Browsing by Subject "Linguistics"
Now showing 1 - 20 of 25
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Air-borne bards : Anglo-Irish writers and the BBC, 1931-1968(2012-08) Bloom, Emily Catherine; Cullingford, Elizabeth; Carter, Mia; Friedman, Alan W; Hutchison, Coleman; Savage, Robert JThis dissertation defines and explores “radiogenic aesthetics” in late modernism that emerged alongside radio broadcasting, World War II era propaganda, censorship, and paper shortages, and the transnational networks forming in the shadow of British imperial collapse. The Anglo-Irish writers in this study—W.B. Yeats, Louis MacNeice, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett—addressed a changing media environment that mapped on to the socio-cultural flux of the period following Irish Independence. Transcending the newly minted national boundaries between Ireland and England, the British Broadcasting Corporation became a locus for shaping transnational literary networks, this in spite of the nationalist rhetoric surrounding broadcasting. By analyzing broadcasts alongside print literature, I identify a circuit of influence coursing between modernism and broadcasting, rather than a unidirectional flow. This body of work, which includes drama (radio and stage), feature broadcasts, poetry, and fiction, offers a counter-narrative to literary historical theories that position modernist aesthetics as a reaction against popular mass media. Motifs of uncanny repetition—returns, echoes, and hauntings—are typical of these radiogenic aesthetics and reveal tensions between orality and literacy, embodiment and disembodiment, communalism and individualism, ephemerality and permanence, and tradition and “the now.” These tensions become definitive features of late modernism as the self-assurance of modernism’s first practitioners gives way to troubling questions about the future of literature in the unstable media environments surrounding World War II. Adapting traditional literary forms from the novel, poem, and play for the broadcast medium and incorporating radio’s epistemologies into their literary theories, Yeats, MacNeice, Bowen, and Beckett draw attention to fundamental questions about mediation itself. In so doing, they anticipate the hypermediacy of postmodernism without, however, relinquishing the modernist pursuit of authenticity or the quest for forms capable of transcending the widening distance between author and audience.Item Aspects of the phonology and morphology of Zenzontepec Chatino, a Zapotecan language of Oaxaca, Mexico(2014-08) Campbell, Eric William; Woodbury, Anthony C.This dissertation is an analysis of aspects of the phonology and morphology of Zenzontepec Chatino (ISO 639-3: czn), a Zapotecan (Otomanguean) language spoken in a remote area of Oaxaca, Mexico (16°32"N, 97°30"W). There are an estimated 8,000 speakers of the language, but its vitality is weakening due to accelerating shift to Spanish. The phonological analysis begins with the segmental inventory. After that, the autosegmental contrasts are treated, with the highlight being the tone system. The tone bearing unit is the mora, which may bear high tone /H/, mid tone /M/, or no tone Ø. In tone systems with a three-way contrast, the unspecified category is usually the mid-level one. Therefore, Zenzontepec Chatino is typologically unusual in this respect. Special chapters are devoted to phonotactics and phonological processes, including a play language of "speaking backwards" that sheds light on crucial phonological questions, such as the status of glottalization and the limits of prosodic domains. There are also chapters on special topics in phonology: regional variation, Spanish loanwords, and sound symbolism. Another chapter bridges the phonology and the morphology, defining and comparing the phonological word versus the grammatical word, and outlining the basic morphological building blocks: roots, affixes, clitics, and particles. After that, lexeme classes are defined using morphosyntactic criteria, providing a syntactic sketch of the language. The language is strongly head-marking with somewhat agglutinating and synthetic morphology. Another chapter gives an overview of verbal morphology, which is the locus of most of the language's morphology. The dissertation is the beginning of a full descriptive grammar and is part of a larger project to document Zenzontepec Chatino, complementing a dictionary and a documentary text corpus recorded in the community with native speakers. The theoretical approach is one in which the language is explored as much as possible on its own terms using naturalistic textual data supplemented by lexicographic and elicited material. The analysis is not bound by any formal framework, but it is informed by socio-cultural and diachronic considerations. It is situated in a typological perspective to offer more of a contribution to the scientific understanding of the structure of human language.Item At the threshold : liminality, architecture, and the hidden language of space(2013-05) Wilbur, Brett Matthew; Benedikt, MichaelIntersubjectivity is the acknowledgment that the subject of the self, the I, is in direct relations with the subject of the other. There is an immediate correspondence; in fact, one implies the existence of the other as a necessary state of intersubjective experience. This direct relationship negates a need for any external mediation between the two subjects, including the idea of