Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating The Phonology Of Nicaraguan Sign Language: Preprimer And Primer Dolch Words, Julie Delkamiller

Special Education and Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Over the past 30-years linguists have been witnessing the birth and evolution of a language, Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua (ISN), in Nicaragua, and have initiated and documented the syntax and grammar of this new language. Research is only beginning to emerge on the implications of ISN on the education of deaf/hard of hearing children in Nicaragua. The purpose of this comparative exploratory field study was to evaluate preprimer and primer Dolch sight words and sign language frequency between English, American Sign Language (ASL), Spanish and Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua (ISN). The research focused on word and sign frequencies …

Patterns Of Spanish-English Code-Switching In Children's Literature In The Us: The Use Of Español In Books Para Niños, Megan Rae Vasatka

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Spanish-English code-switching is a prevalent and significant form of communication in bilingual and bicultural communities. Authors who wish to reflect and validate cultural and linguistic diversity in their written works may incorporate code-switching in their texts. The purpose of this study is to explore the growing trend of the inclusion of the Spanish language in English-based books written for children in the United States. In order to better understand how code-switching is utilized by authors of varying Spanish language proficiency, fourteen non-native Spanish speakers were surveyed and seventeen examples of their children's books that include Spanish-English code-switching were analyzed in …

Assessing The Economic Value Of The Spanish Language, Isabel Dulfano

Global Business Languages

This paper summarizes the field of economics of language since its inception, in order to introduce this interdisciplinary field to the foreign language academic community. The article traces the key areas in economics of language research, specifically tailoring the data available to assess the calculations of value of the Spanish language.

Acoustic Analysis Of The Allophones Of The Mid-Front Spanish Vowel /E/, Raquel Gonzalez De Anda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the Spanish phoneme /e/ and its open allophone(s). Current literature shows that there is no complete agreement with regards to the specific phonetic environments that trigger the opening of /e/, nor if "open" is the best term to describe the allophone(s). Examining /e/ allophones in Spanish monolinguals clarifies current literature inconsistencies; and therefore, creates a baseline for future studies related to this particular vowel. In this study, the speech of ten Spanish monolingual university students was recorded. Participants read a list of words that contained /e/ in certain phonetic contexts. Each instance of /e/ was acoustically analyzed …

Language, Politics, And History: An Introductory Essay, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

This book chapter examines different articulations of language and history and introduces a new configuration that focuses on the political dimension of language.

El Uso Variable De Los Pronombres Sujetos En El Castellano Puertorriqueño Hablado En Luisiana Y Puerto Rico, Lee-Ann Marie Vidal Covas

LSU Master's Theses

Abstracto: La alternancia entre sujetos expresos y tácitos constituye una característica fundamental del castellano. Orozco (under review:15) indica que el uso variable de los pronombres sujetos es una característica morfosintáctica heredada del latín. Leonetti (2009: 8) propone que la “alternancia no es siempre del todo libre, ya que está determinada por algunos factores gramaticales y discursivos, pero podemos afirmar que en un buen número de contextos realmente existe la posibilidad de optar libremente” entre usar un pronombre explícito y usar uno implícito o tácito. El presente estudio explora la variación en el uso de los pronombres personales de sujeto en …

Culture, Constructivism, And Media: Designing A Module On Carlos Slim, Roberto Rey Agudo

Global Business Languages

Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helú has been a fixture on Forbes’s list of billionaires since 1991, and for the past three years, he has topped the magazine’s list of the world’s richest men. Although he is exceptionally well-known in his native Mexico, the majority of American college students have never heard of Carlos Slim. This article presents a curricular module built around this charismatic and controversial figure. The module requires students to navigate Internet-supported news media in the target language (Spanish), and engages them in independent, small-group, and larger, teacher-led activities designed to foster critical and comparative skills in …

Individual Factors And Successful Learning In A Hybrid Course, Kelly Arispe, Robert J. Blake

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

What personality factors make for a successful hybrid L2 learning experience? While previous studies have examined online learning in comparative terms (i.e. Which format is better: in class or hybrid?), this study examines certain personality and cognitive factors that might define the ideal hybrid language learner. All informants studied introductory Spanish with multimedia materials supported by synchronous chat (video, voice, text). Personality and cognitive traits were probed using the Big Five Inventory scale (BFI¹) and the Shipley Institute of Living scale (SILS²), respectively. The results were correlated with course outcomes and learner preferences for online, chat, …

Cuba Alert To Possible Brain Drain With Increased Migratory Flexibility, Daniel Vã¡Zquez

NotiCen

No abstract provided.

