Linguistics Commons^™

Non-Standard Italian Dialect Heritage Speakers' Acquisition Of Clitic Placement In Standard Italian, Lionel Chan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the acquisition of object clitic placement in Standard Italian by heritage speakers (HSs) of non-standard Italian dialects. It compares two different groups of Standard Italian learners--Northern Italian dialect HSs and Southern Italian dialect HSs--whose heritage dialects contrast with each other in clitic word order. The syntactic constructions tested include restructuring contexts (i.e., constructions in which clitic climbing can take place), and negative first- and second-person informal imperatives. The overarching research question guiding this pilot study is to determine what influences non-standard Italian dialect HSs' clitic placement when learning these constructions in Standard Italian. Three possible sources that …

The Effect Of Morphological Awareness On Reading Comprehension: A Study With Adolescent Spanish-English Emergent Bilinguals, Rebecca Curinga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present research examines the role of morphological awareness in reading comprehension of high school emergent bilinguals. As an increasing number of research studies contribute to our understanding of morphological awareness, i.e. the ability to reflect on and manipulate morphologically complex derived words, we are better able to appreciate some essential components of reading that may have been overlooked in past decades. Previous research suggests that morphological awareness contributes to academic reading vocabulary and higher-level text comprehension, both crucial to the success of secondary school students in the United States (U.S.).

The population in the present study is newcomer Spanish-speaking …

Battles With Words: Literate And Linguistic Resistance In Multi-Ethnic U.S. Literature And Everyday Life, Melissa A. Dennihy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Battles with Words analyzes the role of multi-ethnic U.S. literature as an alternative form of cultural production which critiques and challenges U.S. linguistic and literate hegemony and homogeneity. The texts comprising this field continually emphasize the ways in which words, through language and literacy, become tools of power and action used by the ethnically marginalized to negotiate everyday advantages for themselves and challenge the linguistic and cultural domination of Anglo America. Through their critiques of the culture of English-only monolingualism that has continued to dominate the national landscape of the U.S. throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, these authors indicate …

The Inner Workings Of Text Summarization Systems, Hope Cotton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper investigates automatic text summarization systems (ATS). To begin, a general description of how some ATS systems operate is provided. Following is a report on the testing of two summarization systems, Mead and SweSum. News articles from online sources were used for testing. Analyzing each system's output under different parameter settings helped to uncover (to some extent) the architecture of these summarizers. Both systems were compared as to how user-focused they are, how informative the summaries are in relation to the source document, and how punctuation and format are reconstructed in a summary.

January 30, 2014: Triezenberg Article Accepted, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Modeling Dialogue Structures, Rebecca D. Rees, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Within every human being lies the desire and the power to communicate—both to decide what to say and when to say it, and to unravel the meaning in someone else’s message. And dialogue is our fundamental tool of communication. Even a writer must take into account their intended audience and the most successful way to convey their “monologue”; my paper, for example, even if put away on some forgotten library shelf, will complete the communicative exchange (which I began when I started writing) the moment a reader picks it up, dusts it off, and opens the cover. The message will …

Linguistics And Law: An Assessment Of Linguistic Contributions In The Courtroom, Jordan Toone, Dr. Cynthia Hallen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Linguistics has provided critical and clarifying evidence in the courtroom for decades. Not only have linguists and linguistic theory assisted the upholding of U.S. law but both have provided professional expertise in disputes throughout the world. The exciting correlation between linguistics and law has long been developing, while the assessment and evaluation of the relationship is in its infant stage and is yet to be fully established in professional research and publication.

The Language And The Law: Trademark Dilution Online, David Stankiewicz, Dr. William Eggington

Journal of Undergraduate Research

One of the most important areas of legal dispute today is internet trademark law. This has become an increasingly greater concern as more and more web pages grab for consumer attention. Many legal questions remain unanswered, and perhaps the most important of these is “Do we apply the old laws directly to cyberspace?” This question became a practical concern with “Kelley Blue Book v. Primdedia, Inc.”