a separate object between the subject of one individual and that of another. The essay proposes that our confrontation with the other occurs not in physical geometric space, but in liminal space, the space outside of the mean of being, at the threshold of relativity. The essay endorses the idea that liminality is not a space between things, but instead is an introjection, an internalization of the reflected world, and a reciprocal notion of the externalized anomaly of the other within each of us. We meet the surface of the world at the edge of our body but the mind is unencumbered by such limitations and as such subsumes the other as itself. Through symbolic language and myth, the surfaces and edges of things, both animate and inanimate, define the geography of the intersubjective mind. Inside the self the other becomes an object and persists as an abstraction of the original subject. We begin to perceive ourselves as the imagined projections of the other; we begin to perceive ourselves as we believe society perceives us. The process applies to the design of architectural space as a rudimentary vocabulary that is consistent with the language of the landscape.Item Audience design and code-switching in Bayside, Texas(2009-12) Dahl, Kimberly Lynn; Crowhurst, Megan Jane; Hinrichs, LarsThis study casts the code-switching patterns observed among Spanish-English bilinguals in Bayside, Texas within the framework of Bell’s (1984) theory of audience design, which is claimed to apply to both monolingual style-shifting as well as bilingual code-switching. The latter part of this claim has been little explored. The intent of this study, then, is to determine if the explanatory power of audience design, as demon¬strated in studies on style-shifting, does indeed hold when applied to cases of language alternation. Analysis of the data from Bayside generally supports Bell’s theory as it shows speakers adjusting their use of Spanish and/or English to suit their audience. The study will highlight a less frequently analyzed aspect of Bell’s model, i.e., the role of the auditor, and will call for the auditor to be classified as a primary influencer of lin¬guistic choice in bilingual contexts, alongside the addressee. The code selection patterns exhibited by a pair of Bayside residents in a series of interviews and in conversations videotaped at the local general store will be com¬pared to illustrate the effects of addressee and auditor. A qualitative analysis will dem¬onstrate that differing determinations regarding the linguistic repertoires of the auditors led to contrasting linguistic choices on the part of the study’s subjects. The data collected will show that, when selecting a language of communication, as opposed to a register, style, or dialect, a speaker may be more greatly affected by an auditor than by the addressee. The methods used in collecting the data will also support an expan¬sion of Bell’s model to include an additional participant category suitable for capturing the effect of the recording device, as per Wertheim (2006).Item Bilingual language contexts : variable language switching costs and phonetic production(2012-08) Olson, Daniel James; Ortega-Llebaria, Marta; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-; Bullock, Barbara; Griffin, Zenzi; Hensey, Frederick; Kelm, Orlando; Sussman, HarveyBilinguals are generally adept at segregating their two competing languages and switching between them when contextually appropriate, although it has been shown that switching languages incurs a reaction time delay, or switch cost (Kolers, 1966). These switch costs are modulated by language dominance, with bilinguals evidencing greater delays when switching into their dominant language relative to their non-dominant language (e.g. Meuter & Allport, 1999). While these asymmetrical switch costs have formed the basis for theories of bilingual language separation and selection, the key factor of language context, the degree to which each language is employed in a given paradigm or conversation, has yet to be considered. In addition, previous research and subsequent theories of language selection have focused exclusively on the lexical level, yet given the distinct phonetic categories in a bilingual’s two languages (Caramazza et al., 1973), selection must also occur at the phonetic level. Addressing these gaps in the literature, this dissertation investigates the language switching costs and phonetic production of Spanish-English bilinguals in two experimental paradigms: a cued picture-naming task and an oral production task. In both studies, bilinguals (English-dominant, Spanish-dominant, and balanced bilinguals) produced language switches in varying language contexts, from monolingual to bilingual. Analyses focus on switch costs, error rates, and phonetic production, as a means to further the understanding of the language switching mechanism at the lexical and phonetic levels. Drawing on results from the two experimental paradigms, this dissertation makes several major contributions to the ongoing discussion regarding bilingual language selection. First, this study provides evidence for a gradient nature of the language switching mechanism at the lexical level. Second, it contributes an examination of the effects of language switching at the phonetic level, demonstrating asymmetrical phonetic transfer. And third, parallels are drawn between the underlying effects of language switching and the phonetic