Fact-Checking As A Multi-Step Process: From Ambiguity Resolution To Claim Validation,
2025
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Fact-Checking As A Multi-Step Process: From Ambiguity Resolution To Claim Validation, Wenbo Wang
Dissertations
The spread of misinformation and disinformation has become a major concern, particularly with the rise of social media as a primary source of information for many people. Fact-checking—the process of verifying claims against credible evidence—has emerged as a critical safeguard against misinformation. Yet, the task is fraught with challenges: claims are often ambiguous, context-dependent, or composed of multiple intertwined assertions, while automated systems struggle to replicate the nuanced reasoning of human experts. This dissertation addresses these challenges by reimagining fact-checking as a multi-step, knowledge-guided process that systematically resolves ambiguity, decomposes complexity, and validates claims through structured reasoning. Additionally, the proposed …
How Individual Differences In Cue Weighting Influence The Link Between Memory And Speech In Noise Perception,
2025
University of Connecticut - Storrs
How Individual Differences In Cue Weighting Influence The Link Between Memory And Speech In Noise Perception, Ava Buckmir, Anne Marie Crinnion, Emily Myers
Honors Scholar Theses
Listening to speech is challenging, particularly when there is background noise or ambiguities in the speech signal. Numerous factors impact our ability to understand speech, including age, cognitive processes, and contextual information. But how do we account for these challenges? The types of cues we use may aid us in perceiving ambiguities in speech. Some individuals may rely on semantic cues (higher-level cues), such as how words relate to each other, or they may rely on acoustic-phonetic cues (lower-level cues), such as the durational information in the speech signal itself. But why do individuals differ in the types of cues …
How Childhood Maltreatment Shapes Brain Regions: Considerations For Speech-Language Pathology,
2025
University of South Dakota
How Childhood Maltreatment Shapes Brain Regions: Considerations For Speech-Language Pathology, Alexa G. Sees
Honors Thesis
Childhood maltreatment is a pervasive issue that affects millions of children worldwide, leading to alterations in key structures such as the limbic system, basal ganglia, corpus callosum, visual cortex, and language areas. These changes result in significant cognitive, emotional, and neurological consequences, such as learning deficits, emotional regulation issues, memory problems, reduced vocabulary size, speech errors, etc. This thesis explores the neurological effects of childhood maltreatment and their implications for speech-language pathology, highlighting how maltreatment-induced brain changes affect areas within the scope of speech-language pathology, such as social communication, language development, and behavior management. These results underscore the importance of …
Iconicity As An Organizing Principle Of The Lexicon,
2025
Boston University
Iconicity As An Organizing Principle Of The Lexicon, Erin E. Campbell, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Elana Pontecorvo, Ariel Cohen-Goldberg, Karen Emmorey, Naomi Caselli
Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research
The view that words are arbitrary is a foundational assumption about language, used to set human languages apart from nonhuman communication. We present here a study of the alignment between the semantic and phonological structure (systematicity) of American Sign Language (ASL), and for comparison, two spoken languages—English and Spanish. Across all three languages, words that are semantically related are more likely to be phonologically related, highlighting systematic alignment between word form and word meaning. Critically, there is a significant effect of iconicity (a perceived physical resemblance between word form and word meaning) on this alignment: words are most likely to …
The Semantics Of Sin: Profanity, Reform, And Cultural Authority In Progressive America,
2025
University of New Hampshire, Durham
The Semantics Of Sin: Profanity, Reform, And Cultural Authority In Progressive America, Evan J. Christensen
Roland D. Sawyer Scholarship Papers
During the Progressive Era, language reform movements such as the Anti-Profanity League sought to regulate everyday speech as part of broader efforts to preserve public morality and cultural identity. This paper examines the rhetorical strategies and cultural assumptions underpinning the anti-profanity crusade, focusing especially on Reverend Roland D. Sawyer’s leadership. Using historical sources including league literature, newspaper accounts, personal letters, organizational records, and sermons, it argues that profanity was framed not merely as a religious or moral failure but as a threat to social cohesion, character, and national values. Efforts to suppress swearing reveal how language functioned as a marker …
