Linguistics Commons^™

/N/:/R/ Correspondences In Albanian Dialects: Understanding The N>R Sound Change, Katie Albany

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Albanian language is an Indo-European language that constitutes a separate branch in the Indo-European language family. There are two major dialects, Geg and Tosk, spoken in present day Albania that are mutually intelligible. There are morpho-syntactic differences between the two dialects and shared words provide evidence for a number of sound changes applying in certain contexts in Tosk. The focus of this paper is n > r sound change in Tosk applying to the nasal /n/ in an intervocalic position followed by an unstressed vowel. The lenition rule has been prolific diachronically, but stopped applying some time between the 13 …

Pragmatics And Semantics In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Karece Lopez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examined scalar implicature to investigate semantic bases of pragmatic language impairment in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Scalar implicatures are inferences made by listeners, whereby they strengthen the weaker meaning of a term that can be represented on a scale (Grice, 1975; Horn, 1992). Scalar terms include: some/all; or/and; numerals. These inferences depend on understanding a speaker's intent and having the cognitive skills necessary to process such information in real time. Informativeness is the value a listener places on having to derive an implicature and assumes that the listener perceives the speakers intentions. Cognitive effort includes the …

Interpretation Of Overt Pronouns In L1 And L2 Japanese: The Role Of Context, Marisa A. Nagano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the interpretation of Japanese overt 3rd person pronouns by native (N=21) and advanced L1-English/L2-Japanese (N=20) speakers, using interpretation, reaction-time, and eye-tracking data. Previous studies have investigated L1 and L2 pronoun interpretation in null-subject languages like Spanish, Italian, and Greek, finding that L1 speakers tend to show a topic-shift effect for overt pronouns more often than L2ers (Sorace, 2011). Similar studies on Japanese, which allows null subjects but also differs greatly from these languages, have been mixed; crucially, several studies found no antecedent bias for overt pronouns by L1 speakers to begin with (Okuma, 2012; Ueno & Kehler, …

The Mission As A Master Signifier: Documentary Film, Social Change And Discourse Analysis, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

This field note explores the ways in which the documentary MIND ZONE: Therapists Behind the Front Lines (2014), directed by Dr. Jan Haaken, moves viewers into innovative and critical stances towards the U.S. military mental health program. Using a discourse analysis of the film and transcripts of interviews conducted by Haaken, I trace the deployment of the term “the mission” to show how the film teases apart problematic military discursive practices. Jacques Lacan’s theory of the four discourses is used to analyze how MIND ZONE’s content challenges audiences to produce their own critically informed opinions.

Effects Of Native Language On Perception And Neurophysiologic Processing Of English /R/ And /L/ By Native American, Korean, And Japanese Listeners, Lee Jung An

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The perception of English liquids /r/ and /l/ is challenging for native Korean and Japanese adult speakers because these sounds are not phonemic in these languages. The Korean language has a partial phonetic model (intervocalic [ɾ]-[11]) that could potentially facilitate processing of English /r/ and /l/ but the Japanese language does not. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of native language on the neurophysiologic processing of English intervocalic /r/ and /l/ by native American, Korean and Japanese listeners using several event-related evoked potentials (ACC, MMN, & P3a) along with behavioral identification and discrimination. Three specific aims …

Densidad Léxica En La Prensa Hispana De Ee.Uu. E Hispanoamérica: Un Estudio Comparativo, Luana Ferreira

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on a quantitative and comparative analysis of lexical density in Spanish print news in the United States and Latin America. Lexical density is the statistical measure that calculates the percentage of terms in relation to the total number of running words contained in a text. Within the context of Spanish in the United States, questions arise pertaining to the level of lexical compatibility and variability in contact situations, as well as in situations where the convergence of different varieties of the Spanish language coexist. Because most existing lexical density studies of Spanish media are descriptive, there is …

A Syntactic Treatment Of Adjectival Non-Intersectivity In English, Alexander Funk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Natural language has long been observed to be rife with apparently 'non-intersective' modification constructions (false teeth, huge flea, heavy smoker, etc.), whose apparent non-compositionality poses difficulties for formally-articulated theories of language. Bolinger's (1967) demonstration of the extent and significance of the issue ushered in several lines of investigation, first in semantics (most notably Kamp 1975, Siegel 1976, Partee 2009), but more recently in syntax as well, with the insights of Larson (1998) and Bouchard (2002) informing approaches to the nominal domain such as that in Cinque (2010). However, 'semantics-only' accounts of non-intersectivity phenomena have limited explanatory …

