Linguistics Commons^™

The Contribution Of Set Switching And Working Memory To Sentence Processing In Older Adults, Mira Goral, Manuella Clark-Cotton, Avron Spiro Iii, Loraine Obler, Jay Verkuilen, Martin Albert

Publications and Research

This study evaluates the involvement of switching skills and working memory capacity in auditory sentence processing in older adults. The authors examined 241 healthy participants, aged 55 to 88 years, who completed four neuropsychological tasks and two sentence-processing tasks. In addition to age and the expected contribution of working memory, switching ability, as measured by the number of perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, emerged as a strong predictor of performance on both sentence-processing tasks. Individuals with both low working-memory spans and more perseverative errors achieved the lowest accuracy scores. These findings are consistent with compensatory accounts of …

Esp For Hospitality And Tourism Students : A Needs Analysis., Krishna Rubi Munusamy

Student Works (2010-2019)

The main concern of this research is to determine the Needs of the stakeholders involved in relation to the conduct of the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course at the Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism Management of University Tun Abdul Razak (UniRazak). As it is quite clear that the premier language of communication in the hospitality and tourism industry is English, a needs analysis for the ESP course was essential to identify whether the course catered to the needs of the students. Thus, this study was focused on the feedback from two main stakeholders; the students of the ESP course …

The Teaching Of Mathematics And Science In English : A Dialetical Relational., Noorhana Hashim

Student Works (2010-2019)

The policy of teaching Science and Mathematics in schools has become a never ending issue with groups divided on whether teachers should continue teaching them using English. The policy was first introduced in 2003, sparking a series of debates, especially by those who are concerned with the ability of the subjects to be taught effectively using the language. This study looked into the construction of the discursive field of teaching Mathematics and Science in English articulated in the editorials published by the New Straits Times. It also looked into the various moments of interdiscursivity (i.e pedagogic, political, and perception of …

Pemaparan Idea Dan Penguasaan Bahasa Dalam Karangan Pelajar Lembam : Satu Kajian Kes., Siti Farah Mat Daud

Student Works (2010-2019)

This research is a case study on the visualization of ideas and language proficiency in the composition produced by slow learners. Language is the most important communication channel for everyone. Through languages, people can communicate with others in order to express feelings, needs, opinions, experiences, ideas, knowledge, to obtain information, gain knowledge, understanding other and so forth both in written and oral form. As such, language proficiency is an important aspect of the learning process. The study employs ten subjects among Form Two students who are considered slow learners. The data gathered is based on 60 essays formal and informal …

Permindahan Leksis Bahasa Inggeris Dalam Cerpen Tamil., Jayanthi Palanandy

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study focuses on the English lexis loans found in the Tamil short stories of Malaysia. The main objective of this study is to examine the extent and the manner in which the English lexis loans occur in the Tamil literature involving short stories of Malaysia. These lexis loans are analyzed on the basis of their categories and the patterns of their formation. Altogether 93 Tamil short stories, published in three Tamil dailies of Malaysia namely, Tamil Nesan, Makkal Osai and Malaysia Nanban, for the period of six months have been selected for analysis. Since the above dailies are the …

Lexical Stress Placement In Polysyllabic Words In Malaysia English., Jelinda Ye-Na Chin

Student Works (2010-2019)

Malaysian English is said to be different from British English in terms of stress placement with the tendency for Malaysian English speakers to stress the final syllables of polysyllabic words, such as manfully, whereas in British English, stress placement is on the initial syllable. Two observations led to the investigation of the said cross-varietal difference. Firstly, previous studies have explored stress differences based on auditory impressions, not acoustic evidence (Platt & Weber, 1980; Tongue, 1972). Secondly, the auditory evidence from such previous studies comes from the realisations of test words in phrase-final position or citation form, where phrase-final lengthening is …

Language Choice And Shift Among Families Of Sino-Malay Mixed Marriages., Mohana Raju

Student Works (2010-2019)

In this study, the researcher has made an attempt to investigate the language choice of Sino-Malay mixed marriage families residing in Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia. The study hopes to look for any existing patterns to indicate if these families are shifting from the native tongues existing at home, namely, Malay and Chinese, to another language due to their choice of language for selected domains and perception towards the mother tongues. In this study, participants consisted of sixteen (16) Sino-Malay mixed-marriage families of which the fathers are all Malay and mothers are all of Chinese descent. The theoretical framework of the …

