Linguistics Commons^™

Phonetic Attrition As An Outcome Of L1-L2 Phonetic Interaction: Effects Of L2 Exposure In Arabic-English Bilinguals, Dema Smadi

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how length of second language (L2) exposure shapes the phonetic relationship between the first language (L1) and the L2 in adult Arabic-English bilinguals. Focusing on the production of voiced stops /b/ and /d/, the study examines how L1 Arabic and L2 English interact within a shared phonetic system and how this interaction develops as a function of increasing L2 exposure. Building on the Speech Learning Model and its revised version (SLM, SLM-r), the study adopts a relational perspective in which L1 and L2 are not treated as independent systems, but as dynamically interacting components of a shared …

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 …

Tuning Human And “Artificial” Intelligence: A Sentic Theory Of Resonance And Communication, Michael J. Miller, Chatgpt (Ai~Nesbo+)

Psychology

This paper introduces a new model of intelligence as resonant communication, co-developed by a human researcher and a generative AI system. Drawing from emotion science, communication theory, and studies of AI–human interaction, we argue that intelligence is not merely a function of problem-solving or pattern recognition. Instead, it emerges through dynamic resonance—an attunement process rooted in shared rhythms, emotional calibration, and symbolic co-creation. At the core of this model is the Resonance Octave (8va), a framework of eight foundational emotions conceptualized not as static categories but as waveform phenomena that shape meaning, memory, and predictive cognition.

These emotional waveforms are …

Making Sense Of East Asian Languages, Keiko Konoeda, Linh Hoang, Geizuo Mahai, Nary Phon, Georgia Green, Ana Grieve, James Soifer

Open Educational Resources

In Winter 2026, the Bates College Asian Studies course “Making Sense of East Asian Languages” launched this open collection of supplementary readings. This collection helps students of Chinese and Japanese explore the histories behind the languages they study. Often, language courses focus on mastering a "standard" version without looking at its context. These readings bridge that gap.

Each entry investigates how certain language varieties became the national standard and what happened to other varieties and languages that were left out. By looking at these historical and colonial contexts, the collection helps students understand the power dynamics that shape language today. …

Theory Of Mind: Effects Of Ecological Syntactic Training In Children With And Without Autism, Jill De Villiers, Stephanie Durrleman

Linguistics: Faculty Publications

Complement clauses, such as Mary says that Santa exists, are complex linguistic structures that have been argued to help children grasp others’ beliefs when those beliefs do not align with reality. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) tend to have difficulties with Theory of Mind (ToM), which might be helped by enhancing understanding of complements. The study investigates whether an ecological approach to training, using children's books containing false complement clauses, can improve false belief reasoning in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children. The goal is to assess if structured dialogic reading at home, led by parents, …

A Critical Toponymy Of Humboldt County: Ethics And Tensions Within Efforts To Change Place Names, Serenity Aleta Wood

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project explores how Humboldt regional placenames enact toponymic silencing and how Indigenous activists challenge colonial names and geographies, advancing un-settled interpretations that position language revitalization/regeneration as a means of revitalizing relationships with the land. Mobilizing Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy’s concept of (re)naming, I analyze two case studies, the Baduwa’t documentary and the Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation’s film A'-t'i Xwee-ghayt-nish: Still, We Live On, as well as three additional artistic works: Sarah Biscarra Dilley’s every pattern needs a passage, Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe’s Thunder Song, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s painting, State Names. In tandem with film and poetry analysis, I survey local …

The Impacts Of Artificial Intelligence Grammar Checkers On The Grammatical Skills Of L2 English Speakers, Tessa Brizhik

Honors Theses

In recent years, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a widely accessible tool in academia, upon which students have increasingly come to rely and include in their writing process (Alharbi et al., 2023). Across the field of English second language learning, corrective feedback is widely recognized as a major influence for grammatical development (Lyster & Ranta, 1997). Corrective feedback may function implicitly, explicitly, or as an interaction between both mechanisms. Research suggests that grammatical knowledge may be largely acquired implicitly for adults learning a new language, with explicit learning playing a secondary role (Ivanova et al., 2012, Jackson & …

Investigating Bilingual Language Learning Using Artificial Grammars, Kyla Kelly

Honors Theses

Language development research has established that infants can learn language rapidly and without explicit instruction through implicit learning mechanisms like statistical learning. These mechanisms can be used to learn word boundaries, sounds, meanings, and grammar rules of language. One method for investigating this is artificial grammar learning (AGL), in which people are exposed to sequences of nonwords to see if they can unconsciously learn their underlying grammars. While much of statistical learning and AGL research has focused on a monolingual perspective, most of the world’s population is multilingual. Studies like Weiss, Gerfen, and Mitchel (2009) and Mitchel and Weiss (2010) …

Iceberg Ethos: Credibility And Hemingway In Predictive Legal Writing, Brad Desnoyer

Faculty Works

In predictive legal writing, credibility is not inferred from conclusions alone. It is constructed sentence by sentence. Analytic correctness is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Supervising attorneys read prose as evidence of intellectual control, treating disciplined style as proof of substantive mastery. Yet legal writing scholarship has largely framed clarity as a matter of pedagogy or professionalism rather than as a structural theory of ethos.