Cross-Cultural Communication In The Medical Setting, David M. Smith, Dr. Bill Eggington

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Communication between patients and physicians is perhaps the single most important issue in providing quality health care to a community. When segments of this community come from different cultural backgrounds and speak different languages, effective communication becomes more difficult. Over the last several years, Utah Valley has grown significantly more culturally and linguistically diverse. As a linguistics student with plans to attend medical school I wanted to research the current situation of cross-cultural care in the community and make suggestions for improvements in the future.

Dialect And Characterization In Mountain Meadows, Adrienne Landes, Dr. David Bowie

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Great writers are often praised for their fine ear for dialogue; Mark Twain, Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy all had the talent for recreating discourse that gives their work authenticity and their characters individuality. While I will not be writing about my contemporary neighbors and countrymen, as did these authors, I have studied the language of my characters in an effort both to enrich the body of existing linguistic research, and also as background research for a play about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The best dialogue makes use of the eccentricities unique to a society, thus I have recorded the …

Vowel Laxing In Utah English: Early Findings Of The Early Utah English Project, Ellen Lund, Dr. David Bowie

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The study of dialect formation typically consists of examining changes within an already established dialect region, such as those caused by large-scale immigration or an extension of a previously existing dialect region. Utah English, on the other hand, was formed by native English speakers settling outside existing dialect regions. While this type of dialect formation has occurred before, usually only written records (if any) exist to document changes. The study of Utah English formation is a rare opportunity, because audio recordings of these dialect speakers were made.

Morphologically Parsing The Cebuano Lexicon, Jarren Bodily, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit of meaning such as a prefix, a root word, or a suffix. Morphology then, is the study of the processes by which morphemes combine to form words.1 Understanding how words are formed is imperative to such applications as speech recognition, web searches, and corpus searches, which depend on identifying every instance of a word, including all inflected forms. For example, a search for the word run must recognize running, runner, and ran as possible results even though they have additional morphemes or irregular conjugated forms. In addition to technical applications, understanding morphology is …

Armenian Language Textbook: A Communicative Approach To Language Learning, John Henry Jorgensen, Dr. Cynthia Hallen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In the Post-Soviet era, there has been a dearth of language materials available to those wishing to learn the Armenian language. Thorough language texts are simply not available in Eastern Armenian, the official language of the Republic of Armenia. The small number of texts that exist are primarily geared toward native Russian speakers who wished to learn Armenian during the former Soviet regime.

Phrasal Cloning Through Analogical Modeling Of Language, Deryl K. Hatch, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Analogical Modeling (AM) is an algorithm for systematically comparing related sets of data (‘vectors’) in search of patterns of recurrence or dominance, whether they be apparent or not, in order to predict the likely outcome of novel occurrences. As an alternative to rule-based explanations of language, for example, it allows analogy to predict behavior, instead of rules prescribing that behavior. The motivation behind this approach is the idea that the human mind learns and processes language more by analogy than through applying hierarchal rules. It has successfully modeled many tendencies in language: historical change in English, irregularities and “exceptional” behavior …

Two-Level Persian Morphology Engine, Jonathan Dehdari, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The Persian language, or Farsi, stands in a unique position in the international scene for political, religious, and historical reasons. With over 60 million speakers in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, interest has been growing lately in the West in using current technologies to better manipulate information in Farsi. In order to utilize Farsi data effectively, computers must be able to understand its morphology, or the individual components of a word. This understanding of morphology is necessary because of the language’s productive usage of affixes, as well as the substantial interaction between its morphology and its phonology and orthography. I have …

Task-Centered Conversation Systems For Computer-Assisted Language Learning, Aric Bills, Dr. Deryle Lonsdale

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Many language educators have envisioned computer systems capable of providing language learners with intelligent spoken interaction in the target language. Although we can’t expect to see a fully conversant computer for years to come, there are several resources available which can be used to make scaled-down, domain-restricted, speech-driven conversational computer systems from which language learners can benefit. Many of these resources are free for academic use and can be used on a personal computer. My project explores new ways to combine these resources to create useful task-centered conversational systems.

