to communicate …

Forgetting Freud: The Courts' Fear Of The Subconscious In Date Rape (And Other) Criminal Cases, Andrew E. Taslitz

ExpressO

Courts too often show a reluctance to learn the lessons taught by social science in criminal cases, especially where subconcious processes are involved. The subconscious is seen as rarely relevant and, in the unusual cases where it is relevant, it is viewed as a disease commandeering the conscious mind and thus helping to exculpate the accused. Drawing on the example of forensic linguistics in date rape cases as illustrative of a broader phenomenon, this article argues that the courts' misuse of social science stems from fear and misunderstanding of the workings of the subconscious mind. Accordingly, the piece contrasts the …

Crossing Dependencies In Persian, Jonathan M. Dehdari

Theses and Dissertations

Languages occasionally have syntactic constructions that are difficult, if not impossible, to describe using a context-free grammar. One such construction is a crossing dependency. Crossing dependencies have been well studied for Dutch and Swiss German (Huybregts, 1976; Shieber, 1985), and recently for Tagalog (Maclachlan and Rambow, 2003). In this paper I propose that Persian exhibits crossing dependencies. In this SOV language, a light verb construction in the future tense becomes interrupted by a future auxiliary verb, which agrees with its subject in person and number. The future auxiliary also splits passive constructions in a similar manner. These forms present interesting …

Automatic Recognition Of Printed And Handwritten Mathematical Expressions., Shri Sahadeb Garain Dr.

Doctoral Theses

This thesis presents a systematic study on recognition of printed and handwritten mathematical expressions. Automatic recognition of printed expressions is an essential requirement for efficient Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of scientific paper documents. On the other hand, recognition of handwritten expressions has been tried for online environment. Here expressions are written using electronic data tablet/stylus providing a convenient alternative to keyboard or mouse used for data entry into a computer.The previous studies dealing with different aspects of expression recognition are, at first, reviewed. Next, the scope of the present thesis, its layout and contributions are outlined. Discussion on OCR of …

Agentive And Patientive Verb Bases In North Alaskan Inupiaq, Tadataka Nagai

Linguistics

This dissertation is concerned with North Alaskan Inupiaq Eskimo. It has two goals: (i) to provide a grammatical sketch of the Upper Kobuk dialect of this language; (ii) to investigate agentive and patientive verb bases. Chapter 2 is a grammatical sketch of the Upper Kobuk dialect of North Alaskan Inupiaq. Chapter through 5 deal with two types of verb bases in this language, called agentive and patientive. As we see in Chapter 3, agentive and patientive verb bases are verb bases that can inflect either intransitively or transitively, and they differ in the following ways: (i) prototypical agentive bases have …

Certainty Identification In Texts: Categorization Model And Manual Tagging Results, Elizabeth D. Liddy, Victoria L. Rubin, Noriko Kando

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This chapter presents a theoretical framework and preliminary results for manual categorization of explicit certainty information in 32 English newspaper articles. Our contribution is in a proposed categorization model and analytical framework for certainty identification. Certainty is presented as a type of subjective information available in texts. Statements with explicit certainty markers were identified and categorized according to four hypothesized dimensions – level, perspective, focus, and time of certainty.

The preliminary results reveal an overall promising picture of the presence of certainty information in texts, and establish its susceptibility to manual identification within the proposed four-dimensional certainty categorization analytical framework. …

Full Nps As Subjects, Jenny Dumont

Spanish Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to investigate and identify factors that influence 3rd person (singular and plural) subject expression in the spoken Spanish of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on the role of full NPs as subjects. Subject expression has been the topic of many linguistic studies, especially with respect to personal pronouns (Bayley & Pease Alvarez 1997; Bentivoglio 1987; Cameron 1994, 1995; Cameron & Flores 2003; Flores-Ferrán 2002; Silva-Corvalán 1994; Travis 2005, To appear). What distinguishes this investigation from other studies of subject expression is that it focuses on the third person, which is a more heterogeneous category …

Really Intriguing, That Pred Np!, Ileana Paul, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Terminological Reflections Of An Enlightened Contextualist, Robert J. Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Problems With Steve Pinker's Mentalese: On The Implications Of Bilingualism, Marino Fernandes

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction To Language In The Justice System, By John Gibbons, Drury Stevenson

University of Colorado Law Review

John Gibbons's book Forensic Linguistics provides an excellent introduction to the different areas of interdisciplinary studies involving linguistics and law. Gibbons explores many of the unique linguistic features of legal writing and courtroom speech, and discusses legal regulation of inappropriate uses of language (threats, lies, etc). This review surveys each of these sections of Gibbons's work, and adds in depth critique on issues related to "audience design " in legal documents and the linguistic pitfalls of relying on trial transcripts.

A Computational Analysis Of Navajo Verb Stems, David Eddington, Jordan Lachler

Faculty Publications

One of the principal goals of linguistics is to find, classify, and describe relationships between words. Many formal mechanisms such as rules and constraints have been devised in order to show systematic relationships. Inflectional paradigms are a crucial component of a linguistic analysis that has applications for pedagogical grammars. For example, over the past 20 years there have been numerous Navajo textbooks produced that are aimed at beginning learners of the language. These include works such as Diné Bizaad Bóhoo'aah (Navajo Language Institute 1986), Diné Bizaad: Speak, Read, Write Navajo (Goossen 1995), and The Navajo Verb: A Grammar for Students …

Implementation Of Image Processing Approach To Translation Of Asl Finger-Spelling To Digital Text, Divya Mandloi, Kanthi Sarella, Chance Glenn

Articles

The present analysis is the phase one of a broader project, the Sign2 Project, which is focused on a complete technological approach to the translation of American Sign Language (ASL) finger-spelling to digital audio and/or text. The methodology adopted in this analysis employs a grayscale image processing technique. We will describe the latest results as well as future enhancements to the system. This paper will also discuss the application of the approach to the telecommunication Industry.

Implementation Of Image Processing Approach To Translation Of Asl Finger-Spelling To Digital Text, Divya Mandloi

Theses

This thesis describes the ongoing development of an image processing technique for the translation of American Sign Language (ASL) finger-spelling to text. The present analysis is the phase one of a broader project, the Sign2 Project, which is focused on a complete technological approach to the translation of ASL to digital audio and/or text. The methodology adopted in this analysis employs a gray-scale image processing technique to convert the American Sign Language finger-spelling to text. It attempts to process static images of the subject considered, and then matches them to a statistical database of pre-processed images to ultimately recognize the …