Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Referring Forms And Cognitive Status In Non-Narrative American Sign Language Texts, Tamara Michelle Grosso

Theses and Dissertations

In their work on referring expressions and cognition, Gundel et al. (1993) propose a model called the Givenness Hierarchy which suggests that there are basic referring expressions in languages which can signal the cognitive status of their referents. Supported by cross-linguistic research, the theory proposes six cognitive statuses which have forms associated with them such that if that form is used (successfully), the referent must have at least that status on the scale. In 2002, Swabey published a doctoral dissertation researching the Givenness Hierarchy for American Sign Language (ASL) in narrative texts. She compared the distribution of referring forms cross-linguistically …

Alternations In Murui: A Morphological Approach, Amy Havlicek

Theses and Dissertations

Murui is a Witotoan language spoken in Colombia and Peru. This thesis focuses on alternations of voiced and voiceless alveolar and velar stops in Murui that occur at some morpheme boundaries in verbs. The alternations of the voiced and voiceless alveolar stops occur in the active indicative suffix allomorphs [‐dɯ] ~ [‐tɯ] ~ [‐d] ~ [‐t] and the alternations of the voiced and voiceless velar stops occur in the passive indicative suffix allomorphs [‐ka] ~ [‐ɡa]. These stops may also become voiced or voiceless when other suffixes are present in the verb. I focus my analysis on the inflectional morphology …

Tone In Acatlán Mixtec Nouns, Esteban I. Méndez-Hord

Theses and Dissertations

Varieties of Mixtec (an Oto-Manguean language group spoken in southern Mexico) have often been analyzed as having a three-way tonal distinction: Low, Mid and High. I present evidence from original research on simple, alienable nouns, that only two lexical tones, /H/ (corresponding to the traditional Mid tone) and /L/, where some H tones are floating, are needed to describe noun roots in Acatlán Mixtec. In essence, the extra-H tone (corresponding to the traditional Hi tone) only occurs in derived environments, which involve the interaction of tones from two or more morphemes. The bulk of the analysis uses H and L …

Tools For Assessing Relatedness In Understudied Language Varieties: A Survey Of Mixtec Varieties In Western Oaxaca, Mexico, Erin Padgett

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents findings of research conducted on the relatedness of seven Mixtec varieties spoken in indigenous language communities in western Oaxaca, Mexico. Mixtec varieties vary widely from one community to the next, and it is necessary to determine the relatedness of Mixtec varieties in order to best serve the language development needs of communities. Understanding the relatedness of these varieties is also an important step in measuring their intelligibility.

I used three research tools to gather data: a General Wordlist, a Tone Wordlist, and a Sociolinguistic Questionnaire. I present five analyses: percentage of phonologically similar forms, displaying phonological correspondences …

Structural Narratology In Romanian Sign Language Personal Experience Narratives, Jessica Sohre

Theses and Dissertations

The primary focus of this paper is to examine how personal experience narratives in Romanian Sign Language (LSR) compare to previous research in structural narratology in spoken languages and in American Sign Language (ASL). One main area of comparison is the differences and similarities in the type of information found in structural narrative categories as described by Labov and Waletsky (1967), Labov (1972), Brewer (1984), Dooley and Levinsohn (2001) and Mulrooney (2009). The second main area of comparison is the grammatical devices that correlate to certain categories, in particular, using Liddell's (2003) concepts of surrogate, depicting verb and token blends. …

Social Reactions To Sexual Assault Survivors Presenting With Ptsd: The Impact Of Survivor Gender And Psychotherapy Treatment-Seeking Status, Shannon Marie Sommer

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined public perceptions of and willingness to provide social support to survivors of sexual assault presenting with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) based on the survivor’s gender (male vs. female), psychotherapy treatment-seeking status (no treatment vs. dropped out after four sessions vs. still in treatment), and participant gender (male vs. female). Participants (n = 178) read one of six vignettes based on a 2 (gender of survivor of sexual assault: male vs. female) X 3 (treatment-seeking status: no treatment vs. dropped out of treatment after four sessions vs. still in treatment) factorial design describing the life circumstances and …

Lexical Categories In Lengua De Señas Argentina, Roman Caceres

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to identify lexical categories of Lengua de Señas Argentina (LSA). Sign languages, in general, have not been extensively researched. For example, the LSA section of the World Atlas of Language Structures only mentions irregular negatives and question particles.

The research methodology included interviews with fluent deaf signers. Different descriptions in LSA were video recorded, annotated and analyzed. The researcher made initial hypotheses about the syntactic nature of signs based on the strategy used for their elicitation. Then, the researcher tested the hypotheses through syntactic analysis.

During the analysis, the researcher identified two varieties of …

The Effect Of Perpetrator Remorse, Victim Gender, And Photographer On Victim Blame In A Case Of Nonconsensual Photograph Sharing, Kaitlin Jo Rhyner

Theses and Dissertations

Emotional expression is often used as a way to determine a person’s intent for social situations. In a courtroom, when a perpetrator expresses (or fails to express) remorse, not only the perception of the perpetrator may be altered, but also the perception of the victim. This difference may especially be the case in a situation where the victim is viewed as having a high level of culpability for the crime, such as if the victim took the picture and sent it. Furthermore, the gender of the victim of the crime may influence how the victim is perceived, such that women …

Empathy Induction To Reduce Victim Blaming In Revenge Porn Cases, Marissa Amber Morris

Theses and Dissertations

Research findings suggest that certain characteristics of victims and perpetrators may make them more likely to be blamed. To this end, the current study examined how victim gender, having a history of infidelity, empathy instructions, and observer gender work together to place blame on victims and perpetrators. Participants read one of eight scenarios that varied the victim’s gender, history of infidelity, and presence of empathy instructions. They then indicated the degree to which various actors were to blame for the occurrence of nonconsensual pornography, as well as their affective reactions toward both the victim and the perpetrator. Overall, affect decreased …