Navigating Trauma: A Linguistic Exploration Of Bilingual Trauma Expressions,
2025
American University in Cairo
Navigating Trauma: A Linguistic Exploration Of Bilingual Trauma Expressions, Amira Mahmoud Othman
Theses and Dissertations
This study explores the relationship between language, trauma, and emotional expression among bilingual Arabic-English speakers, focusing on code-switching patterns and euphemisms, and more broadly the emotional roles of native and non-native languages in trauma narratives. Through qualitative interviews with 20 Egyptian participants, the research reveals that code-switching serves as both a linguistic and emotional tool, allowing speakers to navigate trauma by creating distance or engaging more intimately. Such codeswitching patterns include the integration of English content words within Arabic structures, morphosyntactic innovations, and gender agreement applications, reflecting the creative adaptability of bilingual speakers in emotionally charged contexts, in line with …
Tuturan Ekspresif Sebagai Ungkapan Kesantunan Dan Ketidaksantunan Dalam Kumpulan Dongeng Untuk Anak,
2025
Universitas Indonesia
Tuturan Ekspresif Sebagai Ungkapan Kesantunan Dan Ketidaksantunan Dalam Kumpulan Dongeng Untuk Anak, Nesti Magdalena Tampubolon, Kushartanti Kushartanti
Multikultura
This research aims to describe expressive speech as an expression of politeness and impoliteness with moral values, which children learn during development. The data in this study used 42 expressive speeches of characters in the collection of fairy tales Jam Beker Raksasa & 9 Dongeng Seru Lainnya by Dian Kristiani. This research uses a qualitative approach through the analysis of Leech's politeness principle (1993), Leech's politeness scale (1993), Culpeper's impoliteness strategy (1996), and Linda and Eyre's moral values (1993). This research shows that expressive speech in this book uses more forms of impoliteness. Of the 42 expressive speeches, the researcher …
Form-Meaning Mappings Of Cyclic Gestures,
2025
University of New Mexico
Form-Meaning Mappings Of Cyclic Gestures, Wilho Macneil
Linguistics ETDs
Hirrel (2018) examines form-meaning mappings between speech and co-articulated cyclic gestures, identifying meanings associated with such gestures. To test replicability, this thesis analyzes two functional-semantic domains: modification (adverbs, quantifiers) and morphosyntactic constructions (complex sentences, English Progressive) and their relationship to cyclic gestures. About 12 hours of video was coded in ELAN for cyclic gestures (n=586) and analyzed textually for speech instances (n=1919) of target constructions. Contrary to Hirrel’s predictions, cyclic gestures were not more commonly co-articulated with adverbs than quantifiers and were also not more commonly co-articulated with complex sentences than the English Progressive Construction. Neither pattern reached statistical significance …
Spanish Conquistadors As God’S Chosen People: The Role Of Biblical Metaphor In Angélico Chávez's Recounting Of Southwest History,
2025
University of New Mexico - Main Campus
Spanish Conquistadors As God’S Chosen People: The Role Of Biblical Metaphor In Angélico Chávez's Recounting Of Southwest History, Nicholas L. Chavez
International Journal of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest
This study presents a critical discourse analysis of Fray Angélico Chávez’s My Penitente Land: Reflections on Spanish New Mexico through a cognitive linguistic lens based on Hawkins’s notion of iconographic reference. A metaphor analysis first identifies Chávez’s framing of New Mexican history as biblical narrative, mapping Old Testament stories, locations, and characters onto Spanish colonial events. The iconographic reference analysis then demonstrates how this metaphor functions discursively: a biblical iconographic frame of reference allows Chávez to create a biblically-based heirarchy which maps onto Spanish–Indigenous relations, positioning Spaniards as a chosen people and implicitly justifying colonial atrocities by aligning Indigenous groups …
Indirect Requests: Sociopragmatic Aspects Of Non-Conventionalised Indirect Directives,
2025
University of Texas at Arlington
Indirect Requests: Sociopragmatic Aspects Of Non-Conventionalised Indirect Directives, Hammed Mohammadpanah
Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations - Archive
Directives are divided into three types, corresponding to different levels of explicitness. To get a hearer who has left the front door open on a cold winter night while taking off their shoes, one can use a direct directive (e.g., Close the door!), a conventionalised indirect directive (e.g., Can you close the door?), or a non-conventionalised indirect directive (e.g., It’s –15 outside.). Inherently implicit in nature, non-conventionalised indirect directives (NCIDs) have been understudied due to being the most context-dependent and form-independent type of directives, which underscores the central role of context-based inferencing and contextual salience in processing and studying them. …
