Linguistics Commons^™

A Variationist Approach To Code-Switching And Lexical Borrowing : The Case Of Limonese-Spanish Bilinguals In Puerto LimóN, Costa Rica, Ashley Laboda

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The current study aims to contribute to the body of research on variation in the speech of bilinguals in language contact situations, as well as the ongoing discussions of creoles in contact with languages other than their lexifiers. Bilingual production of lone lexical Spanish insertions and multiword Spanish insertions in otherwise Limonese Creole (Limonese) speech are analyzed, and both linguistic and extralinguistic factors are considered. Previous studies have measured lone word integration in bilingual corpora and have shown that lone lexical insertions are integrated into the recipient language as borrowings almost categorically regardless of frequency (nonce or more frequent than …

Estudio SociolingüÍStico De Las LíQuidas En El EspañOl Hablado En La Ciudad De GuantáNamo, Yaima Aimee Centeno

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Este estudio examina la variación de /l/ y /r/ mediante 32 entrevistas sociolingüísticas llevadas a cabo en la ciudad de Guantánamo, Cuba. Además, investiga la influencia del contexto fonológico, el nivel académico, la edad y el sexo en el uso de ciertas variantes de /r/ y /l/. Los factores lingüísticos internos considerados fueron: el contexto lingüístico (posición final de sílaba o final de palabra) y el segmento lingüístico. También se consideraron factores sociales tales como: el nivel académico, la edad y el sexo.

Ideophones In Manyika Shona: A Descriptive Analysis Of Ideophones And Their Function In Manyika (Bantu), Genevieve E. Franck

Linguistics

Ideophones are a class of words which occur in many languages throughout the world, but are relatively uncommon in English. Though often mimetic, ideophones are not to be confused with onomatopoeia since they extend well beyond the narrow scope of sound only symbolism. In the past, ideophones have been difficult for linguists to categorize and understand due to their limited usage in many of their native European languages. These words are marked due to their divergent phonology, morphology, syntax, or all of the above. Ideophones often vividly depict one or more sensory events, ranging from sight to emotion. This paper …

Adjectives, Be Verbs, And Derterminers In Manyika Shona, Grace Teubl

Linguistics

Manyika is a dialect of Shona, a Bantu language spoken in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Like many Bantu languages, Manyika has a noun class system, which affects the morphology and phonology of many parts of speech including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and determiners. In this paper, noun class is studied in relation to adjectives, stative verbs, and determiners. In addition, there is a section on the use of the be-verb in Manyika Shona, and a section on combinations of determiners and the syntax of the determiner phrases.

Discursive Leadership And Conceptual Fluency In Non-Native English Speakers' Online Task-Based Dialogues, Umit Boz

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Much research has examined how different patterns of social interaction shape language learners' interactional roles (e.g., collaborative, dominant, passive) in peer-to-peer conversations. However, little or no research has investigated the co-construction of such roles in multiparty, online task-based dialogues within the framework of discursive leadership. For the purpose of this study, discursive leadership is defined as the ability of the interlocutors to (a) shape the discourse via topic introductions and subsequent topic mentions and (b) manage the process of the task through the use of a series of task-oriented speech acts such as directives and assertions. Using a multi-method approach …

Adult Learners Of English Interacting With Native Speaker Teachers And Non-Native Speaker Teachers : Exploring Differences In Students' Language Use, Melody Hallenbeck Nadeau

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This mixed-methods study examined the lived experience of adult English Language Learners (ELLs) in classrooms led by native speaking teachers, compared with their experience in classrooms led by non-native teachers. The socio-cognitive approach to language and emergent common ground framed the development of the English classroom as a Community of Practice, in which students produced varying levels of complex, formulaic, metaphorically dense speech.