realizations produced in connected speech. Implications are considered for theories of bilingual language selection, and a gradient account of the Inhibitory Control Model (Green, 1986) is proposed at both the lexical and phonetic levels.Item Characteristics of utterances produced by persons with dementia living in a long-term care facility: Lexical diversity, message clarity, and influence of conversational partners(2011-05) Rochester, Tarah B.; Corwin, Melinda D.; Owen, Donna; Perry, Carolyn; Aoyama, KatsuraThe language of persons with dementia has been studied in the past, but rarely in the natural context of conversation. The purpose of this study was to examine lexical diversity and message clarity of language produced by persons with dementia during conversational interactions and the influence of conversational partners, if any, on their language characteristics. Six case studies were used to describe the language of people with dementia. Participants were also divided into two groups based on whether or not their communication partner had been trained. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed. The following lexical diversity variables were measures: noun rate, pronoun rate, adjective rate, and verb rate. Additionally, Brunét's index, Honoré's statistic, and type-token ratio were also calculated to quantify vocabulary richness. The following message clarity variables were measured in percentages: utterances with a verbal maze, unfinished utterances, fully unintelligible utterances, partially unintelligible utterances, utterances with an inappropriate topic shift, and pronouns with a clear referent. Results revealed that persons with dementia produced more pronouns compared to other content words. Some participants produced language that was lexically rich while others did not. Measures of message clarity varied across participants. There were no significant differences between trained and untrained conversation partner groups on any of the measures. Qualitative analyses revealed some communication partner techniques that seemed to enhance language production in persons with dementia. This study identified some lexical diversity and message clarity measure that could be obtained from a brief conversational language sample and used to assist in the diagnosis and treatment of persons with dementia. Additionally, the study provided insight regarding the contribution of conversational partners to the language of persons with dementia.Item Code-switching in the determiner phrase : a comparison of Tunisian Arabic-French and Moroccan Arabic-French switching(2010-12) Post, Rebekah Elizabeth; Birdsong, David; Bullock, Barbara E.Code-switching (CS) between French and Arabic is common across North Africa and in parts of the Middle East. Many researchers have examined this phenomenon in Tunisia (Belazi 1991, Lawson & Sachdev 2000, Belazi et. al 1994) and Morocco (Abbassi 1977, Bentahila 1983, Bentahila & Davies 1983, Lahlou 1991, Redouane 2005.) Corpus and elicited data from these two countries has helped form the basis of proposed universal constraints on code-switching, specifically the Functional Head Constraint (FHC) (Belazi et al 1994) and the Complement Adjunct Distinction (CAD) (Mahootian and Santorini 1996). However, CS between French and Moroccan and Tunsian dialects has not been directly investigated within a single study. This study is a step in filling that gap. Using a web-based survey, the present study examines native dialect speakers’ ratings of authenticity of sentences that contain both French and Arabic with a switch occurring in the Determiner Phrase (DP). The syntactic structure of the DP in the dialects examined is the same, (DP = D (D) N (A)). This is similar to the DP in French (DP = D (A) N (A)) with a few key differences that make it possible to test the FHC and CAD within the DP alone. An example of one of the eight possible switch types, between an Arabic Demonstrative Determiner and a French Definite Determiner, is seen here between Moroccan Arabic and French: Men dima had l’homme n’aime pas les chiens. (Since always this the man doesn’t like dogs.) A mixed-model ANOVA performed on the participants’ ratings reveals main effects for dialect, sex and switch type. Significant interactions also exist, including an interaction between switch type, sex and dialect. While further research is needed, the results indicate that syntactic constraints may not be the only way to understand the practice of CS. Instead, a typological approach, as suggested by Muysken (2000), may lead to a more complete understanding of why and how communities use multiple languages.Item Definiteness marking in Moroccan Arabic : contact, divergence, and semantic change(2013-08) Turner, Michael Lee; Brustad, KristenThe aim of the present study is to cast new light on the nature of definiteness marking in Moroccan Arabic (MA). Previous work on the dialect group has described its definiteness system as similar to that of other Arabic varieties, where indefinite entities are unmarked and a "definite article" /l-/ modifies nouns to convey a definite meaning. Such descriptions, however, do not fully account for the behavior of MA nouns in spontaneous natural speech, as found in the small self-collected corpus that informs the study: on one hand, /l-/ can and regularly does co-occur with indefinite meanings; on the other, a number of nouns can exhibit definiteness even in the absence of /l-/. In