Linguistics Commons^™

An Acoustic Phonetic Analysis Of African American English: A Comparative Study Of Two Dialects, Catherine A. Adams

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

In this thesis, I contribute acoustic phonetic data and analysis to the study of African American English (AAE). For this research, I collected speech samples of self-identified AAE speakers and speakers of a dominant coexisting dialect, the Northern Cities Shift (NCS). I analyze these samples to determine if vowel quality and vowel duration are consistently and predictably varied between the two dialects. Labov's Chain Shift Principles are used as the context for the results.

In my analysis, I find that both vowel quality and duration are different between AAE and NCS in ways previously undocumented in the linguistic literature. The …

On The Existence (And Distribution) Of Sentential Subjects, William D. Davies, Stanley Dubinsky

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Topicalization In Malagasy: Effects Of Teaching Malagasy As A Topic Language, Jeremy D. Workman

Theses and Dissertations

This study discusses teaching Malagasy as a second language. Malagasy is the native language spoken on the island of Madagascar. Traditionally, Malagasy has been taught as a language that is similar to English in the way that it uses active and passive voice constructions. However, most native-English students struggle to produce native-like utterances using non-active voice constructions in Malagasy. Recent studies have suggested that Malagasy more closely relates to Germanic V2 languages than it does to English (Pearson 2005, Hyams et al. 2006). This might explain why students taught Malagasy as an English-like language struggle. This study compares the relative …

The Spread Of Change In French Negation, Angus Grieve-Smith

Linguistics ETDs

Many varieties of French have changed over the years from expressing predicate negation (Geurts 1998) with ne alone, to the embracing construction ne ... pas, and then to postverbal pas alone (Jespersen 1917). When the increase in the frequency of ne ... pas over time is plotted on a graph, it takes the S shape of the logistic function (Kroch 1989). Bybee and Thompson (1997) note that "the type frequency of a pattern determines its degree of productivity," but "high frequency forms with alternations resist analogical leveling.' These two observations provide an explanation for the logistic progression observed by Kroch …

Language And Linguistics, J. J'Fellers, Theresa Mcgarry

ETSU Faculty Works

Excerpt: The ways in which language and linguistics figure in women’s science fiction reference communication both within human societies and among humans and other societies.

T-Glottalization In American English, David Eddington, Michael Taylor

Faculty Publications

In word-final prevocalic position (e.g., right ankle), there are various possible phonetic realizations of /t/ in American English: [t], [r], [?]. The present study focuses on the linguistic and social factors associated with the use of the glottal stop. Datat were gathered by having participants repeat sentences they were presented auditorily (e.g, She twisted her right ankle). The particular pronunciation of /t/ in the presented sentences was masked with a tone. Logistic regression analysis identified three significant factors: (1) glottal stops were favored by following front vowels; (2) younger female speakers were most likely to use glottal stops, which …

The Acquisition Of Pragmatic Competence: Compliment Response Strategies In Learners Of Spanish, James Bryant Smith

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The areas of Pragmatics and Second Language Acquisition have existed separately in the field of Linguistics for some time. Their connection, however, has more recently seen a great deal of study by researchers like Scarcella and Brunak (1981), Rintell (1981), Brown and Levinson (1987), Koike (1992, 1996), Saito, Beecken (1997), Félix-Brasdefer (2003, 2006) and Huth (2006). A common thread in these studies is the effect of language transfer or cross-linguistic influence that the first language has while learners are attempting to acquire the pragmatic and politeness principles that are central to the target language and culture. One speech act that …

Straight From The Mouth Of The Volcano: The Lowdown On Law, Language, And Latin@S, Ȧngel R. Oquendo

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: Latinos and Latinas at the Epicenter of Contemporary Legal Discourses. Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, March 2007.

Metaphorical Singular Reference: The Role Of Enriched Composition In Reference Resolution, Anne L. Bezuidenhout

Faculty Publications

It is widely accepted that, in the course of interpreting a metaphorical utterance, both literal and metaphorical interpretations of the utterance are available to the interpreter, although there may be disagreement about the order in which these interpretations are accessed. I call this the dual availability assumption. I argue that it does not apply in cases of metaphorical singular reference. These are cases in which proper names, complex demonstratives or definite descriptions are used metaphorically; e.g., ‘That festering sore must go’, referring to a derelict house. We are forced to give up dual availability in these cases because a process …

The Asteroid Puzzle And Games, Jeremiah Farrell, Karen Farrell

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Each of our two-person games is a word version variation from the tic-tac-toe or noughts and crosses family. It is well known that classic tic-tac-toe is a draw when expertly played. It is also clear that not all of its plays are equal- a strong move for the first player is to initially take the powerul center square. ASTEROID and ASTEROID II, on the other hand, are both completely symmetric (in the sense that all letters are used equally) and each have rather suble forced wins for either the first or second player.

