Linguistics Commons^™

Double Tense Marking In L1 Spanish Speakers/L2 English Learners, Vianney Zuniga

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The present study examines the effects of Form Focused Instruction plus corrective feedback on "double-tense marking" (Al-Makatrah et al. ,2017; Cancino et al. 1967) in past tense negative statements and wh-questions among advanced L2 English speakers (Candry, 2013). These are learners who have reached the fourth stage of sentential negation, having acquired the auxiliary "do" and inflecting it in the past tense producing "did". Some advanced L1 Spanish speaking English learners inflect the verbs in structures in which the auxiliary "do" is already inflected for the past tense as in:

1. "I didn't knew about chemistry"

2. "When did he …

Dismantling Anti-Blackness In Teacher Education: Centering Black Epistemologies To (Re)Construct Elementary Language Arts Education For Linguistic And Racial Justice, Jasmyn Kymberly Jones

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

Black students and their linguistic resources are undervalued, disdained, disrespected, and disregarded in language arts classrooms. Not only is Black Language often ignored in English language arts instruction, but language more generally remains largely hidden within elementary ELA. Elementary ELA educators are tasked with teaching a vast array of skills, content, and concepts. So, teacher education programs are responsible for ensuring that preservice teachers leave prepared to take on the task of cultivating language arts classrooms that foster students’ literacy development. However, traditionally, literacy teacher education and the ELA curriculum has maintained white mainstream English as the standard for which …

An Analysis Of Communication-Related Information And Services Offered To Parents Of Deaf Children In Puerto Rico, Brenda Belcher

Capstone Collection

The period from birth to five years is a critical stage for human language acquisition, and inadequate access to language during this period can cause far-reaching negative effects. Young deaf and hard-of-hearing children face barriers to acquiring language through speaking and listening techniques, and their parents must make consequential decisions about what communicative strategies to pursue for their child. In Puerto Rico, information and support around communication approaches flow to parents from a variety of sources, including the Island’s local Early Hearing Detection & Intervention (EHDI) system, three dedicated schools for the deaf, and a variety of community-based organizations. This …

People And Power: Person-First Language Usage And The Criminal Justice System, Casey E. Orr

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

Language is power. Word choice and terminology, especially those referring to people, are expressions of societal norms and institutional power. Dehumanizing crime-first terms and labels are abundant and common in criminal justice contexts despite being protested by system-involved individuals and activists. Instead, many advocate for person-first terms wherein identifying language emphasizes an individual’s humanity. With a peace-focused anthropological framework, this paper presents the case for person-first language in criminal justice contexts. It is evident that adopting first-person language usage regarding the criminal justice system is necessary after analyzing and considering the multiple sources, such as the voices of those who …

Confronting The Political Economy Of Englishes In The Classroom, Katy Highet

International Journal for Research in Education

Despite celebratory discourses of Global English(es), scholars adopting political economic approaches have demonstrated the continued unequal distribution and valuation of English(es), and have shifted the focus to questions of unequal speakers in unequal conditions (Tupas, 2020). Drawing on ethnographic data from an English-teaching NGO for ‘disadvantaged’ young adults in Delhi, this paper seeks to contribute to political economic scholarship of English Language Teaching and Learning in two ways. In a first instance, I trace the shaping effects of class, caste and coloniality on how marginalised students orient themselves to notions of correctness and discursively reject fluid language practices. In a …

Lived Experiences Of Unequal Englishes Of Filipino Domestic Workers In Hong Kong, Nicanor L. Guinto

International Journal for Research in Education

In this paper, I investigate the lived experiences with English of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong from roughly 30 hours of recorded ethnographic interviews and fieldwork with 28 key participants talking about language in relation to their living and working experiences. Employing linguistic ethnographic approaches to analysis, I describe recurring accounts reflecting the tension between doing being an English-proficient and an English-deficient other: a tension that emanates from enabling and constraining sociolinguistic conditions in the workplace and the host society, and informed by participants’ experiences and education from their home country. I demonstrate how participants seem to discursively invoke …

Competing Targets In English Sibilant Imitation, Ivy Hauser, Emily Graham, Xinwen Zhang

