Linguistics Commons^™

Order Of Operations In Sociophonetic Data Analysis, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

It’s difficult to say objectively whether a vowel is shifted:

• Relationship to other vowels (which may also be shifting)
• Benchmarks don’t work because of normalization and dialect differences

Compare to ANAE Benchmarks:

More processing involved:

• remove stopwords
• remove outliers
• remove diphthongs
• remove presonorants
• isolating midpoints
• specific normalization procedure
• remove unstressed vowels

Seven steps = 5040 combinations

What Can Vowel Formant Trajectories Tell Us About Language Change?, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Recent Developments

Easier to extract trajectory data:

• FAVE is good, but only returns 5 points, English-only
• Fast Track has more gradience, cleaner, any language.

Easier to analyze trajectory data:

• Generalized additive mixed effects models
• "Difference smooths” can tells us where along the trajectory we see statistical significance between two curves.

We can analyze the trajectories themselves , rather than properties about them.

Overview

Vowel shifts may involve changes in trajectory:

• Data: sociolinguistic interviews in Cowlitz County
• Phenomenon: The “Elsewhere Shift”

Vowel shift might night involve changes in trajectory:

• Data: Legacy linguistic atlas interviews in the South
• Phenomenon: Southern Vowel Shift …

Yolkkh: The Story Of My People, Amna Zelimkha Yandarbin

Theses and Dissertations

The name of my project is: Yolkkh, The Story of My People. With this project I present a series of scarves each one bearing an illustrated scene in order to tell a story – my story and the story of the Noxci people. Noxci are the people who are referred to as “Chechens” by Russians and are generally known by that title. As a Muslim, I have witnessed the way Western media tend to dehumanize my community. In order to contrast this dehumanizing process, I thought that telling the story of my family would help reverse Islamophobic tendencies and raise …

Ragam Budaya Penggunaan Piranti Sumpit Masyarakat Bandung, Selvia Selvia

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Food is an inseparable part of a culture and serves as one of the characteristic markers of a culture or ethnic groups. The arrival and presence of the Chinese ethnic group has contributed to the diversity of the Indonesian culture in general. One of Chinese dishes that have become a favorite delicacy in Bandung is noodles, a wide variety of which is sold in various areas around the city. Noodles are considered as a substitute for daily staple food and have become part of Indonesian identity in general. This field study used the descriptive qualitative method. Data collection was carried …

Jalan Gender, Jalan Spiritual: Menggali Pembentukan Gender Project Dalam Konteks Pengalaman Keberagamaan Perempuan, Katrin Bandel, Anne Shakka, Gusnita Linda, Yustina Devi Ardhiani

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Using the method of collaborative autoethnography, this study critically reflects on the life stories of three women from different backgrounds by focusing on gender and religion. One of the main aspects that we examined is gender projects, i.e. the projections people make when imagining their future gender roles and identities. As a result of our (self-) observations, we found that, while at first the gender project of those women was formed by the patriarchal gender order of their society, as time progresses, after living through and evaluating a variety of often traumatic experiences, they developed their own gender projects more …

Peran Perempuan Dalam Tradisi Sedekah Gunung Di Desa Pelangas, Kecamatan Simpang Teritip, Kabupaten Bangka Barat, Putra Pratama Saputra, Tiara Ramadhani, Michael Jefri Sinabutar

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Women have a role in a particular culture, and this can serve as a way to express their freedom and to be on an equal footing with their male counterparts. The Jering ethnic group in Palangas Village, Bangka Island, has a traditional ritual that is still carried out by the community, namely sedekah gunung. This ritual is carried out once a year, coinciding with the 14th night of the full moon. This ritual serves as an expression of gratitude for the good harvest that occurred for the entire year. This study used the descriptive qualitative method, while data collection techniques …

Pengaruh Profesi Tukang Cukur Dalam Transformasi Kampung Peundeuy, Banyuresmi, Garut, Hilyatun Nishlah, Dhita Hapsarani

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Being professional barbers from Garut—known as ASGAR, short for Asli Garut, which means ‘of Garut origin’—has been the main source of income for most men residing in Kampung Peundeuy, Banyuresmi Village, Garut Regency, West Java. The profession is considered so successful in providing financial welfare for the villagers and improving their social status that many of the residents decide to leave the village to expand their business elsewhere, especially in Jakarta and other big cities in West Java. This phenomenon has intensified since the 2000s until the residents finally dub Kampung Peundeuy as a “barber village” in West Java. In …

Beyond Midpoints: Vowel Dynamics Of The Low-Back-Merger Shift, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Conclusions

Summary:

• Here, as the vowels lowered/retracted, their trajectories changed too.
• This is not always the case! (cf. Stanley et al. forthcoming)
• Not an artifact of modeling! Each cohort had independent model fits.

Take-away:

• There is more to a vowel shift than its midpoints.
• More work needed on vowel trajectories to better describe change.

Sociolinguistics of vowel formant trajectories?

