Digital Commons Network^™

Narrative Structure And Characters In The Nanzi Stories Of Curacao: A Discourse Analysis., Joke Maaten Mondada

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation develops a new approach to the analysis of narratives by combining the analysis of narrative structure and character analysis. Through the in-depth analysis of two stories of a collection of 32 Nanzi stories (from Curacao), which are spider/trickster stories in Papiamentu, I develop a method to analyze the structure of the Nanzi stories. My method is based on the determination of narrative division into (1) episodes, organized as macro-propositions under a macro-structure (Van Dijk 1982; 1992); (2) different sections (six), based on narrative and free clauses (Labov 1972); and, (3) major events (Barthes 1975; Chatman 1978). By applying …

The Sociolinguistic Situation Of Creoles In South Louisiana: Identity, Characteristics, Attitudes., Megan Elizabeth Melancon

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Most of the research done on the Louisiana Creole community has concentrated on the vocabulary and folklore of Creole French. To date, there has been no methodological examination of other parameters enveloping the community. In this dissertation, the previous findings will be extended by analyzing the results of a survey on the linguistic attitudes and cultural, ethnic, and racial identity of the African-Americans in South Louisiana who identify as Creole. Due to the presence of several varieties of French in the state, the ethnic and racial admixture among the people who speak these dialects, and the overwhelming presence of English …

War Games: Odysseus At Troy, Corinne Ondine Pache

Classical Studies Faculty Research

This paper examines two aspects of Odysseus' behavior that fundamentally set him apart from the other Greek heroes in the Iliad. Odysseus at Troy superficially appears to share many traits with the other Homeric heroes: he is a prominent participant both in assemblies and in combat, and he takes part in many of the decisive episodes of the narrative. He shares in the kleos ("glory") of the other renowned warriors by association, but closer examination shows that he speaks and behaves in an idiosyncratic, often unconventional, manner, and that many of his words and deeds reflect a stance of …

Linguistic Meaning, Nonlinguistic “Expression,” And The Multiplevariants Of Expressivism: A Reply To Professors Anderson And Pildes, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bilingual Sentence Processing: Relative Clause Attachment In English And Spanish, Eva M. Fernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Monolingual studies have shown that the relative clause attachment ambiguity, illustrated by the sample English sentence below, is ultimately interpreted in different ways by speakers of English and Spanish: (1) Someone shot the maid of the actress that was on the balcony. English speakers tend to attach the relative clause to the lower noun, actress, while in the comparable sentence in Spanish, Spanish speakers generally prefer the attachment to be to the higher noun, maid. This thesis compares the relative clause attachment preferences of monolingual and bilingual speakers of English and Spanish. Data were collected using a speeded self-paced reading …

Sabine River Spanish: Survival Of A Threatened Dialect., Comfort Pratt-Panford

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Spanish-speaking settlements were established along the Sabine River in 1717. The descendants of these Spanish settlers, often referred to as "Adaesenos", live in present-day Texas and Louisiana. Over the years, their language has been subjected to adverse conditions which have affected its use and features. This study focuses on the characteristics of this Hispanic dialect, with the aim of documenting what is left of it. The corpus consisted of seventeen informants ranging in age from 55 to 91 and representing three different generations. They were selected from the four remaining localities in northwestern Louisiana where the Adaesenos can be found …

Learning Efficiencies For Different Orthographies: A Comparative Study Of Han Characters And Vietnamese Romanization, Wi-Vun Taiffalo Chiung

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive

In order to address the question of whether or not to abandon Han characters (Hanji), it is important to evaluate empirically the efficiency of Han writing. The purpose of this study is to compare the efficiency of learning to read and write in Hanji versus learning to read and write in phonemic writing systems, such as Vietnamese Chu Quoc Ngu (CQN) or Mandarin Bopomo. Three experiments were conducted in this study. The first experiment focused on a study of reading comprehension; the second one focused on a study of accuracy of writing dictation; and the last was a study of …

Review Of The Book "New Ways Of Learning And Teaching: Focus On Technology And Foreign Language Education", Travis Bradley, Lara Lomicka

