Linguistics Commons^™

The Syntax Of The Arabic Determiner Phrase, Mohamed Cheikh Beina

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to analyze the syntactic structure of the Arabic determiner phrase (DP) within the confines of Chomsky's minimalist program. Attention is drawn to a number of the misconceptions many linguists have about this constituent. Some of the issues that linguists overlook include the existence of an indefinite article as well as a possessive determiner that heads the genitive phrase. A new analysis of agreement within DP is presented, as well as an argument against the construct state analysis and analyses of other related issues.

Tutor Assisted Vocabulary Support: Easing The Vocabulary Load For Burundian Refugees Studying For The U.S. Citizenship Test, Eleanor Anne Clark

Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this thesis was to develop vocabulary materials to supplement those already in use for emergent literate Burundian refugees preparing for the U.S. Citizenship Test. These learners study in conjunction with the International Rescue Committee in Salt Lake City, Utah, and with volunteer tutors who help them study. The flashcards and supporting activities were designed to better enable tutors to teach learners highly-dense vocabulary items, as well as to provide vocabulary scaffolding support for both learners and tutors and to increase depth of vocabulary knowledge with the target vocabulary. The U.S. Citizenship Test Vocabulary Flashcards and Vocabulary Support …

A Teacher's Guide To Academic Reading: Focusing On The Academic Reading Demands Of Esl Learners, Rebecca Jean Stone

Theses and Dissertations

With over 765,000 English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students studying in the United States, a greater understanding of the academic requirements and demands these students face while studying in the US is needed. Some of the biggest challenges they face include the amount of reading required and the various tasks employed with academic reading. University reading tasks require more than an understanding of the text. These tasks place a strong emphasis on text comprehension, summary, synthesis, and critical analysis. This is problematic as students, especially ESL learners, lack experience with academic tasks, and many additionally struggle with low metacognitive awareness, limited or low …

December 9, 2013: Kazoo Books Author Day, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Language Ideologies And Orthographies: Developing A Writing System For Than Ówîngeh, Evan Ashworth

Linguistics ETDs

The use of writing to represent the heritage language represents a contentious issue for many members of Puebloan societies in the American Southwest. Many community members resist the use of writing for this purpose on the grounds that it acts as a form of colonialism, while others accept the use of writing in the heritage language because it is seen as valorizing the heritage language itself. This study seeks to address three research questions: 1) What factors motivate either a resistance to or acceptance of the use of writing to represent a heritage language? 2) If the use of writing …

December 1, 2013: Bay Psalm Book Auctioned For $14.2 Million, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

La Condition Postmétisse, Célestin Monga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Patrick Chamoiseau’s thought has evolved considerably over the past twenty-five years. Whether it inscribes itself in the registers of utopia or counter-utopia, it has moved away from the linguistics issues of creoleness to acquire a humanistic thickness. It now advocates the advent of a global identity that could be viewed as “post-mestizo”. This essay analyzes its invocation of the Tout-Monde and its faith in a universal poetics of relation. It also assesses the empirical basis for his views in a world where nihilism appears to be the only credible virtue.

Predictive Admission Criteria In Graduate Programs In Speech-Language Pathology, Mary Lloyd Moore

Dissertations

Speech-language pathology is a profession for which there is increasing demand as well as being one of the most desirable career paths in the United States. Graduation of qualified persons who can pass the Praxis exam is an essential outcome of all graduate programs in speech-language pathology. If predictors of competence could be identified before admission, graduate programs would be better able to select students who would maximize the expenditure of materials, energy, and expertise, thereby decreasing the potential failure for both students and universities. Therefore, this research addresses the extent to which selected variables may serve to predict success …

Many Voices, Many Selves: An Analysis Of Education Blog Discourses, Kelli Lynn Finney

Theses and Dissertations

At this point, the majority of computer mediated communication (CMC) studies have employed a variation analysis approach, quantitatively describing language on the Internet and comparing CMC to speech and writing. While these studies have provided valuable information about CMC, they have also left many gaps, especially related to social and ideological issues such as language use.

This study responds to the need for more qualitative studies of language on the Internet by examining one form of CMC: education blogs. The study analyzes a selection of posts from five blogs published between March 21, 2012 and March 28, 2013. These five …

Numeral Incorporation In American Sign Language, Vanessa L. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Numeral incorporation is a moderately productive process in ASL which combines a numeral and a base to form a compounded fully formed sign. Numeral-incorporated signs involve some sort of simultaneity of the base and the numeral. I interviewed six individuals who use ASL as their primary language in order to gather examples of numeral-incorporated signs in ASL, thus getting a sampling of variation in the American deaf community.

