Linguistics Commons^™

Towards Multipurpose Readability Assessment, Ion Madrazo

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Readability refers to the ease with which a reader can understand a text. Automatic readability assessment has been widely studied over the past 50 years. However, most of the studies focus on the development of tools that apply either to a single language, domain, or document type. This supposes duplicate efforts for both developers, who need to integrate multiple tools in their systems, and final users, who have to deal with incompatibilities among the readability scales of different tools. In this manuscript, we present MultiRead, a multipurpose readability assessment tool capable of predicting the reading difficulty of texts of varied …

Focus Structures In Copala Triqui, Zena Zimmerglass

Linguistics

The purpose of this research is to identify the techniques used by speakers of Copala Triqui to focus one or more constituents in a sentence. Copala Triqui is a native Mexican language originating in the region that is now San Juan Copala, Mexico. In this experiment, we tested for five types of focus: broad focus, subject focus, object focus, contrastive subject focus, and contrastive object focus. We captured these patterns by having speakers answer Triqui questions that elicited the appropriate type of focus. We found that some focused sentences allow for deviations in word order from non-focused or broad-focused ones. …

A Longitudinal Analysis Of Adult Esl Speakers' Oral Fluency Gains, Kostiantyn Fesenko

Theses and Dissertations

While a number of studies have sought to investigate ESL speakers' fluency gains over the course of one 15-week semester, few if any studies have investigated these changes over a longer developmental period. A critical factor in researching longitudinal change is that students do not often remain in an intensive English program (IEP) for more than two semesters before moving to a new school, applying to an American university, or returning to their home country. Longitudinal research, therefore, is necessary as program administrators, teachers, and learners all seek to understand points where change in oral fluency actually occurs. For this …

A Framework For Evaluating Recommender Systems, Michael Gabriel Bean

Theses and Dissertations

Prior research on text collections of religious documents has demonstrated that viable recommender systems in the area are lacking, if not non-existent, for some datasets. For example, both www.LDS.org and scriptures.byu.edu are websites designed for religious use. Although they provide users with the ability to search for documents based on keywords, they do not provide the ability to discover documents based on similarity. Consequently, these systems would greatly benefit from a recommender system. This work provides a framework for evaluating recommender systems and is flexible enough for use with either website. Such a framework would identify the best recommender system …

Expecting Excellence: Student And Teacher Attitudes Towards Choosing To Speak English In An Iep, Alhyaba Encinas Moore

Theses and Dissertations

In an effort to immerse learners in the target language, many IEPs in the U.S. hold fast to inflexible English Only policies (Auerbach, 1993; McMillan & Rivers, 2011). However, research has identified several shortcomings of such a rule, such as (1) the benefits of the L1 in L2 learning, and the lack of research supporting the exclusion of the mother tongue (Atkinson, 1993; Brooks-Lewis, 2009; Butzkamm, 2003), and (2) psychological, sociocultural, and linguistic factors that diminish the effectiveness of English Only and contribute to a negative learning environment (Shvidko, Evans, & Hartshorn, 2015). This body of research has prompted a …

The Influence Of Online English Language Instruction On Esl Learners' Fluency Development, Rebecca Aaron

Theses and Dissertations

The number of students participating in online-based instruction has grown steadily over the past decade as improvements in Internet availability, speed, and bandwidth have enabled students from around the world to enroll in online courses rather than participate in onsite traditional college courses. Online courses have also provided educational opportunities for language learners that are more convenient and cost effective. With the growth occurring in online instruction, it is critical to ask about the effectiveness of online English language learning. Even though this type of instructional medium has been available for more than a decade, there has been little empirical …

Avoiding Linguistic Neglect Of Deaf Children, T. Humphries, P. Kushalnagar, G. Mathur, Donna Jo Napoli, C. Padden, C. Rathmann, S. Smith

