Linguistics Commons^™

Using Context To Communicate: Romanian Sign Language Learners And Their Communication Strategies, Rebecca Melville

Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the communication strategies used by second language learners of Romanian Sign Language (LSR), including learners of different proficiency levels, and investigates whether the learner’s proficiency level affects the kinds or variety of communication strategies they use. Unlike previous studies of communication strategies by language learners, it focuses on learners of a signed rather than a spoken language.

The study consisted of two tasks—the first being a structured task where the learner was given a list of ten words to communicate to an interlocutor (a Deaf native signer). The second task was less structured and asked the …

Reference Tracking In Ethiopian Sign Language, Katelin Jo French

Theses and Dissertations

Very little has been written about Ethiopian Sign Language, but the language has obvious differences from more well-studied signed languages. This thesis focuses on striking differences in reference tracking: looking at all the different referring types—lexical items, points, eye gaze, body shift, agreement, and zero reference—and their distribution throughout narrative texts. Through this process, Ethiopian Sign Language has proved different from expectations based on previously studied signed languages. This language uses loci with much more flexibility, depending on role shift alone to strongly establish loci for entities. Another way this language differs from other languages is its lack of entity …

Some Features Of Participant Reference In Xochapa Mixtec, Laura J. Cline

Theses and Dissertations

Many works have been published about the grammar and phonology of Mixtecan languages, but relatively little has been written about the discourse features of these languages. One of these areas of discourse where relatively little research has been done is that of participant reference.

This thesis explores the features of participant reference in one Mixtec language, Xochapa Mixtec, by examining the use of nouns, pronouns, and deictic phrases in eight Xochapa Mixtec texts. The texts used in this research were transcribed from audio recordings and then analyzed with respect to the participant reference forms they employed. The thesis begins with …

Modest Dress As Literacy Practice In English-Speaking Conservative Mennonite Groups, Megan Lois Mong

Theses and Dissertations

English-speaking conservative Mennonites exercise a distinct set of dress practices that are not often understood by people outside the community. Advances in New Literacy Studies pave the way to understand their dress practices as a type of literacy. Multiple literacies work together to inform conservative Mennonite dress practices. One of these literacies is the reading and writing of religious texts. A second literacy is a form of heritage literacy where clothing functions as a multimodal text. Conservative Mennonites use their clothing to codify their Christian identity, gender roles and church affiliation. They intend their clothing to represent who they are …

The Impact Of Translation On Constructed Action And Constructed Dialogue In Asl Texts, Beth C. Gray

Theses and Dissertations

Depiction, a phenomenon similar to iconicity, involves representing what something "looks like or is like" (Streeck 2008:289). Because depiction is used more heavily in sign languages than spoken languages (Dudis 2007), people interpreting or translating spoken/written texts into signed languages struggle to use depiction naturally (Thumann 2011). This thesis analyzes constructed action (CA) and constructed dialogue (CD), two types of depiction in which the signer's hands represent those of a discourse participant. Using Tannen (1989) & Metzger's (1995) framework of non-directly-quoted CACD and Quinto-Pozos & Mehta's (2010) degrees of CA, I examine differences between narratives originally composed in ASL and …

A Phonology Of Hill (Kone-Tu) Asho, Daniel Tignor

Theses and Dissertations

Asho (ISO 639-3: csh) is a Tibeto-Burman language in the Southern Chin branch of Kuki-Chin. It is spoken by about 170,000 people, primarily in western and west-central Myanmar (Simons & Fennig 2018). Although Asho received some early attention in the studies of Tibeto-Burman languages (Houghton 1892; Joorman 1906), it has remained mostly unstudied for the past century. Current data confirm the traditional distinction of two basic dialects of Asho (Hill and Plains), and this paper focuses on the Hill or "Kone-tu" dialect. The Hill dialect has 26 consonants (compared to 29 in the Plains dialect), and both dialects have 14 …

Korean–English Bilingual Sibling Interactions And Socialization, Hyonsuk Cho

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This paper examines how a pair of Korean–American siblings interact and socialize and how their interactions change over time as the younger sibling starts to go to an English-speaking preschool. A 7-year-old Korean–English bilingual girl and her 3-year-old sister were observed in their home over 23 visits within a year. Their discourse data, including 33 h of audio-recordings, were analyzed from the Language Socialization perspective. The older sibling’s authority derived from the age-based Korean family hierarchy inevitably played a role in creating shared benefits in the bilingual sibling relationship. After the younger sibling began to speak English, there were noticeable …

Coffee, Please?: Sociolinguistic Influences On Politeness Strategies In Making Requests, Amy Burbee

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

In this paper I look at the extent to which factors of gender and context influence linguistic features such as hedging and syntax in indirect requests. I analyzed different features of indirect speech used by participants. I selected a few scenarios that focused on different social aspects where requests would be needed. Responses from men and women were compared to see if the gender of the speaker had any effect on the linguistic features used.

