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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Minority Language Education In Russia: An Example Of Social And Cultural Reproduction And Correspondence Theories, Nadezhda Braun Jun 2023

Minority Language Education In Russia: An Example Of Social And Cultural Reproduction And Correspondence Theories, Nadezhda Braun

Russian Language Journal

Russia is an incredibly diverse country, both linguistically and ethnically. However, Russia is often presented, and presents itself, as a monolith. Russia’s approach to minority language teaching further perpetuates this monolithic view by creating a hierarchical language structure with Russian at the top. This hierarchy is created through societal pressure, language requirements in the Russian education system, and the minimization of minority language instruction, in direct contrast to best practices for language instruction. Chuvash in Chuvashia and Nenets, Khanty, and Selkup in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug serve as examples of this linguistic hierarchy. This paper uses social and cultural reproduction …


Cognitive Effects Of Grammatical Gender In L2 Spanish Acquisition: A Study Among Latter-Day Saint Returned Missionaries, Hannah Cagle Mar 2023

Cognitive Effects Of Grammatical Gender In L2 Spanish Acquisition: A Study Among Latter-Day Saint Returned Missionaries, Hannah Cagle

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The current study aims to explore the cognitive effects of L2 Spanish acquisition and the role that spending time in the target language country has on L2 learners’ categorization of inanimate objects. Three groups of participants were analyzed: monolingual English speakers, L2 Spanish speakers that learned their Spanish while serving missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) abroad, and L2 Spanish speakers that learned their Spanish while serving LDS missions in the United States. Using a Qualtrics survey, participants were tasked with pairing a list of adjectives stereotypically associated with males or females (Williams & Bennett, …


Learner Engagement With Written Corrective Feedback: The Case Of Automated Writing Evaluation, Hooman Saeli, Payam Rahmati, Svetlana Koltovskaia Jan 2023

Learner Engagement With Written Corrective Feedback: The Case Of Automated Writing Evaluation, Hooman Saeli, Payam Rahmati, Svetlana Koltovskaia

Journal of Response to Writing

The study explored six ESL university students’ behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement with e-rater feedback on local issues and examined any changes in students’ engagement over two weeks. We explored behavioral engagement through the analysis of screencasts of students’ e-rater usage and writing assignments. We measured cognitive and affective engagement by analyzing students’ comments during the think-aloud protocol and reflection surveys. The findings indicated that the students had varying levels of engagement with the feedback. Behaviorally, all students used a range of revision operations to address errors based on the provided feedback. Cognitively, some students were more engaged than others. …


Reporting Verb Variation Across Disciplines: An Academic Corpus Study, Grant Eckstein, Jacob D. Rawlins, Hannah Taylor, Haley Briggs, Andrea Candland, Elizabeth Hanks, Sarah Hill Jun 2022

Reporting Verb Variation Across Disciplines: An Academic Corpus Study, Grant Eckstein, Jacob D. Rawlins, Hannah Taylor, Haley Briggs, Andrea Candland, Elizabeth Hanks, Sarah Hill

Faculty Publications

Reporting verbs are used in academic writing to establish authorial voice when referencing previous research. Although the practice is widespread, inexperienced academic writers and second-language learners may struggle to select appropriate reporting verbs within their given discipline or may overuse them in ways that signal outsider status. The present study explores the distribution of reporting verbs across six disciplines in a corpus containing 270 academic research background sections (introduction and literature review). The results illustrate that disciplines vary widely in the number and type of reporting verbs used. While common reporting verbs across disciplines include argue, examine, report …


Gender-Related Language Trends In Online Written News: Comparative Corpus Analysis Of Prescribed Vs. Actual Usage, Brooke James Mar 2022

Gender-Related Language Trends In Online Written News: Comparative Corpus Analysis Of Prescribed Vs. Actual Usage, Brooke James

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Contrary to traditional thought in linguistics and editing, recent studies using corpus-based evidence suggest that historical English usage patterns influenced prescriptive usage manuals’ guidelines more than the other way around. To investigate the modern relationship between English language prescriptions and usage, this study focuses on the wide-reaching genre of written online news and the topic of gender-fair language. It compares changes regarding gender-specific language in the Associated Press’s stylebooks to actual usage trends as documented in the News on the Web (NOW) corpus. Results from NOW show -man title variants as the dominant form in the early 2010s, consistent AP …