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Democracy-Forcing Constitution, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Study Of The Japanese Reflexive Pronouns, Zibun And Zibun-Zisin, Masaru Yamada

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The behavior of various types of anaphors may be classified into two types, local and long-distance anaphors. The English reflexive 'himself' and the Japanese reflexive 'zibun' representatively characterize the two types of anaphors. They contrast in that 'himself' is a local anaphor, whereas 'zibun' is a long-distance anaphor. Japanese has another reflexive pronoun, `zibun-zisin', and it behaves more similarly to himself. The standard binding theory (Chomsky (1981)) regulates the behavior of local anaphors; however, the behavior of long-distance anaphors cannot be explained. One proposal for this matter is to invoke parameterization, which defines a language-specific binding domain for anaphors. Within …

Deadweight Costs And Intrinsic Wrongs Of Nativism: Economics Freedom And Legal Suppression Of Spanish , Drucilla Cornell, William W. Bratton

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pattern Classification Using Genetic Algorithms., Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay Dr.

Doctoral Theses

Pattern recognition and machine learning form a major area of research and develop- ment activity that encompasses the processing of pictorial and other non-numerical information obtained from the interaction between science, technology and society. A motivation for the spurt of activity in this field is the need for people to com- municate with the computing machines in their natural mode of communication. Another important motivation is that the scientists are also concerned with the idea of designing and making intelligent machines that can carry out certain tasks that we human beings do. The most salient outcome of these is the …

Οτι Recitativum In John’S Gospel: A Stylistic Or A Pragmatic Device?, Stephen H. Levinsohn

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

This paper distinguishes three ways in which speech is reported in the Greek of John's Gospel: directly (without the complementizer hoti), indirectly (with hoti and appropriate changes to first and second person references), and in 'hoti-direct' form (i.e., with hoti but without changes to first and second person references). The default way of reporting speech in Koine Greek is directly. Typically, when using direct speech, the reporter purports to reproduce the original speech verbatim. When in indirect form, the speech is not reported verbatim and/or is backgrounded with respect to what follows. The hoti-direct form is …

The Case For Sound Symbolism, Janis B. Nuckolls

Faculty Publications

proposal that linguistic sounds such as phonemes, features, syllables, or tones can be meaningful, or sound-symbolic, contradicts the principles of arbitrariness and double articulation that are axiomatic to structural linguistics. Nevertheless, a considerable body of research that supports principles of sound symbolism has accumulated. This review discusses the most widely attested forms of sound symbolism and the research programs linked to sound symbolism that have influenced linguists and anthropologists most. Numerous reports of magnitude sound symbolism in the form of experimental studies and comparative surveys have been integrated into a biologically based theory of its motivation. Magnitude sound symbolism also …

Ideomotor Apraxia And Lesion Location: Analysis Of Error Types, Motor Function, And Task Demands., Brenda Hanna-Pladdy

LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses

Ideomotor apraxia is a disorder of learned skilled movement which typically has been attributed to damage confined predominantly to the frontal and parietal cortical areas within the hemisphere dominant for speech. However, most studies of the anatomical basis of apraxia have relied on case studies or have only approximate lesion localization, and few studies have examined motor performance in relation to lesion location. This study examined the relationship of apraxia severity to lesion location (in both cortical/subcortical dimensions and anterior/posterior dimensions), aphasia, motor performance, and task demands, and identified the existence of subtypes of apraxia with characteristic performance profiles (error …

Acquisition Of Syntax In A Minature Artificial Language : Effects Of Input And Instruction, Penelope Ann Fowler

School of Psychology Theses

The goal of the research was to discover which type of input and instruction best facilitates the acquisition of syntax in adult learners. An artificial miniature language was used to model real second language to control precisely the type of input, conditions of exposure and instruction accompanying that input. Performance of learners under four input conditions was compared and analogies were drawn between these conditions and those experienced by adult second language learners (L2 learners). "Instructed" learners Z): like formally instructed L2 learners were systematically taught the rules of the language. "Exposure" learners saw example sentences and were asked to …

Syllable Structure And Stress Effects On Articulatory Coordination, Philip Lawrence Gleason