Analisis Sistem I'Rab : Satu Kajian Perbandingan Antara Pendekatan Sibawayh Dengan Al-Sayutiy., Ahmad Arifin Sapar

Student Works (2010-2019)

This study intends to analyze Sībawayhs‟ perspective and al-Sayūṭīys‟ perspective on system of inflection ) )الإِػِشَابُ in Arabic language as well as examine the similarities and differences aspects in system. Research samples involved are several selected writing about system of inflection )الإِػِشَابُ( by two Arabic language experts in grammar namely; „Amru Bin „Uthman Bin Qanbar [Sībawayh] and Abu al-Fadhl Abdul al-Rahman Bin al-Kamal [al-Sayutiyy]. Major books underlying this study are “al-Kitab” )اَىْنِتَابُ( and “Ham'ul Hawami'i Fi Syarhi Jam'i al-Jawam'i” ىَ غَُِ اىْهَىَا غٍِِ فِ شَشِحِ جَ غَِِ اىْجَىَا غٍِِ ( ). This study has applied concentrated comparison technique to five …

Speech Patterns And Styles Of Young Malaysian Metrosexuals., Mohd Khushairi Tohiar

Student Works (2010-2019)

This case study attempts to examine the styles of language and patterns of speech among young Malaysian men between the ages of mid-twenties to late thirties who live and work in Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding urban areas. The subjects involved in this study are randomly selected using the definition of ‘metrosexual men’ by Simpson (1994). As there have been no studies on metrosexual language, particularly in the Malaysian context, it should be noted that this study is the first to be carried out in the context of Malaysian men. In order to analyse the subjects’ styles of language and …

Structure And Use Of Pronouns In Malaysia Spoken Tamil : A Sociolinguistic Study., Rathimalar Rama

Student Works (2010-2019)

The present research, Structure and Use of Pronouns in Malaysian Spoken Tamil – A Sociolinguistics Study focuses on ‘language structure, (LS) and ‘language use’ (LU) and tries to accomplish an adequate description of the pronoun system that includes different types of pronouns, their alternants, their distribution, functional importance, grammatical relationships established, occurrence of pronoun forms in phrases and sentences, etc. The research also brings out the functional importance of pronoun forms-their grammatical occurrences in larger constructions. Pronouns, apart from their role established through different structures found in language, do have socio-cultural significance when they are used in different contexts, situations, …

The Development Of Two Units For Btr Tesol: "Basic Principles Of Second Language Acquisition" And "Communicative Language Teacher And Information Gap Exercises", Paul A. Scholes

Theses and Dissertations

A team of graduate students from Brigham Young University under the supervision of the main author Dr. Lynn Henrichsen collaborated on creating a book, as well as a website, Basic Training and Resources for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (BTR TESOL). The entire project consists of 10 sections with nearly 50 units addressing topics that novice teachers should know before teaching English to non-native speakers. The BTR TESOL program provides basic material for untrained novice teachers that will help them to be better prepared to face the challenges and responsibilities of teaching English. This write-up describes …

K-12 Teacher Perceptions Regarding Hispanic Family Educational Beliefs And Language And Literacy Practices, Marisa Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Abundant research exists examining what occurs in Hispanic homes regarding educational beliefs and literacy and language practices before and after children enter the school system. What is not known is whether or not teachers are aware of these practices and beliefs. The research questions of this study focus first on what perceptions K-12 teachers have about Hispanic educational beliefs and practices, and second, on determining if those perceptions correlate with teacher training in English as a second language (ESL). To answer these questions, a questionnaire was written based on an extensive review of literature regarding three aspects: Hispanic educational beliefs, …

Research, Development And Application Of A Learning Resource For Enhancing Listening And Spoken Skills In Spanish, Elena Paz Vizcaya

Conference papers

Native speech is directed towards native listeners, not designed for comprehension and analysis by language learners. Speed of delivery - or economy of effort - produce a speech signal to which the native listener can assign the correct words — there are no discrete words in the speech signal itself. Experience of using timescaling with recorded English has highlighted the benefit of making slowED speech available to the language learner or researcher, as opposed to slow speech – i.e delivered slowly. The main contribution to knowledge of this project is to generate a unique research and analysis corpus (audio resource) …

