Linguistics Commons^™

Health Perceptions Of Low-Income, Immigrant Spanish-Speaking Latinas In The United States., Donna Hartweg, Christina Isabelli

Scholarship

The health outcomes and health practices of immigrant Latinas tend to decrease with acculturation to U.S. culture. The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate health perceptions of first- and second generation, low-income, Spanish-speaking women from Mexico and Central America to learn their views of health and also to identify any differences between subcultures. This investigation was the first phase of a larger study to understand the relationship of physical activity to health, as Latinas define it. Seven focus groups were conducted in Spanish with women, ages 25 to 64, by country of origin. Fifteen themes emerged, with more …

The Role Of Meaning In Past-Tense Inflection: Evidence From Polysemy And Denominal Derivation, Shoba Bandi-Rao, Gregory L. Murphy

Publications and Research

Although English verbs can be either regular (walk-walked) or irregular (sing-sang), “denominal verbs” that are derived from nouns, such as the use of the verb ring derived from the noun a ring, take the regular form even if they are homophonous with an existing irregular verb: The soldiers ringed the city rather than *The soldiers rang the city. Is this regularization due to a semantic difference from the usual verb, or is it due to the application of the default rule, namely VERB + -ed suffix? To gain a new source of insight into …

Review Of Dieter Wanner's The Power Of Analogy: An Essay On Historical Linguistics, Eva NúÑEz-MéNdez

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Review of Dieter Wanner's "The Power of Analogy: An Essay on Historical Linguistics", published by Mouton de Gruyter, New York, 2006.

Washback From Language Tests On Teaching, Learning And Policy: Evidence From Diverse Settings, Pauline Rea-Dickins, Catriona Scott

Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

No abstract provided.

The Functional Range Of Bare Singular Count Nouns In English, Laurel Smith Stvan

Linguistics & TESOL Faculty Publications & Presentations - Archive

One overlooked and highly polysemous English noun phrase form is the bare singular, i.e. a null determiner with a singular count noun complement. Occurring in all grammatical positions, this constituent shape is used in English for multiple functions. Examination of naturally occurring English data shows the conditions under which bare singulars are used as generics (with a meaning like bare plurals), as components of a predicate conveying a stereotypical activity (with an indefinite meaning), and as markers of an identifiable referent (like nouns with definite articles, demonstratives, and possessive determiners). While generic and indefinite meanings are well documented for bare …

Language And The Shaping Of The Arab-American Identity, Dalal Saleh Almubayei

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

This study is an attempt to shed light on the interaction between language and the ethnic, cultural, and religious identities of Arab-Americans. It employs two focus groups consisting of Arab-Americans who share a group dialogue about the aspects of language and identity. The groups differ in terms of two variables: age and generation. Participants shared their experiences, life stories, feelings, and perspectives about the role of Arabic and English in their lives. The older participants emphasized a concern of language and ethnic identity loss among their U.S. born children, while younger participants talked about the importance of Arabic to belong …

Preliminary Tone Analysis Of Possessed Nouns In Chicahuaxtla Trique, Kosuke Matsukawa

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

Chicahuaxtla Trique is one of the Trique languages spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico. Among three Trique languages, Chicahuaxtla Trique has the most complicated tone system and its tone system has not been fully understood yet. When a noun is possessed, a contrastive tone on the final syllable of a noun stem is often changed with a post-clitic pronoun and, less frequently, with an independent pronoun in Chicahuaxtla Trique. In this paper, I will analyze the tone patterns for possessed nouns in Chicahuaxtla Trique based on my fieldwork data. Although the analysis is still at the preliminary stage and more comprehensive data …

Time In Navajo: Direct And Indirect Interpretation, C. Smith, E. Perkins, Theodore B. Fernald

Linguistics Faculty Works

This article discusses the temporal interpretation of Navajo sentences. Navajo has linguistic forms that give temporal information: future tense, past and future particles, and temporal adverbials. These forms are optional, so that many sentences contain no direct temporal information. In such cases, aspectual information gives pragmatic cues to the temporal location of the situation expressed. The key factor is boundedness: in the default case, unbounded situations are taken as present and bounded situations as past. Three pragmatic principles explain the inference from aspect to temporal location. The principles, which also hold for certain other languages, apply to verb words with …

When Languages Die: The Extinction Of The World's Languages And The Erosion Of Human Knowledge, K. David Harrison

Linguistics Faculty Works

In When Languages Die, K. David Harrison illustrates the individual face of language loss, as well as its global scale. Languages are the accretion of thousands of years of a people's science and art - from observations of ecological patterns to creation myths. The author shows that the disappearance of a language is a loss not only for the community of speakers itself but also for our common human knowledge of mathematics, biology, geography, philosophy, agriculture, and linguistics. In this century, we face a massive erosion of the human knowledge base. The global abandonment of indigenous languages will bring a …

Language Hotspots Map, K. David Harrison, G. D. S. Anderson

Linguistics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Book Review - Hart, W. (2002) Never Fade Away, James Kent Knaack

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

No abstract provided.