Ethnic Differences In Lbms Structure, Lisa M. Johnson Jan 2022

Ethnic Differences In Lbms Structure, Lisa M. Johnson

Faculty Publications

This poster reports on structural correlations between low back vowel merger/position and front lax vowel lowering/retraction (Low-Back-Merger Shift or LBMS). Based on analyses of word list recordings from two groups of Utah teens (Pacific Islanders and Euro Americans), I argue that the position of BOT affects the front vowels in the two ethnic groups differently: while the F1 of EA front vowels is inversely correlated with BOT F1, PI front vowels appear to be more sensitive to BOT F2. These results highlight the structural complexity of LBMS and the importance of recruiting ethnically diverse groups of participants for such studies.


Reading Rate Gain In A Second Language: The Effect Of Unassisted Repeated Reading And Intensity On Word-Level Reading Measures, Grant Eckstein, Krista Rich, Ethan Lynn Jan 2022

Reading Rate Gain In A Second Language: The Effect Of Unassisted Repeated Reading And Intensity On Word-Level Reading Measures, Grant Eckstein, Krista Rich, Ethan Lynn

Faculty Publications

Repeated reading is a popular intervention used to help struggling readers by exposing them to the same text multiple times. While the approach has been effective in L1 and some EFL settings, little research has explored its effectiveness compared against a control group or among ESL learners. Our study examined reading rate gains using words per minute and four eye-tracking measures with 46 mid-intermediate ESL learners grouped into three 14-week treatment groups: a control group that read 26 text passages (about two per week) just once through, another that read the same passages twice in each sitting, and a third …


A Language Analysis Of The London, Harrow Obituary From 1940 To 1950, Michaela Rappleyea Dec 2021

A Language Analysis Of The London, Harrow Obituary From 1940 To 1950, Michaela Rappleyea

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the vocabulary and phrases used in obituaries written in London during World War II and in the first five years following the war. During the war, both the length and content of the obituaries was significantly different, as the subjects and manner of death during those years was also significantly different. During the post-war years, the subjects and content followed a lengthier format and were generally for older community members who died of natural causes. This change in structure was affected by the nature and frequency of death. The tone of the writing was …


A Strategy For Correcting Errors In Automated Formant Extraction, Lisa M. Johnson Dec 2021

A Strategy For Correcting Errors In Automated Formant Extraction, Lisa M. Johnson

Faculty Publications

Sociophonetic vowel analysis relies heavily on measurements of resonant frequencies, particularly of the first and second formants. Automated formant estimation using linear predictive coding (LPC) algorithms in software like Praat greatly increases efficiency compared to hand measurements and allows researchers to analyze more data than was possible before this technological advancement. However, many authors have noted LPC analysis is prone to certain types of errors (e.g., Di Paolo, Yaeger-Dror, & Wassink, 2011; Harrison, 2013; Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006; Strelluf, 2019; Styler, 2017). In one common error, which I call “faulty low F2” (FLF2), LPC identifies a spectral peak between …


Vowel Pronunciation As An Ethnic Marker: Pacific Islander Teens In Utah, Lisa M. Johnson Oct 2021

Vowel Pronunciation As An Ethnic Marker: Pacific Islander Teens In Utah, Lisa M. Johnson

Faculty Publications

Despite the growing numbers and visibility of Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders (NHPIs) in the U.S., these Americans are generally overlooked in the research on language variation. American dialectology tends to focus on speakers of European descent, and most research on minority ethno-racial groups has concentrated on larger demographic groups, such as African American and Latinx American groups. This combination of research deficits limits our understanding of linguistic variation and the social forces that influence it. In addition, it may reinforce stereotypes of “ethnolects” as nonstandard and wholly separate from regional and stylistic influence. (See Eckert, 2008.) Many of …


On The Relationship Between Frequency, Features, And Markedness In Inflection: Experimental Evidence From Russian Nouns, Jeffrey R. Parker Jul 2021