Officialization And Linguistic Acculturation Of Spanish In The United States Catholic Church, Antonio Medina-Rivera

World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

The present investigation brings to light some of the changes associated with the use of English and Spanish in the US Catholic Church. The first part is an examination of the process of officialization from a historical perspective, acknowledging the impact of some groups or associations in the use of vernacular la!_lguages within the Church. The second part examines the role of acculturation during this process of officialization; and the final section analyzes the use of inclusive language in the Church, as an attempt to have a more gender-balanced institution. These three elements serve to provide a more complete perspective …

Dos Erres: A Second Trial For Guatemalan Former Dictator Efraã­N Rã­Os Montt, Louisa Reynolds

NotiCen

No abstract provided.

Enhancing Listening And Spoken Skills In Spanish Connected Speech For Anglophones, Elena Paz Vizcaya

Doctoral

Native speech is directed towards native listeners, not designed for comprehension and analysis by language learners. Speed of delivery, or economy of effort, produces a speech signal to which the native listener can assign the correct words. There are no discrete words in the speech signal itself therefore there is often a linguistic barrier in dealing with the local spoken language.
The creation, development and application of the Dynamic Spanish Speech Corpus (DSSC) facilitated an empirically-based appreciation of speaking speed and prosody as obstacles to intelligibility for learners of Spanish. “Duologues”, natural, relaxed dialogues recorded in such a manner that …

The Making And Breaking Of A Language: The French And Spanish Effect Upon The Catalan Regional Language, Margaret Emilyn Cychosz

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Almost four hundred years ago, the French and Spanish governments divided the Catalan border regions located between their respective countries. The subsequent centuries have seen the expansion and development of the Catalan language in Spain and the demise of the Catalan language in France, where it has nearly deteriorated to disuse. Is this a reflection upon the French and Spanish culture or was it simply governmental policy? If so, what did the central governments of Madrid and Paris do in the centuries following the division that resulted in this contrasting development of Catalan? What effect did the usage of Catalan …

Relationships Between Vocabulary Size, Working Memory, And Phonological Awareness In Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners, Brenda K. Gorman

Speech Pathology and Audiology Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose: The goals of this study were to evaluate the impact of short-term phonological awareness (PA) instruction presented in children's first language (L1; Spanish) on gains in their L1 and second language (L2; English) and to determine whether relationships exist between vocabulary size, verbal working memory, and PA in Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs).

Method: Participants included 25 kindergartners who received PA instruction and 10 controls. A 2-way within-subjects repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to evaluate gains. Relationships between PA gains, Spanish and English vocabulary, and memory, as measured using nonword repetition and experimental …

Accuracy Of Automated Grammatical Tagging Of Narrative Language Samples From Spanish-Speaking Children, Tyson Gordon Harmon

Theses and Dissertations

The present study measured the accuracy of automated grammatical tagging software as compared to manual tagging in Spanish-speaking children's personal and fictional event narrative language samples. Studies have identified articles, clitic (contracted with a verb) pronouns, and verbs as clinical markers for language impairment in Spanish-speaking children. Automated grammatical tagging software may aid in the rapid identification of these grammatical markers. Grammatical morphemes of 30 first and fourth grade children's personal and fictional event narrative samples were tagged and compared with their respective manually tagged samples. The accuracy of word-level coding averaged 91%, and similar accuracy was found for clinically …

Sabbatical Leave Proposal And Report, Melissa Leach

Sabbaticals

I propose a renewed emphasis on my Spanish language skills -reading, writing, speaking and listening- through: 1) speaking with native speakers; 2) immersion in Spanish media -magazines, newspapers, television, movies, etc.; 3) travel to Spanish speaking countries; and 4) a journal project in my target language. These activities will refresh and improve my Spanish and give me newfound connections with the Spanish speaking world and its cultures, making me a better Spanish teacher.