response to these challenges, the study puts forth an alternate synchronic description the system, arguing that the historical definite article */l-/ has in fact lost its association with definiteness and has instead become lexicalized into an unmarked form of the noun that can appear in any number of semantic contexts. Relatedly, the study argues that the historically indefinite form *Ø has come under heavy syntactic constraints and can best be described as derived from the new unmarked form via a process of phonologically conditioned disfixation, represented {- /l/}. At the same time, MA has also apparently retained an older particle ši and developed an article waħəd, both of which can be used to express different types of indefinite meanings. To support the plausibility of this new description, the study turns to the linguistic history of definiteness in MA, describing how a combination of internal and external impetuses for change likely pushed the dialect toward article loss, a development upon which semantic reanalysis and syntactic restructuring of other forms then followed. If the claim that MA no longer overtly marks definiteness is indeed correct, the study could have a significant impact on work that used previous MA descriptions to make grammaticality judgments, as well as be of value to future work on processes of grammaticalization and language contact.Item A dictionary of foreign language education ; and, William Dwight Whitney : the proto-modern linguist(1995-12) Adamson, Brent Matthew, 1968-; Donahue, Frank E.; Louden, Mark LaurenceItem Directions of linguistic change in the Texas Panhandle(Texas Tech University, 1999-05) Boykin, Lori K.It is popularly believed that American speech is becoming more homogenous. Most people assume that language in the United States is undergoing a "leveling" process as a result of the media's influence in our society. However, William Labov and Sharon Ash point out that "in spite of the intense exposure of the American population to a national media with a convergent network standard of pronunciation . . . the local accents of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco are more different from each other than at any time in the past" ("Understanding Birmingham" 508). In fact, Labov has identified three primary dialect areas in the United States which are undergoing very different sound changes. The Northem Cities shift entails an upward shift of the low long vowels (so that bag sounds like beg, for example) and a falling downward and backward of the short vowels (so that Debbie sounds like Duhbie), while the Southern shift involves a movement of the back vowels to the front and an exchange of position among the front vowels (so that hill/heel, for example, sound like /hiyel/). The Third Dialect seems unaffected by the changes occurring in the Northem Cities Shift and those in the Southern Shift, but is characterized instead by the merger of/a/ and lol (so that cot and caught are homophonous) ("Three Dialects"). While Labov and others have demonstrated that phonological differences still exist and new differences are emerging, lexically /American English seems, in fact, to be moving toward greater homogeneity due to a variety of factors. The effects of marketing, education, migration and the media tend to make American speech more homogenous and dialect boundaries much more difficuU to draw based on lexical items. Peter Tmdgill agrees that lexical difftision as a result of the media and other factors may be taking place, but he argues that phonological and syntactic changes take place only through dialect contact (Dialects in Contact 41). Social and geographic mobility has made such dialect contact in the United States common. Nevertheless, dialect differences do exist and deserve careful examination. It is important that we find out what regional distinctions in the lexicon are disappearing as well as discover where certain distinctions do exist lexically, syntactically, and phonologically. This study will analyze the distribution of distinctive regional words that do still exist in the Texas Panhandle and will examine their possible future. Additionally, a preliminary account will be given of certain phonological changes that are occurring in the Panhandle. As Labov and Ash and many others have pointed out, phonological variation, the precursor to phonological change, is evident in American speech, and the study of such variation can give us insight into the nature of language change and, thus, the nature of language itself Dialectology is just as important today as it was when it began over a century ago.Item El Mundo de Comida : the relative effectiveness of digital game feedback and classroom feedback in helping students learn Spanish food vocabulary(2014-12) Wendorf, Arthur Herman II; Koike, Dale AprilFeedback has been defined as “helpful information or criticism that is given to someone to say what can be done to improve a performance, product, etc.” (Merriam-Webster, 2014) Within the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers have shown that language learners acquire languages best when they are provided with feedback (Gass & Selinker, 2008; Loewen, 2012). Because of the importance of feedback to the language learning process, there is an ongoing line of investigation that seeks to determine whether differences in how and when feedback is provided lead to different results in acquisition (Loewen, 2012). To date this