On The Relationship Between Frequency, Features, And Markedness In Inflection: Experimental Evidence From Russian Nouns, Jeffrey R. Parker

Faculty Publications

Markedness has a long tradition in linguistics as a way to describe linguistic asymmetries. In this paper, I investigate an argument about the necessity of markedness as a tool for capturing the structural distribution of inflectional affixes and predicting the behavioral consequences of that distribution. Based on evidence from German adjectives, Clahsen et al. argue that the number of specified features of inflectional affixes (which I argue represents a type of markedness) affects reaction times in lexical access. Affixes’ features, however, overlap with how frequently they occur. Clahsen et al. investigate only three affixes in German, leaving open questions about …


Second Languange Acquisition Of /S/ -Weakinging In A Study Abroad Context, Earl K. Brown, Alicia Harley, Bret Linford Mar 2021

Second Languange Acquisition Of /S/ -Weakinging In A Study Abroad Context, Earl K. Brown, Alicia Harley, Bret Linford

Faculty Publications

This study examines the second language (L2) development of variable /s/-weakening in the spontaneous speech of L2 learners of Spanish who studied abroad in either Dominican Republic, where /s/-weakening is widespread, or central Spain, where /s/-weakening is much less common. Learners’ realizations of /s/ were coded impressionistically and acoustically by measuring voicing, center of gravity, and duration. The results show that regardless of the study abroad location, students did not change the amount of sibilance they produced over time. However, they became more nativelike with respect to /s/-voicing and duration. Additionally, whereas some linguistic factors were found to significantly constrain …


Inter-Generational Family Reconstitution With Enriched Ontologies, Deryle W. Lonsdale, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Scott N. Woodfield Jan 2021

Inter-Generational Family Reconstitution With Enriched Ontologies, Deryle W. Lonsdale, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Scott N. Woodfield

Faculty Publications

Enriching ontologies can measurably enhance research in digital humanities. Support for this claim is shown by using an enriched ontology to attack a well known and challenging problem: record linkage of historical records for inter-generational family reconstitution. An enriched ontology enables extraction of birth, death, and marriage records via linguistic grounding, curation of record-comprising information with pragmatic constraints and cultural normatives, and record linkage by evidential reasoning. The result is a fully automatic reconstruction of family trees. Using three historical record books containing a total of 29,229 extracted records, the enriched ontology links records with high accuracy: F-scores in the …


Mother Goose As A Resource In Teaching Historical Linguistics, Dallin D. Oaks Jan 2021

Mother Goose As A Resource In Teaching Historical Linguistics, Dallin D. Oaks

Faculty Publications

Mother Goose and other nursery rhymes as authentic texts are valuable resources that can be used effectively to illustrate historical English language change. Even though these nursery rhymes contain some forms, structures, and word meanings that differ from the language of today, the texts are sufficiently recent that they are intelligible to modern audiences. This article will illustrate the relevance and usefulness of nursery rhymes in teaching about principles of language and language change, such as voicing, phonological processes, factors motivating phonological change, as well as actual changes in the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and lexicon of English.


Person-Marking In Máku, Chris Rogers Ph.D. Jan 2021

Person-Marking In Máku, Chris Rogers Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

In Máku (an extinct language isolate), person marking is encoded by pronominal elements that are attached to bound pronominal roots, possessed nouns, and as subject and object argument agreement reference on verbs. However, when the contrasts between the various person-markers and their behaviors in the language are considered the system does not fit easily into the traditional analysis of three persons and two numbers. Rather, the organization of and relationships between the pronominal elements in Máku reveals a system based on the distinction of three persons (first, second and third), a two-way quantitative distinction (singular and non-singular), and a two-way …


The Effects Of Metacognitive Listening Strategy Instruction On Esl Learners’ Listening Motivation, Grant Eckstein, Corbin Kalanikiakahi Rivera, Benjamin L. Mcmurry, David Eddington Jan 2021

The Effects Of Metacognitive Listening Strategy Instruction On Esl Learners’ Listening Motivation, Grant Eckstein, Corbin Kalanikiakahi Rivera, Benjamin L. Mcmurry, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