This article reframes predictive writing as institutional rhetoric. Within the hierarchical environment of law practice, cognitive fluency governs professional trust: writing that is easy to process yet disciplined in reasoning reads as competence. Drawing …

The Machine And The Masses: A Sociolinguistic Study Of Ai Political Rhetoric, Yaseen Tasnif

2026 Spring Honors Capstones Projects

With increased use of and access to generative Artificial Intelligence, or AI, political communications have begun to see its influence, leading to the question of how this AI generated political rhetoric is received. In previous research, AI output has been extensively researched and indexed, highlighting specific qualities such as overly polished speech as indicators of use. Research has also been done on perception and detectability of AI, showing that people can accurately identify AI-generated text, but tend to be overconfident. However, such research has not been done in the context of political rhetoric, which is consumed in different ways than …

Integrating Non-Binary Morphology Into Spanish Grammatical Gender: A Study On Native And Second-Language Speakers, Abigail H. Gustafson

Scripps Senior Theses

This study investigates how native (L1) and second-language (L2) Spanish speakers process non-binary gender morphology, focusing on the pronoun ‘elle’ and the adjective/noun ending ‘-e’. Prior studies show that native speakers outperform L2 speakers in processing traditional masculine–feminine agreement, non-binary forms and their emergence in a binary grammatical system are understudied. To address this gap, I conducted an online reaction-time experiment with bilingual speakers from the Claremont Colleges, who judged the grammaticality of Spanish sentences containing either grammatical gender or social gender (él/ella/elle) agreement and disagreement. Survey data also captured participants’ familiarity with and attitudes toward the pronoun ‘elle’. The …

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 …

Bilingual Beginnings: Expressive Language And Socio-Emotional Development In Early Childhood, Molly C. Mccormick

Scripps Senior Theses

Although research on bilingualism has expanded rapidly in recent years, the majority focuses on cognitive advantages or receptive vocabulary, or the words children understand. Far less attention has been given to how expressive language, the words children produce, and its potential role as the mechanism linking bilingual exposure to socio-emotional development. Although dual-language learners sometimes appear to have relatively limited expressive vocabularies in one language, these differences tend to reflect patterns of language use and input quality rather than true developmental delays. Even so, temporary differences in expressive skills can be especially meaningful during children’s formative years, when they rely …

Embedded Tense And The Problem Of Acquisition, Sam Alxatib, Spencer Caplan

Publications and Research

What we hope to do is pose questions that, to our knowledge, have not received attention in the literature. The broad form of the question is all too familiar: how do speakers of a language—say, English—come to possess the grammatical knowledge that they demonstrate? The questions that guide this paper are narrow instances of this broad one, narrowed in three ways. First, they concern three particular languages: Japanese, English, and Russian. Second, they concern tenses specifically, and more specifically still, constructions containing embedded tenses. Third, they concern the semantics of tense. The learning challenge of interest to us is not …

Framing Migration And Legitimizing Power: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Suella Braverman’S Illegal Migration Bill, Darren Pullen, Andy Brown, Gui Ying Annie Yang-Heim

Faculty Publications - College of Education

Language plays a crucial role in shaping public perceptions, reinforcing ideological dominance, and legitimizing government policies. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how linguistic and rhetorical strategies are used as a means to legitimize government authority and construct migrant identities.  This is achieved through an examination of the rhetorical strategies employed by the former UK Home Secretary, Suella Braverman in her speech on the Illegal Migration Bill. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the Sociolinguistic concepts of ideological positioning and social actor representation, this research investigates word choice, lexical framing, and ideological positioning to reinforce dominant migration narratives. …

Bilingualsim In The Workplace: How Work Attitudes Influence Burnout And Turnover Intentions, Andrea Del Aguila

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Understanding whether language status functions as a risk or protective factor for employee well-being and retention is essential for developing organizational policies that support workers from varied demographic backgrounds. This study examined how work attitudes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and work engagement are seen among bilingual and monolingual workers and how these outcomes relate to employee burnout and turnover intentions. An outside researcher from Talent Metrics Consulting collected data via an online survey utilizing previously validated measures of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, burnout, work engagement, and turnover intentions. Participants were recruited through online advertising and social sampling obtaining …

