Morphology Commons^™

Automatic Glossing In Under-Resourced Languages: Case Studies In Bribri And Cook Islands Māori, Carter D. Anderson

Linguistics Undergraduate Senior Theses

Interlinear glossing is a major task in Indigenous language documentation. In this paper, I explore how effectively two Large Language Models, ByT5 and Gemini 2.5 Flash, can produce interlinear glossed text. I also examine how prompting an LLM with different types of information (dictionary entries, other training samples, and translations) can augment model performance. I apply these models to two under-resourced Indigenous languages: Bribri, which is morphologically complex from Costa Rica, and Cook Islands Māori, which has a simpler morphology and is from the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean. ByT5 exhibits much better performance when glossing Cook Islands Māori …

Morphological Evolution And Sediment Budget Of A Flood-Tidal Delta On The Rio Grande Delta Plain: Bahia Grande, Texas, Usa, Aleen Pertuz Paz

Theses and Dissertations

The Isabel Delta is a recently formed flood-tidal delta within the restored Bahia Grande system on the Rio Grande Delta Plain, Texas, USA, where renewed tidal connectivity has created conditions for rapid sediment buildup and landform evolution. This study quantified morphological changes from 2008 to 2025 using satellite imagery. It assessed sediment retention by comparing the effective sediment discharge required to reproduce observed delta growth with field-based estimates of sediment supply derived from channel hydrodynamics, cross-sectional area, and suspended sediment concentration. The delta expanded steadily throughout the study period, with increases in bar, channel, and total surface area, and an …

Morphology Extraction And Analysis Of Primary Soot Particles And Aggregates And Aggregates In Soot Tem Images Using Machine Learning, Timothy Paul Day

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Accurate characterization of soot morphology is crucial for understanding soot’s physical and chemical properties and their effects on climate and public health. Morphological characterization requires manual identification and segmentation of individual primary particles and aggregates, a labor-intensive and time-consuming process limits scale and reproducibility and contributes to uncertainty in climate models. Therefore, automated approaches are needed to reliably quantify soot morphology. This work develops SAGE (Soot Aggregate Geometry Extraction), an instance segmentation model and framework to segment primary particles in TEM images and extract morphological properties. Four key questions are addressed: (1) can the model achieve segmentation quality comparable to …

Comparing English-Speaking Third Through Sixth Grade Students' Performances On Spoken And Written Cloze Morphological Awareness Tasks, Victoria Henbest, Kenn Apel

Victoria S. Henbest Publications

Purpose: Morphological awareness, the ability to consciously think about morphemes, plays an important role in literacy achievement. Historically, when measuring morphological awareness, researchers primarily have administered tasks in the spoken rather than written modality and few have investigated the influence of modality on task performance. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine whether performance on cloze morphological awareness tasks would be different for English-speaking third through sixth grade students depending on whether the task was administered in the spoken or written modality. We also analyzed whether performance on a written version explained unique variance on measures of …

Lexical Selection And New Word Formation In Apex Legends, Genevieve Dickerson

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This research observes the use of language within FPS gaming. Data was collected by solo queuing into the battle royale FPS, Apex Legends, and analyzing the way the player group develops different verbiage to meet the communication needs of the game. Four forms of word-formation mechanisms were observed: compounding (hitbox), borrowing (heaven), noun-verb conversion (spawn), and new-word formation (int-ing). This work supports the hypothesis that the lexical formations which are most-opted for within these games result from noun-verb conversion, due to the fact that these formations are typically monosyllabic and thus more efficient within time-sensitive gameplay. This research explores …

Análisis Verbal De La Concordancia Negativa En Estudiantes De Español Como L2 Y Hablantes De Herencia De Una Universidad De Estados Unidos De América, Natalia C. Gallardo Linares

LSU Master's Theses

La concordancia negativa (NC) constituye un rasgo central de la negación en español, en el que un marcador negativo preverbal (no) coocurre con ítems de concordancia negativa (NCIs) posverbales, como nada, para expresar una única negación semántica. Investigaciones previas sobre la adquisición de la concordancia negativa se han centrado principalmente en el papel de la competencia lingüística y de las influencias interlingüísticas, por lo que se ha prestado relativamente menos atención a la contribución de factores lingüísticos internos, como el tipo de verbo. La presente tesis examina la adquisición de la concordancia negativa en español con especial …