Prior studies examining the effects of listening strategy instruction on motivation have shown a positive correlation between the two. However, the participants of these studies all shared a first language (L1) and were not enrolled in an intensive English program (IEP). This study aims to investigate the correlation between listening strategy instruction and listening motivation in an IEP classroom for students from different L1s. Listening motivation was recorded utilizing the English Listening Comprehension Motivation Scale (ELCMS), and strategy use was tracked with the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ). Pre- and post-test scores of 56 participants (control group, n=30; experiment group, …


Language Matters: Examining The Language-Related Needs And Wants Of Writers In A First-Year University Writing Course, Grant Eckstein, Dana Ferris Oct 2020

Language Matters: Examining The Language-Related Needs And Wants Of Writers In A First-Year University Writing Course, Grant Eckstein, Dana Ferris

Faculty Publications

All writing involves complex linguistic knowledge and thoughtful decision-making. But where do students acquire the linguistic tools needed to write effectively? Many students come from diverse backgrounds and may need additional support and/or instruction in language and grammar. In order to better understand this situation, we conducted a qualitative multiple-case study to examine the experiences of 12 students in a first-year university-level composition course to understand the extent of their diverse learning backgrounds and language needs and expectations. We synthesized information from surveys, interviews, and written texts into narratives about each student’s attitudes toward language and writing and also examined …


Systematizing The Use Of The Aspectual Distinction By Level Of Proficiency: A Case Of Spanish As A Heritage Language, Earl K. Brown, Laura Valentin-Rivera Jan 2020

Systematizing The Use Of The Aspectual Distinction By Level Of Proficiency: A Case Of Spanish As A Heritage Language, Earl K. Brown, Laura Valentin-Rivera

Faculty Publications

The language of early bilingual Spanish-English speakers in the United States is often distinct from that of monolingually raised native speakers of Spanish. This study analyzes the usage of the aspectual distinction in the past tense among 23 early Spanish-English bilingual speakers and 9 monolingually raised native speakers of Mexican Spanish. The participants engaged in a role-play in order to elicit a past-tense verbal form, either preterite or imperfect, for 15 test items. The results show that as level of proficiency in Spanish increases, the level of consensus with the responses of the monolingually raised native speakers of Spanish increases. …


Chapter 7: Applied Rhetoric As Disciplinary Umbrella: Community, Connections, And Identity, Jacob D. Rawlins Jan 2020

Chapter 7: Applied Rhetoric As Disciplinary Umbrella: Community, Connections, And Identity, Jacob D. Rawlins

Faculty Publications

: This chapter argues that many of the existing names and boundaries in use around professional communication create artificial separations among research, pedagogy, theory, and action related to the practice of rhetoric in contemporary society. Scholars working in this area teach and conduct research across a variety of disciplines, but we share a rhetorical foundation and a concern for the practical application of that theory. This combination of classical rhetoric and public action provides a way to move our work beyond the confines of the academy and actively engage in rhetorical work within the communities where we work, live, and …


Improving Nmt Quality Using Terminology Injection, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Duane K. Dougal Jan 2020

Improving Nmt Quality Using Terminology Injection, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Duane K. Dougal

Faculty Publications

Many organizations use domain- or organization-specific words and phrases. This paper explores the use of vetted terminology as an input to neural machine translation (NMT) for improved results: ensuring that the translation of individual terms is consistent with an approved multilingual terminology collection. We discuss, implement, and evaluate a method for injecting terminology and for evaluating terminology injection. Our use of the long short-term memory (LSTM) attention mechanism prevalent in state-of-the-art NMT systems involves attention vectors for correctly identifying semantic entities and aligning the tokens that represent them, both in the source and the target languages. Appropriate terminology is then …


Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback Among Graduate Students: The Effects Of Feedback Timing, Grant Eckstein, Maureen Estelle Sims, Lisa Rohm Jan 2020

Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback Among Graduate Students: The Effects Of Feedback Timing, Grant Eckstein, Maureen Estelle Sims, Lisa Rohm