Open Initiatives Grant Funded Publications-Archive

This study investigates imitation of English /s/ to determine whether speakers converge toward normalized or raw acoustic targets. Participants exposed to increased spectral mean (SM) raised SM, converging toward both the raw acoustics of the model talker (who had high baseline SM) and the pattern of increased SM. However, after exposure to decreased SM, direction of shift depended on participant baseline. All participants converged to the raw acoustic values of the model talker, increasing or decreasing their own SM accordingly. These results suggest imitation is not necessarily mediated by perceptual normalization to different talkers, and raw acoustics can be the …

A Computational Analysis Of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Public Diplomacy Discourse In Times Of Crisis, Amber Brittain-Hale, Amber Brittain-Hale

Education Division Scholarship

In this study, we delve into the public diplomacy discourse of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the ongoing crisis of the Russo-Ukrainian War. We aim to conduct a computational analysis of Zelenskyy's English, Russian, and Ukrainian speeches, exploring the linguistic patterns and code-switching employed in his discourse. The study period encompasses Russia’s build-up to and full-scale invasion of Ukraine from May 2019 to May 30, 2023. This time frame is crucial as it captures the dynamic development of the crisis and the expansion of Zelenskyy's presidency, providing a unique context for analyzing his public diplomacy efforts. By utilizing Linguistic Inquiry …

Individual Differences In Perspective-Taking During Language Comprehension, Kanan Benjamin Luce

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has found mixed results for a link between executive function and perspective-taking. One proposed reason for this is that perspective-taking during comprehension tasks may not be internally reliable. This dissertation presents two large individual differences experiments with multiple perspective-taking during comprehension and executive function measures. We aimed to see (1) whether people were consistent in their ability to take perspectives during comprehension, (2) if the typical tasks used in this area were reliable, and (3) whether executive function measures predicted perspective-taking ability. We found a lack of reliability of some of the most commonly used perspective-taking during comprehension …

Kxanuw! (Miichuwaakan Waak Aweeyayusak), Kira Fucci, Camilla Bager

Games

Kxanuw! (I have it!) is modeled after bingo. This version allows players to practice plant and animal names, engaging listening comprehension, speaking, and visual recognition. The game kit includes instructions, a caller's card, and printable player cards.

Nii Neemun..., Johanna Tumux, Hannah Nosch

Games

Nii Neemun... (I Spy...) is designed for use inside a classroom, where learners can practice hearing and naming the objects that surround them. This game includes a full set of instructions, a learner worksheet, and an answer key, as well as recommendations for adjusting play for beginning and more experienced participants.

Ideology Prediction From Scarce And Biased Supervision: Learn To Disregard The “What” And Focus On The “How”!, Chen Chen, Dylan Walker, Venkatesh Saligrama

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We propose a novel supervised learning approach for political ideology prediction (PIP) that is capable of predicting out-of-distribution inputs. This problem is motivated by the fact that manual data-labeling is expensive, while self-reported labels are often scarce and exhibit significant selection bias. We propose a novel statistical model that decomposes the document embeddings into a linear superposition of two vectors; a latent neutral context vector independent of ideology, and a latent position vector aligned with ideology. We train an end-to-end model that has intermediate contextual and positional vectors as outputs. At deployment time, our model predicts labels for input documents …

The Relationships Between L1, Writing Quality, And Complexity, Accuracy, And Fluency In L2 Writing, Tuc C. Chau

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current dissertation is to map the relationships between first language (L1), writing quality, and syntactic complexity, accuracy, lexical complexity, and fluency (CALF) in second language (L2) writing. CALF are characteristics of language production that have been of significant interest in L2 writing research for the past few decades. Though they have been extensively studied as dependent variables that may vary as a function of other factors, they have been rarely studied together, much less in relation to L1 as an independent variable. Thus, this study explored the effects of L1 and writing quality, operationalized as score …

Assessing The Language Of 2-Year-Olds: From Theory To Practice, Emily Jackson, Dani Levine, Jill De Villiers, Aquiles Iglesias, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Early screening for language problems is a priority given the importance of language for success in school and interpersonal relationships. The paucity of reliable behavioral instruments for this age group prompted the development of a new touchscreen language screener for 2-year-olds that relies on language comprehension. Developmental literature guided selection of age-appropriate markers of language disorder risk that are culturally and dialectally neutral and could be reliably assessed. Items extend beyond products of linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and syntax) and tap the process by which children learn language, also known as fast mapping. After piloting an extensive set of items (139), …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Theological Implications Of The Symbols And Signs In The Sacrament Of Matrimony Of The Syro-Malabar Church, Nelson Mathew O. Carm.

