Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The History Of -Eer In English: Suffix Competition Or Symbiosis?, Zachary Dukic, Chris C. Palmer

Faculty Articles

Ecological models of competition have provided great explanatory power regarding synonymy in derivational morphology. Competition models of this type have certainly shown their utility, as they have demonstrated, among other things, the relevance of frequency measures, productivity, compositionality and analyzability when comparing the development of morphological constructions. There has been less consideration of alternative models that could be used to describe the historical co-development of suffixes that produce words with sometimes similar forms or meanings but are not inevitably or solely in competition. The symbiotic model proposed in this article may help answer larger questions in linguistics, such as how …

Language Classification In Western Amazonia: Advances In Favor Of The Pano-Takana Hypothesis, Pilar M. Valenzuela, Roberto Zariquiey

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

The languages of the Pano and Takana families exhibit a considerable number of lexical and structural affinities that cannot be ascribed to mere chance and are not readily detectable instances of borrowing. After the comparative studies by Key (1968) and Girard (1971) the proposal of a genetic relationship between these two families was generally accepted (e.g. Loos 1973, 2005; Suárez 1973; Kaufman 1990; Campbell 1997). Without solid argumentation, however, this classification was later put into question (Fabre 1998; Loos 1999; Fleck 2013) and, even today, there is no full consensus as to whether the observed similarities are due to genetic …

Untangling The Evolution Of Body-Part Terminology In Pano: Conservative Versus Innovative Traits In Body-Part Lexicalization, Roberto Zariquiey, Javier Vera, Simon J. Greenhill, Pilar Valenzuela, Russell J. Gray, Johann-Mattis List

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Although language-family specific traits which do not find direct counterparts outside a given language family are usually ignored in quantitative phylogenetic studies, scholars have made ample use of them in qualitative investigations, revealing their potential for identifying language relationships. An example of such a family specific trait are body-part expressions in Pano languages, which are often lexicalized forms, composed of bound roots (also called body-part prefixes in the literature) and non-productive derivative morphemes (called here body-part formatives). We use various statistical methods to demonstrate that whereas body-part roots are generally conservative, body-part formatives exhibit diverse chronologies and are often the …

Degrees Of Temporal Remoteness In Pano: Contribution To The Cross-Linguistic Study Of Tense, Pilar Valenzuela, Sanderson Castro Soares De Oliveira

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Beyond simply indicating future or past tense, the languages of the Pano family grammatically distinguish various degrees of temporal distance relative to a reference point, typically the moment of utterance; i.e., they possess what has been called ‘metrical tense’ (Chung & Timberlake 1985; Frawley 1992), ‘degrees of remoteness’ (Comrie 1985; Dahl 1985; Bybee et al. 1994; Botne 2012), or ‘graded tense’ (Cable 2013). This article offers a comparative analysis of the rich graded tense systems found in Pano, concentrating on morphologically expressed categories. In so doing, it seeks to expand our typological knowledge of languages exhibiting this feature, particularly …

Sigmorphon 2021 Shared Task On Morphological Reinflection: Generalization Across Languages, Tiago Pimentel, Maria Ryskina, Christopher Straughn

Library Faculty Publications

This year’s iteration of the SIGMORPHON Shared Task on morphological reinflection focuses on typological diversity and cross-lingual variation of morphosyntactic features. In terms of the task, we enrich UniMorph with new data for 32 languages from 13 language families, with most of them being under-resourced: Kunwinjku, Classical Syriac, Arabic (Modern Standard, Egyptian, Gulf), Hebrew, Amharic, Aymara, Magahi, Braj, Kurdish (Central, Northern, Southern), Polish, Karelian, Livvi, Ludic, Veps, Võro, Evenki, Xibe, Tuvan, Sakha, Turkish, Indonesian, Kodi, Seneca, Asháninka, Yanesha, Chukchi, Itelmen, Eibela. We evaluate six systems on the new data and conduct an extensive error analysis of the systems’ predictions. Transformer-based …

