Linguistics Commons^™

A Multi-Measure Approach For Lexical Diversity In Writing Assessments: Considerations In Measurement And Timing, Kelly Woods, Brett James Hashimoto, Earl K. Brown

Faculty Publications

Several researchers (e.g., Gebril & Plakans, 2016; Crossley & McNamara, 2012) have noted a relationship between lexical diversity (LD) and writing proficiency. Previous research has indicated that typical LD measures can account for as much as 44 % of variability in writing proficiency (Crossley et al., 2011). However, it remains unclear which of the numerous LD measures (or combination of measures) that exist best predict writing proficiency (e.g., McCarthy & Jarvis, 2010). The present study addresses these issues using scored writing assessment samples from 911 ESL students. LD was assessed with a battery of ten measures through the Python lexical-diversity …

In Search Of Founding Era Registers: Automatic Modeling Of Registers From The Corpus Of Founding Era American English, Liina Repo, Brett James Hashimoto, Veronika Laippala

Faculty Publications

Registers are situationally defined text varieties, such as letters, essays, or news articles, that are considered to be one of the most important predictors of linguistic variation. Often historical databases of language lack register information, which could greatly enhance their usability (e.g. Early English Books Online). This article examines register variation in Late Modern English and automatic register identification in historical corpora. We model register variation in the corpus of Founding Era American English (COFEA) and develop machine-learning methods for automatic register identification in COFEA. We also extract and analyze the most significant grammatical characteristics estimated by the classifier for …

Boomer Peak Or Gen X Cliff? From Svs To Lbms In Georgia English, Margaret E. L. Renwick, Joseph A. Stanley, Jon Forrest, Lelia Glass

Faculty Publications

The late twentieth century in the United States marks the decline of regional vowel systems like the Northern Cities Shift and the Southern Vowel Shift, replaced by supralocal systems like the Low-Back-Merger Shift.We chart such change in acoustic data from seven generations of White speakers (n = 135) in the Southeastern state of Georgia. We analyze front vowels affected by both the SVS and LBMS (DRESS, TRAP), plus PRICE and FACE, known respectively to monophthongize and centralize in the SVS, and LBMS-implicated LOT/ THOUGHT. The SVS is most advanced among Georgians born in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in FACE-centralization. In …

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

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

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

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 …

Perspectives On Georgia Vowels: From Legacy To Synchony, Joseph A. Stanley, Jon Forrest, Leila Glass, Margaret Renwick

Faculty Publications

Nexuses of change in Georgia English

Mid vowels

• How are FACE and DRESS distinguished over time?
• Which speakers show DRESS raising/fronting (SVS, AAVS)?
• When does DRESS lowering/backing begin (LBMS)?
• Which speakers show GOAT fronting (SVS, LBMS vs. AAVS)?

Low vowels

• Which speakers show TRAP raising/fronting (SVS, AAVS)?
• When does TRAP lowering/backing begin (LBMS)?
• Which speakers have the LOT/THOUGHT merger (LBMS)?

Temporal Fluency And Floor/Ceiling Scoring Of Intermediate And Advanced Speech On The Actfl Spanish Oral Proficiency Interview–Computer, Troy L. Cox, Alan V. Brown, Gregory L. Thompson

Faculty Publications

The rating of proficiency tests that use the Inter-agency Roundtable (ILR) and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines claims that each major level is based on hierarchal linguistic functions that require mastery of multidimensional traits in such a way that each level subsumes the levels beneath it. These characteristics are part of what is commonly referred to as floor and ceiling scoring. In this binary approach to scoring that differentiates between sustained performance and linguistic breakdown, raters evaluate many features including vocabulary use, grammatical accuracy, pronunciation, and pragmatics, yet there has been very little empirical validation …

Using Eeg To Measure L2 Word Learning, Jeffrey Jack Green, Ellen Knell, Rachel Yu Liu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Regional Patterns In Prevelar Raising, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Prevelar raising is the raising of trap and dress vowels before voiced velars. While bag and beg raising have been described in Canada, the Upper Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest, an in-depth investigation of their distribution across North America is lacking, especially for beg. Using an online survey distributed to over 5,000 participants via Reddit (which skews toward younger, White males) and ordinary kriging for spatial interpolation, this study finds that prevelar raising is more widespread than previously reported: bag raising is found in much of the North and the Upper Midwest, and beg raising is far more variable and …

Vowels Can Merge Because Of Changes In Trajectory: Prelaterals In Rural Utah English, Joseph A. Stanley, Lisa Morgan Johnson

Faculty Publications

Overview

• Front vowels: tense-lax pairs getting closer in apparent time.
• Back vowels: three-way convergence of WOLF, JOLT, and MULCH.
• This data suggests a merger by approximation.

