Linguistics Commons^™

Approaching Arabic Automatic Speech Recognition With Usage, James Longstaff, Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this project is to improve Arabic automatic speech recognition (ASR) by distinguishing between different dialects with the use of machine learning. Machine learning is the teaching of computers to recognize and distinguish between categories by themselves. Machine learning works off of statistical and mathematical algorithms implemented with computer programming.

How Teachers Grade Native And Non-Native Writing: Exposing Biases And Grading Discrepancies, Jenna Snyder, Dr. Grant Eckstein

Journal of Undergraduate Research

With Dr. Grant Eckstein leading our research team, we gathered TESOL writing teachers together to start our data collection. Using an eye-tracker, we monitored the different grading tendencies of 10 different writing teachers. Using this data, we made important observations and applications to writing teachers who teach mixed classrooms of both native English speakers and non-native English speakers.

English As A Second Language Speakers’ Ability To Replicate Native Speaker Speech Forms When Engaged In Imitative Interaction, Ariana Avila, Dr. Mark Tanner

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this study was to gather acoustic data aimed at empirically assessing the degree to which non-native English speakers can approximate the linguistic features of native speech when engaged in imitative interaction. The focus of my study was to investigate the degree to which ESL learners living in an English speaking environment can produce linguistic features (variation in intonation, appropriate word and sentence stress, and appropriate use of pausing to delineate meaning units in discourse) in their speech similar to those produced by native English speakers when the ESL learner is trying to imitate what a native speaker …

An Eye Tracking Study: Composition Teachers’ Assessment Of Native And Non-Native, Rachel Casper, Grant Eckstein

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Applied linguists are interested in the cognitive processes of writing teachers within the subfields of both second language writing and writing assessment. Such cognitive insights as how a teacher reads and scores a piece of non-native English speaker (L2) writing can have an impact on the way in which second languages are taught and assessed in writing classrooms. This is particularly relevant as increasing numbers of L2 students matriculate into composition courses traditionally designed for native-English speakers.

The Challenges And Solutions Of Online Surveys, Rachel Cannon, Amanda Loh, Dan Dewey

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Surveys are a valuable tool in research. However, there is currently no place where researchers can find compiled information about the challenges of online surveys and their corresponding solutions. Research publications typically address a specific single issue, and these articles are published in a wide range of journals, making it difficult to access various findings. Our findings, which we presented as a work in progress at the Georgetown University Round Table (GURT) 2016 conference, provide a useful source that researchers can use to easily learn about the challenges of online surveys and the solutions to these challenges, helping them to …

Mongolian Vowel Harmony And Palatalization, Joshua Sims, Dirk Elzinga

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Mongolian language is spoken by approximately 3,000,000 people in the East Asian nation of Mongolia. The language exhibits vowel harmony, a rare phenomenon where the vowels in a single word must belong to matching categories. Mongolian grammars traditionally classify the seven vowels as either “male” or “female,” as well as rounded or unrounded. The “male” vowels are pronounced with a retracted tongue root (RTR), sounding “darker,” while “female” vowels are pronounced with an advanced tongue root (ATR), sounding “lighter.” The vowel /i/ is considered neutral, neither male nor female, but its presence tends to change the pronunciation of male …

Will We Let A Language Die?, Joseph Heath, William Eggington

Journal of Undergraduate Research

My project examined efforts to maintain the Rusyn language (also known as Ruthenian ). Rusyn is spoken by 50,000 people living primarily in Slovakia and Ukraine. Unless protected, this language may go extinct within several generations. It is one of over 100 languages in Central and Eastern Europe that have received “threatened” or “endangered” status. Globalization threatens the existence of cultures lacking nationstates, and my professional aim is to assist in the preservation of some of these cultures and their languages.

Domain Adaptation In Machine Translation, Joshua Mathias, Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This study uses an open source statistical machine translation system (Moses) to perform machine translation for specific domains, or text types. A machine translation system can be adapted to a specific domain by using training data from the same domain. In this work we show significant improvements for machine translation by training for specific domains and compare the effectiveness of using training data in each of these domains. We also evaluate the effectiveness of different amounts of training data and combining data from different domains.

My Father’S Name: A Study Of Patronymic Naming In Mozambique, Preston Christensen, Cynthia Hallen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Patronymic naming is very common in parts of Mozambique but there has possibly been no formal documentation of this practice prior to this study. Patronymic naming involves the passing of the father’s name to the children and is not to be confused with patronymic surnames. The research was conducted in the City of Quelimane, Mozambique and consisted of two parts, quantitative and qualitative.

Word Borrowing In Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, Trenton Hyer, Dirk Elzinga

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The objective of this project is to document word borrowing in Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, an understudied variety of German spoken in southern Brazil. UNESCO’s The Red Book of Endangered Languages listed Riograndenser Hunsrückisch as an endangered language in 1992, but linguists have written very little about it since.