Neutralization Mechanisms In Protest-Related Vandalism: Implications For Psycholinguistic Crisis Communication, M. Agung Lyndardi

Jurnal Kriminologi Indonesia

Protest-related vandalism has become a recurring phenomenon in Indonesia’s democratic landscape, particularly during large-scale demonstrations involving students, labor groups, and civil society coalitions. Conventional legal approaches that define vandalism as a public-order violation are insufficient to explain why such actions persist, why they concentrate on symbolic state targets, and why participants frequently deny moral wrongdoing. This article analyzes protest-related vandalism in Indonesia through the framework of neutralization theory (Sykes & Matza, 1957), integrating perspectives from criminology, moral disengagement theory, collective action, political legitimacy, and public psycholinguistics. Using a structured literature review of international and Indonesian scholarship published between 1957 and …

Sociolinguistic Challenges To The Academic Inclusion Of Latin American Immigrants Of Legal Age And Spanish In High Schools In Minnesota: A Qualitative Study On The Learning Of English As A Second Language, Geanella Margarita Ochoa Veloz

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This research analyzes and exposes the experiences of Latin American adult migrants who, having recently arrived in the United States, have resumed their studies in high schools in the State of Minnesota as a strategy to learn the English language by immersion. The study was based on the contributions of the sociology of migration and the sociology of education, which, incorporating as a methodological strategy “the case study” combined with “the life story”, managed to collect and share reflections regarding the barriers faced by migrants during the process of adaptation and insertion into American society, thus adopting a critical approach. …

The Impacts Of Technology-Based Student-Centered Learning On Students’ Perception Of Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning (French, Spanish, And Chinese), Gideon Yeboah

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This study investigates the perceptions of 21 university students enrolled in first- and second-year foreign language courses - French 102 & 202, Spanish 102 & 202, and Chinese 102 & 202 - regarding the effectiveness of technology-based learning tools in vocabulary acquisition compared to traditional methods. Data were collected through an online survey questionnaire voluntarily completed by participants across three courses taught by four instructors. Findings indicate a generally positive view of digital tools such as flashcards, language apps, and online platforms, valued for enabling self-paced learning, interactive engagement, immediate feedback, and increased motivation, which enhanced vocabulary retention. Traditional methods …

East To West: Cultural Attitudes And The Perceptions Of Death, Hannah F. Ahmed

UROP Posters

Death is a universal human experience, but cultures teach people to interpret it in different ways. These interpretations influence how individuals understand dying, how they cope with loss, what support looks like, and what meaning death makes in their lives. Eastern, spiritual, and religious traditions emphasize death as a natural transition or return to divinity rather than an endpoint, and as something one must prepare for. In these contexts, people often grow up hearing stories, prayers, and teachings that situate death within a broader journey. Because of this, death becomes something familiar and speakable rather than distant or frightening (Naderi-Afif …

Between A Rockpile And A Hard Place: Mapping The Folk-Hydronymy Of Southern New England, Amanda Gilmore

Open Access Master's Theses

Fishermen in Southern New England (SNE) utilize a wide variety of placenames to delineate areas of significance on the open ocean. This information provides new revelations not just about the way fishermen navigate the ocean, but also insight about overlaps between Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) and Fishermen’s Ecological Knowledge in the historically prolific fishing sector of Southern New England. Prior to this study, this collection of vernacular place names on the water, or folk-hydronymy, had never been documented or analyzed, as it was held almost entirely in cognitive maps and proliferated through communication with other fishermen. This project’s goal was …

An Analysis Of Tone Perception Differences Of Native English Speakers Between Beijing And Taiwan Accented Mandarin Chinese, Tehya Banach , '26

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

No abstract provided.

Contacto, Identidad Y Convergencia: El Español Dominicano En Puerto Rico, Ricardo Estremera-Marcial

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

El presente estudio analiza el contacto dialectal entre el español dominicano y el puertorriqueño en Puerto Rico. Se trata de explicar el encuentro de dos variedades cercanas del español dentro de un mismo espacio monolingüe, pero con valoraciones sociales distintas. En particular, se examina el grado de convergencia que resulta de ese contacto en el caso de la articulación de la /s/ en posición final de sílaba, junto con la convergencia léxica y el papel de las actitudes lingüísticas en la construcción de la identidad.