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article discusses the significance of the signs and symbols used in the sacrament of the marriage of the Syro-Malabar Church and the adaptations from different cultures, particularly the Hindu culture of India. It concentrates on the specific elements found in the marriage celebration of the St. Thomas Christians. The rituals that are unique to the Sacrament of Matrimony of the Syro-Malabar Church, mainly expressed through symbols and signs, remain a significant contribution to the liturgy, spirituality, and theology of the Sacrament of Matrimony, and to the theology of inculturation. In the Syro-Malabar liturgy, marriage rituals, and signs and symbols …

Sound-Category Learning And Memory Skills In Neurotypical Adults And Adults With Language-Learning Disabilities, Allison Fulcher

University Honors Theses

This study evaluates the impact of memory skills (procedural, declarative, and working) and sound discrimination abilities, on the ability of adults with and without Language Learning Disability (LLD) to learn two sound-category structures, one designed to be learned implicitly and the other designed to be learned explicitly. This design tests a theorized etiology for LLD, the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH), which posits that LLD is caused by selective impairments to procedural memory and implicit learning. It also serves to evaluate factors and conditions that contribute to success in second-language learning for adults, who are less neurologically suited to the task …

The Transformative Impact Of A Semester-Long Us-Based Gelt Course On Pre-/In-Service Teachers' Cognition And Classroom Practices, Özge Güney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As English has become a global lingua franca used by a greater number of nonnative speakers than native speakers, a focus on native speaker norms in English language teaching (ELT) has become obsolete. There has been a call to incorporate different varieties of Englishes (native, nonnative, and nativized) and related cultures in both teacher education programs and the English classroom- an approach known as Global Englishes Teacher Education (GELT). This study investigates the influence of a GELT-informed teacher education course offered at a US state university on the cognition and (future) practices of pre-/in-service teachers, which aspects of the GELT …

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

Enrico Pea And The Awareness Of Never-Ending Detachment (Alexandria, Egypt 1896–1914), Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

This chapter analyzes the postcolonial discourse in Italy, through the voice of the novelist and playwright Enrico Pea (1881–1958). Living outside of Italy, Pea gained a unique awareness of the notion of multi-ethnic societies, of the concepts of nationality, borders, and boundaries. Alexandria, Egypt, is Pea’s referential space. It is a center, and at the same time, a marginal place. Alexandrea ad Egyptum, that is, the door to Egypt, as it was known in antiquity, this city brought together Arab and European artistic experiences that converged on, and were triggered by, its multicultural profile. The history of political exile …

The Interplay Between Language And Culture In J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Mackenzie Wangberg

Masters Theses

The construction of detailed languages was a lifelong passion of J.R.R. Tolkien. While creating the world of Middle-earth, he assigned different languages to the various cultures which inhabit this fantasy landscape. He carefully matched languages and cultures to try to elicit particular responses from his audience. It is well known that J.R.R. Tolkien wanted certain languages of Middle-earth to sound beautiful and others to sound ugly. Research so far, however, has not answered why the specific phonemes, or sounds, which Tolkien chose for these languages might cause the specific reactions he intended. I have used Tolkien’s influences to explain why …

A Guide To Vowel Pronunciation In Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey, Penobscot, And Abenaki, Greyson Kurtz

Thinking Matters Symposium

There are many structural and cultural barriers to learning Wabanaki languages. These barriers are compounded by the fact that Abenaki, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy use similar but varying writing systems. This issue was not contrived, but arose through the independent development of these writing systems. The key difference lies in the vowels; vowels are often among the first sounds to shift in any given language, and these three languages have followed this pattern. Any modern word that comes from a shared Proto-Eastern Algonquian root and appears in Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki will exhibit clear systematic variation in the pronunciation of their …

Destined Failure, Chengjun Pan

Masters Theses

I attempt to examine the complex structure of human communication, explaining why it is bound to fail. By reproducing experienceable phenomena, I demonstrate how they can expose communication structure and reveal the limitations of our perception and symbolization.I divide the process of communication into six stages: input, detection, symbolization, dictionary, interpretation, and output. In this thesis, I examine the flaws and challenges that arise in the first five stages. I argue that reception acts as a filter and that understanding relies on a symbolic system that is full of redundancies. Therefore, every interpretation is destined to be a deviation.