Expanding to trajectories gives greater insight into this type of merger.

• Kinda like a zipper.

Greater detail in this merger by approximation.

• The nuclei don’t appear to trigger the shift
• The lateral gradually increases its influence, and the nucleus follows.

Trajectories are potentially important for discovering how vowels shift.

• More recent techniques can allow us to answer these questions.

Homogeneity And Heterogeneity In Western American English, Joseph A. Stanley, Jessica Sheperd, Auna Nygaard

Faculty Publications

The Low-Back-Merger Shift (Becker 2019)

Description:

• BAT, BET, BIT lower and retract
• Arguably a chain shift
• Triggered by BOT-retraction
• Typically BAT shifts the most
• BET and especially BIT less shifted

Previous accounts are based on isolated, independent studies.

“Clearly, collecting the same type of data from all sites would be optimal in allowing us the most reliable cross-region assessment.” (Fridland et al. 2017:172)

This study is a direct response to that call.

Methods:

Speakers:

• Recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (“MTurk”; cf. Kim et al 2019)
• 85 speakers

Procedure:

• Read 132 sentences and a 300-item wordlist
• Submitted audio 10 sentences at …

Generational Change In Formant Trajectories: The Low-Back-Merger Shift In Longview, Washington, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

How have vowel formant trajectories changed as part of the LBMS?

As the front lax vowels lower and centralize, their formant dynamics change

• Specifically, F2 is less dynamic, resulting in a “bounce” shape in F1-F2 plots.
• More evident for lower vowels than higher ones.

Formant dynamics may change as global position changes (but not always).

• Especially true with BAT and BET here.
• BIT mostly unclear.
• BAN did not have substantial changes in vowel dynamics.

"The Working World Is A Minefield": Counterstories Of Job Loss, Rachel Collier Murdock, Matt Baker, Stacy Tye-Williams

Faculty Publications

This study examines narratives told by employees who experienced involuntary job loss. Results expand on previous narrative research investigating the American Dream master narrative and job loss as related to the neoliberal claim that those who work hard will be successful. The study investigated the master narrative’s implications for job loss that if someone loses their job, they must be either flawed or a bad worker. Contributions include a new redeemed-resolved identity construction by individuals who narrated job loss as an opportunity to correct some flaw in either their character or work life and to emerge a better, changed worker. …

Factors That Affect Native English Speakers’ Comfort Levels When Communicating With Non-Native English Speakers, Kayla Nymeyer, Dan Dewey, William Eggington, Wendy Baker-Smemoe

Faculty Publications

This study explores native English speakers’ (NESs) self reported comfort levels when speaking with non-native English speakers (NNESs) from different first language (L1) backgrounds and in six different communication situations. NESs (n=122) listened to Spanish L1 and Chinese L1 NNESs with low, mid or high levels of English proficiency and rated their comfort level interacting with them. Results indicated that higher proficiency speakers were rated significantly higher (more comfortable as interlocutors) than Mid which were in turn rated higher than Low proficiency speakers. Spanish L1 speakers were rated higher than Chinese L1 speakers except at low proficiency levels. Ratings for …

Order Of Operations In Sociophonetic Analysis, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

In modern sociophonetic data analysis, a researcher makes numerous decisions when processing their data. Many of the “big” decisions include how data is collected, how audio is transcribed, how these transcriptions are aligned to the audio, and how acoustic measurements are extracted. Once a spreadsheet of numbers has been generated, further decisions must be made regarding normalization, detecting and handling outliers, and excluding tokens irrelevant to the research question. This paper takes a closer look at this second group of decisions—those made after acoustic measurements have been extracted—and shows that the order in which they are applied can have significant …