Paratum Fuit: Double Perfect Marking In Classical Latin Passives,
2025
University of Kentucky
Paratum Fuit: Double Perfect Marking In Classical Latin Passives, James F. Epperson Ii
Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics
Despite thousands of years of study, certain constructions in Latin remain insufficiently described in modern Latin linguistics. One such construction is the double perfectum, an analytic verbal construction comprising the perfect passive participle and a perfectum forms of the auxiliary esse. These forms are rare, largely absent from educational Latin materials, and receive limited attention in scientific descriptions of Latin, often focusing on their evolution into the modern Romance verbal systems. Pinkster (2015) identifies them within a broader class of resultative constructions, but acknowledges their inconsistent usage. Earlier scholars, such as Riemann (1927), interpreted them as stative, while others, like …
The Grammar Of Approximating Number Pairs (Anps) In Mandarin Chinese,
2025
Claremont Colleges
The Grammar Of Approximating Number Pairs (Anps) In Mandarin Chinese, Xuehuai He
Pomona Senior Theses
"There are twenty or thirty people." What exactly does this mean? Is it exactly twenty or thirty, or is it an approximate range? What about "twenty or twenty-six people"?
Approximating number pairs (ANPs) are a kind of approximative expression that takes a number pair and expresses a quantity close to it. There are constraints on the structure and choice of numerals: many combinations would be ungrammatical or denote a precise disjunction rather than being approximative. Studies like Eriksson et al. (2010) statistically generalized the grammar of ANPs through corpus studies on select European languages. However, these surface-level generalizations fail to …
Evidence For Explicitation: Working From Asl Into English,
2024
Gallaudet University
Evidence For Explicitation: Working From Asl Into English, Campbell Mcdermid, Carrie Humphrey, Anita Harding
Journal of Interpretation
A study was done to examine the explicitation and compression strategies used by interpreters working from American Sign Language (ASL) into spoken English. To date, most research has focused only on their work from English into ASL. A review of the literature identified several expansion and compression strategies that interpreters and translators utilize, and these served as a model of coding the data and for triangulation. The methodology for this study was qualitative and descriptive. Twenty-two interpreters volunteered to simultaneously interpret four ASL recorded texts into spoken English, for a total of 88 target texts. The researchers identified 9 expansions …
Modeling Context And The Characteristica Universalis,
2024
Western University of Ontario
Modeling Context And The Characteristica Universalis, John Kausch
Proceedings from the Document Academy
This paper proposes prototypes for the exploration of the context of terms in a knowledge organization system by visualizing machine learning produced word embeddings. It puts this work in the context of the search for a universal language, typified by Leibniz’s characteristica universalis. This tradition of the search for universal languages is put in the context of universalizing tendencies in taxonomic classification in library and information science. Following this there is a discussion of the use of machine learning models to represent context. These two concerns inform the construction of prototypes for exploring the contextual spaces produced by word embeddings …
On The Benefits Of Directness In Virtual Characters For Motivational Interviews,
2024
Technological University Dublin
On The Benefits Of Directness In Virtual Characters For Motivational Interviews, Michael O'Mahony, Cathy Ennis, Robert Ross
Conference papers
Understanding the factors influencing successful engagement with Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) remains a significant challenge. This understanding could be used to personalise agents to users to improve interactions. Some studies have shown that simulating personalities in healthcare agents can improve effectiveness and engagement. However, it is not yet well understood how variations of agent personality can be leveraged to improve user engagement with Motivational Interviewing (MI) ECAs. Specifically how the balance between agent warmth and directness can be controlled in an MI agent to improve likeability and engagement. We conducted an online Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) mediated study of two variants of …
Do Deaf Readers Pre-Activate Phonology During Sentence Comprehension?,
2024
Chapman University