Linguistics Faculty Works

Deaf children who are not provided with a sign language early in their development are at risk of linguistic deprivation; they may never be fluent in any language, and they may have deficits in cognitive activities that rely on a firm foundation in a first language. These children are socially and emotionally isolated. Deafness makes a child vulnerable to abuse, and linguistic deprivation compounds the abuse because the child is less able to report it. Parents rely on professionals as guides in making responsible choices in raising and educating their deaf children. But lack of expertise on language acquisition and …

The Knowledge Of Ideophones In Multilingual Contexts: A West African Pilot Study, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This presentation examines the ubiquity of multilingualism and its somewhat uncertain characterization; the claim for linguistic repertoires vs. languages; how to evaluate and document a linguistic repertoire, economically and expeditiously; ideophones as functionally areal but formally local, thus a control for borrowings; and, is there any sharing in highly multilingual areas? Are ideophones less local than has been empirically shown?

Assessing Problem Solving In Technology Rich Environments Within A Public Library, Jill Castek, Gloria Jacobs

Presentations and Publications

The presentation focuses on how critical thinking and a range of digital literacy skills may influence the ability to solve web-based information problems in diverse educational settings.

Verbal Morphology And Grammatical Aspect In Sarikoli, Timothy S. Palmer

Theses and Dissertations

Grammatical aspect in Sarikoli, an Eastern Iranian (Pamir) language, has never been adequately described. This work fills a gap in the descriptive literature, beginning with a straightforward restatement of verbal morphosyntax, and moving to a discussion of verb stems and their uses. Verb stems in Sarikoli include the infinitive, imperfective, perfective, and perfect. Additional morphemes discussed in this work include the durative clitic, stative (resultative) suffix, cessative suffix, and agreement suffixes and clitics.

Sarikoli verbal morphology encodes aspect, not tense. The major grammatical aspects of Sarikoli include perfective, imperfective, perfect, and durative. Verb stems and other aspectual marking in context …

The Qualities, Practices, And Theories Held By Award-Winning Second Language College Teachers, Leendert Van Beek

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

It is important for second language college teachers to know what kinds of teaching and learning approaches are most effective for their students. This basic qualitative study presents the perspectives exceptional second language teachers have regarding their own qualities of excellence, practices, philosophies of teaching, and theories of learning. The purpose of the study was to identify, describe, and understand these perspectives. Sixteen of such teachers, all of whom had won one or more awards of excellence from professional organizations, were interviewed, and the collected data were analyzed through three levels of coding. The main research question regarding the perspectives …

Secular But Not Superficial : An Overlooked Nonreligious/Nonspiritual Identity., Daniel G. Delaney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since Durkheim’s characterization of the sacred and profane as “antagonistic rivals,” the strict dichotomy has been framed in such a way that “being religious” evokes images of a life filled with profound meaning and value, while “being secular” evokes images of a meaningless, self-centered, superficial life, often characterized by materialistic consumerism and the cold, heartless environment of corporate greed. Consequently, to identify as “neither religious nor spiritual” runs the risk of being stigmatized as superficial, untrustworthy, and immoral. Conflicts and confusions encountered in the process of negotiating a nonreligious/nonspiritual identity, caused by the ambiguous nature of religious language, were explored …

Reflective Practitioners: Foreign-Language Teachers Exploring Self-Assessment, Maria Luisa Spicer-Ecalante, Karin Dejonge-Kannan

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

It is the professional and personal responsibility of teachers to analyze, evaluate, reflect on, and improve their classroom practice (Desimone & Garet, 2016). This paper introduces a guided teacher observation model which combines both self and peer-observations, designed for Foreign-Language (FL) teachers to evaluate their own classroom practice through video recording and directed reflection. Instructors’ self-assessment statements that implement this model show that it enables teachers to identify and address their areas for improvement (Bailey, 1981; Barber, 1990; Zeichner & Liston, 2014; Spicer-Escalante & deJonge-Kannan, 2014). Moreover, this guided teacher observation model entails a dialogue between observed instructor and observers. …

Reification, Resistance, And Transformation? The Impact Of Migration And Demographics On Linguistic, Racial, And Ethnic Identity And Equity In Educational Systems: An Applied Approach, Rebecca Ann Campbell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using an applied anthropological approach focused on language, this study investigates the relationship between linguistic, racial, and ethnic identities and school resource access in the context of migration. This project examines how these identities are established, experienced, reified, and resisted by various school actors. Exposing power at its roots through a multi-level analysis, this research informs on how people negotiate socialization into particular identities, propelling them toward positions in school and society of varying opportunity.

