Linguistics Commons^™

Onomatopoeia In The Digital Comic The Wormworld Saga (2010), Nur Kholidah, Julia Wulandari

International Review of Humanities Studies

This study examines the forms and meanings of onomatopoeia derived from concrete sounds in the digital comic The Wormworld Saga. The study aims to explore the use of onomatopoeia in The Wormworld Saga and to describe its forms and meanings using a descriptive qualitative method. This study analyzes the forms of onomatopoeia based on the categories proposed by Gross (1988) and analyzes their meanings based on the classification proposed by Körtvélyessy and Štekauer (2024). The results show that there are 54 onomatopoeia classified as concrete sounds. In terms of form, the most common onomatopoeia are non-word forms, accounting for 41 …

The Role Of Cumulative Usage In Language Learning And Language Variation: Evidence From Spanish Voiced Stops, Sarah Lease

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation investigates the cumulative repercussions of a word’s typical context of use on lexical representations and speech production, both in cases of language learning and language variation, through the lens of Usage-Based Linguistics. The data come from sociolinguistic interviews with Spanish-speaking children and adults of Mexican heritage living and working in the Pacific Northwestern United States. Each study examines Spanish word-initial /bdɡ/ productions using a myriad of statistical approaches. The dissertation adds to our understanding of the long-term storage of variation in lexical representations, as well as its nuanced impact on children’s and adults’ speech production. The dissertation also …

Introduction To Phonology Ling 323, Ibrahim Abu Elrob

Open Educational Resources

The sound system of languages and underlying representation of the sound structure and lexicon. Analysis of data from different languages; investigation of the differences and similarities in the sound systems of different languages. Exploration of language universals.

Pinky Extension In American Sign Language: Evidence For A Lexically Restricted Morphological Process, Laurel Whitsett

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

This study investigates pinky extension (PE) in American Sign Language (ASL). PE involves extending the pinky finger in signs, even though this feature is not present in standard dictionary representations of those signs. Although PE has been previously described as conveying emphasis, this account does not fully explain its distribution. This study asks whether PE reflects a meaningful part of how signs are structured in ASL, rather than a matter of individual style or variation. Focusing on adjectives, it examines whether PE interacts with sentence position. In ASL, certain adjectives may appear either before (prenominally) or after (postnominally) the noun …

Phonology, Geoffrey S. Nathan

English Faculty Research Publications

This paper explores the ways in which phonology is both structured by the same principles as other aspects of language but is also different, because the interaction between the substance of phonology and the human bodies used to produce and perceive it are much more tightly integrated than is the case with the structures of words, sentences and other aspects of language. Cognitive Grammar holds that the structure of language is abstracted from its use (the theory is ‘usage-based’), and this has resulted in views of the nature of language that differ radically from the dominant generative paradigm. However, the …

Saussure’S Universal Distinctive Feature Dimensions, Thomas M. Eccardt

Publications and Research

This paper revisits Saussure’s scalar analysis of phonemes, offering a modern reinterpretation that replaces binary features with phonological dimensions grounded in measurement theory. By redefining Saussure’s [openness] and [backness] as ordered scales and Chomsky and Halle’s “combination and concatenation” as partially ordered scales, the paper introduces a notion of “[phono]logical simultaneity.” This framework renders the variously-defined phoneme and segment redundant, and shifts the focus of distinctiveness to the linguistic sign, the morpheme. It demonstrates how phonological dimensions link continuous articulations and acoustic signals (e.g., F1 and F2) with discrete linguistic signs through calibrated distinctive features. The analysis identifies Saussure’s two …

Muzibogun Research Symposium Poster, Serena Parra, Maurissio Gonzalez, Renee Alonzo, Cj Spears

Team - Muzibogun - Documents

This is the research poster which we presented at the 2025 Research Symposium

Theshrahk Thwath Phonological Inventory, Mary Arnolds, Sofia Farias, Alexandra Renteria, Nicholas Denmark

Team - Theshrahk Thwath - Documents

This document contains all of the phonemes present in Theshalshe with their corresponding glyphs.