research has primarily been focused on comparing the effectiveness of the different types of feedback that naturally occur within language classrooms, as identified by such classic studies as Lyster and Ranta (1997; Bargiela, 2003). However, there are other possible approaches to feedback than those that naturally occur within the language classroom. One of these alternatives is the approach to feedback used in digital games. Similar to what is found in the field of SLA, within the field of digital game research it has been established that feedback is important for successful learning (Schell, 2008). Nevertheless, to date no research has been conducted which compares the SLA approach to feedback and the digital game approach to feedback in order to determine which would lead to better language acquisition within a digital game. Answering this question is the goal of the present dissertation. In order to answer this question I created two versions of a digital game, called “Mundo de Comida” (MuCo) ‘World of Food’, which is designed to help novice Spanish learners acquire food vocabulary. One version of the game employs feedback strategies based on the most commonly employed feedback used in Spanish language classes, while the other uses feedback designed according to the most commonly used feedback mechanisms in commercial digital games. A comparison of the vocabulary gains according to feedback type allows us to see which type of feedback seems to help learners of Spanish acquire vocabulary within the context of MuCo. The findings indicate that MuCo does indeed help participants acquire food vocabulary. However, there is no significant difference in the effectiveness of the two different feedback types, which is likely due to the fact that both feedback types have been refined within their respective environments. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that participants found the game that contained the digital game-style feedback to be more game-like than the other version. It was also found that, for several participants, MuCo did motivate them in the sense that they played more of the game than was required. Finally, there was no significant effect found for the participants’ self-reported gaming habits, personalities, or motivation. These findings suggest that well-designed digital games can help learners acquire Spanish vocabulary, and that the impact of differences among participants is negligible when the game is well designed.Item Explaining orthographic variation in a virtual community : linguistic, social, and contextual factors(2010-05) Iorio, Joshua Boyd; Epps, Patience, 1973-; Erk, Katrin; Hinrichs, Lars; Keating, Elizabeth; Sussman, HarveyThe purpose of this project is to investigate factors that can be used to explain orthographic variation in City of Heroes (CoH), a virtual community based in an online role-playing game. While a number of models of variation exist for speech, to date, no statistical models of orthographic variation in virtual communities exist. By combining traditional variationist methods with computational text processing, this project documents socially meaningful alternations in the linguistic code regarding two types of sociolinguistic variables, namely spelling and use of abbreviations. For each of the two variable types, two dependent variables are posited, i.e. the alternation between: 1) –ing and –in in durative verbal aspect marking in forms such as coming and comin, 2) –s and –z markers of plurality in words such as cats and catz, 3) abbreviated and full forms for referential abbreviation in terms such as Atlas Park and AP, and 4) abbreviated and full forms for conative abbreviations in terms such as looking for team and lft. The study investigates the role that the following factors play in explaining orthographic variation in CoH: 1) message length, 2) standardness of the immediate linguistic environment, 3) cognitive load, 4) relative proximity in the virtual space, 5) degree of message publicness, 6) experience in the community, 7) avatar gender, and 8) social group affiliation. Through mixed-effects, multivariate models, the study demonstrates that each of the predictors has some role in explaining the orthographic variability observed in the textual record of the community. Moreover, interactions between some of the predictors prove to be significant contributors to the models, which highlight the importance of addressing interaction terms in models of language variation. The findings from the study suggest that the socio-contextual meaning of particular structures in the CoH community lead authors to make linguistic choices, which are realized as alternations in the linguistic code. Finally, implications for the study of language variation in general are discussed.Item A frame-semantic analysis of five English verbs evoking the Theft frame(2011-05) Dux, Ryan Joseph; Boas, Hans Christian, 1971-; Pierce, MarcAn important problem in lexical semantics is the explanation of how verbal meaning interacts with the syntactic realization of arguments. Levin (1993) recognizes the relation between syntax and semantics in her classification of English verbs, in which similar syntactic behavior among verbs is assumed to reflect shared meaning components. However, her classes do not accurately predict the verbs’ semantic and syntactic properties. Other researchers (Taylor 1996, Boas 2008) argue for the inclusion of detailed encyclopedic meaning in