Linguistics Commons^™

Cats Are Fuzzy Pets: A Corpus And Analysis Of Potentially Euphemistic Terms, Martha Gavidia, Patrick Lee, Anna Feldman, Jing Peng

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Euphemisms have not received much attention in natural language processing, despite being an important element of polite and figurative language. Euphemisms prove to be a difficult topic, not only because they are subject to language change, but also because humans may not agree on what is a euphemism and what is not. Nonetheless, the first step to tackling the issue is to collect and analyze examples of euphemisms. We present a corpus of potentially euphemistic terms (PETs) along with example texts from the GloWbE corpus. Additionally, we present a subcorpus of texts where these PETs are not being used euphemistically, …

Register Variation In Understudied Academic Contexts, Larissa Goulart

Department of Linguistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

A major focus of register research has been language variation in academic discourse. These studies describe patterns of language use in spoken and written academic texts. Although there have been numerous studies of this type, most have focused on academic registers in English and on descriptions of published academic registers (e.g. textbooks, research articles, and abstracts). Much less work has been caried out on academic registers in other languages or unpublished academic registers. This special issue presents five studies describing the language patterns of understudied academic discourse in English (learners’ writing and statutory law), as well as descriptions of published …

Towards Better Structured And Less Noisy Web Data: Oscar With Register Annotations, Veronika Laippala, Anna Salmela, Samuel Rönnqvist, Alham Fikri Aji, Li Hsin Chang, Asma Dhifallah, Larissa Goulart, Henna Kortelainen, Marc Pàmies, Deise Prina Dutra, Valtteri Skantsi, Lintang Sutawika, Sampo Pyysalo

Department of Linguistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Web-crawled datasets are known to be noisy, as they feature a wide range of language use covering both user-generated and professionally edited content as well as noise originating from the crawling process. This article presents one solution to reduce this noise by using automatic register (genre) identification-whether the texts are, e.g., forum discussions, lyrical or how-to pages. We apply the multilingual register identification model by Rönnqvist et al. (2021) and label the widely used Oscar dataset. Additionally, we evaluate the model against eight new languages, showing that the performance is comparable to previous findings on a restricted set of languages. …

Indigenous Language Revitalization: Success, Sustainability, And The Future Of Human Culture, Grace Lewis

Capstone Showcase

This thesis looks at different styles of Indigenous language revitalization programs and seeks to delineate the three most successful characteristics seen across differing designs in an effort to promote the presence of these characteristics in existing programs. The literature analyzed outlines three main schools of thought: first, that language-based education is the most effective program design, second, that language-based education is only effective if it is directed and driven by the community it serves, and third, that culture-based education is the most effective design. The data rejects the idea that one design is superior to another, and instead presents three …

African American English As A Predictor Of Ethnic And Ethnolinguistic Identity In Adolescence, Giahna L. Glasco

Dissertations and Theses

This study’s purposes were to provide support for the Social identity theory of African American English (Vietze & Glasco, 2022) and the meanings African American English (AAE) speakers assign to their dialect. The study was primarily based on Tajfel’s (1979) social identity theory that proposes individuals derive a sense of self from group membership. The qualitative analyses examined ethnic and language group memberships. Ethnic identity development (Phinney, 1992), and ethnolinguistic identity theories (Giles and Johnson, 1987) guided narrative and content analyses of Kiese Laymon’s memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir (Laymon, 2018). The sample included 21 African American English conversations …

Un Estudio Sociolingüistíco Del Español De Hombres Con Descendencia Mexicana Que Se Identifican Como Homosexuales, Víctor Bulfrano Estanislao

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Ciertos rasgos lingüísticos específicos se asocian con hablantes de diferentes grupos. Los investigadores sociolingüísticos han identificado una serie de características lingüísticas como marcadores del habla homosexual en inglés y español; el presente estudio examina si estas características están presentes en el español producido por hombres homosexuales bilingües. Los hablantes examinados son hombres mexicanos de entre 18 y 30 años que viven en Chicago o los suburbios circundantes, son bilingües y se identifican como homosexuales. Los participantes completaron una serie de tareas: un cuestionario del contexto lingüístico, una narración oral y una entrevista sociolingüística grabada con el investigador. Se examinaron los …

Analysis Of The Correlation Between The Lexical Profile And Coh-Metrix 3.0 Text Easability And Readability Indices Of The Korean Csat From 1994–2022, Andrew Howie

All Master's Theses

The Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) is a highly competitive standardized assessment that graduating high-school seniors complete in the hope of getting a good score which will improve their chances of admission to a university of choice. The CSAT contains an English Section that has been described by scholars and educators alike as being far too difficult for the official English language curriculum to serve as sufficient preparation. The test’s lack of construct validity has been the basis for calls to revise the test to be better reflective of the school curriculum so that it can serve the evaluative …