Scoring Morphology In Measures Of Spelling And Written Morphological Awareness: A Scoping Review, Victor A. Lugo, Kimberly A. Murphy, Emily Diehm

Communication Disorders & Special Education Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Notions Of The "Closet" And The "Secret" In Oscar Wilde's, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Jessica Maria Oliveira

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will discuss the notions of the “closet” and “secret” within Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as offer a clear and precise definition of queer theory to assist in elucidating many of the concepts being discussed. Close reading techniques will be utilized to further uncover the metaphoric, symbolic, and otherwise figurative importance of certain aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray and supporting texts. Through Judith Butler’s conceptualization of sex and gender, as well as Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the “secret”, this paper will explicate the intricacies of Wilde’s work and unveil queered aspects …

Non-Manual Articulators In Irish Sign Language Verbs: An Analysis With Data Mining Association Rules, Robert G. Smith, Markus Hofmann

Conference Papers

The Signs of Ireland (SOI) corpus (Leeson et al., 2006) deploys a complex multi-tiered temporal data structure. The process of manually analyzing such data is laborious, cannot eliminate bias and often, important patterns can go completely unnoticed. In addition to this, as a result of the complex nature of grammatical structures contained in the corpus, identifying complex linguistic associations or patterns across tiers is simply too intricate a task for a human to carry out in an acceptable timeframe. This work explores the application of data mining techniques on a set of multi-tiered temporal data from the SOI corpus. Building …

Peaze Up! Adaptation, Innovation, And Variation In German Hip Hop Discourse, Matt Garley

Publications and Research

In this study, I investigate the stylistic use of various forms of the hip hop leave-taking peace in a 12.5-million-word corpus (2000-2011) of German-language Internet hip hop discussions. The English orthography is compared with a number of hybrid variants including, e.g., , , and . I analyze the distribution of these variants over time by comparison to use of the form in an American hip hop forum. I complement these results with a qualitative analysis of peace and its variants as situated in discourse, drawing a connection between linguistic features, discursive use, and corpus distribution. The discourse of German hip …

Saisiyat Morphology, Daniel Kaufman

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Vanilla Sequence-To-Sequence Neural Nets Cannot Model Reduplication, Brandon Prickett

OWP Linguistics

This paper presents results from a series of simulations that attempted to teach a vanilla sequence-to-sequence neural network a reduplication process. These attempts did not succeed, suggesting that added machinery is necessary for connectionist models to perform such a task.

Order Of Acquisition: A Comparison Of L1 And L2 English And Spanish Morpheme Acquisition, Kyle A. Mcferren

Senior Honors Theses

This paper examines the order of acquisition for grammatical morphemes in Spanish and English first and second language learners. Brown’s first morpheme order study, conducted in 1973, laid the foundation for what would become one of the most common types of study conducted within the field of second language acquisition. The four orders of acquisition relevant here are examined and compared in order to support the roles of salience, morphophonological regularity, complexity, input frequency, and native language transfer in first and/or second language acquisition. The conclusion is that these five determinants work interdependently in determining the difficulty of acquiring a …

Seen And Not Heard: The Relationship Of Orthography, Morphology, And Phonology In Loanword Adaptation In The German Hip Hop Community Online, Matt Garley

Publications and Research

In this study, a particular development in language behavior, the use of the -ed suffix from English in both participle and non-participle contexts, is investigated in the domain of the German hip hop community. This morphological-orthographic feature is analyzed from a linguistic and distributional standpoint in a 12.5 million word corpus of German hip hop discussion, revealing its patterns of use over a decade in both contexts within this community, along with supplemental examples from YouTube videos. This corpus analysis is paired with a case study of a discourse event between two forum participants negotiating the use of this form, …

Comparative Morphology Of The Hominin And African Ape Hyoid Bone, A Possible Marker Of The Evolution Of Speech, James Steele, Margaret Clegg, Sandra Martelli

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

This study examines the morphology of the hyoid in three closely related species, Homo sapiens, Pan troglodytes and Gorilla gorilla. Differences and similarities between the hyoids of these species are characterised, and used to interpret the morphology and affinities of the Dikika A. afarensis, Kebara 2 Neanderthal, and other fossil hominin hyoid bones.