Obstruent Voicing And Tone In Siklis Gurung, Danielle Ronkos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines proposals for the tone system of Gurung, a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal, in light of data collected from a speaker of Siklis Gurung. Although Gurung is widely acknowledged to be a tonal language, existing descriptions of Gurung disagree as to how these tone categories should be defined and whether word-initial obstruent voicing is phonemic or allophonic. The data presented in this paper suggests that, despite claims otherwise, voicing is phonemic in some dialects of Gurung. It also suggests that Siklis Gurung is best analyzed as having three tone categories: a low tone that occurs with breathy …

The Domain Of Finiteness: Anchoring Without Tense In Copular Amalgam Sentences, Teresa Elizabeth O'Neill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The central thesis of this work is that a clause consisting only of left-peripheral functional structure can be fully finite. Generative models of clause structure typically assume that a finite clause must be tensed, including a projection of T and a temporal relation between the proposition and the utterance context. In light of evidence from tenseless languages, this assumption has come under scrutiny in recent years. This dissertation offers a new body of evidence from English, a tensed language, in support of the claim that finite clauses can lack the projection of T.

Drawing on the results of formal acceptability …

The Incidence And Evolution Of Palatalized Consonants In Latvian, Linda Zalite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis traces the evolution of the palatalized rhotic /r^j/ in Baltic languages with focus on the continuation of this segment in Latvian and its recent neutralization with /r/. Historical, phonological, phonetic, and synchronic data is gathered as evidence to further our understanding of the Latvian palatalized rhotic and its near-disappearance in the 20^th century. Previous typological works of Endzelīns (1922, 1951), Dini (1997), Rūķe-Dravņia (1994) and Ābele (1929) were considered intending to answer three central questions. Was the Latvian palatal rhotic a palatalized segment or a true palatal? What factors played a role in the depalatalization …

Techniques For Automatic Normalization Of Orthographically Variant Yiddish Texts, Yakov Peretz Blum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Yiddish is characterized by a multitude of orthographic systems. A number of approaches to automatic normalization of variant orthography have been explored for the processing of historic texts of languages whose orthography has since been standardized. However, these approaches have not yet been applied to Yiddish.

Using a manually normalized set of 16 Yiddish documents as a training and test corpus, four techniques for automatic normalization were compared: a hand-crafted set of transformation rules, an off-the-shelf spell checker, edit distance minimization with manually set weights, and edit distance minimization with weights learned through a training set.

Performance was evaluated by …

Vocabulary Through Affixes And Word Families - A Computer-Assisted Language Learning Program For Adult Ell Students, Magdalena Kieliszek

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vocabulary plays an important role in language learning of ELL (English Language Learner) students. This work discusses the importance of metalinguistic awareness in teaching vocabulary to adult English Language Learners at an intermediate- or advanced-level of English language proficiency with an emphasis on learning vocabulary through word families and increased morphological awareness. The main contribution is a computer-based program that guides users through a series of interactive reading and vocabulary practice exercises which allow them to explore and learn how certain words are connected through word families and how some of the most common affixes in English can affect the …

The Encoding Of Temporality In Second Language Acquisition: A Study Of Mandarin Chinese-Speaking Esl Learners, Li Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the influences of pragmatic factors, lexical devices, as well as the lexical aspectual properties of verbs on second language learners' encoding of temporality in their target language. The pragmatic factors being investigated include a recency effect and the number of occurrences of a tense in the previous context, and the lexical devices include past-time temporal adverbials and frequency adverbs. The role of the lexical aspectual properties of verbs is checked against the Aspect Hypothesis, which states that learners will initially restrict past or perfective marking to achievement and accomplishment verbs and later gradually extend this usage to …

The Emergence Of L1 Innovations In Spanish-English Bilinguals: Evidence From Cross-Linguistic Structural Priming, Agustina Carando

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the hypothesis that structural priming is an internal mechanism motivating processes of convergence in bilinguals. The focus of the investigation is linguistic innovations in Spanish produced by Spanish-English bilinguals. Innovations involve both changes in the frequency of alternative constructions and existing patterns produced in new contexts modeled on English equivalents. From structural priming techniques that model convergence, the data assess the extent of English influence on Spanish, in a contact setting (New York, United States) and a non-contact setting (Córdoba, Argentina).