Multidimensional Signals And Analytic Flexibility: Estimating Degrees Of Freedom In Human-Speech Analyses, Stefano Coretta, Joseph V. Casillas, Joseph A. Stanley, Timo B. Roettger

Faculty Publications

Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis that can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time. Even greater flexibility is to be expected in fields in which the primary data lend themselves to a variety of possible operationalizations. The multidimensional, temporally extended nature of speech constitutes an ideal testing ground for assessing the variability in analytic approaches, which derives not only …

How Sample Size Impacts Pillai Scores: And What Sociophoneticians Should Do About It, Joseph A. Stanley, Betsy Sneller

Faculty Publications

Pillai scores in Sociolinguistics

• A way to quantify overlap in multiple dimensions (e.g., F1, F2, duration) (Hay et al., 2006; Nycz & Hall-Lew 2013)
• Some concern about unequal vowel categories sizes (Johnson 2015; convo on Twitter June 2, 2021)
• Our solution: a big simulation to show exactly what impact sample size has on Pillai scores

The Simulation

1. Start with a single bivariate normal distribution.

2. Sample two “vowel classes” from this distribution. – Ground Truth is they’re merged.

3. Calculate the Pillai score – Should be close to 0 because they’re merged!

4. Repeat many, many times.

Microcore: Using Online Playable Cases To Increase Student Engagement In Online Writing Environments, Jon Balzotti, Kevin Haws, Amy A. Rogers, Jason K. Mcdonald, Matt Baker

Faculty Publications

This case study explores a type of educational simulation, an alternative reality game we call a playable case study (PCS), and how its use influenced student engagement in an online writing classroom. The goal of the simulation was to help students create professional communication artifacts and experience real-world professional communication situations. This article reports the effectiveness of the playable case study as a tool specifically for online writing instruction (OWI). The context of our research was a PCS called Microcore. Acting as interns for a company, students are asked to investigate a serious problem that occurs and present a solution …

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

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

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

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 …

An Automated Tool For Comparing Phonetic Transcriptions, Dallin J. Bailey, Marisha Speights Atkins, Ishaan Mishra, Sicheng Li, Yaoxuan Luan, Cheryl Seals

Faculty Publications

Many computerized tools for comparing phonetic transcriptions have been proposed and shared in the past; however, previous tools are relatively difficult to access and incorporate into clinical and research practice, or require users to learn additional phonetic symbol systems. The purpose of this project was to develop and test a readily available web-based application for quantitatively comparing phonetic transcriptions that are input using International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols. A web-based computer application was developed to allow for IPA phonetic transcription comparison. A point-and-click keyboard was developed to provide support for character input of the full IPA, as well as most …

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 …

100 Years Of Speech In Georgia, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick

Faculty Publications

”How has American English speech changed in Georgia, over the last 100 years?”

• Big, detailed phone/c datasets
• Vowel dynamics
• Speakers from all over Georgia
• Speakers born 1887 – 1998

Traditional descriptions of English vowel systems focus on single-point x,y coordinates. The relative placement of vowels indicates a speaker’s shift, or vowel system

How has Georgia English changed since the 1890s? All vowels have changed, in relative position and trajectory shape.

What is the direction of that change? In the same direction as many other urban areas in North America.

Sample Size Matters When Calculating Pillai Scores, Joseph A. Stanley, Betsy Sneller

Faculty Publications

Pillai Scores

Are they good measures?

• Often supported in meta-analyses (Nycz & Hall-Lew 2013, Kelley & Tucker 2020)
• Appear to be better than Euclidean distance, mixed-effects regression, spectral overlap, SOAM, VOACH, APP, etc.
• However, Bhattacharyya’s Affinity may be better suited for vowel data since it’s robust to skewed data. (Johnson 2015)

Implications:

Mergers are probably underreported and separation is probably overreported

• It takes a lot of data (more than many studies use) to get reliably low Pillai scores
• Mergers may be more common previously reported

Statistical significance should be reported

• Reporting p -values from MANOVA tests removes the need for …

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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 …

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, …