Faculty Publications

Dynamic written corrective feedback (DWCF) is a pedagogical approach that offers meaningful, manageable, constant, and timely corrective feedback on student writing (Hartshorn et al., 2010). It emphasizes indirect and comprehensive written error correction on short, daily writing assignments. Numerous studies have demonstrated that its use can lead to fewer language errors among undergraduate and pre-matriculated college writers (see Kurzer, 2018). However, the benefits of DWCF among second language (L2) graduate writers and the role of feedback timing have not been well examined. We analyzed timed writing samples over a 12-week intervention from 22 L2 graduate students who either received biweekly …


Solving Russian Velars: Palatalization, The Lexicon And Gradient Contrast Utilization, Jeffrey R. Parker, Andrea D. Sims Jan 2020

Solving Russian Velars: Palatalization, The Lexicon And Gradient Contrast Utilization, Jeffrey R. Parker, Andrea D. Sims

Faculty Publications

The complexity of an inflection class system is the average extent to which elements in the system inhibit motivated inferences about the realization of lexemes’ paradigm cells. Research shows that systems tend to exhibit relatively low complexity in this sense. However, representations of inflectional systems tend to include only affixal and regular patterns, leaving questions about how irregular patterns and non-affixal ‘layers’ of inflectional exponence affect the complexity of a system. We address these questions by exploring four layers of inflectional exponence of Russian nouns, including irregular patterns within each layer. Our data show that the Russian noun system exhibits …


Reading Academic Citations: How Professors And Graduate Students Read For Different Purposes, Grant Eckstein, Sarah Miner, Katie Watkins, Judy James, Mornie Sims, Allison Wallace Baker, Larissa Grahl Jan 2020

Reading Academic Citations: How Professors And Graduate Students Read For Different Purposes, Grant Eckstein, Sarah Miner, Katie Watkins, Judy James, Mornie Sims, Allison Wallace Baker, Larissa Grahl

Faculty Publications

Citations provide truncated yet socially complex information about sources in academic texts which students are obliged to read, comprehend, and then ultimately produce as part of an academic discourse community. While researchers have observed a developmental process whereby students produce citations during source-based writing, little work has investigated the reading stage when students visually encounter citations. In this study, we explored academic reading behaviors by examining eye movements of 27 graduate students and 18 professors as they read 6 authentic research texts for various purposes (summary, analysis, synthesis). Results of factorial ANOVAs showed no differences between students and professors but …


Understanding Diversity – Perspectives From University Departments Hosting Large Percentages Of International Students, K. James Hartshorn, Maureen Snow Andrade, Norman W. Evans, Gwyneth Gates Jan 2020

Understanding Diversity – Perspectives From University Departments Hosting Large Percentages Of International Students, K. James Hartshorn, Maureen Snow Andrade, Norman W. Evans, Gwyneth Gates

Faculty Publications

The international student enrollment in some university departments has grown to the point that these students are the majority. This study sought to determine the extent to which departments hosting large numbers of international English as a second language (ESL) students demonstrate awareness and planning to address these learners’ needs. Analyses were conducted in reference to a framework designed to aid institutions in meeting international ESL students’ needs. Findings indicate some awareness of students’ needs and related strategies for linguistic and cultural development. They also demonstrate that the proposed framework could foster more intentional strategies to ensure international student success.


Dialect And Employability: Human Resource Managers' Perceptions Of African American English, Kimberly Michelsen Dec 2019

Dialect And Employability: Human Resource Managers' Perceptions Of African American English, Kimberly Michelsen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis addresses the question of whether different dialects can change the probability of speakers being perceived as employable. It is one of the few that takes this question away from college campuses and directly to Human Resources Managers in the workforce. Using the Matched Guise Technique, recordings of Standard American English (SAE) and African American English (AAE) were presented to forty-two HR Managers from regions across the United States. Using a series of Likert scales, the HR Managers rated the recordings on eight characteristics of employability: four focused on professional skills and four focused on human-relation skills. The study …


Global Impact Of A Business School Degree: International Alumni Voice, K. James Hartshorn, Maureen Snow Andrade, Norman W. Evans Dec 2019

Global Impact Of A Business School Degree: International Alumni Voice, K. James Hartshorn, Maureen Snow Andrade, Norman W. Evans

Faculty Publications

Business schools in English-dominant countries host significant numbers of international students. In the U.S., where few students remain in the country to work, little is known about the role of English language proficiency and employer-valued outcomes on students’ professional success. This study reports survey findings from international alumni on the development and impact of learning outcomes, particularly English proficiency. Participants felt they had acquired outcomes valued by employers and reported using English in their work. The study indicates a need for more institution-specific studies to increase knowledge of a population with a significant presence in schools of business.


