Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Nouns And Verbs In The Tagalog Mental Lexicon, Linda Walton

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to study grammatical categories in the Tagalog mental lexicon using lexical decision tasks. Some linguists question whether words in Tagalog can be classified as nouns and verbs (Foley, 1998; Kaufman, 2011) because most root words can be inflected for any grammatical function and because verbs cannot be used in their uninflected form. Previous studies with English and German (Kauschke and Stenneken 2008) have shown that participants respond differently to nouns and verbs in lexical decision tasks. These studies have also shown that participants respond differently to transitive and intransitive verbs in lexical decision tasks. …

Error Frequencies Among Esl Writers: A Resource Guide, Maria Teresa Company

Theses and Dissertations

Being a competent writer is an important skill in academic education. However, second language (L2) writers often struggle to be linguistically and lexically competent. This project explored the most frequent linguistic writing errors made by 343 English as a second language (ESL) students when Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) was applied as an instructional methodology. These errors were also classified by language groups based on the students' first language (L1). These students were enrolled in an intensive English program at the English Language Center (ELC), Brigham Young University. The first languages of these students were Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, …

Using A Cognitive Architecture In Incremental Sentence Processing, Jeremiah Lane Mcghee

Theses and Dissertations

XNL-Soar is a specialized implementation of the Soar cognitive architecture. The version of XNL-Soar described in this thesis builds upon and extends prior research (Lewis, 1993; Rytting,2000) using Soar for natural language processing. This thesis describes the updates made to operators creating syntactic structure and the improved coverage of syntactic phenomena. It describes the addition of semantic structure building capability. This thesis also details the implementation of semantic memory and describes two experiments utilizing semantic memory in structural disambiguation. This thesis shows that XNL-Soar, as currently instantiated, resolves ambiguities common in language using strategies and resources including: reanalysis via snip …

The Effect Of Pause Duration On Intelligibility Of Non-Native Spontaneous Oral Discourse, Ryan Frederick Lege

Theses and Dissertations

Pausing is a natural part of human speech. Pausing is used to segment speech, negotiate meaning, and allow for breathing. In oral speech, pausing, along with other suprasegmental features, plays a critical role in creating meaning as comprehensible speech is seen as a goal for language learners around the world. In order to be comprehensible, language learners need to learn to pause correctly in their speaking. Though this notion is widely accepted by applied linguists and many language teachers, the effect of pausing on intelligibility of spontaneous oral discourse has not been established by empirical data. This study isolates pause …

Breaking Command-Ments And Friend-Ships: Effects Of Relative Frequency And Affix Parsability In Lexical Processing, Jeffrey R. Parker, Michael Phelan, Robert Reynolds, Lauren Ressue

Faculty Publications

• Lexical access as a race (Baayen & Schreuder 1999; Bertram et al. 2000; Burani & Thornton 2003; Schreuder & Baayen 1995; Wurm 1997)
• morpheme-based (parsing) vs. whole-word
• words are accessed by whichever access route is fastest

The Mental Lexicon In Students Of Non-Spoken Languages: A Case Study With Ancient Greek And Latin, Randall C. Meister

Student Works

The unique pedagogical circumstances and uses of non-spoken languages (such as Ancient Greek and Latin) offer other facets to current models of L2 mental lexicon, which, up until this point in academic dialogue, have focused on bilinguals, who produce their language. While empirical evidence from an array of studies (see Cielslicka-­Ratajczak, 1994) favors an integrated system of interwoven phonological, semantic, and categorical information all working together to influence production and comprehension, the elements of L2 organization within the context of non-­spoken ancient languages remains underexplored, yet may offer further evidence for the organization of mental L2 lexical. My current study …

The Effects Of Explicit Instruction On The Development Of Reading Fluency, Michael Jeffrey Zwick

Theses and Dissertations

Developing reading fluency in a first language (L1) is a topic that has received a considerable amount of attention. Developing reading fluency in a second language (L2), however, has received relatively little attention (Grabe, 2009). Anderson (2008) defines reading fluency as "reading at an appropriate rate with adequate comprehension." For adult ESL learners, Anderson suggests a minimum rate of 200 wpm with at least 70% comprehension. Previous studies that have been conducted on L2 reading fluency focus primarily on reading rate development. This study seeks to combine rate development and comprehension development to effectively foster L2 reading fluency. Doing so …

Students' Perspectives On Language Use Outside The Classroom In An Intensive English Program, Elena Vladimirovna Shvidko

Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to 1) explore student attitudes toward the English-only environment in an intensive English program, and 2) find factors that either promote or inhibit students' desire to use English in their communication with compatriots in school. Qualitative research methods employed were a) a student questionnaire (with a total of 158 participants), b) semi-structured interviews with students (total 6 participants), and c) four student focus groups (with a total of 62 participants). The study was conducted at the English Language Center (ELC) at Brigham Young University. The participants were students of four native language groups (Spanish, …

The Correlation Of Arab Ells' Academic Reading Fluency In Arabic And English, Jonathon C. Mccollum

Theses and Dissertations

Educational and economic developments in the Persian Gulf have increased the need for academic English reading fluency in the rising generation of college-bound students. A discussion of the literature on the linguistic properties of Arabic diglossia and orthography affirms the challenge that Arabs confront in L1 literacy. Because of the difficulties encountered in Arabic literacy, the transfer of L1 skills to L2 emerges as a salient issue for English instruction in the Arab world. The following study of Arab ELLs' academic reading fluency in Arabic and English investigates a hypothesized positive correlation between L1 and L2 reading abilities. Quantitative and …

Courtroom Discourse As Verbal Performance: Describing The Unique Sociolinguistic Situation Of The American Trial Courtroom, Seth William Wood

Theses and Dissertations

Individual events within courtroom discourse, such as lawyer-witness interactions have been studied extensively, particularly within a framework of powerful vs. powerless language (Adelsward, 1987; Archer, 2006; Bogoch, 2000; Eades, 2010; Fuller, 1993; Gnisci & Bakeman, 2007; Hobbs, 2007; Keating, 2009; Penman, 1990; Philips, 1984; Roberts, 1990). However, this thesis will show that courtroom discourse is sufficiently unique to warrant a distinct framework. It will also explore the explanatory power of a Courtroom Discourse Verbal Performance framework influenced by Verbal Art as Performance (Bauman, 1977). In particular this work will create a framework (Courtroom Discourse Verbal Performance) that explains the sociolinguistic …

Fluency Features And Elicited Imitation As Oral Proficiency Measurement, Carl V. Christensen

Theses and Dissertations

The objective and automatic grading of oral language tests has been the subject of significant research in recent years. Several obstacles lie in the way of achieving this goal. Recent work has suggested a testing technique called elicited imitation (EI) can be used to accurately approximate global oral proficiency. This testing methodology, however, does not incorporate some fundamental aspects of language such as fluency. Other work has suggested another testing technique, simulated speech (SS), as a supplement to EI that can provide automated fluency metrics. In this work, I investigate a combination of fluency features extracted for SS testing and …

Implementation And Evaluation Of Curricular Changes In The Undergraduate Tesol Internship Program At Brigham Young University, Lydia Ripplinger

Theses and Dissertations

This MA project consists of the implementation and evaluation of the effectiveness of intended improvements to the TESOL minor internship program at Brigham Young University (BYU). The majority of changes implemented and evaluated in this study were suggested by Marisa Ontiveros in her 2010 MA thesis, An Evaluation of the Learning Outcomes and Curricular Organization of the Brigham Young University Undergraduate TESOL Internships Course. The present report summarizes relevant literature that led to the current project, including a discussion of the importance of internships in general, information regarding the significance of TESOL internships, and a summary of the BYU …

The Development Of Two Units For Basic Training And Resources For Teaching English To Speakers Of Other Languages: "Working Successfully With Young Learners" And "Working Successfully With Very Young Learners", Heidi Healy

Theses and Dissertations

Many thousands of people with varying degrees of preparation teach English as a second or foreign language to many millions of people around the world. Some of these teachers are novice, volunteer teachers, who have not received any professional-level training. These novice teachers help to meet the demand for English teachers by often teaching for little remuneration or in non-ideal teaching conditions. These teachers can benefit from receiving training in how to teach English as a foreign language. Basic Training and Resources for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (BTRTESOL) is a program that is being created to provide …

The Development Of Two Units For Basic Training And Resources For Teaching English To Speakers Of Other Languages: "Content-Based Language Classes" And "Multiple Skills In One Class", Amanda Staten Malaman

Theses and Dissertations

Under the direction of Dr. Lynn Henrichsen, a group of students has developed numerous units for the Basic Training and Resources for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (BTRTESOL) program. This program is currently located on a website and will someday be published in book and DVD format. These units provide general training for novice teachers who teach domestically or abroad. With little or no training, volunteer English language teachers are often left with questions that BTRTESOL strives to answer in its 52 units. As this audience may or may not have university education or heavy commitment, these units …

Visual Form And A Typology Of Purpose: A Peircean-Based Approach To Visual Information Design Pedagogy, Christina Laraine Perkins Rosenquist