Information Structure, Agreement And Disagreement In English And French Asynchronous Online Discussion, Patrick Rodrigue Belibi Enama

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This paper compares and contrasts the ways online discussion participants of French and English language expression realize common ground, agree and disagree on newspaper blogs on politics. For that purpose, a corpus of 365 replies among which 177 in French and 188 in English were collected from Le Monde.fr and nytimes.com, the world's two most popular newspaper websites of French and English expression. Kecskes & Zhang's (2009) socio-cognitive approach was used as theoretical framework to analyze common ground. The findings revealed that pragmatic competence, which was put to use depending on the context of situation, was more widely used than …

The Copala Triqui Auxiliary Construction For Emotional And Psychological Predicates, George Aaron Broadwell

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Copala Triqui has a construction in which predicates of emotion and psychological state appear with one of two special auxiliary verbs, derived historically from verbs meaning 'see' and 'look'. This paper details the constraints on the syntax of the emotion auxiliary construction and contrasts it with the ordinary verbal syntax of the language. (Ethnologue code TRC)

Optimal Diphthongs : An Ot Analysis Of The Acquisition Of Spanish Diphthongs, Alice Krause

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation investigates the acquisition of Spanish diphthongs by adult native speakers of English. The following research questions will be addressed:

Mediational Effects Of Desktop-Videoconferencing Telecollaborative Exchanges On The Intercultural Communicative Competence Of Students Of French As A Foreign Language, Veronique Marie Martin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Since the early 2000s, foreign language practitioners and researchers have shown an increasing interest in exploring the affordances of multimodal telecollaborative environments for the linguistic and intercultural development of their students. Due in part to their inherent complexity, one-on-one desktop-videoconferencing contexts have not been widely explored. To this end, this study investigates if and how American students of French engaged in a telecollaborative exchange with a class of French students are able to develop their Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) through online interaction and the completion of a collaborative task. Adopting a case study approach, the video-recorded sessions of three dyads …

The Acquisition Of Sociolinguistic Variation By Study Abroad Students : The Case Of American Students In Madrid, Kathryn Lee Ringer-Hilfinger

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The current investigation seeks to contribute to the emerging body of research on second language variation in Spanish. A range of dialect-specific variables is considered, both morphological and phonological. Learner acquisition of these variables is measured within a study abroad context through oral and written longitudinal data over the course of an 8-month period. Previous studies conducted in this area have considered pronoun use (Geeslin and Gudmestad 2008a; Salgado-Robles 2012) the use of /theta/ (Geeslin and Gudmestad 2008b; Willis et. al. 2009; Ringer-Hilfinger 2012; Knouse 2012), intonation strategies (Henriksen et al. 2010), and perfective past time reference (Geeslin et al. …

Clausal Negation As Raising In San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec, George Aaron Broadwell

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

This paper argues that clausal negation in San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec is best analysed as a kind of raising phenomenon. This analysis correctly predicts a number of facts about the interaction of word order and aspect in the language.

Copala Triqui Rhetoric Discourse Of Peace, Sharone Horowit-Hendler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Our team worked with a native speaker of Copala Triqui, Román Vidal Lopez, to write the Address to the Triqui People, a message of peace for the Copal Triqui. We translated it to Spanish and English, and worked on creating a lexicon of Copala Triqui.

The Analytic Reconciliation Of Classic Mayan Elite Pottery : Squaring Pottery Function With Form, Adornment, And Residual Contents, Jennifer Ann Loughmiller-Newman

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation presents a multidisciplinary means of determining the actual content (foodstuff, non-foodstuff, or lack of contents) of Classic Mayan (A.D. 250-900) vessels. Based on previous studies that have identified the residues of foodstuffs named in hieroglyphic texts (e.g. cacao), this study is designed to further investigate foodstuff residues in the elite vessels indicated by text or image to contain those residues, and the methods employed for residue characterization. Prior to studies utilizing residue analysis, the content of Classic Maya vessels largely had long been inferred largely by ethnographic analogy, associating specific vessel forms with specific uses based on ethnographic …