Language, Racism, And Ethnicity, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

While ethnic prejudices can be expressed in and through language, they are not, however, intrinsically linguistic in nature. They are, instead, supralinguistic concepts that become disguised as linguistic ones and imported into the theater of language. The pathways that facilitate this importation have been made by the repeated interconnections between the concept of language and the concept of race. In other words, language in the service of racism and ethnocentrism cannot occur without conceptualizing language and race in similar ways. Accordingly, the identification of language with race is not possible without the genetic misprisions that create the myth of race …

Structural Ambiguity Collecting As A Tool For Teaching Grammar, Dallin D. Oaks

Faculty Publications

Structural ambiguities can be a valuable resource for grammar students. Because structural ambiguities present more than one possible grammatical interpretation, authentic examples of such ambiguities lend themselves well to meaningful grammatical discussions. One particularly useful way for involving students in the recognition and analysis of structural ambiguities is to assign them to find designated ambiguity types. This paper will consider some benefits of structural ambiguity study and will provide some ideas and suggestions related to a specific type of assignment that involves students in collecting structural ambiguities.

Frequency Based Incremental Attribute Selection For Gre., John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

The DIT system uses an incremental greedy search to generate descriptions, similar to the incremental algorithm described in (Dale and Reiter, 1995). The selection of the next attribute to be tested for inclusion in the description is ordered by the absolute frequency of each attribute in the training corpus. Attributes are selected in descending order of frequency (i.e. the attribute that occurred most frequently in the training corpus is selected first). Where two or more attributes have the same frequency of occurrence the first attribute found with that frequency is selected. The type attribute is always included in the description. …

Does Verbal Communication Impairment Affect Quality Of Life In Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Patients?, Jason Michael Duff

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the self-perceived QOL in ALS patients. Literature will be presented on the incidence, prevalence, prognosis, diagnosis and management of ALS, QOL studies for ALS, the role of the multidisciplinary team, the impairments and dysfunction that ALS patients experience, communication issues, and the development of ALS specific instruments to measure QOL. The "bulbar dysfunction" that ALS patients experience in salivation management, speech, and swallowing were examined in detail. The objectives of this research study were to investigate the following hypotheses: 1. QOL will differ among ALS patients with varying levels of speech, swallowing, …

Cross-Linguistic Analysis Of Vietnamese And English With Implications For Vietnamese Language Acquisition And Maintenance In The United States, Giang Tang

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Two overall goals of this paper are a) to provide a linguistic basis for promoting first language maintenance of Vietnamese in a larger United States context and b) to stimulate future research in language acquisition of Vietnamese-English speakers. This paper is divided into three sections. Section 1 discusses previous studies on first language (L1) maintenance among Vietnamese Americans. Section 2 presents a cross-linguistic comparison of Vietnamese and English across speech-sound, word, and grammatical language levels. A cross-linguistic analysis may help educators better understand speaking patterns of Vietnamese American students. Based on this cross-linguistic comparison, Section 3 presents potential bi-directional interactions …

Supporting Technology Instruction Through Peer Tutoring, Discussion Boards And Electronic Journals, Dan Dewey, Anne E. Cannon

Faculty Publications

Given the diverse backgrounds and technical expertise that language teachers can possess, it is challenging for technology instructors to meet the needs of individuals during workshops or classes. In this study, we explored the effectiveness of three interventions implemented to help a technology instructor better meet the needs of individuals in his class: peer tutoring, asynchronous discussion board and electronic journal entries. Through the three interventions, the instructor's role changed from being the provider of solutions to every problem (firefighter) to being an available coach, able to focus his attention on matters that required it most. The instructor became well …

Język: Attitudes Toward Language In Poland, Angela Ott

Honors Program Theses

Perceptual dialectology is the study of how people perceive differences in language. This study was designed to discover Polish college students' attitudes toward the dialects in Poland. Modeled after Dennis Preston's 1986 study of language attitudes in the United States, a map questionnaire was distributed to 100 Jagiellonian University and Krosno College students in Fall 2006. Participants drew boundaries around the areas where people speak differently in Poland and rated each area's correctness compared to Standard Polish. Most participants indicated between three to five regions; the most commonly named regions were Podhale, Katowice, Katowice/Wroclaw, Poznan, and Warsaw. Over half of …

Context, Translator And History : A Study Of Three Translations Of Luotuo Xiangzi In The Usa, Ying Jun Li

Lingnan Theses

Three different English translations of Lao She’s (老舍) Luotuo Xiangzi (骆驼祥子) were marketed in the USA from 1945 to 2005. What are the major historical occurrences and trends from the late 19th to the early 21st century that define the contexts of these translations? Beginning with an analysis of the stylistic features of each translation, the present study explores how each of the three translators and the corresponding historical context impacted on the production of the translated text, its marketing orientation and its reception in the USA.