Mormon Insights, Shane Peterson, Marvin Gardner

Journal of Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

A Quichua Video Dictionary: The Sight And Sound Of Ideophones, Diana Shelton (Née Sun), Janis Nuckolls

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Quichua is a branch of Quechua, a group of indigenous South American languages, which is found in Amazonian Ecuador. This language utilizes a type of adverb, called ideophones, which symbolizes sound, motion, and other sensations. Ideophones are often foregrounded with speaker movements and intonation and are therefore difficult to represent in written documentation. Our project aimed to create a video dictionary of Quichua ideophones as a valuable resource for language learners as well as future researchers of ideophones by using various media to demonstrate ideophones’ uses and contexts in reality.

Defining The Obvious, Or Not, Emily Furner, William Eggington

Journal of Undergraduate Research

When a new word premieres in a publication in the English language, the word is normally followed with a definition (hereafter gloss) that defines or restates its meaning¹. But generally, words will eventually stop being defined as readers come to understand the meaning of the word. In other words, when readers “accept” a word into their vocabulary, the practice of including definitions with newer words becomes unnecessary. In this study, I explored the possibility of using corpora to determine when words stop appearing with definitions, thus signaling when these new words became “accepted” into American English.

Access In The Accent: Career Opportunity Based On Differences In Regional Accents, Stephanie Hedges, David Eddington

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Accents affect employment ratings more when the accent is perceived to be stronger (Carlson & McHenry, 2006). When the accent is strongly perceived by the employer, employment ratings drastically dropped for those speaking Spanish-influenced, Asian-influenced and African American English dialects (Carlson & McHenry, 2006). However, when the accent was only minimally perceived, employment ratings remained high (Carlson & McHenry, 2006). This proposes that accents only negatively impact employment when maximally perceived by the employer (Carlson & McHenry, 2006).

Early Documentation Of The Orang Seletar And Sugut Sungai Languages, Kevin Blissett, Dr. Dirk Elzinga

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Orang Seletar and Sugut Sungai languages are endangered languages indigenous to Malaysia. With every generation there are fewer speakers of the language, and, perhaps more worryingly, the language is less frequently taught to children. It is increasingly urgent for linguists to document the languages before they vanish completely. The purpose of this project was to begin that documentation effort by translating a list of common vocabulary, known as the Swadesh list, into each of these two languages.

Corrections Around The World: An International Survey Of Oral Corrective Feedback, Andrew Bashford, Dr. Mark Tanner

Journal of Undergraduate Research

English teachers’ primary goal is to help their students use English as a means of communication, self-expression, and transaction. Of course, learning a second language is not a spontaneous process: it requires study, practice, and meaningful feedback. In fact, one of the teacher’s most essential roles is that of providing feedback to students, often in order to correct errors and guide the students’ learning. This current study deals with the feedback that teachers provide when their students make errors in speaking—oral corrective feedback, or OCF. While much work has been done to investigate the most effective ways of giving OCF …

Learning Armenian And English Pronunciation, Anna Mcconner-Hughes, Dr. Wendy Baker-Smemoe

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this study is to examine the learning of English consonants by native Armenian speakers. In particular, we examined how the native Armenian speakers perceive and produce English voiced and voiceless ‘th’ sounds (as in the words thy and thigh (/ð/ and /θ/ in IPA)). These sounds are difficult for learners to acquire, in part because they are often confused with each other. The results of this study will help us better understand the relationship between first and second language sound systems and will hopefully lead to training materials to help native Armenian speakers better learn English.

Motivational Strategies For Second Language Teaching And Learning, Neil J. Anderson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The academic objectives centered around five primary research questions:

1. What is the relationship among (a) teachers’ view of the importance of motivational teaching strategies, (b) the frequency with which they report using motivational teaching strategies, and (c) the actual use of motivational teaching strategies in second language classrooms?
2. How does the teacher’s motivational teaching practice affect learners’ classroom motivation in terms of the levels of their alertness, participation, and volunteering?
3. Can teachers guide learners to take more responsibility for monitoring and maintaining their levels of motivation in second language classrooms?
4. Can learners play a multiplier effect role in motivating their …

Examining The Extent Of And Factors Contributing To Adult Literacy In Utah County Utah, Dr. Wendy Baker-Smemoe, Dr. Brad Wilcox

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of adult illiteracy in Utah County Utah and the factors that contribute to it.

Elicited Imitation Test For Brazilian Portuguese, Jerrett Lever, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

An elicited imitation (EI) test is a simple, indirect method of assessing language ability and proficiency. EI works by having subjects hear a determined item (or sentence) and having them repeat the item back as close as possible to what is heard. The theory of EI proposes that to hear a sentence, process its meaning, and produce an imitation exactly the same in meaning as that given requires the subject (test taker) to have a level of proficiency in the language being tested equal to that which the item is examining (Bley-Vroman and Chaudron 1994). Though EI has been shown …

The Analogical Modeling Of Variation In Russian Inflectional Morphology, Vitalijs Sadovskis, Dr. Royal Skousen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The primary purpose of this project was to explain the common and frequently occurring phenomena of variation in Russian morphology. This research is based on empirical data from the Russian language output of native speakers of Russian. The data sets were prepared for and processed by the Analogical Modeling software designed specifically for predicting language behavior. The results of computer analysis were compared with the actual language usage.

