Linguistics Commons^™

Effects Of Holistic And Analytic Instructional Approaches On The Acquisition Of Various Types Of Formulaic Sequences: An Empirical Study Of Adult Learners Of English As A Second Language, Valentina Temina-Kingsolver

Linguistics ETDs

This study investigated whether different instructional approaches affected adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners production and recognition of target formulaic sequences, as measured by oral and written responses on pretest and posttest and a psycholinguistic experiment. Specifically, the goal of the study was to replicate and extend prior research that examines the ways non-native speakers of English acquire and process various types of formulaic sequences in their oral and written production and the validity of holistic storage and processing of those sequences in the learner's mind (Jiang & Nekrasova, 2007). Eighteen adult ESL students were randomly assigned to the following conditions: (a) …

Modern Spoken Coptic And Community Negotiation Of Linguistic Authenticity, Jeremy Toomey

Linguistics ETDs

The pronunciation of the Coptic language in the liturgies of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria according to the Greco-Bohairic and Old Bohairic pronunciation standards is investigated, together with the sociolinguistic narratives constructed by two Coptic communities surrounding the use of either standard. Field recordings of the liturgy as recited according to both standards are analyzed in order to describe the phonology of the standards, and interviews with users of both standards are analyzed in order to describe the language attitudes of the users of the language. Points of similarity and difference between the narratives constructed by users of the …

Leveraging Research To Inform Better Practice, Jill Castek

Presentations and Publications

Panel focused on the importance of research being designed strategically from the very beginning and thinking about dissemination at the outset of every project design, not as an afterthought.

Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language: A Foreigner's Perspective, Frederick J. Poole

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio reflects the author’s beliefs on effective methods for teaching Chinese as a second language. The first section includes the author’s teaching philosophy, which focuses on communicative language teaching, developing literacy, integrating culture into instruction, and employing technology to facilitate learning. Following the teaching philosophy are three artifacts that were written throughout the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program. First, the language artifact presents a study conducted by the author regarding three different approaches to teaching beginners of Chinese. Second, the literacy artifact is a proposal for a study that examines the effect of reading Chinese via an …

Linguistic Landscape Of Main Streets In Bosnia And Herzegovina, Rachel E. Lay

Undergraduate Honors Theses

After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina erupted into ethnic conflict and ultimately genocide. Nearly 100,000 people, mainly Bosniaks, died in the Bosnian War. Two decades later, the violence has ended but the conflict is still present in Bosnia; the societal segregation of the 1995 Dayton Accords, intended only as an immediate solution to the violence, still stands. Population and language distribution are evidence of this segregation. Bosnia’s two entities are home to two different ethnic majorities: Serbs in the Republika Srpska and Bosniaks in the Federation of BiH. In an environment so sensitive that the government …

Cognitive Influences On Constituent Order: Priming Evidence, Lee Prunier

Honors Scholar Theses

In spoken as well as signed language, a shift over time from the use of Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order to Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order has been observed. The use of pantomimed gesture and priming can help determine the extent to which this shift comes from pressures specific to language, as opposed to existing as a more broad feature of communication. Participants took turns matching images to videos showing gestured event descriptions primed in SVO or SOV order, and gesturing event descriptions to a camera. Results show a strong preference for orders consistent with SVO across prime types, and an increase …

A Modern Analysis Of Consonant Harmony In Theoretical Frameworks, Nicole Mariah Dobson

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Consonant Harmony (CH) is a process that commonly characterizes the phonology of a child's first language acquisition. CH is the means by which non-adjacent consonants partly assimilate to one another in the primary place of articulation of features, e.g. the word dog is pronounced as gog. This paper provides a modern interpretation of the treatment of CH under successive phonological frameworks: early generative, autosegmental, connectionist, and Optimality Theory (OT). The review highlights the inter-child, intra-child, and cross-linguistic differences between child and adult CH in order to emphasize the contrasts appearing in child language. More recent accounts propose a comprehensive analysis …

Perceptual Dialectology And The Attribution Of Responsibility: On Narrating Sexual Violence, Sabia Carly Prescott

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

African American Vernacular English has a distinct set of grammatical and phonological features that are given social meaning by listeners, often associating its speakers with ideas about the African American community at large. Studies have shown that social ideologies surrounding a dialect may strongly influence perceptions of the speaker. In turn, the very ways the speaker is understood may have tangible consequences. The present study analyzes data collected from an online survey to determine the effects of language ideologies and dialect perception on attribution of responsibility to victims of sexual violence. The text focuses specifically on how perceptions of a …