Frequency Distribution Of Graphemic-Phonemic Correspondences Of Vowels In English Children's Literature, Steven Michael Paquin

Graduate Masters Theses

Phonics instruction is widely regarded as the most efficacious method for teaching children to read English. In order to acquire reading, young-learners must connect orthography to phonology. An obstacle to English reading acquisition is the language’s opaque orthography. Its grapheme to phoneme correspondence is not 1:1. Instead, a range of multi-letter strings, or graphotactics, correspond to various phonemic sequences. This network of graphophonemic correspondences renders English reading acquisition an arduous undertaking for young-learners. Phonics curricula like Letters and Sounds (Department for Education and Skills, 2007) in the U.K. and UFLI Foundations (Lane et. al., 2022) in the U.S. aid young-learners …

Production Of Labiodental Fricative /V/ In Heritage Speakers Of Spanish, Andrea Michelle Nunez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

AbstractThe present study investigates the factors that influence Heritage Spanish speakersâ?? production of the allophone [v]â??namely its corresponding orthography ( vs. ), the phonological context in which it is produced (VCV vs. NCV, where V = vowel, C = consonant, N = /n/), and participantsâ?? language dominance (Spanish vs. English). More specifically, this study seeks to determine whether, for these Spanish speakers, [v] contrasts with /b/ (hence, /v/) or is an allophone of /b/. Standard Spanish does not have /v/, but it has â??an orthographic form of /b/, which in turn has (at least) two allophonic realizations: [b] after nasals …

Minimal Wordlist Size For A Phonological Profile: New Evidence From Kra-Dai Languages, Kanyarin Boonkongchuen , '25

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

This study replicates, and extends to Kra-Dai languages, earlier work on minimal wordlist size needed to make a phonological profile of a language. Previous work on Australian languages recommended approximately 400 randomly sampled words to comprise a minimally complete profile in terms of reliably capturing every phoneme, and with accurate distribution. We survey 55 Kra-Dai languages to show that a longer minimal list is necessary, which we attribute to typological differences like larger consonant/vowel inventories. Given the widespread use of short wordlists in fieldwork, these results hold significance for designing language documentation surveys as well as projects that use legacy …

Topics In Wappo Phonology, Aaron W. Marks

Linguistics ETDs

This work examines various topics in the phonology and phonetics of the Wappo language (ʔonaʔcáṭis), an Indigenous American language spoken in Northern California. Utilizing both published written sources and the large audio corpus of spoken Wappo compiled by linguist Jesse Sawyer and housed at the California Language Archive at UC Berkeley, this work addresses several fundamental questions in Wappo phonology, including phoneme inventory structure, phonotactics, phoneme frequency, phonetics and allophony, word-level prosody, morphophonemics, and a detailed discussion of the context of Wappo phonology within the California Linguistic Area, including the question of a localized linguistic sub-area around the …

L2 Acquistion Of Korean: Phonology And Prosody, Angel M. Ray

2024 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Learning Korean as a second language (L2) has many challenges for a native (L1) non-native speaker. There is a new alphabet, word order, and new sounds that English does not have. Additionally, pronunciation and prosody are among the hardest aspects of the language to learn and master. Especially if one's native language is not tonal or does not have similar sounds in their inventory. The new sounds that a new language introduces can be too subtle to pick up when listening, making it difficult for non-native speakers to replicate in their speech. The language's flow of speech and rising and …

How Phonological And Syntactic Overlap Impact Cognate Processing Speeds In Bilinguals, Ella Marie Peterson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper investigates individuals who are proficient in two languages (bilinguals) and the speeds at which bilinguals process cognates (words with comparable form and meaning across languages). This paper cites two ongoing experiments: The Language Identification (LID) task and the Self-Paced Listening (SPL) task. Findings from the LID suggest that phonological overlap in cognates facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in isolation. Findings from the SPL suggest that syntactic overlap in cognates also facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in sentences. These findings are significant in that the tasks present cognates to participants in …

Stable Complexity: Verbal Inflection In Prominent And Frequent Environments, Lukas Denk

Linguistics ETDs

Despite presenting challenges for speakers, complex linguistic features such as lexically conditioned inflection (LCI) persist across different languages. LCI forms part of not entirely predictable paradigms which require lexeme-specific knowledge to master. Moreover, LCI remains one of the oldest morphological phenomena in certain languages. Previous research has linked the persistence of such complexity to language-external factors like geographic and social circumstances of speech communities.

This dissertation delves into the question whether language-internal properties are associated with the distribution of inflectional complexity. LCI is compared with other inflectional paradigms across 41 genetically and geographically distant languages. The study shows that LCI …

Conceptual Meaning In Phonology: Multimodal Iconic Expressions In Discourse Focus, David Páez Acevedo

Linguistics ETDs

In everyday communication, speakers go beyond words to synchronize speech sounds and gestures, adding nuanced meanings. For instance, in Colombian Spanish, recounting the distant past involves elongating words, modulating pitch, and using expressive hand movements. This dissertation explores this phenomenon, termed Multimodal Iconic Expressions (MMIEs), using Cognitive Linguistics and Cognitive Grammar. The quantitative study uncovers correlations between verb aspect, nominal quantification, and speech duration, revealing phono-iconic connections. The qualitative study examines construal operations giving rise to MMIEs across semantic domains. MMIEs predominantly appear in discourse Focus, with durative events and mass-like quantities exhibiting pronounced phono-iconic associations. Patterns include stress and …

Memetic Epidemiology: A Mathematical Model For Tracking The Spread Of Linguistic Features Across Western Europe, Benjamin Shavitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this dissertation is to introduce a powerful new method for demonstrating the role of contact in potential cases of linguistic contact spread, Memetic Epidemiology, that can facilitate extensive future research. This dissertation introduces and demonstrates the use of this method on examples from Western and Central Europe.