Knowing Knobe: A Linguistic Approach, Justin Stark

Journal of Undergraduate Research

People encounter and make decisions constantly. Trivially, we may need to decide which color blue better matches our eyes or, significantly, we may be asked to make a decision as participants in a jury, a decision that could affect the rest of someone’s life. Some of the more important and influential decisions we make are moral decisions. There has been a lot of interesting research analyzing and discussing moral decisions and the studies range in discipline from neuroscience to philosophy. Some of this research has suggested that language can play an important role in our decision-making processes as well as …

Arabic Study Abroad: An Exploratory Study Of Connections Between Journal Writing And Language Gains, Kendon Kurzer, Dr. Dan Dewey

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This project explored connections between language gains and instances of positive and negative responses as recorded in pseudo-dialogue journals kept by second language learners of Arabic participating in a study abroad (SA) program to Jordan. Daily journals from seven of forty-four total participants were analyzed for this project: those of the four students who showed the most proficiency gains over the course of the program as determined by pre- and post-study abroad program Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) scores, and those of the three students who showed no proficiency gains between their pre- and post-program OPI scores. Trends noted included the …

Factors Influencing Language Gains For Chinese Speakers During Study Abroad, Spencer Ring, Andrew Westover, Dr. Dan Dewey

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In this project, we aimed to investigate factors that influence study abroad students’ development of linguistic proficiency in Mandarin Chinese. We decided to focus on Mandarin Chinese because, as Dewey (2007) observes, an understanding of what factors affect the development of proficiency in Asian languages is limited compared with European languages, which have received more research focus in second language acquisition studies.

Ethnic Group Affiliation And Second Language Acquisition, Sarah Franklin, Dr. Wendy Baker-Smemoe

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Over the past forty years a significant amount of research has explored how to improve second language (L2) acquisition, most of which has examined factors that influence this ability. Little research, however, has examined how ethnic group affiliation (defined as how closely you feel attached to your native culture and language) affects this learning, especially in bilingual communities. It is hoped that the current research will not only help in understanding the many factors that influence L2 acquisition, but may also demonstrate how ethnic group affiliation can be used to preserve endangered languages throughout the world.

A Study Of Second Language Acquisition Of Glottal Ejectives Through A Comparative Phonetic Analysis Of Mayan Q’Eqchi’ Native Speakers And English L2 Learners Of Q’Eqchi’, Karl Olaw Christian Wagner, Dr. Wendy Baker Smemoe

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The research the grant from the Office of Research and Creative Activities has allowed me to perform has been a wonderful opportunity that has helped me to take my undergraduate work to a higher level. To be able to apply the linguistic knowledge I’ve gained in the classroom in real research, even research abroad at that has been of great worth to me. The entire process has been a learning experience and continues to be so as I finish my work on this project. This process, from the first rough sketches of a possible research project to the current work …

Japanese Sentence Parsing In An Artificial Intelligence System, Nathan Glenn, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In this project, we created a Japanese sentence parser that functions within a cognitive modeling architecture known as Soar. It was created by modifying an existing English parser called XNL-Soar, which implements minimalist principles in syntactic parsing. Japanese lexical access is performed via GoSen and a Java interface to the Japanese WordNet, and syntactic and semantic processing is done within Soar. The ease with which the parser was modified to process Japanese input is extremely encouraging and lends support to its use as model of human sentence processing, as well as to the Minimalist Program in linguistics. The system is …

An Empirical Test Of Analogical Modeling: The K/Ø Alternation, C. Anton Rytting, Dr. Royal Skousen, Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Turkish is an agglutinative language, meaning that each word consists of a word stem followed by a variable number of suffixes. Sometimes, the addition of suffixes causes the stem to change its form. For example, stem-final velar consonants (i.e., /k/ and /g/) tend to be deleted between a stem vowel and a suffix vowel:

Analogical Modeling Of Japanese Loanword Formation From English, Nate Blaylock, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The topic of this research, by way of review, was to try to predict, using the Analogical Modeling of Language (AML) method, the formation of Japanese loanwords from English. In other words, given an English word, how would a Japanese person pronounce it if they adopted it into Japanese. (Ice cream being pronounced aisu kurimu, for example). It was intended to be a test of the strengths and weaknesses of AML for this kind of a task (it has already been attempted by others using other methods).

The Ch’Olti’ Link Language, Craig M. Warren, Dr. John Robertson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Perhaps one of the greatest achievements of the Mayan Civilization was their development of a writing system. Remnants of this highly sophisticated writing system can be found beautifully etched on temples and other ancient structures scattered throughout parts of Southern Mexico and Central America.