Transposing Culture Through Conversation: An Ethnographic Approach To Anime Fandom, Virginia Leslie Clark

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Unique linguistic habits are upheld by the anime fandom community JADE, the Japanese Animated and Dramatic Entertainment club at the University of Mary Washington. Discourse and interaction within this community are studied over the course of a semester through observation and audio recordings. Conversations are then transcribed and carefully examined for trends in syntax and lexicon. Analysis reveals that participants employ language to situate themselves in a space between East and West. Though they are geographically removed from the source cultures of anime production, the use of certain pronouns and anaphoric adverbs suggest a close alignment with Eastern culture and …

Survival Of The Fittest: The Role Of Linguistic Modification In Nursing Education, Brenda Strauch Moore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project’s long term goal was to improve English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) nursing student retention. Improving the quality of multiple choice exams is a first crucial step. ESL students find multiple-choice exams to be one of the most challenging aspects of nursing school. One reason for this is the presence of linguistic errors in exam questions. Linguistic errors include: irrelevant question content, poor sentence structure, and culturally biased words or phrases. Non-ESL students are less affected because exams are written in their native language. Linguistic modification, as part of best practices in item writing, removes these types of errors. The U.S. Department …

Gestures As Mimetic Forms Of Identity In Post-Secondary Italian As A Foreign Language Classrooms: A Sociocultural Perspective, Ilaria Nardotto Peltier

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study investigates the use of mimetic gestures of identity by foreign language teachers of Italian and their students in college classes as a form of meaning-making. All four of the teachers were found to use a variety of Italian gestures as a regular aspect of their teaching and presentation of self. Students and teachers also were found to mirror each other’s gestures. None of the teachers had been video-recorded before the study and all were surprised to see the degree to which they appeared to be Italian, although at the same time all believed this to be an important …

Wandering, Idleness, And The Nineteenth-Century Tales Novel, 1836-1895, Molly C. O'Donnell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In "The Late-Victorian Romance Revival" (2008) Anna Vaninskaya questions if "one [can] even speak of the mixing or hybridization of genres in a particular work if the genres themselves had not yet been conclusively defined" (60). This question serves as a warning to genre studies scholars seeking to tease out new observations from history. This dissertation, however, seeks to do just that. Employing multiple theoretical approaches, my study of what I dub the tales novel finds links between diverse Victorian works. Bearing a resemblance to a collection of stories, with seemingly disparate narratives, the tales novels also demonstrate plot interdependence. …

Defining Primary And Academic Discourse Through Instructional Methods In A Single Junior High Classroom, Ashley Nicole Gerhardson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine the use of academic discourse in the school setting and discuss the relation of the primary discourse to academic discourse. I focus on the verbal exchanges between a teacher and her students as these students acquire the academic discourse of the English classroom. The study focuses on the ideas of primary discourse and secondary or academic discourse as presented by Gee (1996) and focuses on his idea of Social languages.

Using a microethnographic study, I develop the idea of how the teacher related to her students and how a single educator felt about the purpose …

Grammatical Features Of Structural Elaboration And Compression Common In Advanced Esl Academic Writing, Gyusuk Yang

Theses and Dissertations

The present study replicated the research framework of a previous study (Biber, Gray, & Poonpon, 2011) that identifies the grammatical complexity of L1 professional academic prose as strongly favoring a dense use of phrasal nominal modifiers such as prepositional phrases as postmodifiers, attributive adjectives, and nouns as premodifiers which characterize its unique structurally compressed discourse style. The main purpose of the present study was to explore syntactic similarities and differences between L1 professional and L2 student academic writing in terms of their reliance on phrasal/nominal compression features to determine characteristics of the grammatical complexity of advanced ESL academic writing. To …

Central Auditory Processing And The Link To Reading Ability In Adults, Lisa M. Brody

Honors Scholar Theses

What makes someone a good reader? What makes someone a poor reader? The root biological marker of reading ability has yet to be determined. Many scientists agree that phonological awareness, the understanding of speech sounds, and phonological decoding are key components of reading ability (Melby-Lervag, Lyster, & Hulme, 2012). In addition to this, new research suggests that the auditory system, specifically the timing of auditory processing in the brain, provides a crucial platform that supports the development of reading ability (Banai et al., 2009). This thesis provides empirical data to support the link between reading skill …

Use Of Phonetics In The Beginner French Classroom: An Analysis Of Textbooks, Melissa B. Scarbrough

Honors Scholar Theses

Textbooks are a common resource for teachers in a variety of content areas, as such it is important that teachers know whether or not textbooks are aligned to standards and current research. This study investigates if common textbooks, reported to be in use in schools across Connecticut, are aligned to recent second language acquisition and French linguistics studies.

Linguistic Landscape Of Main Streets In Bosnia And Herzegovina, Rachel E. Lay

Undergraduate Honors Theses

After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina erupted into ethnic conflict and ultimately genocide. Nearly 100,000 people, mainly Bosniaks, died in the Bosnian War. Two decades later, the violence has ended but the conflict is still present in Bosnia; the societal segregation of the 1995 Dayton Accords, intended only as an immediate solution to the violence, still stands. Population and language distribution are evidence of this segregation. Bosnia’s two entities are home to two different ethnic majorities: Serbs in the Republika Srpska and Bosniaks in the Federation of BiH. In an environment so sensitive that the government …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

From “My Block” To “Born On The Rez”: A Linguistic Analysis Of Lyrics By 2pac, Frank Waln, Litefoot, Nataanii Means, And Night Shield, Teresa Y. Neely, Sarah Kostelecky, Jorge Ricardo Lopez-Mcknight, Monica Etsitty Dorame

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

The lack of consistent wide-spread media coverage of recent events in North America involving violence against Native Americans and African Americans in the U.S., missing and murdered indigenous women, led the authors to a thoughtful discussion about the similar and parallel issues shared by our people. Although the deaths of Michael Brown (August 9, 2014, Ferguson, MO), Eric Garner (July 17, 2014, NY), and Sandra Bland (July 13, 2015, TX) were nationally covered news events; the deaths of Misty Upham, Blackfeet (October 5, 2014, WA); Native American activist Rexdale Henry, Choctaw (July 14, 2015, MS), and Christina Tahhahwah, Comanche (November …

An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis Of Syllable Structure In Qassimi Arabic, Sarah Soror Al Motairi

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis examines syllable structure in Qassimi Arabic (QA), a Najdi dialect spoken in Al-Qassim region in Saudi Arabia. Syllable-related phenomena in QA have not been fully addressed and understood because QA has not received attention in the available literature on syllable structure within Arabic dialects. Thus, the present study aims to provide an analysis of syllable structure in QA and to contribute to the current research on Arabic syllable structure. Adopting the framework of Optimality Theory, this study explores the effect of high vowel deletion on syllable structure and the treatment of superheavy syllables in QA. Results confirm three …

Investigating Manchu Converb From A Diachronic Cross-Linguistic Perspective, Luopeng Zheng

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

Abstract

This thesis investigates Manchu converbs from a diachronic cross-linguistic perspective. This thesis is based on the assumption that function words are not loanwords because of the conservative nature of syntax in general. Secondly, it is assumed that one word is the same as the other word if 1) both share similar or same syntactical functions, 2) both share similar or same phonological features, and 3) both have overlapping semantic fields.

It proposes that Manchu phrases headed by converbs should not be regarded as AdvP or a degree word. Rather, Manchu converbal phrases are essentially ConvPs. Evidences supporting this conclusion …

The Nature Of A-Movement In Arabic Raising And Passive Structures, Saja Alburarabi

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The main aim of the thesis is to analyze the syntactic features of “raising and passive structures.” This thesis presents an overview of some of the essential analyses of raising and passive in Standard Arabic. The dissertation not only discusses the two central analyses of argument movement in Standard Arabic but also provides key modifications of Soltan’s (2007) analysis of raising and passive structures, with data that Soltan did not consider and with certain new theoretical proposals involving the inventory of functional projections available in Arabic.

Dialect Influence On California Chicano English, Laura Kompara

Purdue Linguistic Association Symposium

Chicano English is a distinct U.S. English dialect common in California and the Southwestern United States. As Spanish immigrants from Mexico moved to the United States, especially throughout the 1990s, they learned English but carried some of the sounds and grammatical constructions from Spanish with them. Chicano English has become its own variety of English with organized linguistic patterns and must not be confused with English of second-language learners. This paper offers an accessible background piece to Chicano English in California and the ways that this dialect is changing due to contact with the surrounding dialects. The linguistic patterns of …

The Interaction Of Palatal Coarticulation And Palatal Harmony In Kazan Tatar, Jenna Conklin