Phonetics And Phonology Of Chicahuaxtla Triqui Tones, Kosuke Matsukawa

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Chicahuaxtla Triqui (Otomanguean, Mexico) is one of the rare tone languages with five contrastive level tones and its underlying tone system is even more complicated than its surface five-level tone system. The complexity of its underlying tone system has developed through the historical tone shifts from Proto-Triqui. The surface tone system of Chicahuaxtla Triqui is also unusually complicated and its complexity led to the insufficient analysis of the previous studies (e.g. Longacre 1952, 1957, 1959; Good 1978). To understand the tone system and tonal phonology of Chicahuaxtla Triqui, we must know their diachronic development from Proto-Triqui because historical tone shifts, …

Current Perspectives On Tunisian Sociolinguistics, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

Despite its small size (63,170 sq miles) and a rather small population with a stable growth rate,2 Tunisia represents a rich sociolinguistic laboratory with a long history of bilingualism and language contact. The delicate position of Berber, the diglossic situation of Arabic and the increasing efforts for Arabization, the regional and social variation in Tunisian Arabic, the presence of French, and the gradual spread of English, among other closely-related topics, constitute the core themes of research within Tunisian sociolinguistics. Since the publication of R. M. Payne’s Language in Tunisia in 1983, no attempt has been made to reassess the situation …

Code-Switching And Language Change In Tunisia, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

This article quantitatively studies the patterns of Tunisian Arabic/French code-switching and the possible implications for contact-induced change in the Tunisian dialect. The purpose is to account for the extent of the occurrence of code-switching across gender lines and levels of education and assess its role in the interference from French into Arabic, both at the lexical and structural levels. Recorded semi-directed sociolinguistic interviews with twelve speakers are examined for type and frequency of code-switching and use of French borrowings.

Results show that education plays a role in distinguishing the group with a higher education from the group with only a …

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 …

Castilian Transcodic Markers In Internet Catalan : Analysis Of Generic, Regional And Linguistic Factors, Craig Stokes

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation is a study of Castilian transcodic markers in the Catalan written on the Internet. Thirty Castilian transcodic markers representing five categories were run through the interface of the Corpus d'Ús del Català a la Web (CucWeb) to collect information in order to conduct both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The major research questions to be answered deal with the absolute and relative frequencies of these transcodic markers in the CucWeb and the factors behind the production of these non-standard forms. In addition to the frequency of the Castilian transcodic markers in the CucWeb, the initial study provides qualitative analysis …

Expression Of Possession In Spanish In Contact With English : A Sociolinguistic Study Across Two Generations In The Greater New York Metropolitan Area, Maria Cristina Montoya

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

ABSTRACT

Phonetic Adaptations Of Spanish Loanwords In Triqui, Ruth E. Scipione

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This study focuses on the results of increased language contact on Spanish loanword adaptation in Copala Triqui at the segmental and prosodic levels. Data from field notes and publications from the 1960s and 1970s were compared to modern 21st century loanword adaptations in 80+ hours of radio broadcasts and recorded elicitations in personal fieldwork in Mexico, Central California and Albany, NY. The overarching goal is to identify a wide range of possible phonetic adaptations at the segmental and prosodic levels and track the possible effects of increased bilingualism on these adaptations. From there it attempts to hypothesize what phonetic variation …

Body Part Words In Copala Triqui And A Brief Spatial Sketch, Ann Weiner

Linguistics

No abstract provided.

The Syntactic Structure Of K̕'Ichee̕' Mayan, Lachlan Duncan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Linguistic research on the Mayan languages up to the mid 1980s was almost exclusively descriptive in nature. At best, analyses were speculative and pre-theoretical. Since then, research based on contemporary theories of syntax have begun to emerge. In adopting the formal architecture of OT-LFG, I argue that my dissertation can be included amongst this body of analytical research. My overall goal is to provide a syntactic structure for K'ichee' Mayan, the most widely spoken Mayan language in Guatemala.