Citizens Of The English Language: Sociolinguistic Perspectives On Postcolonial India, Prateek Shankar

Masters Theses

This paper introduces the concept of "extralingual citizenship," which I define as an expansion of translingualism to include the ethnoracial logic of the nation-state and demonstrates the entanglement of language, governance, and education in the policing of knowledge infrastructures and discursive practices. I am interested in the codification of postcolonial disparity into the teaching, social performance, and material assessment of English language users, and the infrastructural disqualification of World Englishes (and their amalgams) in favor of a standardized English. I frame extralingualism as a kind of citizenship, shifting the focus of English pedagogy/practice from the syntactical/etymological concerns of language …

Exploiting Association Rules Mining To Inform The Use Of Non-Manual Features In Sign Language Processing, Robert G. Smith

Other Resources

In recent years, the use of virtual assistants and voice user interfaces has become a latent part of modern living. Unseen to the user are the various artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies, the vast datasets, and the linguistic insights that underpin such tools. The technologies supporting them have chiefly targeted widely used spoken languages, leaving sign language users at a disadvantage. One important reason why sign languages are unsupported by such tools is a requirement of the underpinning technologies for a comprehensive description of the language. Sign language processing technologies endeavour to bridge this technology inequality.

Recent approaches …

The Sociolinguistics Of Code-Switching In Hong Kong’S Digital Landscape: A Mixed-Methods Exploration Of Cantonese-English Alternation Patterns On Whatsapp, Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales, Yuen Man Tsang

Journal of English and Applied Linguistics

This paper examines the prevalence of Cantonese-English code mixing in Hong Kong through an under-researched digital medium. Prior research on this code-alternation practice has often been limited to exploring either the social or linguistic constraints of code-switching in spoken or written communication. Our study takes a holistic approach to analyzing code-switching in a hybrid medium that exhibits features of both spoken and written discourse. We specifically analyze the code-switching patterns of 24 undergraduates from a Hong Kong university on WhatsApp and examine how both social and linguistic factors potentially constrain these patterns. Utilizing a self-compiled sociolinguistic corpus as well as …

Applying Linguistics To The Adult Esol Classroom: A Guide For Esol Teachers In Community Centers, Lenore Costello

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many community centers in urban areas of the United States offer English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) classes to adults. This thesis is intended as a resource for teachers of those classes, so that they may make pedagogical decisions that are informed by Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research findings on how languages are learned. The thesis is designed for teachers with and without formal background in ESOL or linguistics. Each chapter introduces an SLA concept that pertains to instructed SLA: (1) the natural order hypothesis, (2) mental representation and interlanguage, (3) the role of input in acquisition, (4) …

The Impact Of Semantics And Syntax On Lexical Retrieval In Individuals With Aphasia, Marta M. Korytkowska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nearly all people with aphasia (PWA) report difficulty with lexical retrieval (i.e., anomia). While there are several tasks used to measure lexical retrieval, each poses different degrees and types of challenges. For example, some studies have found that PWA performance varies depending on the type of lexical retrieval task. The tasks that have been used include lexical retrieval in isolation tasks (such as picture-naming), lexical retrieval in sentence level tasks (such as narration tasks), and lexical retrieval in sentence-completion tasks. Some studies have found no differences between the accuracy of lexical retrieval in isolation and at the sentence level (e.g., …

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 …

Association Strength Between Concepts As The Origin Of The "Foreign Language Effect", Emilia Ezrina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bilinguals sometimes make decisions in verbal tasks differently in their first (L1) and second (L2) language. This phenomenon is known as the foreign language effect (FLE), and it suggests strong connections between language and cognition. On the one hand, it is possible that L2 “blunts” emotional language. However, the FLE can be observed in non-emotional tasks. Therefore, it is possible that L2 requires more deliberate processing due to increased cognitive load, leading to more rational decisions. The support for each explanation is mixed.

In this thesis we propose looking for a single explanation for all instances of the FLE. After …