Mind The Gap: Morphological Defectivity And Suffixal Competition In Polish, Szymon E. Zuberek

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigates morphological defectivity and suffixal competition in the genitive singular of Polish masculine inanimate nouns. Drawing on survey-based grammaticality judgments from native speakers, it examines how respondents select between the suffixes -a and -u or reject both as unacceptable, thereby signaling defectivity. Mixed-effects logistic regressions revealed that defectivity was rare overall but patterned systematically by age, education, and region, with additional baseline variability across lexical items. Suffix choice showed a strong preference for -a, modulated by age, education, and region, with additional baseline variability across lexical items. These findings inform our understanding of paradigm structure, sociolinguistic variation, and …

Confessions Of A Beginning Dutch Learner, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

I have studied, taught about, and learned new languages throughout my lifespan. In fact, it has been the very core of my teaching career.  Now, I have the humbling experience of testing those truths against a new enterprise:  learning Dutch.  I spent last summer in the Netherlands, pursuing family roots and acquiring what Dutch I could.  I took no formal classes but did attend a free dropin class at the local library, where - believe me - I was the lowest learner in the lowest group! Here are some of my insights, from notes taken during that summer:

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 …

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 …

From Morphology To Machine Learning And Genomics: Understanding Phenotypic Variation In Wild Ducks, Sara Gonzalez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Understanding the genetic underpinning and distribution of phenotypic variation within and between divergent groups is core towards shedding light into how populations diverge and adapt, as well as how hybridization breaks or builds on these scenarios; and thus, central to evolutionary biology. In wild organisms, however, quantifying and linking phenotypic traits to underlying genetic processes, like mutation, gene expression, epigenetics and allele interactions, remains challenging. This difficulty arises from the complex interplay between morphology, environment, and gene regulation, as well as the logistical barriers of collecting and standardizing large-scale data across individuals and populations. As a result, researchers are increasingly …

Morphological And Semantic Analysis Of Plant Names Attested In Hehe Language In Tanzania, Onesmo Simon Nyinondi

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper examines the morphological structure of plant names in Hehe, a Bantu language spoken in the Iringa Region of Tanzania, specifically in the rural areas of Mufindi and Kilolo districts, involving 169 participants. Data were collected through free listings, field interviews (also known as walk-in-the-woods interviews), focus group discussions, and the analysis of written texts containing Hehe plant names. The study shows that Hehe plant names consist of a noun class prefix and a noun stem, with most falling into the 3/4 and 5/6 pairs. Some plant names are also categorised in the 7/8, mainly small plants, and 9/10 …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

The Key To Acquiring The Language Of Law, Science, And Technology In The Esl College Classroom, Patricia George-Hunter

Journal of English Learner Education

Since vocabulary plays a significant role in second language acquisition, expansive vocabulary targets should be set and pursued. This paper explores the results of introducing affixes to develop vocabulary and increase motivation for beginner to intermediate-level English language learners (ELLs) pursuing academic disciplines in law, science, and technology at a New York City community college. Participants included 23 ELLs with diverse linguistic, educational, and sociocultural backgrounds enrolled in an online synchronous Integrative Language Seminar (ILS) designed to develop all areas of English language proficiency. Pre‑, post‑, delayed tests, questionnaires, and post‑intervention interviews were conducted and analyzed to establish the language …

Diverse Presentations Of Aphasia: A Comparative Analysis Of Polysynthetic And Analytic Languages Through Kanien'keha (Mohawk) And English Morphology And Syntax, Halle L. Elder

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

This paper looks to compare two linguistically diverse languages, English and Kanien'keha, a native American language commonly known as Mohawk. The comparison will revolve around the morphology and syntax typologies of these two languages. In addition to the morphological and syntactic comparison, I will discuss how aphasia presents itself in different language typologies, placing this comparison onto English and Kanien'keha. The research questions I look to answer are: How does word formation and sentence structure differ between English and Kanien'kéha? Does aphasia present differently in analytic and polysynthetic languages like English and Kanien'kéha? The morphological data and syntactic data are …

Morphology-Performance Relationships To Understand Cichlid Neurocranial Evolution In The Context Of Adaptive Radiation, Sarah Pascarella

Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University

Cichlid fishes have undergone multiple adaptive radiations in the rift lakes of East Africa pairing rapid taxonomic and morphological diversification. Lake Malawi’s rock-dwelling cichlids (mbuna) have diversified into hundreds of species that partition their habitat by depth and diet resulting in high morphological and behavioral diversity. We characterized morphological differences and performed behavioral assays among four cichlid genera from Lake Malawi focused on understanding form-function relationships in the neurocranium and oral feeding apparatus. We characterized neurocranial shape using 3D geometric morphometrics across a large taxonomic sample of mbuna cichlids, focusing primarily on the Tropheops species complex. Alongside broad changes in …

From Old English Genitives To Modern English Possessives: Tracing Grammar Evolution Through Biogrammar And Grammatical Biology, Charles X. Li

Journal of the Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression

Project Mentor(s): Charles X. Li, PhD

This paper presents a biologically grounded and historically informed framework, Biogrammar, as a means to explain grammatical evolution and cognitive processing. It compares Biogrammar with two foundational theories in the study of language: the Nature-Nurture Hypothesis and Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. As a case study, the paper examines the historical evolution of English plural and genitive constructions, focusing on morphological developments such as the -as/-es mergers, his-genitives, group genitives, and the rise of the of + noun phrase pattern. These diachronic changes are interpreted as evidence of grammar functioning as a biologically adaptive system shaped …

Protein Word Detection Using Text Segmentation Techniques, Ashish V. Tendulkar, Sutanu Chakraborti, Ganesh Devi

Journal of Global Awareness

Literature in Molecular Biology is abundant with linguistic metaphors. There has been works in the past that attempt to draw parallels between linguistics and biology, driven by the fundamental premise that proteins have a language of their own. Since word detection is crucial to the decipherment of any unknown language, we attempt to establish a problem mapping from natural language text to protein sequences at the level of words. Towards this end, we explore the use of an unsupervised text segmentation algorithm for the task of extracting "biological words” from protein sequences. We demonstrate the effectiveness of using domain knowledge …

A Navajo Corpus Of Historical Narratives, Lukas Denk, Melvatha R. Chee

A Navajo Corpus of Historical Narratives

The Navajo Corpus of Historical Narratives is a digital compilation of morphologically annotated narratives. They were first published by Robert W. Young and William Morgan in the 1950’s in the volumes Navajo Historical Selections (1954) and The Trouble at Round Rock (1952). Nine out of 28 narratives are included in the corpus, totaling over 10,000 Navajo words. The corpus contributes to the understanding of the Navajo language by offering interlinear glosses of words, morphemes, morphs, and a free translation. These different interlinear tiers bridge the gap between the original Navajo text and the free translation provided by Young and Morgan, …

The Creation Of Gender In Conlangs, Alexis L. Campos, Ixchel Mireles, Bryon Haynes, David Kamal, Zachariah Gonzalez

Team - Mere Wudu - Documents

This PowerPoint presentation is an example of grammatical gender and language structure in the world of Mere Wudu using the language of "Letic"

Universal Dependencies For Amahuaca, Candy Angulo, Pilar Valenzuela, Roberto Zariquiey

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

This paper presents the creation of a Universal Dependency (UD) treebank for Amahuaca (Peru), marking the first UD treebank within the Headwaters subbranch of the Panoan family, spoken mostly in Peru and Brazil. While the UD guidelines provided a general framework for our annotations, language-specific decisions were necessary due to the rich morphology of the Amahuaca language. The paper also describes specific constructions to initiate a discussion on several general UD annotation guidelines, particularly those concerning clitics and morpheme-level dependencies.

Navigating Trauma: A Linguistic Exploration Of Bilingual Trauma Expressions, Amira Mahmoud Othman

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between language, trauma, and emotional expression among bilingual Arabic-English speakers, focusing on code-switching patterns and euphemisms, and more broadly the emotional roles of native and non-native languages in trauma narratives. Through qualitative interviews with 20 Egyptian participants, the research reveals that code-switching serves as both a linguistic and emotional tool, allowing speakers to navigate trauma by creating distance or engaging more intimately. Such codeswitching patterns include the integration of English content words within Arabic structures, morphosyntactic innovations, and gender agreement applications, reflecting the creative adaptability of bilingual speakers in emotionally charged contexts, in line with …