Humans and African apes are found to have distinct hyoid morphologies. In humans the maximum width across the distal tips of the articulated greater horns is usually slightly greater than the maximum length (distal greater horn tip to most anterior point of the hyoid body …

Accent In Uspanteko, Ryan Bennett, Robert Henderson

English Faculty Research Publications

Uspanteko (Guatemala; ∼2000 speakers) is an endangered K’ichean-branch Mayan language. It is unique among the K’ichean languages in having innovated a system of contrastive pitch accent, which operates alongside a separate system of non-contrastive stress. The prosody of Uspanteko is of general typological interest, given the relative scarcity of ‘mixed’ languages employing both stress and lexical pitch. Drawing from a descriptive grammar and from our own fieldwork, we also document some intricate interactions between pitch accent and other aspects of the phonology (stress placement, vowel length, vowel quality, and two deletion processes). While pitch accent is closely tied to morphology, …

Pedagogía De Hablantes De Herencia: Implicaciones Para El Entrenamiento De Instructores Al Nivel Universitario, Lina M. Reznicek-Parrado

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study researches the differences in pedagogical needs between learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language (FL learners) and learners of Spanish as a Heritage Language (HL learners) at the university level. By using the UNL Modern Languages and Literatures Department as an illustrative case and based on an analysis of the Heritage Language student profile in the context of the United States, this study seeks to explore arguments in favor of providing training for university-level instructors of Spanish that responds to the specific pedagogical needs of Heritage Language Learners.

The relevancy of this study is not only based on …

Contemporary English In The Usa, Melissa Axelrod, Joanne Scheibman

English Faculty Publications

Indigenous and immigrant speakers from a variety of linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds have in different ways contributed to the development of present day American English, as have the geographical and social dimensions of the country. This paper provides a survey of contemporary usage of American English by describing and illustrating linguistic features documented for social and regional groups in the United States. The focus on variation in pronunciation, grammar, and meaning in American English highlights the diversity of dialects and styles in the U.S. as well as the centrality of sociocultural identities to language use. We group examples of variation …

Morphological Alternations At The Intonational Phrase Edge, Robert Henderson

English Faculty Research Publications

This article develops an analysis of a pair of morphological alternations in K'ichee' (Mayan) that are conditioned at the right edge of intonational phrase boundaries. I propose a syntax-prosody mapping algorithm that derives intonational phrase boundaries from the surface syntax, and then argue that each alternation can be understood in terms of output optimization. The important fact is that a prominence peak is always rightmost in the intonational phrase, and so the morphological alternations occur in order to ensure an optimal host for this prominence peak. Finally, I consider the wider implications of the analysis for the architecture of the …

Changing Language, Remaining Pygmy, Serge Bahuchet

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

In this article I am illustrating the linguistic diversity of African Pygmy populations in order to better address their anthropological diversity and history. I am also introducing a new method, based on the analysis of specialized vocabulary, to reconstruct the substratum of some languages they speak. I show that Pygmy identity is not based on their languages, which have often been borrowed from neighboring non-Pygmy farmer communities with whom each Pygmy group is linked. Understanding the nature of this partnership, quite variable in history, is essential to address Pygmy languages, identity and history. Finally, I show that only a multidisciplinary …

Autosegmental Spreading In Optimality Theory, John J. Mccarthy

Linguistics Department Faculty Publication Series

Revised December 2009

This paper is a shorter (and probably better) version of "Harmony in Harmonic Serialism." Like its big brother, it argues that Harmonic Serialism answers the conundrum of how iterative autosegmental spreading is obtained in Optimality Theory.

Pausal Phonology And Morpheme Realization, John J. Mccarthy

Linguistics Department Faculty Publication Series

Revised December 2009

Classical Arabic has complex phonological alternations affecting words in utterance-final position, traditionally called "pause". All pausal forms end in a heavy syllable, but the ways of achieving this result are both diverse and subject to both phonological and morphological conditioning. This chapter argues that an adequate analysis of Arabic's pausal phonology requires a derivational version of Optimality Theory, called Harmonic Serialism, in which morpheme spell-out is interleaved with phonological processes.