January 21, 2014: Gigante To Deliver Keynote Lecture, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

Self-Efficacy In Low-Level English Language Learners, Laura F. Blumenthal

Dissertations and Theses

Accounting for differences in second language proficiency attainment is an important area of inquiry in the study of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Accounts of the language acquisition process have generally come from cognitive or psychological perspectives, which view language learning as primarily an internal mental/emotional process, or from sociocultural or critical perspectives that emphasize the influence of the learner's social environment. Research on variability in language learning has also failed to take into account the learning experiences of low-level learners.

This study adopted a social-psychological perspective on language acquisition that focused on the role of self-efficacy in learning, and applied …

A Review Of The Routledge Encyclopedia Of Second Language Acquisition, Avizia Long

Faculty Publications

A review of The Routledge encyclopedia of second language acquisition, by Peter Robinson (Ed.). New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. Pp. xxiv + 756.

Hoisan-Wa In Jest: Humor, Laughter, And The Construction Of Counter-Hegemonic Affect In Contemporary Chinese American Language Maintenance, Genevieve Leung

Rhetoric and Language Faculty Publications and Research

This research examines the language and cultural maintenance of Chinese Americans of a specific heritage: Hoisan-wa people. Hoisan-wa is one of the languages linking nearly all early Chinese immigrants in the U.S., but this language background has been pushed aside by the presence of other Chinese languages in America, such as Standard Cantonese and Mandarin. It has also been perpetually omitted from research for the last 150 years.

Drawing from 93 sociolinguistic interviews with Hoisan-wa heritage people, I explore instances of humor and laughter as these participants talk about their cultural and linguistic heritage. Home and family remain two of …

Lateralización De /ɾ/ Implosiva: La Conciencia Fonológica Y Sus Manifestaciones En El Español Puertorriqueño Oral Y Escrito (Lateralization Of Syllable Final /ɾ/: Phonological Consciousness And Its Manifestations In Oral And Written Puerto Rican Spanish), Antonio Medina-Rivera

World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

This study examines the process of lateralization of syllable final / r / in Puerto Rican Spanish. In addition to analyzing the process in oral speech, this study takes into consideration written registers as well. The results show that the process of lateralization goes beyond oral registers among Puerto Rican Spanish. However, the manifestation of the lateral variant does not only occur as a result of neutralization or confusion between 'r' and 'I.' There seems to be a ludic function and evident intentionality in the use of lateral variant, that in some ways shows a mark of identity among Puerto …

L2 Perception Of Spanish Palatal Variants Across Different Tasks, Christine Shea, Jeffrey Renaud

Spanish: Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works

While considerable dialectal variation exists, almost all varieties of Spanish exhibit some sort of alternation in terms of the palatal obstruent segments. Typically, the palatal affricate [ɟʝ] tends to occur in word onset following a pause and in specific linear phonotactic environments. The palatal fricative [ʝ] tends to occur in syllable onset in other contexts. We show that listeners’ perceptual sensitivity to the palatal alternation depends upon the task and exposure to Spanish input. For native Spanish listeners, the palatal alternation boosts segmentation accuracy on an artificial speech segmentation task and also reduces latencies on a phonotactically-conditioned elision task. L2 …

Linguistic Advocacy As A Bridge Between Disciplines, David Bowie, Clare Dannenberg

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

Linguistics involves, at its core, advocacy for a key part of human existence: No matter our linguistic specialty, we advocate for human language on a variety of different levels from the social and political to the scientific. Certainly, as educators, our position as advocates leaks into our pedagogy as we try to instill in our students both the rote knowledge of our discipline and also the responsibility of utilizing that knowledge in the “real world.” Many of us even create assignments that engage our students to become real-world advocates, and yet these assignments may remain within the silos of our …