Deictic Selves And Others In Pastaza Quichua Evidential Usage, Janis B. Nuckolls

Faculty Publications

This article clarifies the perspectival, deictic nature of evidentiality in Pastaza Quichua, a dialect of Quechua spoken in Amazonian Ecuador. I examine the discourse patterning of what have been called the direct and in direct experience morphemes and argue that a source-based characterization of these morphemes cannot be supported by the data. Using insights from liana Mushin's notion of epistemological stance, I outline the Quechua evidential system, identifying perspectives that may be divided into three main categories: the speaking self of a speech event, the speaking self of a narrated event, and a variety of stances that may categorized by …

Mayanwiki: An Online, Consensus-Based Linguistic Corpus Of The Mayan Hieroglyphs, Robbie A. Haertel

Theses and Dissertations

The writing system used by the ancient Maya civilization has intrigued researchers and aficionados for centuries. Now that it has mostly been deciphered, the emphasis in the field of Mayan epigraphy has shifted to a study of the system of phonological, morphological, and grammatical rules that once governed the language that the hieroglyphs encode. One of the most important resources for linguistic study of this type is a comprehensive, electronic corpus of texts to investigate phraseology, frequency information, and collocations. Because Mayan linguistic epigraphy is in the early stages, a publicly available, editable corpus would be an invaluable resource in …

A Liminal Examination Of Always Already Meaning Within Language, James Richard Starr

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis juxtaposes Plato's allegory of the cave with Jacques Derrida's concept of the always already aspect of meaning, a concept derived from Ferdinand de Saussure's work. This theoretical investigation examines the implications of universal Signified forms of word meanings for postmodern composition theory.

Missing Topics In Malagasy Headlines, Ileana Paul

French Studies Publications

No abstract provided.

F1 And Center Of Gravity Interplay In The Maintenance Of Phonological Height Within A Statistical Model Of A Communal Grammar: The Case Of Foodo [Atr] Acoustics, Colleen G. Anderson

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

This paper presents the notion of an idealized or communal grammar as a statistical model of mode, mean or median as emerging from a representative number of a population, rather than in individual speech, per se. Like other languages with a 9-vowel Cross Height Vowel Harmony (CHVH) system, the most reliable correlate of ATR is F1; [+ATR] vowels have lower F1 values than their [-ATR] counterparts, while F2 differences show considerable variation across speakers. F1, however, fails to maintain phonological height differences as the [+ATR] mid vowels of level 3 overlap in acoustic space with the [-ATR] high vowels of …

A Perception Study On The Third Tone In Mandarin Chinese, Rui Cao, Priyankoo Sarmah

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

This experimental study examines the role of the shape of the pitch contour in the perception of the Mandarin Chinese tone 3.2 A set of stimuli was constructed by varying the pitch of tone 3 on two conditions: (1) varying the duration of the dip (or turning point) and (2) varying the timing of the turning point (duration of the slope). The manipulated pitch contours of tone 3 were presented to the native speakers of Mandarin Chinese in two sets: (a) a set of speech stimuli and (b) a set of non-speech stimuli. The participants of the experiment were asked …

Argument Realization Of Chinese Result And Phase Complements, Han-Chun Huang

UTA Working Papers in Linguistics - Archive

This paper discusses result complements and phase complements in Chinese, both of which are postverbal elements. Despite their surface similarity, they are different with respect to argument realization. While the result complements allow complicated argument realization (in terms of semantic host, verbal transitivity, and subcategorization of objects), the phase complements function as lexical aspect markers, or Aktionsarten, and do not participate in argument realization. I adopt a constructional approach, particularly Boas’s (2003) event-frames and linking rules. Inverted causative resultative constructions in Chinese are also discussed. They are strong evidence for “constructional participants” that interact with event participants in determining syntactic …