Reading Rate Gain In A Second Language: The Effect Of Unassisted Repeated Reading And Intensity On Word-Level Reading Measures, Grant Eckstein, Krista Rich, Ethan Lynn

Faculty Publications

Repeated reading is a popular intervention used to help struggling readers by exposing them to the same text multiple times. While the approach has been effective in L1 and some EFL settings, little research has explored its effectiveness compared against a control group or among ESL learners. Our study examined reading rate gains using words per minute and four eye-tracking measures with 46 mid-intermediate ESL learners grouped into three 14-week treatment groups: a control group that read 26 text passages (about two per week) just once through, another that read the same passages twice in each sitting, and a third …

Una Lengua En Un Cuerpo, Silvia Rivera Alfaro

Publications and Research

Texto autoetnográfico sobre el trabajo lingüístico.

Perspectives On Georgia Vowels: From Legacy To Synchony, Joseph A. Stanley, Jon Forrest, Leila Glass, Margaret Renwick

Faculty Publications

Nexuses of change in Georgia English

Mid vowels

• How are FACE and DRESS distinguished over time?
• Which speakers show DRESS raising/fronting (SVS, AAVS)?
• When does DRESS lowering/backing begin (LBMS)?
• Which speakers show GOAT fronting (SVS, LBMS vs. AAVS)?

Low vowels

• Which speakers show TRAP raising/fronting (SVS, AAVS)?
• When does TRAP lowering/backing begin (LBMS)?
• Which speakers have the LOT/THOUGHT merger (LBMS)?

Temporal Fluency And Floor/Ceiling Scoring Of Intermediate And Advanced Speech On The Actfl Spanish Oral Proficiency Interview–Computer, Troy L. Cox, Alan V. Brown, Gregory L. Thompson

Faculty Publications

The rating of proficiency tests that use the Inter-agency Roundtable (ILR) and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines claims that each major level is based on hierarchal linguistic functions that require mastery of multidimensional traits in such a way that each level subsumes the levels beneath it. These characteristics are part of what is commonly referred to as floor and ceiling scoring. In this binary approach to scoring that differentiates between sustained performance and linguistic breakdown, raters evaluate many features including vocabulary use, grammatical accuracy, pronunciation, and pragmatics, yet there has been very little empirical validation …

Using Eeg To Measure L2 Word Learning, Jeffrey Jack Green, Ellen Knell, Rachel Yu Liu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Regional Patterns In Prevelar Raising, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Prevelar raising is the raising of trap and dress vowels before voiced velars. While bag and beg raising have been described in Canada, the Upper Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest, an in-depth investigation of their distribution across North America is lacking, especially for beg. Using an online survey distributed to over 5,000 participants via Reddit (which skews toward younger, White males) and ordinary kriging for spatial interpolation, this study finds that prevelar raising is more widespread than previously reported: bag raising is found in much of the North and the Upper Midwest, and beg raising is far more variable and …

Vowels Can Merge Because Of Changes In Trajectory: Prelaterals In Rural Utah English, Joseph A. Stanley, Lisa Morgan Johnson

Faculty Publications

Overview

• Front vowels: tense-lax pairs getting closer in apparent time.
• Back vowels: three-way convergence of WOLF, JOLT, and MULCH.
• This data suggests a merger by approximation.

Expanding to trajectories gives greater insight into this type of merger.

• Kinda like a zipper.

Greater detail in this merger by approximation.

• The nuclei don’t appear to trigger the shift
• The lateral gradually increases its influence, and the nucleus follows.

Trajectories are potentially important for discovering how vowels shift.

• More recent techniques can allow us to answer these questions.

Homogeneity And Heterogeneity In Western American English, Joseph A. Stanley, Jessica Sheperd, Auna Nygaard

Faculty Publications

The Low-Back-Merger Shift (Becker 2019)

Description:

• BAT, BET, BIT lower and retract
• Arguably a chain shift
• Triggered by BOT-retraction
• Typically BAT shifts the most
• BET and especially BIT less shifted

Previous accounts are based on isolated, independent studies.

“Clearly, collecting the same type of data from all sites would be optimal in allowing us the most reliable cross-region assessment.” (Fridland et al. 2017:172)

This study is a direct response to that call.

Methods:

Speakers:

• Recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (“MTurk”; cf. Kim et al 2019)
• 85 speakers

Procedure:

• Read 132 sentences and a 300-item wordlist
• Submitted audio 10 sentences at …

Doing Corpus Pragmatics: Variations In Speech Acts Performed In Conversations Occurring Naturally In Academic Contexts, Jacob Philip Rigal

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

No abstract provided.