Theses and Dissertations

Visual information design is a vital part of modern communication. Currently discussion is occurring in most disciplines to determine more effective ways to incorporate visual information design into all their communication, including website and document design. These discussions typically focus on elements of traditional graphic design that tell the student what is "good" graphic design; however, traditional graphic design depends on trial and error, luck, and best practices, with only rare attempts to construct general principles. Selection of visual elements is usually based on designer preference rather than any consistent conceptual framework or empirical support for design decisions. Another approach …

Greening The Market: The Development And Effect Of Environmental Terms On Consumer Perception Of Products, Jae Parker Heiner

Theses and Dissertations

History, discourse analysis, and corpus linguistics show the green movement (humankind's response to issues affecting the environment) to have proliferated both ecological ideologies and the linguistic tools to discuss them, (R. J. Alexander, 2002; Bang, Døør, Steffensen, & Nash, 2007; Carvalho, 2007; Mahlberg, 2007; Wang, 2009) showing the development of green or environmental language in the lexicon. The topic has also left its mark on the market, and green market research has shown effects of messages on perceptions of green brands (Phau & Ong, 2007) and profiles of m (J. A. Roberts, 1996). However , surprisingly little research has been …

A Study In Computerized Translation Testing (Ctt) For The Arabic Language, Amanda J. Kuhn

Theses and Dissertations

Translation quality assessment remains pertinent in both translation theory and in the industry. Specifically, the process of assessing a target document's quality or a person's translation competence involves a lot of time and money on the part of various governments, organizations and individuals. In response to this issue, this project builds on the ongoing research of Hague et al. (2012), who seek to determine the capabilities of a computerized translation test for the French-to-English and Spanish-to-English language pairs. Specifically, Hague et al. (2012) question whether a good score on a detect-and-correct style computerized translation test that is calculated by a …

Robust Parsing And Lgsoar, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Tory Anderson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ruqual: A System For Assessing Post-Editing, Jason K. Housley

Theses and Dissertations

Post-editing machine translation has become more common in recent years due to the increase in materials requiring translation and the effectiveness of machine translation systems. This project presents a system for formalizing structured translation specifications that facilitates the assessment of the performance of a post-editor. This report provides details concerning two software applications: the Ruqual Specifications Writer, which aids in the authoring of post-editing project specifications, and the Ruqual Rubric Viewer which provides a graphical user interface for filling out a machine readable rubric file. The project as a whole relies on a definition of translation quality based on the …

Filling The Halls With English: Creating Self-Regulated Learners Through Co-Curricular Activities, Sharon Lynn Tavares

Theses and Dissertations

This project investigates the benefits and practicality of applying Zimmerman's (1994) dimensions of self-regulated learning to co-curricular activities so as to increase students' willingness and opportunities to communicate in English in the hallways of intensive English programs. Three of these dimensions (social environment, motivation, and physical environment) work together to create a semi-structured liaison between in and out of class communicative environments and give students an occasion, location, and motivation to speak English with one another. To evaluate the effectiveness of such activities and conceptualize a means in which to assist intensive English programs effectively incorporate co-curricular activities in their …

Employment After Graduation: Career Path Trends Of Tesol Ma And Graduate Certificate Students, Eimi Priddis

Theses and Dissertations

As English expands across the world, quality English teachers are increasingly needed. However, reports that even well-trained TESOL professionals have a hard time obtaining stable employment are prevalent. This study sought to provide some solid evidence about employment trends in TESOL. It is based on a survey administered to alumni who graduated between the years of 1973 and 2008 from Brigham Young University's TESOL program. The results indicate that graduates spend about half of their career time in TESOL-related employment. Most are involved in teaching, but jobs in administration, materials development,or testing are more likely to be full-time and offer …

The Development Of Two Units For Basic Training And Resources For Teaching English To Speakers Of Other Languages: "Tutoring Guidelines" And "Designing An Overall Plan For A Course", Beth Anne Firnges

Theses and Dissertations

A team of graduate students from Brigham Young University under the supervision of the main author, Dr. Henrichsen, collaborated on creating a book with an accompanying website, Basic Training and Resources for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (BTRTESOL). The entire program consists of 10 main sections with nearly 50 units addressing topics that novice teachers can choose from to help them prepare to teach English to non-native speakers. The BTRTESOL program answers the need for material designed for novice teachers, material that will help them to be better prepared in a minimalistic, non-overwhelming way. The goal of this …

Punjabi Tonemics And The Gurmukhi Script: A Preliminary Study, Andrea Lynn Bowden

Theses and Dissertations

Punjabi, a language primarily spoken throughout Pakistan and in the northern Indian state of Punjab, is one of a few closely related Indo-Aryan languages, including Lahnda and Western Pahari, or Dogri-Kangri, which are counted among the world's tone languages, despite having no genetic link to other recognized tone languages. Few grammars have been published for Punjabi, and of those available, the grammars either fail to discuss the existence of lexical tone or note tone only in passing, and these disagree among themselves on even the number of tones. Unfortunately, those grammars which do make note of the presence of lexical …

Iotacism And The Pattern Of Vowel Leveling In Roman To Byzantine Era Manuscripts: Perspectives From The Thomas Gignac Corpus, Craig Meister

Student Works

After centuries of debate surrounding the change of the Greek simple vowels and diphthongs ι, υ, η, οι, and ει into the phoneme /i/, the process known as iotacism (sometimes referred to as itacism) has become not only an anomaly of philological analysis, but the phonetic reality of this vowel shift and leveling from the phonemes /i/, /oi/, /e:/, /y/, and /ei/ to /i/ have yet to be linguistically analyzed successfully within various systems of linguistic modeling. In order to fill this important gap within the history of the Greek language, this research seeks to use the Roman and Byzantine …

Review Of Understanding Morphological Rules, By Stela Manova, Jeffery R. Parker

Faculty Publications

In this monograph Stela Manova dicusses word-formation processes ("techniques" in her terminology) based on data from several Slavic languages: Bulgarian, Russian, and Serbian/Croatian. Manova presents theoretical support and a wealth of data to argue that conversion and subtraction operate similarly to other morphological techniques; that is to say, they operate in both derivation and inflection, have prototypical and non-prototypical instances, can be applied to different bases (words, stems, and roots) and compete with other, more iconic, morphological processes. While some of her examples could be disputed, she presents ample data and discussion to support her claims. This work will be …

Extracting Information From French Obituaries, Deryle W. Lonsdale, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Joseph Park

Faculty Publications

This paper discusses ongoing efforts to develop a system for extracting information from French obituaries. The approach is based on prior work on ontology-based English obituary extraction, which we first summarize. Then we mention sources for, and characteristics of, typical French obituaries. We sketch ongoing knowledge source development and the relevant tools, as well as an evaluation procedure we intend to follow for quantifying performance of the French system. Throughout we mention some lessons learned in the process.

First Results In A Study Evaluating Pre-Annotation And Correction Propagation For Machine-Assisted Syriac Morphological Analysis, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Paul Felt, Eric Ringger, Kevin Seppi, Kristian Heal, Robbie A. Haertel

Faculty Publications

Manual annotation of large textual corpora can be cost-prohibitive, especially for rare and under-resourced languages. One potential solution is pre-annotation: asking human annotators to correct sentences that have already been annotated, usually by a machine. Another potential solution is correction propagation: using annotator corrections to dynamically improve to the remaining pre-annotations within the current sentence. The research presented in this paper employs a controlled user study to discover under what conditions these two machine-assisted annotation techniques are effective in increasing annotator speed and accuracy and thereby reducing the cost for the task of morphologically annotating texts written in classical Syriac. …

Multilingual Extraction Ontologies, Deryle W. Lonsdale, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Yuri A. Tijerino

Faculty Publications

In our global society, multilingual barriers sometimes prohibit and often discourage international travelers from receiving desired goods and services. In a multilingual setting, easing linguistic-based tasks such as finding a restaurant, learning how to use local mass transit, and making simple business transactions would help remove barriers and encourage international travelers to seek and enjoy a wider variety goods and services. We propose multilingual extraction ontologies accessible via mobile devices as an aid to resolving these issues. Multilingual ontologies can communicate in multiple languages with the wireless local web as well as the international traveler and can thus break through …

Item Development And Scoring For Japanese Oral Proficiency Testing, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Hitokazu Matsushita

Faculty Publications

This study introduces and evaluates a computerized approach to measuring Japanese L2 oral proficiency. We present a testing and scoring method that uses a type of structured speech called elicited imitation (EI) to evaluate accuracy of speech productions. Several types of language resources and toolkits are required to develop, administer, and score responses to this test. First, we present a corpus-based test item creation method to produce EI items with targeted linguistic features in a principled and efficient manner. Second, we sketch how we are able to bootstrap a small learner speech corpus to generate a significantly large corpus of …

Working Memory’S Meager Involvement In Sentence Repetition Tests, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Eve Kiyomi Okura

Faculty Publications

Elicited imitation (EI) is a testing method for learners’ oral language proficiency. One common criticism aimed at EI is that performance might not require linguistic knowledge, but mere rote memorization. This study explores the issue by administering two tests to the same group of students studying English as a second language: (1) a working memory test, and (2) an English EI test. Participants came from a range of English language proficiency levels. Our goal was to test whether scores from these two treatments (English EI scores and working memory scores) would correlate significantly. If not, this would suggest that there …