Linguistics Commons^™

Collaborative Digital Problem-Solving: Power, Relationships, And Participation, Gloria E. Jacobs, Jill Castek

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The study examines the collaborative nature of problem solving as dyads and triads of adults were grouped to solve digital problems using online resources. Digital problem solving involves the nimble use of skills, strategies, and mindsets to navigate online in everyday contexts using novel resources, tools, and interfaces, in efficient and flexible ways, to accomplish personal and professional goals. Findings address the nature of collaborative talk during digital problem solving through three interrelated categories of themes gleaned from discourse analysis: (a) power, (b) relationships, and (c) participation. These themes offer a nuanced understanding of collaborative interactions during digital problem solving. …

Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis Of Movie Reviews, Samuel Onalaja, Eric Romero, Bosang Yun

SMU Data Science Review

This study investigates a comparison of classification models used to determine aspect based separated text sentiment and predict binary sentiments of movie reviews with genre and aspect specific driving factors. To gain a broader classification analysis, five machine and deep learning algorithms were compared: Logistic Regression (LR), Naive Bayes (NB), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Recurrent Neural Network Long-Short-Term Memory (RNN LSTM). The various movie aspects that are utilized to separate the sentences are determined through aggregating aspect words from lexicon-base, supervised and unsupervised learning. The driving factors are randomly assigned to various movie aspects and their impact tied to …

Pragmatic Deficits In Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Paige Kessler

Honors Theses

Background: Most studies have found pragmatic language skills to be poorer in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) populations, but there is no conclusive evidence.

Aim: Our aim was to conduct a meta-analysis of pragmatic language abilities in ADHD populations to more definitively demonstrate the extent of pragmatic language deficits in these populations as compared to typically developing (TD) populations.

Methods and procedures: Journal articles were identified using the search terms ((attention deficit) OR (adhd)) AND (pragmatics). Identified studies were screened and reviewed for inclusion criteria, descriptive information, and outcome variables. A meta-analysis was conducted, and individual effect sizes and overall effect size …

Functional Differentiation In The Language Network Revealed By Lesion-Dymptom Mapping, William Matchin, Alexandra Basilakos, Dirk B. Den Ouden, Brielle C. Stark, Gregory Hickok, Julius Fridriksson

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Theories of language organization in the brain commonly posit that different regions underlie distinct linguistic mechanisms. However, such theories have been criticized on the grounds that many neuroimaging studies of language processing find similar effects across regions. Moreover, condition by region interaction effects, which provide the strongest evidence of functional differentiation between regions, have rarely been offered in support of these theories. Here we address this by using lesion-symptom mapping in three large, partially-overlapping groups of aphasia patients with left hemisphere brain damage due to stroke (N = 121, N = 92, N = 218). We identified multiple measure by …

A Strategy For Correcting Errors In Automated Formant Extraction, Lisa M. Johnson

Faculty Publications

Sociophonetic vowel analysis relies heavily on measurements of resonant frequencies, particularly of the first and second formants. Automated formant estimation using linear predictive coding (LPC) algorithms in software like Praat greatly increases efficiency compared to hand measurements and allows researchers to analyze more data than was possible before this technological advancement. However, many authors have noted LPC analysis is prone to certain types of errors (e.g., Di Paolo, Yaeger-Dror, & Wassink, 2011; Harrison, 2013; Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006; Strelluf, 2019; Styler, 2017). In one common error, which I call “faulty low F2” (FLF2), LPC identifies a spectral peak between …

Black Codes Re-Envisioned: The Dred Scott Majority Opinion As An Antiblack Performative Speech Act., Tiffany Dillard-Knox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a discursive analysis of the decision in the Dred Scott v Sandford, 1857 case written by Chief Justice Roger Taney. It begins with an overview of the literature on performative speech acts, focusing on the aspects of performatives that relate to Louis Miron and Jonathan Xavier Inda’s thesis that race is a performative speech act. Breaking from their use of race as the analytic, this analysis is situated within a black/nonblack paradigm. This provides a framework that focuses on the unique ways in which the discourse of the text enacts, accumulates and renders blackness fungible. The …