Linguistic Foundations For L2 Pronunciation Teaching, Kathy L. Sands

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

In this session I present a course I am proposing (and will pilot in short form this summer in Mongolia) entitled “Linguistic Foundations for L2 Pronunciation Teaching.” This course is designed to provide language-teaching majors with key linguistic foundation in phonetics and phonology to be able to analyze the linguistic source of pronunciation errors accurately and provide students with clear explanations and effective, individualized coaching. For non-native speakers of the language they will be teaching, the course is designed as well to strengthen their own pronunciation. A major component of the course will be hands-on working with L2 speakers, chosen …

Language, Gender, And Culture, Janie Rees-Miller

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

At a small college with no linguistics department and no major or minor, all linguistics courses must satisfy some general education requirements or major/minor requirements in another discipline. The course Language, Gender, and Culture was designed to satisfy the GE requirement for a course in diversity and/or global perspectives and may also be used for the Gender Studies minor. In order to satisfy these various requirements and to appeal to the broadest spectrum of students, the course has been constructed so that course content and readings include data from a variety of languages and cultures, concepts of gender and the …

Teaching To The Teachers: Secondary Education English Students In The Introductory Linguistics Course, Julie S. Amberg, Deborah J. Vause

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

Non-linguistic majors can benefit from well-designed lessons in the introductory linguistics course that raise issues students will need to know about in their future careers. At our institution, the introductory linguistics course is populated by students majoring in English Literary Studies, Secondary Education English, and Professional Writing. Secondary Education English (SEE) majors take Language and Linguistics because they must fulfill requirements mandated by the state: knowledge of morphology, phonology, syntax, history of the English language, and so on. In addition to these required subjects, we introduce other issues as well that we feel are essential to developing these particular students’ …

Linguistics And Tesol At Suny Oswego, Jean Ann, Bruce Long Peng

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

We are linguists with tenure homes in a School of Education (SOE). We were charged with (i) reviving a languishing undergraduate Linguistics major, and (ii) creating a new TESOL Program for undergraduate students destined for NYS certification to teach English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) in K-12 settings. We argued for a subset of courses in the linguistics major to serve as the arts and sciences concentration for the TESOL major. We advise and teach both the TESOL and Linguistics majors. Our teaching loads are about half in the School of Education (SOE) and half in the College of …

Linguistic Weeds: Popping Up Everywhere, Lynn Burley

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

The study of language is a part of a dozen other disciplines on any average sized campus, and should be a part of every general education program precisely because it is a part of so many other disciplines. Our job is to not only provide students with exceptional undergraduate and graduate linguistics degrees, but to ensure that students are exposed to linguistics in their general studies and that students have the opportunity to take linguistics courses as appropriate for their other majors and minors. The University of Central Arkansas (UCA) linguistics faculty is doing this by offering interdisciplinary programs, creating …

Transitioning From Serving Others’ Students To Serving Our Own, Julie Roberts

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

The current study focuses on a linguistics program in the unusual situation of having emerged from another department. Therefore, the program began by creating classes that would be of interest and relevance to other fields, and, only after the formation of the stand-alone major (2008) and minor (2006), began to fill in with classes that are important to linguists but less “marketable” outside that program. The presentation will focus on the following strategies for maintaining and expanding our relevance to other majors and to the university as a whole and the success and challenges of each:

1. Use of cases/examples …

Weaving Linguistics Into A Range Of Fabrics, Sharon Klein

Taking Linguistics Beyond Linguistics Programs and Departments Symposium

No linguist is ever at a loss to understand how attention to any aspect of language as an object of inquiry can contribute to the context where the piece might be found. But linguists rarely get consulted, because what is also true is that virtually no one beyond the landscape of linguistic study is likely even to know that such a perspective on language exists, much less that it might truly be useful. Waiting for this state of affairs to change is fruitless—surely frustrating—and many of us choose to ignore the views “out there” keeping our individual and collective focus …