Part I begins by providing theoretical background for Memetic Epidemiology using understandings, including Memetics, and Evolutionary Phonology and its extensions. Part I proceeds to lay out the objective of Memetic Epidemiology: to provide a new means of demonstrating that contact influenced the rise of linguistic features in certain languages during …

The Distribution Of Tone In Shanghainese Monosyllables: An Optimality Theory Approach, Jamie Xu

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

This paper aims to create an Optimality Theory ranking of tonal phonology constraints in Shanghai Chinese (Shanghainese) monosyllables. Previous research on tonal phonology in Shanghainese preceded the more recent research on Optimality Theory which may provide new principles to justify the language’s tonal phonology system. I use inputs composed of High (H) and Low (L) tone combinations and 8 constraints, (3 faithfulness and 5 markedness constraints) to motivate the distribution of tones in Shanghainese monosyllable in four environments: KV, GV, KVʔ, GVʔ. The faithfulness constraints include DEP, MAX, and IDENT. The markedness constraints include *KL, *GH, POLARITY, [AGREE]ʔ, and *L/ʔ. …

Comparing Speech Sound Production Skills Across Two-Year Olds With Varying Language Proficiency Using Phonetic Inventory And Word-Shape Complexity, Makayla Eberly

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Purpose. Young children, who by the time they are two years of age, have 50 or fewer words in their expressive lexicon and produce few to no two-words phrases are often identified as demonstrating “late language emergence” (LLE). The nature of the relationship between speech sound (phonological) production development and LLE continues to be an important area of inquiry in the field of speech-language pathology with clinical intervention implications. The present study aimed to further distinguish and confirm associations between phonological productions and language proficiency status at two years of age.

Method. Participants (n = 20) were divided into two …

A Phonological Analysis Of Asu, James Passetti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides an analysis of the phonology of Asu, a small and endangered Nupoid language of Nigeria. The corpus of data used for the analysis comes from more than two hours of recordings of a word list for the language, provided to me by the historian and anthropologist Constanze Weise.

The Asu language recognizes only two syllable structures, CV and CGV. The only syllables without onsets are formed by four noun class prefixes [è-,ē-, à-,ā-], that create Asu nouns without onsets word-initially.

The phonemic inventory of consonants consists of seven pairs of corresponding voiced-voiceless obstruents at the labial, alveolar, …

Seeing Is Believing: The Role Of The Visual Stimulus In Cognitive Knowledge Of Sound Structure, John M. Sances

Linguistics ETDs

Usage-based Phonology proposes that language users’ knowledge is stored in the form of exemplars reflecting experience of language usage. Exemplars encompass all visual and auditory information perceived during a language interaction, but few studies have examined the role that visual information plays. This dissertation addresses this question through two experiments. Experiment 1 tested perceptions of rounding via the visual signal (lip protrusion) in native French speakers. Participants perceived rounding in both visual and auditory signals, suggesting they may store the visual stimulus in their exemplars. Experiment 2 tested native American English speakers learning French on perceptions of rounding using audio …

The Phonology And Syntax Of Grammatical Tone In Copala Triqui, Jamillah Shantel Rodriguez

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Copala Triqui is an Otomanguean language of Oaxaca, Mexico with a highly complex tone system. In Copala Triqui, the lowering of tone from an upper register tone to a lower register tone acts as a conveyor of grammatical information. Tone lowering occurs across many syntactic environments in the language (Hollenbach, 1984; Broadwell; 2011; Broadwell, 2016; Broadwell & Clemens, 2017; Rodriguez & Clemens, 2020). In this thesis, I consider two aspects of tone lowering: i) the representation of tone lowering in the phonology and ii) the syntactic trigger for tone lowering across multiple environments.