The Acquisition Of Variation In Future Time Expression By High School Student Learners Of Spanish In Upstate New York, Erika E. Clarkin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The present dissertation sets out to investigate the acquisition of variation in future-time expression by English speakers L2 learners of Spanish in a high school setting. I explore the variable use of the morphological future, the periphrastic future, and the present indicative to express the future time in Spanish by the participants. A total of 2,282 tokens were collected at three different times during the school year. The participants were attending year six of Spanish instruction. The study takes into consideration previously published research on the use of future markers by native speakers and by non-native speakers. The present study …

The Lived Experiences Of Latinx Parents And Their Perception Of Bilingual Programs: A Phenomenological Reflection, Manuel O. Adrianzen

Dissertations

The aim of this study is two-fold. First, to better understand and capture the lived experiences of Latinx parents as they navigate the registration/enrollment process at the school and select a language program for their Pre-kindergarten child. Second, to understand what lived experiences influence their perception about bilingual education programs. Using Van Manen’s (2016) concept of human sciences and phenomenology, data was collected through the use of conversational interviews. The responses provided by the parents and school clerk revealed five themes, fear & anxiousness, hope for things to come & for a brighter future, use of social networks to understand …

Spanish /S/ Reduction In Cíbola County, New Mexico, Brandon Martinez

Linguistics ETDs

The extent to which /s/ reduces in both onset and coda positions varies greatly across Spanish varieties, with Traditional New Mexican Spanish showing significant reduction rates in past research. However, to-date there has been no in-depth linguistic study of Spanish in Cíbola County. The current work presents an analysis of variable /s/ reduction in Cíbola Spanish, using data from the New Mexico-Colorado Spanish Survey. The results demonstrate that reduction in this dialect is conditioned primarily by linguistic rather than extralinguistic factors, which vary based on syllable position. The manuscript also briefly introduces the history of Cíbola, Hispanic identity & …

Latin American Identities And The American Demonym, Maia S. Schofield

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

Current literature addresses the question of Latin American identity largely in terms of assimilation, language proficiency, generation of immigrant, and political participation, while the American demonym remains an understudied topic. ‘America’ has been popularized in its usage to refer only to the United States and ‘American’ to its nationals. Although Latin Americans are natives of the Americas, they are rarely considered ‘American’. This study examines factors that influence the identity of Latin Americans living in the United States and focuses primarily on the connection between identity and the understanding of ‘America’. To examine this relationship, a questionnaire, offered in Spanish …

Collateral Damage: How Expanding Public Charge Policy Influences Adult Esl Enrollment, Allison M. Eckert

Master's Theses

This study used statistical analysis of enrollment records for ESL programs at community colleges throughout California from 2015-2019 to determine whether adult immigrants’ participation in public ESL programs was reduced under President Donald Trump. Immigrant families’ lesser use of public education services and means-tested federal benefits has been widely documented in the wake of Trump’s expansion of the public charge rule, which counted immigrants’ use of a wider array of public benefits against their case for residency in the United States than had any previous iteration of the rule. Failing the public charge test can block an immigrant’s entry into …

A Discipline In Search Of A Voice: A Corpus Linguistic Study Of Evaluation Scholarly Literature, Aaron Wilson Kates

Dissertations

Linguists use the concept of discourse community (DC) to describe the speech of groups of people associated by some extrinsic purpose or interest (Swales, 1990). One defining feature of a DC is a shared lexicon. Scriven (1994), in his discussion of evaluation as a discipline, addresses the need for evaluation to have a “core subject” which would then allow, among other things, the development of “concepts and language to deal with core problems,” while noting that there exists a definite lack of clarity of language among evaluators (p. 147). Christie and Rose (2003) suggest that the lack of clarification around …

The Effects Of Watching Text-Relevant Video Segments On Reading Comprehension Of Culturally Unfamiliar Texts With Adult English Language Learners Supported By The Schematic Information-Processing (Sip) Model Of Reading Comprehension, Amirreza Karami

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed-methods sequential explanatory study was to investigate the effects of watching text-relevant video segments on reading comprehension of a culturally unfamiliar text when technical words are present or absent. Therefore, 44 adult English Language Learners (ELLs) with higher-intermediate to advanced English language proficiency levels from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) School of Languages located in the Dominican Republic were chosen and randomly assigned to two different groups: control vs. experimental.