The Development Of Two Units For Basic Training And Resources For Teaching English To Speakers Of Other Languages: Understanding And Adapting In A New Culture And Teaching Culture, Monty A. Colver

Theses and Dissertations

A team of Brigham Young University graduate students working under the supervision of Dr. Lynn Henrichsen, collaborated on the creation of a book as well as a website, Basic Training and Resources for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (BTR-TESOL). The project, which will be developed in phases over the coming years, is intended to provide novice English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers with some introductory material on nearly fifty different topics related to the field. Each unit is not intended to be a comprehensive source and is not to be seen as a replacement for formal training. …

Semantic Enrichment Of Text Representation With Wikipedia For Text Classification, Hiroki Yamakawa, Jing Peng, Anna Feldman

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Text classification is a widely studied topic in the area of machine learning. A number of techniques have been developed to represent and classify text documents. Most of the techniques try to achieve good classification performance while taking a document only by its words (e.g. statistical analysis on word frequency and distribution patterns). One of the recent trends in text classification research is to incorporate more semantic interpretation in text classification, especially by using Wikipedia. This paper introduces a technique for incorporating the vast amount of human knowledge accumulated in Wikipedia into text representation and classification. The aim is to …

Wording Effects In Moral Judgments, Ross E. O'Hara, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Nicholas A. Sinnott-Armstrong

Dartmouth Scholarship

As the study of moral judgments grows, it becomes imperative to compare results across studies in order to create unified theories within the field. These efforts are potentially undermined, however, by variations in wording used by different researchers. The current study sought to determine whether, when, and how variations in wording influence moral judgments. Online participants responded to 15 different moral vignettes (e.g., the trolley problem) using 1 of 4 adjectives: “wrong”, “inappropriate”, “forbidden”, or “blameworthy”. For half of the sample, these adjectives were preceded by the adverb “morally”. Results indicated that people were more apt to judge an act …

Study Of Stemming Algorithms, Savitha Kodimala

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Automated stemming is the process of reducing words to their roots. The stemmed words are typically used to overcome the mismatch problems associated with text searching.

In this thesis, we report on the various methods developed for stemming. In particular, we show the effectiveness of n-gram stemming methods on a collection of documents.

Placing İsmayilli Lezgi Among The Lezgi Dialects, Jessica Smith

Theses and Dissertations

There is a cluster of three Lezgi villages in the İsmayıllı district of Azerbaijan that is separated by the Caucasus Mountains from the three main Lezgi dialects—Standard (SL), Axti (AL), and Quba (QL) Lezgi. This study places İsmayıllı Lezgi (IL) among the other dialects by comparing many of the varieties' attributes.

Five approaches are taken in this comparison: 1) comparing the similarities and differences of IL's phonological inventory to that of SL and AL; 2) contrasting the noun case system of IL versus that of SL; 3) comparing their verbal morphology; 4) looking for lexical similarities between IL and SL/AL/QL …

The Effect Of Content Revision Logs And Student-Teacher Conferences On Esl Student Writing, Urim Yi

Theses and Dissertations

Research has demonstrated the need for both teachers and students to find appropriate types of feedback for meaning-level (content) issues for English as a second langauge (ESL) writing (Kepner, 1991). The current study examines the use of a content revision log (where students monitor their revisions in such content issues as organization, paragraph development and use of topic sentences). Adding to the effect of applying the content revision log, the effect of holding conferences was also examined in the hope that referencing the content revision log during a conference session would bring the most positive results. There were three types …

Iconic Semantics In Phonology: A Corpus Study Of Japanese Mimetics, Joshua Marrinor Caldwell

Theses and Dissertations

Recent research on Japanese mimetics examines which part of speech the mimetic occurs as. An individual mimetic can appear as a noun, an adjective, an adverb, or a verb (Tsujimura & Deguchi 2007, 340). It is assumed by many scholars that mimetic words essentially function as adverbs (Inose 2007, 98). Few data-based studies exist that quantify the relative frequency of mimetic words in different word categories. Akita (2009) and Caldwell (2009a) have performed small scale or preliminary studies of this aspect of Japanese mimetics. The use of mimetics in other grammatical function categories has been attributed to the polysemous nature …