Toward A Theory-Based Natural Language Capability In Robots And Other Embodied Agents : Evaluating Hausser's Slim Theory And Database Semantics, Robin Kowalchuk Burk

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Computational natural language understanding and generation have been a goal of artificial intelligence since McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester and Shannon first proposed to spend the summer of 1956 studying this and related problems. Although statistical approaches dominate current natural language applications, two current research trends bring renewed focus on this goal. The nascent field of artificial general intelligence (AGI) seeks to evolve intelligent agents whose multi-subagent architectures are motivated by neuroscience insights into the modular functional structure of the brain and by cognitive science insights into human learning processes. Rapid advances in cognitive robotics also entail multi-agent software architectures that attempt …

Qualitative Information In Annual Reports & The Detection Of Corporate Fraud : A Natural Language Processing Perspective, Sunita Goel

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

High profile cases of fraudulent financial reporting such as those that occurred at Enron and WorldCom have shaken public confidence in the U.S. financial reporting process and have raised serious concerns about the roles of auditors, regulators, and analysts in financial reporting. In order to address these concerns and restore public confidence, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 was enacted. However, SOX has not lived up to its promise. Numerous cases of fraudulent financial reporting have surfaced in the post-SOX era. So far, the major thrust of research has been on examining fraud that has already been discovered. This dissertation …

The Representation Of Multiple Translations In Bilingual Memory : An Examination Of Lexical Organization For Concrete, Abstract, And Emotion Words In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Dana M. Basnight-Brown

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Tokowicz and Kroll (2007) originally reported that the number of translations a word has across languages influences the speed with which bilinguals translate concrete and abstract words from one language to another. The current work examines how the number of translations that characterize a word influences bilingual lexical organization and the processing of concrete, abstract and emotional stimuli. Experiment 1 examined whether the number-of-translations effect reported previously could be obtained in a different task (i.e., lexical decision task) using the same materials presented by Tokowicz and Kroll. Decision latencies revealed no significant differences between concrete and abstract words, which suggested …

Physician-Patient Communication About Patients' Sexual Activities And Substance Use : Information Exchange On Potentially Delicate Matters, Paul Michael Denvir

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Previous interaction-based research has shown that physicians and patients collaboratively realize the routine character of comprehensive medical histories through their communicative behavior. A primary resource in this regard is the design of information seeking and reporting actions. Physicians seek information through closed-ended query formats and patients report information in fitted, minimal formats. This organization provides a relatively efficient way to address a wide range of health-related topics. One topical domain that has been described as sensitive and difficult is patient `lifestyle,' which typically includes discussion of sexual activities and substance use. In these domains, patients engage in some special interactional …

Phonological Adaptation Of Spanish Loanwords In Northern Moroccan Arabic, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, loanword phonology has attracted continuously growing attention as an area able to shed additional light on universal phonological patterns. The contexts and processes of loanword adaptation present a dy namic interaction between two distinct systems allowing for different theo retical interpretations (Paradis, 1996). Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993) has been suggested as a possible framework to analyze these processes (Yip, 1993; Katayama, 1998; Jacobs and Gussenhoven, 2000). The fact that OT recognizes the difference between languages as a difference in the ranking of the same universal constraints could explain the changes that loanwords may or may …

Morphophonological And Semantic Adaptation Of Arabisms In Galician, Lotfi Sayahi, Juan Antonio Thomas

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

This papers analyzes the processes of morphophonological adaptation of words from Arabic origin that are present in Galician, a Romance language spoken in Northwestern Spain. It presents a list of all the Arabisms present in this language, some four hundred fifty entries, and assesses the conditions for its contact with Arabic. Detailed analysis of twelve words unique to Galician, i.e. not present in Castilian Spanish, highlights their importance as a distinguishing feature within this particular linguistic system and investigates the great variability in their adaptation. A final argument will be made that lexical borrowing in this case was partially a …

Consonantal Variation Of Spanish In Northern Morocco, Ruth Scipione, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

In former Spanish Morocco, many educated speakers are able to draw upon various phonological systems such as French, Moroccan Arabic, and Modern Standard Arabic in order to pronounce Spanish sounds. However, although the speakers of this study are highly proficient in Spanish, there are still some segmental features that set them apart from a native Spanish speaker. These features include the failure to produce the fricative allophones of bilabial, dental, and velar stops the failure to distinguish between the simple and multiple vibrant trill, and difficulties in producing the palatal nasal. While the Spanish of these Northern Moroccans seems to …