Impact Of Intercultural Competence On Communicative Success In L2 Environments(With Reference To Missionaries Of The Church Ofjesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints), David Milford Lucero Dec 2019

Impact Of Intercultural Competence On Communicative Success In L2 Environments(With Reference To Missionaries Of The Church Ofjesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints), David Milford Lucero

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the impact of cultural competence on success in completing key missionary tasks. Qualitative survey results are supported by data from an intercultural effectiveness assessment and a Mandarin Chinese listening proficiency test to describe themes related to missionary communicative success and to explore correlations between intercultural effectiveness and listening proficiency. Missionary communicative tasks are clarified into themes:"obtaining referrals,"obtaining teaching opportunities," and"helping people make and keep commitments." Factors perceived as associating with communicative success include"feeling and communicating love" and receiving"spiritual guidance." The effect of training on intercultural competence is also described. The intercultural effectiveness subcategory of positive regard is …


An Analysis Of Esl Learner Preferences For Native Accent Retention And Reduction, K. James Hartshorn Jun 2019

An Analysis Of Esl Learner Preferences For Native Accent Retention And Reduction, K. James Hartshorn

Faculty Publications

Though most ESL learners desire a “native-like” pronunciation, researchers have observed that some may want to retain features of their L1accents as a means of maintaining identity. This raises important questions about the best ways to teach L2 pronunciation. Therefore, the aims of this study were to discover how pervasive a preference for accent retention may be and to identify possible reasons learners exhibit this preference. To accomplish this, a scale was designed to assess a preference for accent retention, and potential explanatory variables were identified. Analyses of 350 ESL learners identified varying levels of a preference for accent retention, …


L1 And L2 Reading Behaviors By Proficiency Level: An English-Portuguese Eye-Tracking Study, Larissa Grahl Jun 2019

L1 And L2 Reading Behaviors By Proficiency Level: An English-Portuguese Eye-Tracking Study, Larissa Grahl

Theses and Dissertations

The process of reading in a second language is an under-studied area of research on second language processing. Researchers have found similarities and differences between first- and second-language reading (Koda, 2007; Artieda, 2017; Walter, 2007), and many believe that readers’ successful reading behaviors in their L1 reflect their reading patterns in the L2 (Yamashita, 2007; Cummings, 1991; Sparks & Ganschow, 1995). Others claim that a certain threshold level of L2 language proficiency is necessary before L1 reading ability transfers to L2 reading (Clark, 1978; Cummings, 1991). Eye tracking technology has enabled researchers to investigate early and late reading measures, the …


Effects Of The Relationships Between Forms Within And Across Paradigms On Lexical Processing And Representation: An Experimental Investigation Of Russian Nouns, Jeffery R. Parker May 2019

Effects Of The Relationships Between Forms Within And Across Paradigms On Lexical Processing And Representation: An Experimental Investigation Of Russian Nouns, Jeffery R. Parker

Faculty Publications

The frequency and distribution of forms within a lexeme’s paradigm affect how quickly forms are accessed (e.g., Kostić, 1991; Milin, Filipović Đurđević, & Moscoso del Prado Martín, 2009; Moscoso del Prado Martı́n, Kostić, & Baayen, 2004). The distribution of forms across paradigms, in contrast, has received little experimental attention. Theoretical studies investigate the distribution of forms across paradigms because forms vary in how predictive they are of other (unknown) forms. Such investigations have uncovered typological tendencies (e.g., Ackerman & Malouf, 2013; Stump & Finkel, 2013) and contribute to explanations of language-specific phenomena (e.g., Sims, 2015; Parker & Sims, To appear). …