Singing And Pronunciation: A Review Of The Literature, Kassidy Joyner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Observed differences exist in the pronunciation abilities of individual language learners, especially adult learners. Musical ability and experience are possible factors that have been attributed to language pronunciation abilities. Although there has been a large amount of research concerning the effects of general musical ability and training on language abilities, very few studies have investigated the musical sub-category of singing. Research on the use of songs in the language classroom has largely tested the effects of song on vocabulary acquisition, while very few studies have explored the effects of song on pronunciation. Given that singing and pronunciation both use similar …

The Effect Of Dialect On Lexical Recall, Chandler Douglas

Honors Theses

Investigating the performance of listeners as they attempt to recall words in both a familiar and unfamiliar dialect could likely lend some insight to the cognitive processes concerning speech perception. Specifically, the current study investigates whether speech spoken in an unfamiliar accent in a listener’s language influences comprehension and, therefore, memory recall of content. To test this, a group of speakers of General American English speakers and a group of speakers of Southern American English listened to two sets of words: one in General American and one in Southern American English. Participants were then asked to write down or type …

Theory And Practice: Phonological Awareness Instructional Methods Used In Deaf Education, Mary Cantino

Theses and Dissertations

An inequality in literacy rates exists between deaf children and their hearing peers. Research indicates that visual phonic interventions such as Visual Phonics used alongside a phonics program enhances grapheme-phoneme correspondence. That practice in turn improves overall literacy achievement. However, as rates deaf literacy continue to lag ongoing research indicates that teachers may be ill prepared to use research-based interventions. This study seeks to identify the frequency of teacher implementation of Visual Phonics interventions as well as their exposure to these interventions via teacher education and professional development. This study will investigate if the presence of these elements by using …

The Vowels Of Urban Qatari Arabic, Mark Daniel Shockley

Theses and Dissertations

Urban Qatari Arabic is a variety of Gulf Arabic [afb] spoken by Qataris with traditionally sedentary tribal backgrounds. This study examines phonetic and phonological aspects of Urban Qatari Arabic vowels using acoustic phonetic data gathered in Qatar. A new phonemic vowel inventory is proposed, including five long vowels and two short vowels. This finding contradicts published studies on Gulf Arabic, which include three or more short vowels; however, it is not unexpected when studies are compared from nearby Arabic varieties. The vowel inventory is also investigated using four linear mixed-effects regression models. In Gulf Arabic, variation in short vowel backness …

The Phonology Of Mbati, Sarah Gloria Lepage

Theses and Dissertations

This description of the phonology of Mbati/Isongo (C13) (mdn) of CAR is based on a word-list recorded by native Mbati speakers. A description of nominal and verbal morphology is included as a foundation for discussing morphophonemic processes. Only open syllables and consonant-glide clusters are allowed. Alveolar and velar plosives are affricated or palatalized before the high front vowel. Prenasalized consonants act as phonological units, rather than clusters. Mid-vowels within noun roots harmonize according to the feature [ATR]. [−ATR]-dominated vowel assimilation occurs within verb stems. Vowel hiatus is resolved by glide formation, diphthong formation, elision, and epenthesis, depending on the vowels …

Tones In Shupamem Reduplication, Magdalena Markowska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis presents an analysis of reduplication in Shupamem, an Eastern Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon. In this language nouns, verbs, and adjectives undergo full segmental reduplication. At the suprasegmental level, on the other hand, tones of the reduplicants are not entirely faithful to their bases. The tonal asymmetry of the reduplicted phrase also relies on the grammatical function of that phrase within a clause, as well as on the neighboring grammatical words, such as tense particles. This morphological process gives also an insight to an underlying tonal representations in Shupamem. Nominal reduplication, in particular, provides a proof of the …

The Sounds Of Sikles Gurung: A Phonetic And Phonological Description Of A Tibeto-Burman Language Of Nepal, Danielle Ronkos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation describes the sound system of the Sikles variety of Gurung, or Tamu Kyui, a Tibeto-Burman minority language of Nepal. Drawing on data collected with the help of Sikles Gurung speakers living in Nepal and New York between 2014 and 2018, it presents evidence that the phonetics and phonology of this variety differ from descriptions of other varieties. Major findings include contrastive vowel duration, a 2-category register system rather than the 4-tone system reported for other varieties, and allophonic secondary consonant articulations assigned by the backness of adjacent vowels and glides. The secondary articulation system is linked to the …

Adding Production To High Variability Phonetic Training, Caleb Crosby

Honors Theses

The effectiveness of adding a production component to a High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) regimen to improve native Japanese speaker’s pronunciation of English [b], [v], [f], and [h] was investigated. L1 Japanese-speaking English learners were recruited as participants, and a pretest-posttest procedure was used to evaluate improvement at production of the target consonants. For the pretest and posttest, recordings were taken of participants pronouncing twelve tokens, and the recordings were rated for intelligibility by a phonetically trained native English-speaking rater. Participants were divided into two groups. Group A received only HVPT training, and group B received a regimen of half …