Generational Change In Formant Trajectories: The Low-Back-Merger Shift In Longview, Washington, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

How have vowel formant trajectories changed as part of the LBMS?

As the front lax vowels lower and centralize, their formant dynamics change

• Specifically, F2 is less dynamic, resulting in a “bounce” shape in F1-F2 plots.
• More evident for lower vowels than higher ones.

Formant dynamics may change as global position changes (but not always).

• Especially true with BAT and BET here.
• BIT mostly unclear.
• BAN did not have substantial changes in vowel dynamics.

Thai Sentence Segmentation Using Large Language Models, Narongkorn Panitsrisit

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Thai sentence segmentation has been on the topic of interest among Thai NLP communities. However, not much literature has explored the use of transformer-based large language models to tackle the issue. We conduct three experiments on the LST20 corpus, including (1) fine-tuning WangchanBERTa, a large language model pre-trained on Thai, across different classification tasks, (2) joint learning for clause and sentence segmentation, and (3) cross-lingual transfer using the multilingual model XLM-RoBERTa. Our findings show that WangchanBERTa outperforms other models in Thai sentence segmentation, and fine-tuning it with token and contextual information further improves its performance. However, cross-lingual transfer from English …

Comparison Of The Inter-Accent Variation Of Articulation Rate Between English And English With Imitated Chinese Accent Speech, Komchit Taweesablamlert

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This paper compares the articulation rate of 2 English speeches with different accents produced by Nigel Ng, a well-known stand-up comedian and youtuber, while he is taking the role of Uncle Roger and while he is not. Taking the role of Uncle Roger, Nigel Ng produces utterances with imitated Chinese accent to underline stereotypical Asian characteristics, and to contrast with his own “neutralish English accent”. The objective is to investigate the variation of articulation rate between 2 accents which are both produced by only one speaker. Based on the analysis of the articulation rate of Nigel Ng’s speeches, it is …

การเปรียบเทียบค่าช่วงเวลาเริ่มเสียงก้องของพยัญชนะกักในเสียงพูดและเสียงร้องเพลงของภาษาไทย, สรชัช พนมชัยสว่าง

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

ลักษณะที่แสดงความแตกต่างของเสียงพูดและเสียงร้องเพลงในทางกลสัทศาสตร์นั้นได้มีการศึกษาพบหลายลักษณะด้วยกัน หนึ่งในนั้นรวมถึงลักษณะที่ไม่เกี่ยวข้องกับส่วนที่เป็นเสียงก้อง เช่นค่าช่วงเวลาเริ่มเสียงก้องของพยัญชนะกัก (Voice Onset Time) ซึ่งแสดงค่าระยะเวลาจากจุดเปิดฐานกรณ์จนถึงจุดที่เกิดการสั่นของเส้นเสียงของพยัญชนะกักในตำแหน่งต้นพยางค์ งานวิจัยที่ผ่านมาซึ่งศึกษาภาษาอังกฤษพบว่าเสียงร้องเพลงจะมีค่าช่วงเวลาเริ่มเสียงก้องของพยัญชนะกักน้อยกว่าเสียงพูด ในงานวิจัยชิ้นนี้ซึ่งศึกษาในภาษาไทยซึ่งมีความแตกต่างในการเปรียบต่างทางสัทวิทยาของพยัญชนะกักนั้น ได้ศึกษาด้วยวิธีการที่มีต้นแบบจากงานที่ผ่านมาในภาษาอังกฤษ และวิเคราะห์ทางสถิติด้วย mixed-effect linear regression พบว่า ความแตกต่างของค่าช่วงเวลาเริ่มเสียงก้องของพยัญชนะกักระหว่างเสียงพูดและเสียงร้องเพลงนั้น มีนัยสำคัญเพียงในพยัญชนะกักไม่ก้องพ่นลมเท่านั้น โดยมีแนวโน้มที่เสียงร้องเพลงจะมีค่าช่วงเวลาเริ่มเสียงก้องของพยัญชนะกักมากกว่าเสียงพูด ซึ่งต่างกับในงานวิจัยในภาษาอังกฤษ นำมาสู่ข้อสรุปว่าความแตกต่างของเสียงพูดและเสียงร้องเพลงในภาษาไทยนั้นอาจมีการพ่นลมเป็นหนึ่งในปัจจัยสำคัญ ซึ่งน่าจะเกิดจากการเน้นพยัญชนะให้ชัดเจนในขณะร้องเพลง