With a comparison of the three translated texts and their meta-textual features, the …

Active Learning For Part-Of-Speech Tagging: Accelerating Corpus Annotation, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Eric K. Ringger, Peter J. Mcclanahan, Robbie A. Haertel, George Busby, Marc A. Carmen, James Carroll, Kevin Seppi

Faculty Publications

In the construction of a part-of-speech annotated corpus, we are constrained by a fixed budget. A fully annotated corpus is required, but we can afford to label only a subset. We train a Maximum Entropy Markov Model tagger from a labeled subset and automatically tag the remainder. This paper addresses the question of where to focus our manual tagging efforts in order to deliver an annotation of highest quality. In this context, we find that active learning is always helpful. We focus on Query by Uncertainty (QBU) and Query by Committee (QBC) and report on experiments with several baselines and …

A Cognitive Robotics Approach To Comprehending Human Language And Behaviors, Deryle W. Lonsdale, D. Paul Benjamin, Damian Lyons

Faculty Publications

The ADAPT project is a collaboration of researchers in linguistics, robotics and artificial intelligence at three universities. We are building a complete robotic cognitive architecture for a mobile robot designed to interact with humans in a range of environments, and which uses natural language and models human behavior. This paper concentrates on the HRI aspects of ADAPT, and especially on how ADAPT models and interacts with humans.

Onset-To-Onset Probability And Gradient Acceptability In Korean, Hahn Koo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Generating Ontologies Via Language Components And Ontology Reuse, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Yihong Ding, David W. Embley, Martin Hepp, Li Xu

Faculty Publications

Realizing the Semantic Web involves creating ontologies, a tedious and costly challenge. Reuse can reduce the cost of ontology engineering. Semantic Web ontologies can provide useful input for ontology reuse. However, the automated reuse of such ontologies remains underexplored. This paper presents a generic architecture for automated ontology reuse. With our implementation of this architecture, we show the practicality of automating ontology generation through ontology reuse. We experimented with a large generic ontology as a basis for automatically generating domain ontologies that fit the scope of sample natural-language web pages. The results were encouraging, resulting in five lessons pertinent to …

A Constitutional Conundrum Of Second Amendment Commas: A Short Epistolary Report, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

Prompted by the court’s decision in Parker v. District of Columbia, this series of correspondence discusses the effect possible forms of punctuation may have on the Second Amendment. The article makes comments on the important grammars during the founding and also two possible writings of the Second Amendment that contain different sets of punctuation.

The Use Of Context-Free Grammars In Isolated Word Recognition, Chaiyaporn Chirathamjaree

Research outputs pre 2011

A method using nonrecursive context-free grammars is presented for the recognition of isolated words. Some form of 'training' is required to combat problems of variations in speech. In the training mode, one grammar for each word in the vocabulary is constructed directly from a set of sample strings of 'features' represented by symbols. In the recognition mode, an incoming string is analyzed to determine which grammar, if any, could have generated it. The word corresponding to such grammar is then said to have been recognized.

Korean Hurricane Media Discourse Analysis, Youngae Lee

LSU Master's Theses

Presented within this thesis, I have analyzed a particular TV broadcast news discourse called Korean Hurricane Media Discourse (KHMD), which was presented online from YTN, a Korean cable TV news station. The data presents the topic of the Korean refugees who were forced to evacuate to Baton Rouge from New Orleans, after facing the destructions of Hurricane Katrina on August 2005. The methods are Ron Scollon’s TV news frames (1998), van Dijk’s superstructure (1988a and 1988b) and macrostructure (1980), Allan Bell’s news structure (1991), Dell Hymes’s SPEAKING model (1974), and Erving Goffman’s frameworks (1986). Since KHMD is a spoken, plannable …

Analogical Modeling: An Update, Deryle W. Lonsdale, David Eddington

Faculty Publications

Analogical modeling is a supervised exemplar-based approach that has been widely applied to predict linguistic behavior. The paradigm has been well documented in the linguistics and cognition literature, but is less well known to the machine learning community. This paper sets out some of the basics of the approach, including a simplified example of the fundamental algorithm’s operation. It then surveys some of the recent analogical modeling language applications, and sketches how the computational system has been enhanced lately to offer users increased flexibility and processing power. Some comparisons and contrasts are drawn between analogical modeling and other language modeling …

Turning Away, Jacob D. Rawlins

Faculty Publications

From the time of Joseph Smith’s first vision, the concepts of general apostasy and divine restoration have been central to the Latter-day Saint movement. In the Prophet’s account of his vision, he records that after he asked which church he should join, “I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: ‘they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines …