Language Description and Documentation Commons^™

Emotional Facial Expressions In Synthesised Sign Language Avatars: A Manual Evaluation., Robert G Smith, Brian Nolan

Other Resources

This research explores and evaluates the contribution that facial expressions might have regarding improved comprehension and acceptability in sign language avatars. Focusing specifically on Irish sign language (ISL), the Deaf (the uppercase ‘‘D’’ in the word ‘‘Deaf’’ indicates Deaf as a culture as opposed to ‘‘deaf’’ as a medical condition) community’s responsiveness to sign language avatars is examined. The hypothesis of this is as follows: augmenting an existing avatar with the seven widely accepted universal emotions identified by Ekman (Basic emotions: handbook of cognition and emotion. Wiley, London, 2005) to achieve underlying facial expressions will make that avatar more human-like …

Determining The Academic Achievement Of English Language Learners (Ells) By Using Additional Measures Of Growth, Adriana Maria Marin

Dissertations

Accountability measures employed in the country to determine the academic achievement of all the student population rely solely on the results obtained on the standardized tests. Such measures have often placed English language learners’ (ELLs) at risk of academic failure despite the fact that research on second language acquisition (SLA) has stated the complexity involved in the learning/acquisition process of a target language. Scholars have also discussed the influence accountability measures and the issues with the validity of the tests implemented to assess ELLs may have on such results. Therefore, in an effort to obtain a more comprehensive idea of …

Talking Back, With Reawakened Voices: Analyzing The Potential For Indigenous California Languages Coursework At California Polytechnic State University, Logan Cooper

Ethnic Studies

The legacy of colonialism in the United States, including genocidal practices and cultural assimilation, has left Indigenous languages endangered. Native peoples, scholars, and activists have been working to revive and heal the languages of America’s first peoples, and the cultures those languages speak to, yet more work remains in the field of language revitalization. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo currently does not offer any course specifically teaching or discussing Indigenous languages, even those of the Chumash people who know the San Luis Obispo area as their ancestral homelands.

By synthesizing revitalization and Indigenous activist literature with the narratives …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Sentence Final Particles In Shanghainese: Navigating The Left Periphery, Ethan C. Myers

Open Access Theses

The purpose of the present study was to provide a modern syntactic analysis of Shanghainese, the regional language spoken in Shanghai, China. While Shanghainese has received significantly less exposure in the published literature compared to other regional counterparts, there is much that the language can contribute to the overall study of human language. In spite of the fact that Shanghainese has been experiencing a decline in first language learners in recent generations, this thesis aims to increase its exposure in the academic discourse and enforce the legitimacy of its standing as a distinct, living language and as a valuable piece …

Different Neural Mechanisms For Causal Processing In Language And Perception: An Fmri Study, Brett B. Bankson, Dirk B. Den Ouden

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Information that is used to establish and evaluate causal relationships between objects and events can be gleaned from many sources, especially those that rely on language and perception. For example, sentences with a verb structure using change of state verbs such as “to break” or “to freeze” imply sequential events that express understood causal relationships. At this time, little research has examined the neural correlates of causal verb processing or has compared them to the more well researched brain activity involved in perceptual causal processing. This study investigated the extent to which the evaluation of causal verbs and causal image …

Use And Perception Of Taboo Language In College-Age Females, Kathleen M. Uhlman

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Overcoming Gender: The Impact Of The Persian Language On Iranian Women’S Confessional Literature, Farideh Dayanim Goldin

English Faculty Publications

[From the Introduction] The idea that language embodies patriarchal thought processes, severing women writers from the written language and from their own words, was first elaborated by the French feminist theorists Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous. Irigaray argues, for example, that language generally denies women a distinct subjectivity, with the result that the voice of women has largely been excluded from mainstream cultural discourse (Donovan). In this chapter, I juxtapose this theory to the obstacles faced by Iranian women writers of life narratives. Is it possible that Persian could have impeded Iranian women’s literary aspirations, especially in the genre of …

I Accidentally This Thesis Because East: The Influence Of The Internet On Spoken Language In Eastspeak, Emma S. Manning

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines the variety of English spoken in East Dorm at Harvey Mudd College. It describes aspects of the syntax and phonology of Eastspeak, focusing in particular on how Eastspeak has been influenced by the language of the internet. This includes tendencies toward brevity and language play, as well as the use of specific constructions used on the internet, and playful pronunciations that are influenced by creative misspellings used online. Specific Eastspeak phenomena discussed include conversion, deletion, and unusual determiner and quantifier use.

Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

This essay examines translations of the Kurdish epic poem Mem û Zîn into Turkish, tracing the logics behind these state-sponsored translations and examining how acts of translation are also efforts to regulate, translate, and erase Kurdish subjectivities. I argue that the state instrumentalizes Mem û Zîn’s potent nationalist currency in order to disarm present and future claims of Kurdish national autonomy. Using translation as a counterinsurgent governmental tool, the state attempts to domesticate Kurdish nationalist discourses even as it reproduces them, thereby transforming Kurdish nationalism into a specter of itself. Attending to this specter, however, allows us to see how …