Indus Kohistani Dictionary: People And Kinship Terms, Beate Lubberger

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

This paper contributes to the description of the Indus Kohistani language of Pakistan by presenting a list of terms referring to people, kinship and other relationships – along with their English glosses – that are used in this language. The list includes related verbs and adjectives.

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 Postposition 'Bok' In The Arara Language, Shirley De Souza

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

In languages, the category of adpositions typically comprises a small class of morphemes that serve to locate one entity, the 'trajector', with reference to another entity, the 'landmark' within three-dimensional space. Adpositions tend to be highly polysemous. In this paper I consider the postposition bok in the Arara language. This postposition has a variety of disparate usages. My goal is to show how the meanings illustrated by these usages are related within a network.

Verbal Morphology And Grammatical Aspect In Sarikoli, Timothy S. Palmer

Theses and Dissertations

Grammatical aspect in Sarikoli, an Eastern Iranian (Pamir) language, has never been adequately described. This work fills a gap in the descriptive literature, beginning with a straightforward restatement of verbal morphosyntax, and moving to a discussion of verb stems and their uses. Verb stems in Sarikoli include the infinitive, imperfective, perfective, and perfect. Additional morphemes discussed in this work include the durative clitic, stative (resultative) suffix, cessative suffix, and agreement suffixes and clitics.

Sarikoli verbal morphology encodes aspect, not tense. The major grammatical aspects of Sarikoli include perfective, imperfective, perfect, and durative. Verb stems and other aspectual marking in context …

Voice In Bugis: An Rrg Perspective, Douglas C. Laskowske

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes the voice system of Bugis (also known as Buginese), a Western Austronesian language of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Using Role and Reference Grammar as a theoretical framework, I analyze the Bugis voice system as symmetrical in the sense of Arka (2003), with two distinct transitive constructions: actor voice, in which the actor is the privileged syntactic argument (PSA) and undergoer voice, in which the undergoer is the PSA. This contrasts with previous analyses, which have classified Bugis as lacking a symmetrical voice system (Hanson 2003; Jukes 2006). The choice between the two transitive voices in Bugis is determined …

An Acoustic Study Of Kope, Northeast Kiwai, Papua New Guinea, With Preliminary Tonal Analysis, Julia Martin

Theses and Dissertations

Kope is a dialect of Northeast Kiwai, a language of Papua New Guinea. It exhibits contrast for length on vowels, and a two-level tonal contrast. Measurements were taken from a recording of one speaker, and subjected to statistical tests to determine the relationship between variables of tone, phonemic length, duration, F0, and the first and second formants.

The most consistent effect found is higher F1 on HI-toned vowels, and indeed some measure of correlation between F0 and F1. Another effect, less consistent but still present, is the interaction of length with F2. Duration is found to be heavily influenced by …

Indus Kohistani Dictionary: Body Parts, Bodily Processes, Sickness And Medicine, Beate Lubberger

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

This paper contributes to the description of the Indus Kohistani language of Pakistan by presenting a list of terms—along with their English glosses—that are used in this language to refer to body parts, bodily processes, sickness and medicine.

Spectrums, Subgroups And School-Lunch: The Linguistic Capital Of Students With Autism, Scott Belden

Theses and Dissertations

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are known to have difficulties with pragmatic language. There is, however, a subpopulation of those with ASD that exhibits a high competency with pragmatic language. It can be difficult for researchers to find natural contexts to record these high-functioning individuals and examine their spontaneous use of pragmatic language. Additionally, there is a need to move beyond analyzing the cognitive abilities of these individuals to a sociolinguistic exploration of how they use pragmatic abilities to form and navigate social groups.

The research involved in this thesis included audio-visual recordings of 14 high school students with …

Deixis In Shughni: Grammatical And Semantic Considerations, Katja S. Mueller

Theses and Dissertations

Shughni is one of the best documented and described languages of the Pamirs. Linguistic research so far has focused on the verbal system of Shughni grammar but no detailed study has been done on the deictic system of the language. In this thesis I will describe grammatical and semantic aspects of the deictic system in Shughni.

During the course of the project I observed natural conversations, and listened to stories and discussions, and additionally I elicited sentences or conversations in order to clarify structures or understanding of previous observations.