First, the researcher compared two different types of reading instruction—traditional text-based vs. video-based reading instruction supported by the Schematic Information-Processing (SIP) model of reading …

Klon Pronouns In Their Typological And Linguistic Context Within Wallacea, Eastern Indonesia, Johnny Marshel Banamtuan

Theses and Dissertations

Klon is a typologically SOV Timor-Alor-Pantar (Papuan) language, spoken by around 10,000 people on the islands of Alor and Pantar in eastern Indonesia. Like most SOV languages, Klon has postpositions, possessor before possessed, and sentence-final question particles. NPs are left-headed, with attributive modifiers, numerals, quantifiers, relative clauses, and demonstratives following the head noun. Klon has both pre-verbal and post-predicate verb modifiers. Preverbal modifiers can only modify verbal predicates. The language is aspect-prominent, with no grammatical tense. Like many SOV languages, Klon has clause-final standard negation, often occurring as bipartite negation.

Klon syntax pivots around the Undergoer. Only Undergoers are indexed …

Investigating Information Structure And Word Order In Latin Poetry: An Analysis Of Epigrams, Justin Riley Soderholm

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the epigrammatic verses of the Latin poet Marcus Valerius Martialis (Martial). The emphasis is on the order of basic constituents and information structure, in particular, the concepts of sentence articulation and focus structure as modelled by Lambrecht (1994).

I categorize clauses from roughly 200 lines of epigrammatic verse by the sentence articulations topic-comment, in which propositions have predicate focus, identificational, in which propositions have argument focus, and thetic, in which whole propositions are in focus. For each articulation, I also present various examples demonstrating the variety of word orders in each. Additionally, this study examines some patterns …

The Impact Of Verb Type On The Variability Of The Comp-Trace Effect, Haydee Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The C-t effect has been extensively researched with regards to its variability, however, matrix verbs have not generally been taken into account. The present study investigates whether verbs believe, doubt, know, realize, say and think differ in the strength of the C-t effect they induce— exploring syntactic analyses, epistemicity and grammaticalization to possibly identify what characteristics of verbs dictate the strength of the C-t effect. Subjects (n=44) were asked to complete 1 of 2 Grammaticality Judgement Tasks (GJT), which asked them to rate the grammaticality of items which included matched items with that involving both subject extractions, constructions without extractions, …

Measuring Cross-Cultural Engagement Of Those Using The Growing Participator Approach, Cheryl Lea Cross

Theses and Dissertations

The Growing Participator Approach (GPA) is a language-learning approach used among global professionals living cross-culturally. Developer Greg Thomson claims that through the GPA, learners grow as active participants in their new culture by learning language primarily in relationship. Because cultural participation is central to GPA, measuring social engagement is the most appropriate form of evaluation. This research seeks to answer the questions: (1) Does focused language learning using the GPA correspond with a high degree of social integration in the host community? (2) Does the use of scales from other academic fields help evaluate social engagement for language learners?

For …

The Iconicity And Non-Arbitrariness Of Body Locations In Four Unrelated Sign Languages, John Samson

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I show that universally, there is a strong tendency for signs located on the body to have an iconic or non-arbitrary motivation, especially in their original form. I analyze sign language dictionaries from four unrelated sign languages and establish an iconic or non-arbitrary link between the form of the signs and their meaning, and classify those links according to 8 categories of body location iconicity and 3 categories of non-arbitrariness. The strength of this tendency depends on the percentage of signs that are shown to have an iconic or non-arbitrary link. For the data analyzed here this …

Book Review: Intercultural Perspectives On Research Writing, Edited By Pilar Mur-Dueñas And Jolanta Šinkūnienė (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2018), David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Complex Predicates In Southern Turkmen: A Role And Reference Grammar Analysis, Nathaniel Andrew Shaver

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses the concepts of nexus and juncture, as articulated by Role and Reference Grammar, to examine complex verbal constructions found in four collected texts. These texts were collected from four Southern Turkmen (or Turkmen of Afghanistan) speakers. Through transcribing, glossing, and analyzing these texts, a number of complex predicates were identified. These were then described according to their various nexus juncture types. Three nexus juncture varieties were represented in the collected texts. These include clausal coordination, clausal subordination, and core cosubordination. Although not represented in the texts, it was possible to elicit three other provisional nexus juncture varieties. …