Other Linguistics Commons^™

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 …

Exploring Strategies For Modeling Sign Language Phonology, Lee Kezar, Riley Carlin, Tejas Srinivasan, Zed Sehyr, Naomi Caselli, Jesse Thomason

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Like speech, signs are composed of discrete, recombinable features called phonemes. Prior work shows that models which can recognize phonemes are better at sign recognition, motivating deeper exploration into strategies for modeling sign language phonemes. In this work, we learn graph convolution networks to recognize the sixteen phoneme “types” found in ASL-LEX 2.0. Specifically, we explore how learning strategies like multi-task and curriculum learning can leverage mutually useful information between phoneme types to facilitate better modeling of sign language phonemes. Results on the Sem-Lex Benchmark show that curriculum learning yields an average accuracy of 87% across all phoneme types, outperforming …

Language Classification In Western Amazonia: Advances In Favor Of The Pano-Takana Hypothesis, Pilar M. Valenzuela, Roberto Zariquiey

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

The languages of the Pano and Takana families exhibit a considerable number of lexical and structural affinities that cannot be ascribed to mere chance and are not readily detectable instances of borrowing. After the comparative studies by Key (1968) and Girard (1971) the proposal of a genetic relationship between these two families was generally accepted (e.g. Loos 1973, 2005; Suárez 1973; Kaufman 1990; Campbell 1997). Without solid argumentation, however, this classification was later put into question (Fabre 1998; Loos 1999; Fleck 2013) and, even today, there is no full consensus as to whether the observed similarities are due to genetic …

Degrees Of Temporal Remoteness In Pano: Contribution To The Cross-Linguistic Study Of Tense, Pilar Valenzuela, Sanderson Castro Soares De Oliveira

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Beyond simply indicating future or past tense, the languages of the Pano family grammatically distinguish various degrees of temporal distance relative to a reference point, typically the moment of utterance; i.e., they possess what has been called ‘metrical tense’ (Chung & Timberlake 1985; Frawley 1992), ‘degrees of remoteness’ (Comrie 1985; Dahl 1985; Bybee et al. 1994; Botne 2012), or ‘graded tense’ (Cable 2013). This article offers a comparative analysis of the rich graded tense systems found in Pano, concentrating on morphologically expressed categories. In so doing, it seeks to expand our typological knowledge of languages exhibiting this feature, particularly …

Corpus Linguistics Criticisms Of Heller Misuse Corpus Linguistics, Michael Showalter

SMU Law Review Forum

A number of linguistics experts have asserted that new corpus-linguistics evidence undermines the U.S. Supreme Court’s conclusion in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment phrase keep and bear arms means to possess and carry weapons. At the time of ratification, the term bear arms carried both an idiomatic sense meaning “to serve as a soldier” and a literal sense meaning “to carry weapons.” The Heller majority concluded that the Second Amendment uses the literal sense, partly because the idiomatic reading has the absurd implication of causing the Amendment to protect a right to serve as a soldier. …

Creating A Theoretical Framework To Underpin Discourse Assessment And Intervention In Aphasia, Lucy Dipper, Jane Marshall, Mary Boyle, Deborah Hersh, Nicola Botting, Madeline Cruice

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Discourse (a unit of language longer than a single sentence) is fundamental to everyday communication. People with aphasia (a language impairment occurring most frequently after stroke, or other brain damage) have communication difficulties which lead to less complete, less coherent, and less complex discourse. Although there are multiple reviews of discourse assessment and an emerging evidence base for discourse intervention, there is no unified theoretical framework to underpin this research. Instead, disparate theories are recruited to explain different aspects of discourse impairment, or symptoms are reported without a hypothesis about the cause. What is needed is a theoretical framework that …

Kinesthetic Language: A Dialect Of Kinesics, Terrill Suzanne Corletto

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Human communication requires the disciplines regarding physical fitness, codified language, and the performing arts to overlap, and exist symbiotically. Within the realm of artistic performance, the three disciplines working together deliver a deliberate message in a way unique to performing artists. The general tendency to compartmentalize sports, communication, and the performing arts into their pigeonhole categories of Kinesiology, Linguistics, and Theatre Arts is impractical, particularly for performing artists simply because all of the disciplines are mutually dependent in the context of all kinesthetic communications.

The purpose of this paper is to define and discuss several concepts and the ways in …

“So, Literally,…Basically,...It’S Like…”: A Study Into The Generational And Sociological Impact Of American Language Culture, Richard Moreno

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Language is unique to the human species. It serves to communicate thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. Within the context of this capstone I outline the theory that language is much more than this. Words can also serve to bond or reject, based on the level of acceptance within social groups towards the speaker. In seeking to discover what effects specific language utterances have on social interaction and the processes involved in developing cohesiveness collective identity in these groups, I found that they do have a definite impact and this is based mainly within generational parameters. Using a mixed method approach of …

Student Perceptions Regarding The Use Of Purposive English In A Spanish As A Foreign Language Classroom, Kacey Booth

Dissertations

In modern American society, diversity is both challenged and celebrated, and inclusion is imperative. This ideology begins in the classroom. Oftentimes, this celebration of diversity, more specifically linguistic diversity, is most visible in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) classes and similar bilingual educational programs. In TESOL programs, students’ international identities are highlighted and students are often instructed using multilingual educational resources to scaffold their acquisition of English. Historically, foreign language teaching also utilized dual-language instructional methodologies. Such archaic teaching methodologies have since been replaced by more modern and immersive sociopsycholinguistic approaches such as Communicative Language Teaching. Such …

Final Vowel Devoicing In Blackfoot, Samantha Leigh Prins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents a study of final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot, an indigenous language of Montana and Alberta. Previous research on final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot variously suggests word-final, phrase-final, and utterance-final vowel devoicing processes (e.g. Taylor 1965, Bliss & Gick 2009, Frantz 2017), though, the conditioning environment for this phenomenon had not been a research focus prior to this study. The present study investigates intonation units (IUs) as the conditioning domain for final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot.