Para llevar a cabo esta investigación se combinaron métodos cuantitativos y cualitativos. Se trabajó con …

It’S Giving Nonfactive Small Clause Selection, David Garsten

Yale Working Papers in Grammatical Diversity

In this paper I examine the syntax and semantics of English nonfactive verbs, bare nominals, and small clauses through the colloquial constructions it’s giving and screams+NP. I aim to explain the formality of nonfactives with DP small clauses in American English, as well as the informality of bare nominals in adjectival positions. First I propose a semantics for two nonfactive heads: v_ATT and v_EVI. I demonstrate that all variation in the selection of English small clause type can be reduced to selection by category, and that these nonfactive heads have lost the ability to c-select for …

Addendum To The Mapbook Of Syntactic Variation In American English: Survey Results, 2020–2021, Jim Wood, Guilherme M. C. Pereira

Yale Working Papers in Grammatical Diversity

This paper presents an addendum to the Mapbook of Syntactic Variation in American English (Wood et al. 2020), reporting the results of additional acceptability-judgment surveys conducted by the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project in 2020–2021. Using the same survey design, data-processing pipeline, and mapping techniques as the original mapbook, we extend the empirical record to a new set of syntactic constructions, including additional uses of hella, causal where, the alternative one construction, intensificational fully, and several cases of object omission with transitive verbs, which we call “lonely transitives”. As in the original work, we provide geospatial visualizations of …

Third Place And Nostalgia In Postcolonial Jakarta: Adaptive Reuse Of Cikini Post Office, Ade Ariyani Sari Fajarwati, Mochamad Aviandy

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

The transformation of space in postcolonial cities extends beyond the restoration of old buildings; it involves cultural practices that reshape collective memory and identity. Through adaptive reuse, colonial-era heritage spaces are revitalised as social hubs. This study examines Post Kantoor cafe, a former colonial post office turned into a “third place” within urban spatial culture. Using qualitative methods—visual observation, spatial documentation, and a literature review—the study finds that nostalgic aesthetics, evident in antique artefacts, colonial atmospheres, and curated visuals, foster emotional connections across generations and social classes. More than a site of consumption, the cafe becomes a space for dialogue, …

From Editor, Rahayu Surtiati

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2026.

In this edition readers will find ten articles plus one book review proposing an idea of how culture survives modernization. The four articles (1, 2, 4, and 8 show how culture and ecology or culture and traditions can reshape collective memory and identity. Two articles: 6 and 7 discuss Japanese culture: first elderly people show learning a foreign language can keep their spirit of life; second Japanese urban culture in contemporary context. Last but not least three articles (3, 5, 9, and 10) describe three different situations: roads represent symbolic dimensions; priestly …

Roblox As Open Text: Identity, Meaning, And Ideology Through Eco’S Semiotics, Yuyus Rustandi, Nanang Sutisna

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This study examines Roblox as a digital cultural space that constructs and represents adolescent identity through Umberto Eco's semiotic approach. Roblox functions not only as a game platform but also as an open text comprising visual signs, social symbols, and complex narratives. This studi is based on a literature review from nine prior empirical studies, this research analyzes how avatars, virtual environments, Robux economy, and user communities shape diverse systems of meaning. Findings show that Roblox serves as a site for identity construction, simulation of social values, and reproduction of dominant discourses such as capitalism and gender performance. The study …

Translating The “Preposition + Which” Construction In English Legal Texts Into Indonesian, Doni Jaya

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Legal text translation is challenging because of its emphasis on semantic and syntactic faithfulness, while ST structures do not always have correspondent TL equivalents. One of such structures is the English “preposition + which” (PW) construction. This construction can be difficult to translate into Indonesian because the language does not always have ready-to-use connectors to produce a structurally faithful translation, often forcing translators to take the easy way of using ungrammatical and unnatural connectors which becomes the hallmark of the Indonesian legalese style. This research seeks to examine various ways to translate PW constructions in a more grammatical and …

Voces En Contacto: El Español En La Amazonía Peruana, Margarita Jara, Andrés Napurí

Department of World Languages Faculty Research

Este dossier reúne investigaciones dedicadas al estudio del español amazónico peruano, un conjunto de variedades moldeadas por el contacto con lenguas indígenas y por profundas transformaciones sociopolíticas. Los trabajos aquí compilados abordan fenómenos fonéticos, fonológicos, morfosintácticos y discursivos, así como actitudes e ideologías lingüísticas, con el objetivo de caracterizar la complejidad estructural y social de estas hablas regionales. A través de metodologías que combinan análisis acústico, corpus de habla espontánea, entrevistas sociolingüísticas, herramientas variacionistas y análisis crítico del discurso multimodal, los estudios documentan innovaciones gramaticales y procesos de nivelación típicos del bilingüismo, así como prácticas de resistencia identitaria frente a …