Revealing Students’ And Teachers’ Perceptions Of Challenges And Strategies In Arabic Reading Comprehension, Osama Othman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the perceptions of Arabic as a Foreign Language (AFL) students and teachers regarding the influence of eight textual features on reading comprehension. These features are: vowelization, word patterns, roots, vocabulary, case endings, word order, punctuation marks, and text organization. It also investigates reading comprehension strategies employed by both groups to overcome comprehension challenges associated with these features. Data were collected from 102 AFL students and 26 AFL teachers through questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 students and 11 teachers. Results revealed that students generally rated the influence of these features more highly than teachers. The …

Swim Bladder Morphology Influences The Responses Of Nearshore Rockfishes To Barotrauma, Molly K. Alvino

Master's Theses

Rockfishes (Sebastes spp.) are ecologically and economically important fishes in the continental shelf and slope regions of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. All species within the Sebastes genus have a buoyancy organ, the swim bladder, which is sensitive to rapid changes in pressure that occur when fish are caught and brought up to the surface. Although all rockfishes have swim bladders, pressure-related injuries (barotrauma) affect rockfish species differently. I determined whether swim bladder morphology can explain differences in barotrauma among semi-pelagic (Blue and Olive rockfish) and benthic (Gopher and Vermilion rockfish) species that occupy different habitat zones. Seven different swim bladder …

Diaspora Documentation Of West Albay Bikol, Nhia Borja

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper presents a comprehensive linguistic analysis and cultural documentation of West Albay Bikol, a dialect spoken in Bikol, Philippines. Drawing upon narratives spoken by a native speaker, this study aims to expand the literature on Bikolano language and add the dialects of Balugo and Polangui to the conversation. The motivation for the project stems from a personal aspiration to learn West Albay Bikolano and provide authentic language examples.

The paper comprises six chapters. The first chapter briefly overviews Bikol dialects and Central Philippine languages and reviews existing literature on the overall Bikol language. The second chapter is an examination …

Building The Roots Of Word Knowledge: Using Morphological Instruction In Latin Roots To Build Word Analysis Skills For Middle School Students., Sara Sukalski

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Proficient reading requires the ability to analyze words for various properties, including pronunciation, meaning, and syntactical function. However, most instruction in word analysis is limited to phonics instruction provided in the early elementary grades. For older students, whose words largely center units of meaning, or morphemes, early phonics instruction does not provide the multifaceted knowledge of word properties these older students need to manipulate the complex words of their curricula. Therefore, this study examined the effects of direct morphological analysis instruction focusing on Latin roots on middle school students’ ability to orally decode and construct meaning for morphologically complex words. …

Overregularization Of Irregular Spanish Verbal Morphology: The Cases Of 2sg Preterit And Irregular Past Participles, Elisabeth Baker Martínez

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation investigates a widely observed phenomenon in child language acquisition: overregularization, which occurs when a child applies a regular linguistic pattern where an irregular form is expected (Bybee, 2015), for example, when a child overregularizes irregular 1sg Spanish sé ‘I know’ as sabo. This dissertation adds to the research on the overregularization of Spanish verbal morphology. The population of focus is Spanish-speaking children ranging from the ages of 1;10 – 12;4 with different language backgrounds (e.g., monolingual Spanish children, U.S. child heritage speakers). The studies included address the development of two Spanish morphological forms by focusing on children’s …

The History Of -Eer In English: Suffix Competition Or Symbiosis?, Zachary Dukic, Chris C. Palmer

Faculty Articles

Ecological models of competition have provided great explanatory power regarding synonymy in derivational morphology. Competition models of this type have certainly shown their utility, as they have demonstrated, among other things, the relevance of frequency measures, productivity, compositionality and analyzability when comparing the development of morphological constructions. There has been less consideration of alternative models that could be used to describe the historical co-development of suffixes that produce words with sometimes similar forms or meanings but are not inevitably or solely in competition. The symbiotic model proposed in this article may help answer larger questions in linguistics, such as how …

Exploring Etymology Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

The English language is a borrowed language, a blend of words from many languages from around the world. We see this in the various ways sounds are represented by letters and letter combinations. In transparent or shallow orthographies, there is high predictability and consistent letter-sound correspondence whereas in opaque or deep orthographies, there are many ways to spell the same sound as well as there are many sounds for the same spellings (Burkins & Yates, 2021; Moats, 2020). This assignment description is a guided inquiry for preservice teachers to explore the concept of etymology by watching and reflecting on six …