Purdue Linguistic Association Symposium

Vowel harmony and vowel-to-vowel coarticulation are long-distance assimilatory processes wherein certain vowels trigger systematic changes in adjacent vowels; harmony effects phonological change, resulting in phonemic alternation, while coarticulation effects phonetic change. This study examines the coarticulatory processes present in disharmonic words in Kazan Tatar, a language with left-to-right palatal harmony. While right-to-left palatal coarticulation is found to be widespread, left- to-right palatal coarticulation is virtually nonexistent in Tatar. It is hypothesized that gradient and categorical processes sharing the same triggers, targets, target feature, and direction cannot coexist; the diachronic implication for Tatar is that, once coarticulation was phonologized into harmony …

Uses Of Someone: Beyond Simple Person Reference, Yu-Han Lin

Purdue Linguistic Association Symposium

This study looks at how the non-recognitional reference form “someone” is used to refer to a known referent when a recognitional, such as a first name or a descriptive recognitional (Stiver, 2007), is available (Sacks & Schegloff, 1979). In a conversation, when participants have shared knowledge about who a referent is, the occurrence of “someone” connotes more than a simple reference to the referent. While there is little previous research concerning the use of a non-recognitional to complete particular social actions, in this study, I show how “someone” can be employed to accomplish disaffiliative actions such as complaints, accusations and …

The Role Of Antonymy On Semantic Change, Ashley M. Kentner

Purdue Linguistic Association Symposium

The role of antonymy in semantic change is investigated via the etymology of sets of English antonyms. The results show a developmental pattern wherein two words sharing an antonym tend to exhibit similar trajectories of semantic development. Metaphorical extension is proposed as the primary mechanism that produces this regularity with antonymy playing a secondary role. These results further support semantic change as regular, even in contexts not involving grammaticalization, and that furthermore, metaphor is not peripheral to language use. (See Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Traugott & Dasher, 2002; Hopper & Traugott, 2003.) There are also implications for formal and cognitive …

Order Of Acquisition: A Comparison Of L1 And L2 English And Spanish Morpheme Acquisition, Kyle A. Mcferren

Senior Honors Theses

This paper examines the order of acquisition for grammatical morphemes in Spanish and English first and second language learners. Brown’s first morpheme order study, conducted in 1973, laid the foundation for what would become one of the most common types of study conducted within the field of second language acquisition. The four orders of acquisition relevant here are examined and compared in order to support the roles of salience, morphophonological regularity, complexity, input frequency, and native language transfer in first and/or second language acquisition. The conclusion is that these five determinants work interdependently in determining the difficulty of acquiring a …

International Teaching Assistants' Experiences In The U.S. Classrooms: Implications For Practice, Ekaterina Arshavskaya

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Recently, a number of studies have examined the lived experiences of the international teaching assistants (ITAs) in the U.S. classrooms. The findings show that the ITAs face many challenges such as classroom management, instructional, linguistic, cultural and social challenges. Following this line of research, this interview-based study examined the lived experiences of a group of ITAs using a qualitative methodology. The qualitative approach was intentionally selected to add an interpretive stance to the quantitative analyses prevalent in the current research on the ITAs. The paper aims to: (1) to provide insights into the ITAs’ perspectives on their first semester of …

The Interaction Of Gradient And Categorical Processes Of Long-Distance Vowel-To-Vowel Assimilation In Kazan Tatar, Jenna T. Conklin

Open Access Theses

Vowel harmony and vowel-to-vowel coarticulation are long-distance assimilatory processes wherein certain vowels trigger systematic changes in adjacent vowels; harmony effects phonological change, resulting in phonemic alternation, while coarticulation effects phonetic change. This thesis offers a novel acoustic analysis of the coarticulatory processes present in disharmonic words in Kazan Tatar, a language with left-to-right palatal harmony. While right-to-left palatal coarticulation is found to be widespread, left-to-right palatal coarticulation is virtually nonexistent in Tatar. It is hypothesized that gradient and categorical processes sharing the same triggers, targets, target feature, and direction cannot coexist; the diachronic implication for Tatar is that, once coarticulation …

"Schitworde": Analysis Of Linguistic Taboo In The History Of The Semantic Field Of Excrement, Julisa R. Edwards

Open Access Theses

Currently, scholarship in the field of linguistic taboo concentrates on the history of cursing, the usage of cursing in society, methodologies for collecting data on cursing, and the history and use of particular terms. However to date, there has been no examination of the semantic shifts of taboo terms, nor has there been any analyses of the history of the semantic fields of which these terms have membership, and so this study serves as a model for analyzing taboo terms according to etymological and semantic field history. This analysis reveals the interplay between language, culture, and taboo terminology because it …