Focused on two elementary schools in a central Florida county that has been and is undergoing demographic changes, this work offers applications for educational institutions …

Towards A Computational Model Of Frame Of Reference Alignment In Swedish Dialogue, Simon Dobnik, Christine Howes, Kim Demaret, John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

In this paper we examine how people negotiate, interpret and repair the frame of reference (FoR) in online text based dialogues discussing spatial scenes in Swedish. We describe work-in-progress in which participants are given different perspectives of the same scene and asked to locate several objects that are only shown on one of their pictures. This task requires participants to coordinate on FoR in order to identify the missing objects. This study has implications for situated dialogue systems.

Aloha In The Desert: Ideologies Of Ka ʻŌlelo HawaiʻI A Mēheuheu, Violet Lovelena Witt

Linguistics ETDs

My study involved sociolinguistic interviewing and the gathering of ethnographic data collected to inform a discussion of three interlaced topics; Language and Culture, Language Ideologies, and Language Maintenance. These topics are discussed through the exploration of ka ʻōlelo hawaiʻi (Hawaiian Language) in the cultural context of Hula. Hula is defined as a dance with referential movements and gestures that was developed in the Hawaiian Islands by the original settlers (Stillman 1998:1). The goal of this study is to build on previous studies of Hawaiian Ideologies (e.g., Wong 1999, Hall 2005, Malone & Shoda-Sutherland 2005, Halualani 2007, and Snyder-Frey 2013), …

Lexical Variation, Lexical Innovation, And Speaker Motivations: A Historical Psycholinguistic Approach, Jason Timm Dr.

Linguistics ETDs

Speakers commonly re-purpose existing forms in the mental lexicon to create novel form-meaning. Contemporary evidence that such innovation processes have occurred historically is attested in varying degrees of polysemy in the mental lexicon. This dissertation considers speaker motivations underlying these innnovation processes historically. Strong synchronic relationships between frequency and degree of polysemy, on one hand, and frequency and lexical access, on the other hand, have traditionally been interpreted as evidence for the primacy of economic motivations in processes of lexical innovation. In contrast, the cognitive processes that most commonly facilitate innovation, metaphor and metonymy, have largely been described as processes …

October 28, 2016: Elizabeth Wardle Next Visiting Speaker In Ellis Speaker Series, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

The Department of English Anthony Ellis Scholarly Speakers Series featuring Elizabeth Wardle

Because, X: A New Construction Of Because In Popular Culture, Stephanie Walla

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis explores the new language fad, Because, X, which originated on the Internet and was named the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year in 2013. Since the construction is relatively recent, there has been little formal research conducted on it beyond Internet articles and discussions. The research presented in this thesis aims to understand this new construction through detailed syntactic, semantic, and quantitative analyses. This includes investigating instances of the Because, X construction from its origins in 2011 to recent occurrences as well as gathering participant judgments on the construction from two different studies conducted for this work.

Fish Names Variability Traces The Geo-Historical Dynamics Of Moroccan Fishermen Communities, Hicham Masski, Abdelaziz Ait Hammou

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Fish vernacular names in Morocco needs a structuring system. Though used widely, these names are highly variable and do not necessarily meet trade requirements. The 138 species considered in this study have 691 vernacular names and the vernacular names lists of the 16 study sites show large disparities. The most part of this variability is of linguistic origin coming from four geographic regions and thus cultural groups. Even if possible, the adoption of a unique standard, which is the goal of the national fisheries regulation authorities, might encounter resistance to its dissemination throughout fishermen and the local population.