Do Deaf Readers Pre-Activate Phonology During Sentence Comprehension?, Danielle Moraga, Lauren Fillet, Eva Gutierrez-Sigut, Zed Sehyr
Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters
Readers can use linguistic and contextual clues to predict upcoming words in a sentence. This predictive processing allows for more efficient recognition of upcoming words, particularly when the context of a sentence is predictable (Federmeier & Kutas, 1999; Metusalem et al., 2012). Evidence suggests that for hearing readers, preactivation of word semantics and phonology facilitates the recognition of upcoming words in a sentence (Ito et al., 2016). Readers who became deaf/hard-of-hearing before learning a language rely primarily on visual rather than auditory input, and it is unclear if they engage in similar predictive processes. The study aims to investigate the …
Exploring The Efficacy Of Transcutaneous Auricular Vagal Nerve Stimulation On Post-Stroke Aphasia: A Single-Subject Design Study,
2024
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Exploring The Efficacy Of Transcutaneous Auricular Vagal Nerve Stimulation On Post-Stroke Aphasia: A Single-Subject Design Study, Aswathy Anakkathil Pradeep
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Background: Anomia or word-retrieval difficulty is a common long-term language impairment for individuals with post-stroke aphasia. Several behavioral interventions like semantic feature analysis (SFA) have shown positive results in naming outcomes, but continue to face difficulty in generalizing the treatment effects to untreated items. With recent advancements in technology, researchers are developing newer neuromodulation devices that aim at promoting neuroplasticity and neural reorganization in post-stroke individuals. Transcutaneous auricular vagal nerve stimulation (taVNS) is a relatively new technology that aims at stimulating the auricular branch of the vagal nerve to promote neuroplasticity. Studies have shown taVNS to potentially facilitate positive improvements …
Intensification Strategies Of Southern Arizona Bilinguals,
2024
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Intensification Strategies Of Southern Arizona Bilinguals, Sadie E. Seilhan
LSU Master's Theses
The present thesis explores the intensification strategies employed by bilingual Spanish-English speakers in Southern Arizona, focusing on six distinct devices: lexical, phrasal, repetition, reformulation, hyperbole, and code-switching. While previous research has largely centered on adverbial and lexical intensifiers in monolingual contexts, this study broadens the scope by examining how bilingual speakers leverage their unique linguistic repertoire to amplify their speech. Using a sociopragmatic framework, the analysis reveals a marked preference for lexical intensification, which accounts for more than half of the recorded instances, with phrasal intensification and repetition following closely. Despite its lower frequency, code-switching stands out as a particularly …
A Global Comparison Of Communication Intervention Strategies For Justice-Involved Youth,
2024
Old Dominion University
A Global Comparison Of Communication Intervention Strategies For Justice-Involved Youth, Sophia Janeiro Martinez
OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal
Purpose: This paper explores the intricate relationship between communication disorders and delinquent youth behavior. It will explore the detrimental impact of zero-tolerance policies and their contribution to the school-to-prison pipeline. It will introduce issues, such as complex Miranda warning diction, and the benefits of including speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to aid in youth comprehension. Additionally, it will propose the integration of SLPs within the juvenile justice system to assist in communication between justice-involved youth (JIY) and justice professionals during conversations, questioning, and trials or hearings. Furthermore, this paper examines the roles of SLPs within juvenile justice systems abroad, including Canada, …
Preschoolers’ Generation Of Quantity Implicatures,
2024
CUNY Graduate Center
Preschoolers’ Generation Of Quantity Implicatures, André Eliatamby
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation uses the developing child as a window into the mechanisms and representations that allow us to understand the meaning of utterances in their contexts. I present three studies investigating 4- and 5-year-olds’ ability to generate two types of “quantity implicatures,” classic scalar implicatures with some that imply not all, and free choice inferences that arise with sentences like “Larry is allowed to have cake or ice-cream.” Together, the studies suggest a close relationship between pragmatic development and word learning, something not appreciated in existing literature. In the first study investigating some, I show that preschoolers interpret …