Traditionally, numeral incorporation has been viewed as a process of combining a numeral sign with a noun, which I call a source sign. Instead, I found that the source signs are separate …

Resemblance-Oriented Communication Strategies: Understanding The Role Of Resemblance In Signed And Spoken Languages, Daniel R. Eberle

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to propose that resemblance plays an important role in human communication. Saussure proposed a characteristic principle of the linguistic sign: that connections between linguistic codes and the objects they signify are arbitrary; however, I intend to show that resemblance, which I define as the visual or aural similarity between a stimulus, the thought it is intended to activate, and the real world target that utterance is about, is an important part of human communication and should be taken into consideration when defining language and proposing theories of human communication.

I have chosen Relevance Theory …

A Survey Of Those In The U.S. Deaf Community About Reading And Writing Asl, Jennifer Keogh

Theses and Dissertations

On average, students who are deaf do not develop English literacy skills as well as their hearing peers. The linguistic interdependence principle suggests that literacy in American Sign Language (ASL) may improve literacy in English for students who are deaf. However, the Deaf community in the United States has not widely adopted a written form of ASL. This research surveys individuals in the U.S. Deaf community to better understand the opinions surrounding literacy in ASL.

The survey was presented online, containing both ASL in embedded videos and written English. The survey asked for the participants' demographic information, language and educational …

Lexical Retrieval In Discourse: An Early Indicator Of Alzheimer’S Dementia, Seija Pekkala, Debra Wiener, Jayandra Himali, Alexa Beiser, Loraine Obler, Yulin Liu, Ann Mckee, Sanford Seshadri, Philip Wolf, Rhonda Au

Publications and Research

We examined the progression of lexical-retrieval deficits in individuals with neuropathologically determined Alzheimer’s disease (AD; n=23) and a comparison group without criteria for AD (n=24) to determine whether linguistic changes were a significant marker of the disease. Our participants underwent multiple administrations of a neuropsychological battery, with initial administration occurring on average 16 years prior to death. The battery included the Boston Naming Test (BNT), a letter fluency task (FAS) and written description of the Cookie Theft Picture (CTP). Repeated measures analysis revealed that the AD-group showed progressively greater decline in FAS and CTP lexical performance than the comparison group. …

Second Language Gesture And Acculturation In Study Abroad Contexts, Christie Marie Gardner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Motivationis an integral part of learning; Gestures are an important aspect of human communication, and culture plays a significant role in shaping all of these human elements. This study explores the relationship betweensocial, cultural-historical activityand second language(L2) gesture acquisitionas student motivations both drive, and emanate from, the L2 learning process. Six American students participating in a study-abroad program in Chile were evaluated at three different levels of L2 proficiency (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) for L2 gesture articulations and motivational developments. During the semester-long investigation, three audio-video recorded interviews were conducted to observe L2 gestural behaviors, and two e-mail logs were …

"What's In A Name?": Heteroglossia And History In Native Alaskan Names, Shannon Hannahs

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines Native Alaskan personal names and naming practices and how these names are being used to index cultural identity in Anchorage, Alaska. In order to do this, I follow Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of heteroglossia (1981), which states all words are populated with meaning from all of the contexts in which they have been used in the past. Native Alaskan personal names should be considered heteroglossic based on the Yup'ik/Cup'ik and Inupiaq beliefs that personal names are a type of soul that carries with it the characteristics of a person who uses it. When that person dies, the name-soul …

Terror From The Sky: Unconventional Linguistic Clues To The Negrito Past, Robert Blust

Human Biology

Within recorded history. most Southeast Asian peoples have been of "southern Mongoloid" physical type, whether they speak Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Austronesian, Tai-Kadai, or Hmong-Mien languages. However, population distributions suggest that this is a post-Pleistocene phenomenon and that for tens of millennia before the last glaciation ended Greater Mainland Southeast Asia, which included the currently insular world that rests on the Sunda Shelf, was peopled by short, dark-skinned, frizzy-haired foragers whose descendants in the Philippines came to be labeled by the sixteenth-century Spanish colonizers as "negritos," a term that has since been extended to similar groups throughout the region. There are three …

Time And Place In The Prehistory Of The Aslian Languages, Michael Dunn, Nicole Kruspe, Niclas Burenhult

Human Biology

The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of …

Who Are The Philippine Negritos? Evidence From Language, Lawrence A. Reid

Human Biology

This article addresses the linguistic evidence from which details about Philippine "negritos" can be inferred. This evidence comes from the naming practices of both negrito and non-negrito peoples, from which it can be inferred that many negrito groups have maintained a unique identity distinct from other groups since the dispersal of Malayo-Polynesian languages. Other names, such as Dupaningan and Dumagat, reference locations, from which it is assumed the negritos left after contact with Malayo-Polynesian people. Evidence also comes from the relative positions of negrito groups vis-à-vis other groups within the subfamily with which their current language can be grouped. Many …