Valence Sensitivity In Pamirian Past-Tense Inflection: A Realizational Analysis, Gregory Stump, Andrew R. Hippisley

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Spanish In Contact With Arabic, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

Spanish and Arabic have been in contact for long periods and in different regions. While this is largely due to the geographical proximity of the Iberian Peninsula to western North Africa, a set of historical, political and social developments helped bring both languages into close contact. Of remarkable significance was the presence of Arabic in Iberia from 711 to 1492 and, at least, for several more decades after the Reconquista was completed. This fact, as is often mentioned, led to heavy lexical borrowing from Arabic into Spanish and other Ibero-Romance languages. Also important was the introduction of Spanish into North …

Argument Encoding And Pragmatic Marking Of The Transitive Subject In Shiwilu (Kawapanan), Pilar Valenzuela

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Shiwilu (a.k.a. Jebero) is a nearly extinct Kawapanan language from Peruvian Amazonia. The goal of this article is twofold. First, it investigates the obligatory cross-referencing of arguments in the complex Shiwilu verb. This system is predominantly nominative accusative, with the caveat that main clause object markers coincide with those conveying subject in one type of clause involving nominal predicates, as well as subject and object of dependent clauses. Second, this article provides a first analysis of the enclitic =ler, which may attach to transitive subjects and thus exhibits an ergative-like distribution. Unlike the situation in languages with syntacticized ergative systems, …

Effects Of Lexical Class And Word Frequency On The L1 And L2 English-Based Lexical Connections, Alla Zareva

English Faculty Publications

Three groups of participants—L1 speakers of English, L2 advanced, and intermediate users of English—responded in writing to a word association test containing words balanced for lexical class (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and frequency of occurrence (high, mid, low). The questions addressed in the study concerned the way two word-related factors (i.e., lexical category and word frequency) interplayed with two learner-related characteristics (i.e., proficiency and word familiarity) and influenced 1) the participants’ knowledge of vocabulary, 2) their preference to build specific types of lexical connections among the words they know, and 3) their ability to maintain networks of associations as an indicator …

Morphological Typology, Andrew R. Hippisley

Linguistics Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Una Aproximación Teórica A La Definición Del Modo Verbal Español, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Applicative Constructions In Shipibo-Konibo (Panoan), Pilar Valenzuela

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

This article provides a detailed, typologically informed treatment of applicative constructions in Shipibo-Konibo, a Panoan language from Peruvian Amazonia. Shipibo-Konibo has three applicative suffixes: affective (i.e., benefactive or malefactive), dedicated malefactive, and associative. These applicative types are rather common cross-linguistically and hence the language cannot be said to be particularly rich either in terms of number or kinds of applicative constructions. Nevertheless, the Shipibo-Konibo system exhibits certain points of special interest such as the interplay between transitivity and the different applicative construction types, which include a restriction on the dedicated malefactive to combine with transitive verbs only, and the almost …

Paradigmatic Realignment And Morphological Change: Diachronic Deponency In Network Morphology, Andrew R. Hippisley

Linguistics Faculty Publications

A natural way of formally modeling language change is to adopt a procedural, dynamic approach that gets at the notion of emergence and decay. We argue that in the realm of morphological change, and notably the reorganization of a lexeme’s paradigm, a model that at a given synchronic stage holds together both the actual facts about the paradigm as well as the range of potential or virtual facts that are licensed by the morphological machinery more elegantly captures the nature of the changing paradigm. We consider the special case of morphological mismatch where syntactic function is misaligned with morphological expression, …

Harmony In Harmonic Serialism, John J. Mccarthy

Linguistics Department Faculty Publication Series

What OT constraint favors autosegmental spreading? Existing proposals for the pro-spreading markedness constraint make implausible typological predictions. This paper presents a new proposal that depends on Harmonic Serialism to avoid those unwanted predictions.