• What kind of sociolinguistic meanings are associated with trajectories?
• Yes, surrounding consonants affect trajectories
• They affect midpoints too but they still carry sociolinguistic meaning.
• Are we comfortable assuming trajectories are 100% phonetic?
• Are these trajectory differences perceptible?
• Stay tuned for experimental …

An Editing Process For Blind Or Visually Impaired Editors, Matt Baker, E.M. Nightingale, Suzy Bills

Faculty Publications

In the US, hundreds of thousands of individuals with visual disabilities work in occupations that typically entail editing text. Editing technologies for blind or visually impaired people have been analyzed by researchers for usability, accessibility, and feasibility. However, a tutorial is needed to provide blind or visually impaired workers with information on how to use these technologies. Key concepts: Technologies that blind or visually impaired individuals can use for editing text present challenges. Such challenges include the lack of usability in word processors’ text-editing features, navigational and sense-making issues with screen readers, limited text displayed by refreshable braille displays, and …

The Effect Of Prompt Accent On Elicited Imitation Assessments In English As A Second Language, Jacob G. Barrows, Troy L. Cox

Faculty Publications

Elicited imitation (EI) assessments have been shown to discriminate well between speakers across proficiency levels, but little has been reported on the effect L2 accent has on test-takers’ ability to understand and process the test items they hear. Furthermore, no study has investigated the effect of accent on test-taker perceptions of EI tests. This study examined the relationships among accent, accent familiarity, EI test item difficulty and test scores. To investigate, self-reports of students’ exposure to different varieties of English were obtained from a pre-assessment survey. An EI test (63 items) was then administered in which English language learners (n …

Dramaturgi Sakaiba Dalam Hibridisasi Budaya Minahasa Sulawesi Utara, Tony Tampake, Micchelle Hermanus

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This paper discusses the sakaiba ritual procession in Minahasa which is carried out every year by the Christian community to welcome the New Year. The research was conducted in Taratara village, Tomohon, North Sulawesi. This study focuses on the significance and meaning of the sakaiba ritual procession within the context of the hybridization of contemporary religious culture in Minahasa. By using the theoretical concepts of ritual and dramaturgy, as well as applying the descriptive qualitative methods, this research found that the sakaiba ritual procession is a liminal hinge that allows a peaceful encounter between the ancient Minahasa traditions and the …

Mother Goose As A Resource In Teaching Historical Linguistics, Dallin D. Oaks

Faculty Publications

Mother Goose and other nursery rhymes as authentic texts are valuable resources that can be used effectively to illustrate historical English language change. Even though these nursery rhymes contain some forms, structures, and word meanings that differ from the language of today, the texts are sufficiently recent that they are intelligible to modern audiences. This article will illustrate the relevance and usefulness of nursery rhymes in teaching about principles of language and language change, such as voicing, phonological processes, factors motivating phonological change, as well as actual changes in the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and lexicon of English.

Person-Marking In Máku, Chris Rogers Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

In Máku (an extinct language isolate), person marking is encoded by pronominal elements that are attached to bound pronominal roots, possessed nouns, and as subject and object argument agreement reference on verbs. However, when the contrasts between the various person-markers and their behaviors in the language are considered the system does not fit easily into the traditional analysis of three persons and two numbers. Rather, the organization of and relationships between the pronominal elements in Máku reveals a system based on the distinction of three persons (first, second and third), a two-way quantitative distinction (singular and non-singular), and a two-way …

Translanguaging And Reading Comprehension In A Second Language, Muhammad Asif Qureshi, Ahmad Aljanadbah

All Works

The current study examined the impact of translanguaging on second language reading comprehension. The study involved an experimental and a control group. The participants in the experimental group (n = 38) were offered four opportunities to engage Arabic–their first language–in comprehending a text in English. These occasions for translanguaging included: (a) receiving Arabic glosses (i.e., only meaning) for key terms in the text, (b) employing their first language for summarizing four paragraphs from the passage, (c) using their first language in discussion for comparing summaries with peers, and (d) consulting the Arabic meanings (provided) while attempting the vocabulary items. After …

Overhearers’ Perceptions Of Familiarity Between Interlocutors In Computer-Mediated Communication Based On Gif Usage, Alexa F. Druckmiller

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Given the ever-growing presence of computer-mediated communication (CMC), it is important to understand CMC and how it relates to communication in general. Despite considerable research on CMC, various features are still underrepresented, such as GIF communication. This study examines what GIF usage suggests about interlocutors’ social relationships. In particular, through a perception experiment among young adults, this study investigates how GIF usage affects perceptions of social closeness between interlocutors. I find that participants perceive interlocutors to be significantly closer when one responds to another with a GIF with embedded text instead of a text-only response, an effect that I link …

Gendered Use Of Language In Facebook Status Updates Among Jordanian And American Youths: A Sociopragmatic Study, Ashraf Wenas Al Sad

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The study examines the types of speech acts of Facebook status updates that are posted by Jordanian and American youth. The participants were from Yarmouk University which is located in northern Jordan and from West Virginia University which is located in the US. The data was elicited from 50 American males, 50 American females, 50 Jordanian males, and 50 Jordanian females. Searle’s taxonomy was used to do the content analysis of the data. Searle’s taxonomy and additional speech acts were found: directive, expressive, assertive, God’s invocation, humor, and quotation. The findings of the study indicate that the religious and cultural …

Heller (2008) And The Language Of The Second Amendment: Grammar, Meaning, And Canonical Conventions, James Vanden Bosch

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Legal scholars use linguistic tools in their work as a matter of course, and scholars of Constitutional law regularly engage in semantic analysis, trying to determine what specific words and phrases mean in context. Historical linguistics (the study of how language changes over time) and corpus linguistics (the analysis of large bodies of text, now typically aided by computers) also have roles to play in the study of Constitutional law, and these tools prove to be particularly helpful in the study of the 2008 Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment.

Putting Policy In Its Place: Policy Enactment And Engagement Through A Multiscalar Policy-Shed Framework, Barbara L. Maclennan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The objective of this research is to examine the spatial components integral to policy formation, implementation, and evaluation. The research uses solid waste as a case study to explore a multiscalar GIS policy-shed framework. To this end, the goal of this dissertation is to examine the spatial nature of public policy. The research applies spatial concepts and multiscalar methodological applications embedded within GIS and geovisualization to explore the complex spaces surrounding public policy implementation and evaluation.