Cataloging Semantic Variation In The Swiss German Dialect, Rebecca J. Adams, Dr. Cynthia L. Hallen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Swiss German is the term for the group of Germanic dialects found in Switzerland. They form a sister language to High, or standard, German. They vary significantly from standard German in phonology, syntax, and in semantics . My research project on Swiss German was divided into three parts. First, using information from several books on the history and development of Swiss German, I investigated some of the important points of the dialect itself: its roots; some of the postulated changes that it has undergone; its development from Old High German; and its present status in modern Swiss diglossia. The literature …

November 12, 2013: New Issue Of Comparative Drama, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Phonological Profiles Of 2-Year-Olds With Expressive-Only And Expressive And Receptive Language Delay: A Pilot Study, Kristin Vanwyngaarden, Shari L. Deveney

Special Education and Communication Disorders Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

This poster discusses: Background, Research Question, Methods, Results, Conclusions, Clinical Implications, and Limitations & Future Directions.

Performative Memory: Form And Content In The Jewish Museum Berlin, Lisa A. Costello

Writing & Linguistics: Faculty Publications (1990-2022)

Work published in Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies.

Audio Sampling Of The Aymara Language, Aaron M. Waldrip, Dr. Cynthia Hallen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Upon arriving in the city I couldn’t help but notice the barrenness of my surroundings. Sitting at approximately 12,500 feet above sea level, the city of El Alto in La Paz, Bolivia leaves a distinct impression upon your eyes, nose, and particularly your lungs. Your eyes see nothing but multifaceted shades of brown, your nose perceives smells that will never leave your memory, and your lungs scream so loudly for oxygen that you dare not walk too quickly, let alone run. However, a couple of draughts of mate de coca later, and your body seems to right itself.

An Approach To Automatic Spoken Language Identification Using Analogical Modeling, Nicholas A. Stetich, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Although it is often repeated, perhaps to the point of becoming cliché, we live in an age of information. Information is readily available, and in a variety of formats, especially electronic formats. Our ability to digitize data, or make it available for computer access, has increased dramatically over the last several decades, due to the exponential growth of computers’ processing power and storage capabilities. However, much of this data is unorganized, and exists in many formats (text, audio, video), and in many different languages. Expert linguists can often identify what language is being spoken in a particular piece of audio …

October 27, 2013: Sss Comparative Drama Distinguished Lecture: Loren Kruger (U Chicago), Thurs., Nov. 7@7:00pm, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

October 26, 2013: New C19 Journal Solicits Material, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

The Possibility Of Computer Modeling Language Change, Jonathan Mccollum, Dr. David Bowie

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Language is an ever changing method of communication. Linguists, in their systematic studies of languages, attempt to explain the changes that modify and sometimes eliminate languages altogether. Much research has been employed to discover the methods that keep language continually evolving.

Teaching Through Comparison, A Study Manual Focusing On French, German, And Italian Language Acquisition, Coogan S. Rencz, Dr. Mentor-Cynthia Hallen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Informing ourselves through comparison is a natural process. We seldom make decisions without comparing a few options. We evaluate the quality of everything from artistic techniques, to computers, to pets based on comparisons. Through the humbling process of trial and error we learn from our mistakes. We learn to evaluate the causes and effects of our conduct, habits, and our desires and choose the best action for every situation.

Building A Knowledge Base In Fijian, Adam Rich, Dr. Michael Bush

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The title, Building a knowledge base in Fijian, suggests a very lofty research project for one lone undergraduate student. Several scholars have studied Fijian since the arrival of Christianity to the islands in the mid-nineteenth century. Just seven years ago, the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah began teaching missionaries in the Fijian language. The program at the MTC is the longest continuous program for the teaching of Fijian outside of Fiji. This project was not meant to be the sole ‘building’ of Fijian language knowledge, but to research and assess current methods of Fijian teaching and propose changes for …

Word Sense Disambiguation Through Analogical Modeling, Deryl Keith Hatch, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In the early twentieth century, throngs of male Greek immigrants came to Utah. They left their homeland seeking to save their families from impending poverty and to escape draft by the Greek and Turkish armies.1 The jobs they took in Utah mines, smelters, and rail yards were lowpaying and dangerous, but these were the least of the troubles waiting for Greeks in Utah. They found Mormons and other Utah residents to be inhospitable and strange, and they quickly learned to isolate themselves in all-Greek communities.