Mother’S Social Network And Family Language Maintenance, Isabel Velázquez

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

Abstract This article reports the results of a social network analysis (SNA) performed on the mother’s primary network of interaction in 15 Mexican American families in the city of El Paso, Texas, the neighborhood of La Villita, in Chicago, and the city of Lincoln, Nebraska. The goal of this study was to examine potential opportunities for Spanish use by her children as well as sources of information and influence that might shape her views about the benefits and drawbacks of linguistic maintenance in her family. The network features of primary language of exchange, density, strength of ties, level of integration …

Language Change In Spanish Heritage Speakers: The Interaction Between Lexical And Grammatical Aspect, Jackelyn Kelly Van Buren

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis focuses on preterit and imperfect usage in the Spanish of Chilean-American heritage speakers. Spanish heritage speakers in the United States are second generation bilinguals who learn Spanish in the home from Spanish speaking parents and learn English from school and the community (Montrul 2002; Rothman 2007). When societal factors limit heritage language exposure, tense and aspect morphology is susceptible to change (Guijarro-Fuentes & Clibbens 2004). Findings of a study on 11 Chilean-American heritage speakers show that production of the preterit is overextending, resulting in less frequent use of the imperfect. Large-scale studies of US Spanish-English bilinguals’ use of …

One Nation, Many Borders: Language And Identity In Mayan Guatemala And Mexico, Anna Caroline Peckham

Honors Papers

This paper explores language ideologies, code choice, and ethnolinguistic identity in Maya-dominated areas of Mexico and Guatemala. As the Maya, or Pan-Maya, Movement has grown in scope and force since the 1980s, particularly in Guatemala, possessing a "Maya" identity has become defined in new ways. Since Mayan languages are still spoken with a strong degree of vitality in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and the western highlands of Guatemala, examining Maya identity through beliefs about, and use of, indigenous languages and Spanish is a particularly useful focus. In comparing Maya peoples' beliefs and identities in each of these regions, this paper argues …

Venezuela And Colombia Mend Diplomatic, Trade Fences, Andrã©S Gaudã­N

NotiSur

No abstract provided.

Better Speakers Make More Friends: Predictors Of Social Network Development Among Study-Abroad Students, J Wyatt Brockbank

Theses and Dissertations

Social network development has been studied in the social sciences for the last several decades, but little work has applied social network theory to study-abroad research. This study seeks to quantitatively describe factors that predict social network formation among study-abroad students while in the host countries. Social networks were measured in terms of the number of friends the students made, the number of distinct social groups reported, and the number of friends within those groups. The Study Abroad Social Interaction Questionnaire was compared against these pre-trip factors: intercultural competence, target-language proficiency, prior missionary experience, gender, study-abroad program, neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, …

Classroom Practices And Perspective Transformation In An Adult Elementary Spanish Classroom, Stacey Margaret Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The purpose of this research was to explore students' experiences of perspective transformation and the classroom practices contributing to that transformation in a first-semester, college Spanish class. Purposeful sampling was used to choose a college-level Elementary Spanish I class to study. The qualitative case study design required the collection of three kinds of data: 1) participant observation in the classroom, 2) student learning journals, and 3) one-on-one interviews conducted with eight students purposefully sampled from the class. The criterion for selecting interview participants was evidence in the participant observation and learning journal data of the early stages of perspective transformation. …

Using Authentic Materials To Enhance Reading And Speaking Tasks At The Novice And Intermediate Levels For High School Spanish Instruction, Cinthya Tumlison

Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of authentic materials provides foreign language teachers with more resources to practice communicative language teaching. Finding authentic materials in the target language has become very accessible. Used appropriately, authentic materials can provide students with greater access to the target language and culture. Nevertheless, creating activities using authentic materials without editing the text can be very challenging and time consuming. Sometimes teachers perceive authentic materials to be too difficult and complicated to use for novice learners and would rather only use edited or simplified texts provided by their textbook curriculum. The focus of this thesis is to determine whether …

South America's Relative Economic Stability Attracts Immigrants, Andrã©S Gaudã­N

NotiSur

No abstract provided.

Language Anxiety Among Heritage Speakers Of Spanish On The Texas-Mexico Border, Leigh A. Cherry

Theses and Dissertations

There is an increased need for bilingual education programs throughout the U.S. as a result of the increasing bilingual population, especially Spanish-English bilinguals. With the implementation of such programs there also exists the need to be aware of issues that affect bilinguals and their language learning experience. One of these issues that has been investigated among foreign language learners, but less among bilinguals, is the issue of language anxiety. This case study reports the findings gathered from classroom observations, a language survey, focus group interviews and teacher interviews in order to better understand the issue of language anxiety among heritage …

Spanish/English Language Definitions For Applied Behavior Analysis Terminology, Claudia Arteaga

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Experimental analysis of behavior has grown enormously within recent years. Mexico is one of the main centers of this growth and therefore, as a result, specific Spanish terminology has developed. This thesis offers a list of suggested Spanish translations for terms and definitions in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) as a resource in support of bilingual students in the area of experimental analysis of behavior. The first and second chapters explain the origins and history of ABA and its development in the world and specifically in Mexico. The third chapter provides details about the methodology. A book entitled …

Asking For A Letter Of Recommendation In Spanish And English: A Pilot Study Of Face Strategies, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

Linguistic politeness plays an important role in the opinions people form of one another, especially when an individual has little other knowledge of an interlocutor, as is often the case in relationships between professors and students. Positive face refers to the desire to be liked and appreciated; negative face refers to the desire to be unimpeded. Positive and negative face are often characterized as corresponding to the dichotomies of involvement vs. independence, intimacy vs. distance, and solidarity vs. deference. An action or utterance that goes against one’s need for appreciation, in the case of positive face, or need for autonomy, …

(A)Wry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, And The Early Picaresque, David R. Castillo

Purdue University Press Books

The term anamorphosis, from the greek ana (again) and morphe (shape), designates a variety of perspective experiments that can be traced back to the artistic developments of the 1500's and 1600's. Anamorphic devices challenge viewers to experience different forms of perceptual oscillation and uncertainty. Images shift in front of the eyes of puzzled spectators as they move from the center of the representation to the margins, or from one side to the other. (A) Wry Views demonstrates that much of the literature of the Spanish Golden Age is susceptible, and indeed requires, oblique readings (as in anamorphosis).

Language Acculturation Discrepancy In Latina/O Families And Its Relationship With Emotional And Behavioral Problems, Jonathan P. Muther

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study is an assessment of whether a language acculturation discrepancy (LAD) within families is most predictive of emotional and behavioral problems for Latina/o youth when relevant variables are controlled. A sample of predominantly Mexican American parent-child dyads was recruited to complete a language-based measure of acculturation and parent participants completed an assessment of their child's emotional and behavioral functioning. Results indicated a total difference value between parent-child levels of language acculturation to be most predictive of the outcome. Additionally, the child's level of language acculturation, independent of that of the parent, was also found to account for a …

Castilian Transcodic Markers In Internet Catalan : Analysis Of Generic, Regional And Linguistic Factors, Craig Stokes

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation is a study of Castilian transcodic markers in the Catalan written on the Internet. Thirty Castilian transcodic markers representing five categories were run through the interface of the Corpus d'Ús del Català a la Web (CucWeb) to collect information in order to conduct both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The major research questions to be answered deal with the absolute and relative frequencies of these transcodic markers in the CucWeb and the factors behind the production of these non-standard forms. In addition to the frequency of the Castilian transcodic markers in the CucWeb, the initial study provides qualitative analysis …