Final vowel devoicing in Blackfoot is investigated here by examining the common word-final suffixes –wa (3SG.AN) and –yi (4SG) in two recordings …

Non-Manual Articulators In Irish Sign Language Verbs: An Analysis With Data Mining Association Rules, Robert G. Smith, Markus Hofmann

Conference Papers

The Signs of Ireland (SOI) corpus (Leeson et al., 2006) deploys a complex multi-tiered temporal data structure. The process of manually analyzing such data is laborious, cannot eliminate bias and often, important patterns can go completely unnoticed. In addition to this, as a result of the complex nature of grammatical structures contained in the corpus, identifying complex linguistic associations or patterns across tiers is simply too intricate a task for a human to carry out in an acceptable timeframe. This work explores the application of data mining techniques on a set of multi-tiered temporal data from the SOI corpus. Building …

La Influencia Del Quechua En El Castellano De La Isla De Taquile / The Influence Of Quechua In The Castilian Of The Island Of Taquile, Gianna Macri

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Esta investigación explora el español de la gente que vive en la isla de Taquile. Esta población habla quechua principalmente, pero es importante aprender la lengua española para comunicarse con los turistas, y el español se enseña en la escuela. En una situación como esta de contacto entre dos lenguas, ambas pueden cambiar su estructura, sus características gramaticales y su vocabulario. En otras comunidades quechuahablantes, se describe una variedad de la lengua, el “castellano andino”. Los resultados muestran que el español de Taquile también tiene variaciones similares por la influencia del quechua: el orden de las palabras más común en …

Lingua Franca: An Analysis Of Globalization And Language Evolution, Abigail Watson

Honors Projects

This project details the evolution of languages and how globalization and advances in communication have effected smaller language groups. A world community in which communication is standardized by a Lingua Franca is in most cases harmful for isolated language groups without many speakers. The extinction of language is harmful for human society and culture, and there are many different ways to help prevent language extinction.

This project includes an essay, an animation, six illustrations, and a coloring book that all relate to endangered languages.

From Building Vocabulary To Talking About Family Traditions Together: Discussions On The Facebook Group “Hoisan Phrases 學講台山話”, Melissa Chen, Genevieve Leung

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

This poster focuses on online discourses of an online Facebook group - “Hoisan Phrases.” “Hoisan Phrases” is used to construct positive ideologies about Hoisan-wa. Using multicompetence and symbolic competence frameworks, these online interactions are sites where Hoisan-wa speakers engage in the ability “to perform and construct various historicities in dialogue with others” (Kramsch & Whiteside). Humor serves as a way of moving beyond negative ideologies of Hoisan-wa. Data comes from a corpus of three years’ worth of posts. The data demonstrates a re-envisioning of the way we view Hoisan-wa vis-à-vis online communication, and expands the domains of language use.

Jargons And Pidgins And Creoles, Oh My!, Emily Gray

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

Nowadays, creoles are often employed when a group wants to reach the minority audience with its message. Thanks to the presence of creoles on every continent, this strategy has the potential to be highly successful. Creole writings can be divided into two main subcategories: ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical. Writings related to Christianity can be found wherever English-based creoles are widely used and accepted. Creolized translations of missionary prayers have been dated back to the eighteenth century (Todd 71). Negerhollands, a Dutch-based creole of the Virgin Islands, even boasts a translation of the Bible. Translations of creoles have also been used in …

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 …

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 …

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

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Use Of English Determiners In Dialogue Journals By Japanese Second Language Learners, Adriana Rodrigues Bridger

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The purpose of this study was to describe the use of English determiners in dialogue journals by Japanese second language learners. The entries of the journals of six Japanese students in an ESL class collected over an eight-week period served as the main source of data for this research project. Three analyses wert! performed: the accuracy order of the articles (the. al an. and@). possessives. and other determiners: the accuracy order of predeterminers. central determiners. and postdeterminers: and an error analysis of the articles a/an. the. and the@ article. The following major findings emerged: the accuracy order of the English …

“The Problem Of Science” In Nietzsche And Heidegger, Babette Babich

Research Resources

Nietzsche and Heidegger pose important philosophical questions to science and its technological projects. The resultant contributes to what may be called a continental philosophy of science and I argue that only such a rigorously critical approach to the question of science permits a genuinely philosophical reflection on science. The resultant contributes to what may be called a continental philosophy of science and I argue that only such a rigorously critical approach to the question of science permits a genuinely philosophical reflection on science. More than a thoughtful reflection on science, however, the heart of philosophy is also at stake in …