In this thesis I describe the grammatical structures of Shughni deixis …

Computer-Assisted Vocabulary Learning For Deaf Learners Of Foreign Sign Languages, Benjamin J. Cavaletto

Theses and Dissertations

Deaf people have as great or greater need and desire to learn foreign languages as their hearing peers. Currently it is difficult for these learners to find courses and materials that are appropriate for their learning needs. Especially difficult is finding courses or learning materials for learning sign languages, which are more motivating and more accessible for Deaf learners than spoken languages. Additionally, evidence is presented that learning a foreign sign language can act as a bridge to learning a spoken language from the same region. The study presented in this thesis tested the efficacy of a computer-assisted vocabulary learning …

Falam Immigrants In America: Motivations For Language Use, Maintenance, And Shift, Hannah Reeves

Theses and Dissertations

Using a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach, I explore immigrants' individual motivations for language use, language shift and language maintenance. I met with 25 immigrants to the US who are native speakers of Falam, a language from Myanmar, to learn their reasons for Falam and English usage as well as their desires for Falam usage in the US. I used the Perceived Benefit Model of Language Shift's taxonomy of motivations to classify each motivation expressed. Among Falam immigrants to America, I found that solidarity-related and communicative motivations are behind language maintenance while economic and communicative motivations are behind language shift. …

Case And Pragmatic Status Markers In Embera Katío, Bethany Winter Carlson

Theses and Dissertations

In previous research on the Embera languages of the Chocó genus of Colombia and Panama, many different terms have been applied to one or all of the morphemes ba, ta and ra that frequently mark noun phrases and dependent clauses, and some of these descriptions have been conflicting. This study summarizes the previous analyses and compares them to language data from a corpus of texts and elicited material. The result is an analysis in which ba has three functions, marking ergative case, instrumental case and reason; ta marks focus on absolutives; and ra marks pragmatic topic and syntactic topics. …

Hiding Your Emotions In Plain Sight: Differences Between Real Anger And Feigned Anger In Japanese Girls' Speech, Aidan Aannestad

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

This paper demonstrates the use of non-denotative meaning markers as a way of indicating a speaker’s emotional state. Japanese has a number of such markers, and they pattern differently according to the speaker’s emotion; creating distinctions between speech acts under various emotional circumstances. This paper examines the dialogue of three fictional characters from Japanese television and demonstrates visible differences in their speech patterns between real anger and feigned anger.

Formal And Informal Academic Language Socialization Of A Bilingual Child, Hyonsuk Cho

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This ethnographic case study examines a bilingual child’s academic socialization in both formal and informal academic communities. The study follows a high-achieving, bilingual student in a public US elementary school, who paradoxically is seen as a slow learner in her Korean-American Sunday school. From the academic socialization and community of practice perspectives, 360 contextual, interactional, and interview events gathered from both communities over the course of one year are analyzed. The findings indicate that explicit norms and peer collaboration have a considerable effect on a child’s socialization in a formal academic school context, and furthermore, that the lenient, undisciplined environment …

Handshapes In Afghan Sign Language, Justin Power

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents aspects of handshapes in Afghan Sign Language [afg]. Afghan Sign Language is a Deaf sign language found in Afghanistan (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2014).

Signs in Afghan Sign Language contrast based on the handshape parameter. Furthermore, handshapes contrast based on selected fingers, thumb configuration, arrangement, and aperture. The thesis gives evidence for the selected fingers features [one], [two], [three], and [four]; for the thumb configuration features [opposed], [radial], and [contacting]; for the arrangement features [spread], [joined], and [crossed]; and for the aperture features [open] and [closed].

Of the 22 expected feature combinations, 18 are found in the …

Consonant Correspondences Of Burmese, Rakhine And Marma With Initial Implications For Historical Relationships, Heidi A. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a consonantal comparison of the Burmese, Rakhine and Marma languages of Myanmar and Bangladesh, with primary focus on initial and medial consonants. Its main purposes are to provide new data from the Rakhine and Marma languages of Bangladesh and to make some initial observations about the historical relationship between the three languages based on compiled consonant correspondences.

Although much literature is available on the Burmese language as the primary representative of the Southern Burmish languages, little information is available on Rakhine and Marma. This thesis thus extends previous work on the family tree to these two close …

The Pronominal Clitics Of Logar Ormuri, Jeremy Hawbaker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a description of the system of pronominal clitics in the Logar dialect of Ormuri, an Iranian language of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Logar dialect is based in the Logar province of Afghanistan and is near to extinction. The thesis studies grammatical constraints on the occurrence of pronominal clitics in Ormuri sentences. It also investigates discourse factors that influence when a pronominal clitic is used to refer to an entity in the situation that is being talked about, rather than a noun, an independent pronoun, or zero anaphora. My analysis is based on a corpus consisting of fifty-five …