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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Verb Strings And Other Weavings: An Exploration Of Grammatical Structures, Visual Arts, And Language Teaching, Mae Bash Oct 2023

Verb Strings And Other Weavings: An Exploration Of Grammatical Structures, Visual Arts, And Language Teaching, Mae Bash

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In language education, visual arts are sometimes used as a tool to inspire communication and convey cultural concepts. However, limited research has looked into the application of visual arts in the classroom for the exploration of linguistic patterns. Both languages and weavings are complex systems governed by distinct sets of rules, yet they still permit infinite unique productions. This project explores this relationship by presenting five bandweavings, each of which is designed based on the rules and structures of different languages. These weavings show that it is possible to connect art and language through practical, structural methods, not only abstract …


Nadshedu: Constructing A Fictional Language, Anna Steinhilber Oct 2021

Nadshedu: Constructing A Fictional Language, Anna Steinhilber

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

My purpose for this project was to create my own conlang. Conlang stands for ‘constructed language’ and refers to any language that has been purposefully designed rather than evolving naturally. Conlangs can be created for communicative purposes, like the international auxiliary language, Esperanto, for fictional or artistic purposes like Klingon or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish, or for linguistic purposes, like Kēlen, a language without verbs. Conlangs are much older than you might think. There are examples of artificial languages dating back to the 12th century, like the Lingua Ignota created by St. Hildegard of Bingen, although most artistic languages began to …


The Syntax Of Guaraní: A Pronominal Argument Analysis Of A Noteworthy Indigenous Language, Emily Hillman Apr 2020

The Syntax Of Guaraní: A Pronominal Argument Analysis Of A Noteworthy Indigenous Language, Emily Hillman

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Broadly speaking, I examine the syntax of Guaraní, an indigenous language of Paraguay, and offer my analyses of complex syntactic questions in relation to the language. My research stems from a paper that I wrote in the fall of 2018 that led to many questions and preliminary hypotheses related to argument marking and the Guaraní verb. Under the direction of Dr. Kristin Denham, I answer these questions through a pronominal argument (PA) analysis of Guaraní. I defend the position that Guaraní is a PA language by examining data from prior literature and native speakers. Throughout my paper, I consider discussions …


The Fuck Is Going On? The Grammaticalization Of Taboo Words In English, Laura E. Munger Jan 2019

The Fuck Is Going On? The Grammaticalization Of Taboo Words In English, Laura E. Munger

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This study examines the grammaticalization of the verb “fuck” to the periphrastic interrogative “the fuck”. I use various forms of data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the Corpus of Historical American English to analyze (1) the evolution of “fuck” from a concrete lexical verb to an item diversified in meaning and part of speech, (2) the development of the phrase “what the X” from “what the devil”, and (3) the specific grammaticalization of “the fuck” as an interrogative. These processes are then discussed in terms of specific principles of grammaticalization which they illustrate.