In the field of language contact, convergence may manifest itself as an increase in the use …

Tradición Y Actualidad En La Enseñanza De La Escritura Académica En El Entorno Europeo (Reseña De Rethinking Academic Writing Pedagogy For The European University), David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Rule, Pattern, And Meaning In The Second-Language Teaching Of Grammar, Joseph C. M. Davis

Publications and Research

This is a position paper aimed at the interface between meaning-oriented linguistics generally and instructed language-learning. The alliance between usage-based linguistics and form-focused instruction in language teaching stands to benefit from advances on both sides: a recognition by theoretical linguists that systematic meanings of grammatical forms are responsible for observed, emerging patterns of usage; and a greater willingness on the part of advocates of the teaching of grammar to engage in focusing upon individual, meaningful grammatical forms, as distinct from unanalyzed, holistic form. Explicit knowledge of forms and their meanings can usefully guide the practice of teachers and, …

Variabilidad Lingüística En Las Lenguas De Especialidad, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

El presente trabajo revisa desde un punto de vista teórico algunos de los aspectos fundamentales en los que se ha manifestado la variabilidad dentro de las lenguas de especialidad: desde la misma nomenclatura de este enfoque, pasando por la metodología empleada a lo largo de su evolución, las características de la lengua de especialidad o la variabilidad entre los géneros de las distintas disciplinas dentro del ámbito profesional y académico. La armonía con la que se viene integrando esta variabilidad en las distintas etapas de este enfoque desde hace más de un siglo, hace presagiar un avance al mismo tiempo …

Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

This essay examines translations of the Kurdish epic poem Mem û Zîn into Turkish, tracing the logics behind these state-sponsored translations and examining how acts of translation are also efforts to regulate, translate, and erase Kurdish subjectivities. I argue that the state instrumentalizes Mem û Zîn’s potent nationalist currency in order to disarm present and future claims of Kurdish national autonomy. Using translation as a counterinsurgent governmental tool, the state attempts to domesticate Kurdish nationalist discourses even as it reproduces them, thereby transforming Kurdish nationalism into a specter of itself. Attending to this specter, however, allows us to see how …

Literary Translingualism: Multilingual Identity And Creativity, Steven G. Kellman, Natasha Lvovich

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

How To Ask Questions In Mandarin Chinese, Woan-Jen Liing

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis re-examines the four main question-types in Mandarin Chinese, namely, particle questions, háishì questions, A-not-A questions and wh-questions, whose previous accounts are argued to be unsatisfactory due to various faulty assumptions about questions, particularly the stipulation of `Q'. Each of the four Mandarin Chinese question-types is re-accounted based on the view that questions are speech-acts, whose performance are done by way of speakers' subconscious choice of sentence-types that mirror their ignorance-types, as proposed in Fiengo (2007). It is further demonstrated that viewing questions as speech-acts instead of a structurally marked sentence-type allows a simpler and more intuitive account for …

The Perceived Religiousness Of The Repertoire Of The Muslim Minority In France, Brian Mawyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

France is a secular society with a deeply rooted Catholic tradition. This environment affects the acceptability of demonstrations of Muslim religious identity. Muslim immigrants to France are often ghettoized into rent controlled housing in suburbs around the cities. Rejected from French society, these immigrants cling to what links them together, which is their religion. By the third generation, fluency in heritage languages declines greatly, yet the youth of the banlieues re-appropriate Arabic words into their French speech, leading to the emergence of a Muslim repertoire that is not always accepted by speakers of standard French. This thesis surveys French people …

Understanding Doubly Center-Embedded Sentences Through Contrastive Focus, Ashley Caroline Thorne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A production and comprehension-judgment experiment examined the relationship between prosody and comprehensibility in doubly center-embedded relative clause constructions in English. Lexically identical sentences with contrastive emphasis on NP1, NP2, or VP1, and a baseline version for comparison, were read aloud for recording and judged for comprehensibility. Contrast on NP2 and VP1 yielded higher comprehensibility judgments compared to baseline than contrast on NP1 compared to baseline. This was contrary to the prediction that contrast on NP1 would encourage the prosodic pattern NP1 || RC || VP3, which in previous work has been reported to be optimal for comprehension. Several explanations for …

When Less Can Be More: Dual Task Effects In Stuttering And Fluent Adults, Naomi Nechama Eichorn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study tested the counterintuitive hypothesis that engaging cognitive resources in a secondary task while speaking could benefit aspects of speech production. Effects of dual task conditions on speech fluency, rate, and error patterns were examined in stuttering and fluent speakers based on specific predictions derived from three related theoretical frameworks. Twenty fluent adults and 19 adults with confirmed diagnoses of stuttering participated in the study. All participants completed two baseline tasks: (1) a continuous speaking task in which spontaneous speech was produced in response to given prompts; and (2) a working memory (WM) task involving manipulations of WM …