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 …

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 …

Crossing Dependencies In Persian, Jonathan M. Dehdari

Theses and Dissertations

Languages occasionally have syntactic constructions that are difficult, if not impossible, to describe using a context-free grammar. One such construction is a crossing dependency. Crossing dependencies have been well studied for Dutch and Swiss German (Huybregts, 1976; Shieber, 1985), and recently for Tagalog (Maclachlan and Rambow, 2003). In this paper I propose that Persian exhibits crossing dependencies. In this SOV language, a light verb construction in the future tense becomes interrupted by a future auxiliary verb, which agrees with its subject in person and number. The future auxiliary also splits passive constructions in a similar manner. These forms present interesting …

Certainty Identification In Texts: Categorization Model And Manual Tagging Results, Elizabeth D. Liddy, Victoria L. Rubin, Noriko Kando

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

This chapter presents a theoretical framework and preliminary results for manual categorization of explicit certainty information in 32 English newspaper articles. Our contribution is in a proposed categorization model and analytical framework for certainty identification. Certainty is presented as a type of subjective information available in texts. Statements with explicit certainty markers were identified and categorized according to four hypothesized dimensions – level, perspective, focus, and time of certainty.

The preliminary results reveal an overall promising picture of the presence of certainty information in texts, and establish its susceptibility to manual identification within the proposed four-dimensional certainty categorization analytical framework. …

Really Intriguing, That Pred Np!, Ileana Paul, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Terminological Reflections Of An Enlightened Contextualist, Robert J. Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Problems With Steve Pinker's Mentalese: On The Implications Of Bilingualism, Marino Fernandes

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

A Computational Analysis Of Navajo Verb Stems, David Eddington, Jordan Lachler

Faculty Publications

One of the principal goals of linguistics is to find, classify, and describe relationships between words. Many formal mechanisms such as rules and constraints have been devised in order to show systematic relationships. Inflectional paradigms are a crucial component of a linguistic analysis that has applications for pedagogical grammars. For example, over the past 20 years there have been numerous Navajo textbooks produced that are aimed at beginning learners of the language. These include works such as Diné Bizaad Bóhoo'aah (Navajo Language Institute 1986), Diné Bizaad: Speak, Read, Write Navajo (Goossen 1995), and The Navajo Verb: A Grammar for Students …

'Field Linguistics' Takes Researchers To All Parts Of The Globe, David J. Silva

Linguistics & TESOL Faculty Publications & Presentations - Archive

No abstract provided.

Using Computer-Mediated Communication To Establish Social And Supportive Environments In Teacher Education, Nike Arnold, Lara Ducate, Lara Lomicka, Gillian Lord

Faculty Publications

This article examines social presence in virtual asynchronous learning communities among foreign language teachers. We present the findings of two studies investigating cross-institutional asynchronous forums created to engage participants in online dialogues regarding their foreign language teacher preparation experiences in and out of the classroom. Both studies took place during Fall 2003 and were conducted between first-time teacher/graduate students in four methodology courses at three large state universities. In the first study, students participated in weekly online exchanges in the form of dialogue journals for reflective teaching. In the second study, students were provided with specific topics to address using …

Phonological Adaptation Of Spanish Loanwords In Northern Moroccan Arabic, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, loanword phonology has attracted continuously growing attention as an area able to shed additional light on universal phonological patterns. The contexts and processes of loanword adaptation present a dy namic interaction between two distinct systems allowing for different theo retical interpretations (Paradis, 1996). Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993) has been suggested as a possible framework to analyze these processes (Yip, 1993; Katayama, 1998; Jacobs and Gussenhoven, 2000). The fact that OT recognizes the difference between languages as a difference in the ranking of the same universal constraints could explain the changes that loanwords may or may …

Review Of The Software "La Chaise Berçante", Lara Lomicka

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Variation In The Performance Of Speech Acts In Peninsular Spanish: Apologies And Requests, Laura Elizabeth Stapleton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines variations in the performance of speech acts and additional discourse features in situational speech patterns of Peninsular Spanish. Based on studies by Blum-Kulka, et al. (1989), nine situations were created, varying from less severe to more severe, to elicit natural responses for apologies and requests. Forty participants from Castile and Andalusia were interviewed, and the data were coded to examine the differences in speech act realizations and the use of specific discourse features. The participants’ responses were classified by regional, gender, and age differences for the data set. Sociolinguistic differences in the use of additional discourse features …