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1990 - 1999

Two experiments are reported, both dealing with syllable affiliation of a consonant. The first experiment extends the work of Tuller and Kelso (1990) and was designed to capture the signatures of loss of stability in a dynamical system (enhanced fluctuations and critical slowing). An Articulograph device (Carstens Medizinelektronik GmbH.) was used to track the movements of the tongue tip, the lower lip, and the jaw in the midsagittal plane while the subjects spoke a VCC word in time to an auditory metronome at a slowly increasing rate. A clear transition occurred in the phonetics (VCC -> CVC) as judged by …

Conversational Code-Switching Among Japanese-English Bilinguals Who Have Japanese Background, Yoshiko Morishima

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of this study is to investigate the code-switching of native speakers of Japanese in an English-speaking context. The languages involved in code-switching therefore are English and Japanese. This is an instance of communication in the participants' first language, in a setting where the speakers' second language is dominant. The research focused on a sample of twelve Japanese people. These participants were born in Japan, and their parents' native language is Japanese. Even though the length of time each has spent in residence in an English-speaking country varies, the minimum is two years. Further, all have previously studied English, …

Fifteen Alphabetic Playlets, Nyr Indictor

Word Ways

ANDROCLES AND THE LION

Dramatis Personae: Androcles, Lion

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 31 Issue 3

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

The Presidents, More Or Less, James Puder

Word Ways

IN a transdeletion, one or more letters are subtracted from a word and the remaining letters rearranged (if necessary) to form a new word. In a transaddition, one or more letters are added to a word to supply the letter-stock for a new word. The goal in each case is usually to transform one word into another with the fewest possible subtractions or additions of letters.

Mysterious Precognitions, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

Select any of the ten words in the first verse of Genesis. Count the number of letters in the word you choose. For example, suppose you select BEGINNING which has nine letters. Count ahead nine words, starting with the next word in the text, which brings you to THE, the second word of verse 2. This word has three letters, so you count ahead three more words to end on WITHOUT.

Heterograms And Their Alphomes, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

For the benefit of new readers, allow me to explain the terms heterogram and alphome. Heterogram is my preferred term for isogram, a word such as AMBIDEXTROUS in which no letter is repeated. In "Alphomes" in the November 1995 Word Ways, I defined an alphome as follows: a set of alphabetically-ordered letters of which at least one arrangement is a word. Thus the alphome ABINR makes the word BRAIN.

Doubly True Alphametics In Base 27, Leonard Gordon

Word Ways

In "Base 27: the key to a New Gematria" in the May 1993 Word Ways, Lee Sallows offered "immortal fame" in finding doubly true equations (those valid in both base 10 and base 27 notion). I do not know where he obtained authority to grant such fame, but I accept his challenge.

A Four Seasons Word Network, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

In the June 1938 issue of The Enigma, the official organ of the National Puzzlers' League, Ab Struse (David Shulman) wrote:

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

Whitman Retransposed, James Puder

Word Ways

"Vocabularyclept poetry" is the term Howard Bergerson coined to describe a poem created by a rearrangement of the words of another poem. In the May 1971 Word Ways, and subsequently in his landmark 1973 book Palindromes and Anagrams, Bergerson illustrated the concept with his word-unit transposal of a 100-word Walt Whitman poem, "Poets to Come."

Alphametish Cabell, Mike Keith

Word Ways

The Virginia writer James Branch Cabell, author of the novel Jurgen (1919), was the target of an obscenity trial by John Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The story is told in the following poem, written in Alphametish: in each line, the letters can be replaced by digits to form a valid sum, as illustrated by SEND MORE MONEY to 9567 + 1085 = 10652.

Elf Eyrie, Jan Anderson

Word Ways

From the irrelevant heights of his little cliffside nest, Scarfin; Fatback (my elf) and I thought that the puckishness of editorial replies to authors might be an interesting theme to eyriely explore. Would you believe that just a single trip to the local library's archives unearthed the following correspondence?

Queen's-Move Text, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

Most words are queen-graphable; each different letter can be placed on a chessboard in such a way that a chess queen can spell out the word in legal moves (no jumping over one letter to reach another though). As Leonard Gordon demonstrated in the August 1996 Word Ways, one can use the same queen graph to spell out different words.