Canvas: A Fast And Accurate Geometric Sentence Alignment System Using Lexical Cues Within Complex Misalignment Settings, Hussein M. Ghaly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this paper, we present a new sentence alignment system (Canvas), which is a Python implementation of a geometric approach to sentence alignment, based on lexical cues. Canvas system is designed mainly to handle parallel texts exhibiting complex misalignment patterns, namely within English-Arabic pairs for United Nations documents. The system relies heavily on pre-indexing words/tokens in the source and target texts, and it creates correspondences between the token indexes. From this point onward, the alignment problem is reduced to a geometric problem of finding the path that runs through the True Correspondence Points (TCPs). The likelihood of a point being …

Consonantal Voicing Effects On Vowel Duration In Italian-English Bilinguals, Ylana Beller-Marino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project reported in this dissertation analyzes phonetic details of the speech patterns in one of New York's bilingual communities, asking whether a bilingual speaker can attain native-like proficiency in both languages and the extent to which authenticity — maintenance of language-specific settings — is sustainable. Researchers have established that Italian and English differ strikingly in their characteristic time settings for vowel durations: durations are greater for vowels preceding voiced consonants, e.g., cab, rather than voiceless, e.g., cap. This duration difference, termed the consonantal voicing effect (CVE), is notably greater for English than for Italian. The greater magnitude …

The Status Of Languages In Post-Independent Morocco: Moroccan National Policies And Spanish Cultural Action, Khalid Chahhou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to assess the status of languages in post-independent Morocco from two different angles: the Moroccan national policies and the Spanish cultural action. In particular, it demonstrates that the national policy in post-independent Morocco was, to a great extent, a response to the pressure exercised by the nationalist movement since 1963, the great involvement of the Francophone elite, and the carelessness and emptiness left by Spain. As a result, the Moroccan authority has had to opt for a policy of double standards: On the one hand, to fulfill the identity claims raised by the nationalist movement, Arabic was …

The Interplay Of Syntactic Parsing Strategies And Prosodic Phrase Lengths In Processing Turkish Sentences, Nazik Dinctopal-Deniz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many experiments have shown that the prosody (rhythm and melody) with which a sentence is uttered can provide a listener with cues to its syntactic structure (Lehiste, 1973, and since). A few studies have observed in addition that an inappropriate prosodic contour can mislead the syntactic parsing routines, resulting in a prosody-induced garden-path. These include, among others, Speer et al. (1996) and Kjelgaard and Speer (1999) for English. The studies by Speer et al. and Kjelgaard and Speer (SKS) showed that misplaced prosodic cues caused more processing difficulty in sentences with early closure of a clause (EC syntax) than in …

Representational Implications Of The Phonologization Of Contour Tones, Benjamin Kirkland Macaulay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis bridges accounts of tonogenesis to representations of contour tones in the dominant framework, autosegmental phonology. Accounts of tonogenesis reference phonetic features and structures that are unable to be represented in autosegmental phonology. As these features are required for the phonologization of contour tones, it is argued that they must also receive some representation in the synchrony. This is done under the Evolutionary Phonology framework of sound change. An attempt to reconcile the disparity between perceived phonetic features and synchronic structure is made by discussing the implications of the sequencing of targets within autosegmental contours. This innovation would better …

Systematic Comparison Of Cross-Lingual Projection Techniques For Low-Density Nlp Under Strict Resource Constraints, Joshua Waxman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The field of low-density NLP is often approached from an engineering perspective, and evaluations are typically haphazard - considering different architectures, given different languages, and different available resources - without a systematic comparison. The resulting architectures are then tested on the unique corpus and language for which this approach has been designed. This makes it difficult to truly evaluate which approach is truly the "best," or which approaches are best for a given language.

In this dissertation, several state-of-the-art architectures and approaches to low-density language Part-Of-Speech Tagging are reimplemented; all of these techniques exploit a relationship between a high-density (HD) …

Temporal Information Extraction And Knowledge Base Population, Taylor Cassidy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temporal Information Extraction (TIE) from text plays an important role in many Natural Language Processing and Database applications. Many features of the world are time-dependent, and rich temporal knowledge is required for a more complete and precise understanding of the world. In this thesis we address aspects of two core tasks in TIE. First, we provide a new corpus of labeled temporal relations between events and temporal expressions, dense enough to facilitate a change in research directions from relation classification to identification, and present a system designed to address corresponding new challenges. Second, we implement a novel approach for the …