explanations of syntactic behavior. Frame Semantics provides the necessary tools for fine-grained analyses of the syntax-semantics interface because it offers a rigorous method for the description of meaning and documents syntactic information about argument realization from corpus data. This report uses concepts from Frame Semantics and data from its practical application, FrameNet (http://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu), to assess the importance of fine-grained verbal meaning for argument realization by comparing the verbs embezzle, pilfer, shoplift, snatch and steal. Each verb construes the general semantics of the Theft frame differently, emphasizing or specifying individual participants in the event (frame elements). They also exhibit subtle differences in whether and how these frame elements are syntactically realized. In linking their syntax to their semantics, I show that the verbs’ syntactic distribution may be influenced by aspects of meaning such as their degree of descriptivity, the detailed specification of certain frame elements, and their occurrence as LUs in different frames.Item A game of confidence : literary dialect, linguistics, and authenticity(2011-08) Leigh, Philip John; Barrish, PhillipA Game of Confidence: Literary Dialect, Linguistics, and Authenticity builds a bridge between literary-critical and linguistic approaches to representations of nonstandard speech in literature. Important scholarship both in linguistics and in literary criticism has sought to develop rigorous inquiry into deviations from standard written language to represent features of nonstandard spoken language in literature. I argue that neither field, however, has fully embraced the idea that, by definition, 'literary dialect' necessitates an interdisciplinary approach. Furthermore, neither has successfully integrated the other's very different theories and methods. As a result, 'literary dialect' provides an exciting opportunity for new scholarship connecting recent developments in literary history, sociolinguistics, and digital humanities. The goals of my project are two-fold: First, to analyze within their own cultural and historical contexts previous attempts by authors, readers, and scholars to fix the supposedly empirical accuracy of literary dialect representations; second, to model what I take to be an empirically more valid use of linguistics for analyzing literary artists' representations of nonstandard speech. My work provides a necessary intervention for literary dialect criticism, particularly for the many arguments that have sought a degree of objectivity for assertions about the artistic or socio-political merits of a dialect text based on vague linguistic generalizations. My dissertation's primary focus is on the period that has served historically as the locus classicus for scholarship on American dialect literature: The second half of the nineteenth century when local colorists, regionalists, and realists used 'real' American voices as the foundation for a realistic American literature. By analyzing the production and historical reception of literary dialect texts from this period I show how assessments of 'authenticity' have been a constant in the critical response to these texts for nearly a century and a half. Having underscored the critical problems inherent in linking artistic and political evaluations of dialect texts to the 'authenticity' of their literary dialects, I then draw on recent developments in the digital humanities, computational linguistics, and sociolinguistics to employ a methodology for generating and interpreting literary-linguistic data on literary dialects.Item General interest magazine language preference among Hispanics(Texas Tech University, 2004-08) Galvez, Robert AnthonyAn experiment was conducted to determine if there was a relationship between the way language is presented in a magazine article and Hispanics' perceptions of the article. Two hundred and seventeen respondents in west Texas read articles in Spanish, English and a mix of English with Spanish. Subjects were given a questionnaire to identify their affinity toward the articles, their ability to understand the articles, and their perceptions of the news value of the articles. The ARSMA-II scale was used to evaluate respondent's level of acculturation. Data analysis revealed Hispanics preferred the articles written in English and the mix of English and Spanish to the articles written in Spanish alone. No relationship was found between level of acculturation and preference for language presentation style.Item Linguistic Markers of Trauma Symptoms Following Sexual Abuse in Female Adolescent Inpatients(2016-11-15) Marshall, Kaisa K.; Venta, Amanda; Barker, Maria; Henderson, CraigSexual trauma is a widespread and serious issue in adolescent females. Unfortunately, subsequent PTSD symptoms is a common consequence for individuals who experience this form of trauma. Additionally, inpatient adolescents report elevated rates of PTSD symptoms and sexual abuse has been found to be the largest contributor to trauma symptoms in adolescent inpatients. Therefore, female adolescent inpatients constitute a high risk population for sexual trauma and resulting trauma symptoms. More concerning are the limitations of current methods (e.g. self-report, clinical interview) in accurately measuring trauma symptoms. The aim of the current study is to use the computer program Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to analyze trauma narratives of female adolescents in an inpatient facility and determine if specific linguistic markers are associated to an individual’s current symptomology. Additionally, it will be determined if these linguistic markers can predict trauma symptom change from time of admission to time of discharge. Conducting a LIWC analysis will provide objective data about adolescent’s language use that can aid in obtaining an accurate measure of inpatients trauma symptoms.Item The long line of the Middle English alliterative revival : rhythmically coherent, metrically strict, phonologically English(2012-05) Psonak, Kevin Damien; Cable, Thomas, 1942-; Henkel, Jacqueline M.; Hinrichs, Lars; Lesser, Wayne; King, Robert D.This study contributes to the search for metrical order in the 90,000 extant long lines of the late fourteenth-century Middle English Alliterative Revival. Using the 'Gawain'-poet's 'Patience' and 'Cleanness', it refutes nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars who mistook rhythmic liveliness for metrical disorganization and additionally corrects troubling missteps that scholars have taken over the last five years. 'Chapter One: Tame the "Gabble of Weaker Syllables"' rehearses the traditional, but mistaken view that long lines are barely patterned at all. It explains the widely-accepted methods for determining which syllables are metrically stressed and which are not: Give metrical stress to the syllables that in everyday Middle English were probably accented. 'Chapter Two: An Environment for Demotion in the B-Verse' introduces the relatively stringent metrical template of the b-verse as a foil for the different kind of meter at work in the a-verse. 'Chapter Three: Rhythmic Consistency in the Middle English Alliterative Long Line' examines the structure of the a-verse and considers the viability of verses with more than the normal two beats. An empirical investigation considers whether rhythmic consistency in the long line depends on three-beat a-verses. 'Chapter Four: Dynamic "Unmetre" and the Proscription against Three Sequential Iambs' posits an explanation for the unusual distributions of metrically unstressed syllables in the long line and finds that the 'Gawain'-poet's rhythms avoid the even alternation of beats and offbeats with uncanny precision. 'Chapter Five: Metrical Promotion, Linguistic Promotion, and False Extra-Long Dips' takes the rest of the dissertation as a foundation for explaining rhythmically puzzling a-verses. A-verses that seem to have excessively long sequences of offbeats and other a-verses that infringe on b-verse meter prove amenable to adjustment through metrical promotion. 'Conclusion: Metrical Regions in the Long Line' synthesizes the findings of the previous chapters in a survey of metrical tension in the long line. It additionally articulates the key theme of the dissertation: Contrary to traditional assumptions, Middle English alliterative long lines have variable, instead of consistent, numbers of beats and highly regulated, instead of liberally variable, arrangements of metrically unstressed syllables.Item Manners of speaking : linguistic capital and the rhetoric of correctness in late-nineteenth-century America(2009-08) Herring, William Rodney; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-; Barrish, Phillip; Henkel, Jacqueline; Aune, James A.; Longaker, Mark G.A number of arguments appeared in the late-nineteenth-century United States about “correctness” in language, arguments for and against enforcing a standard of correctness and arguments about what should count as correct in language. Insofar as knowledge about and facility with “correct” linguistic usage could affect one’s standing in the social structure, such knowledge and facility functioned as a form of capital—linguistic capital. This dissertation considers treatments of linguistic capital in a variety of contexts, including verbal criticism, linguistics, composition pedagogy, and novels. The subject of Chapter 1 is verbal criticism, popular writings that quibble over the “correct” meanings of words. Verbal critics’ goals and conclusions, however, were often full of contradictions. My first chapter offers an explanation for these contradictions based on their resonance within late-nineteenth-century capitalism’s social structure. Chapter 2 centers around William Dwight Whitney‘s efforts to establish what he called the “science of language” in America. Whitney’s potentially progressive principles sometimes appear conservative, capable of rationalizing a laissez-faire politics with regard to language and class—a politics this chapter considers in relation to Whitney’s attempt to craft an ethos for the discipline of linguistics. My third chapter examines the dominant composition pedagogy of this period, current-traditional rhetoric, at a time when universities increasingly admitted middle-class students. Chapter 3 considers what types of cultural capital current-traditional pedagogy assumed its students possessed and what effects its assumptions imply. Chapter 4 focuses on William Dean Howells, whose realist novels represented the language of various characters as precisely as possible in an effort to encourage readers to accept speakers of non-prestige dialects. This chapter explores the possibilities and the limits of Howells’s efforts, and what those possibilities and limits imply for any progressive language policy. The Conclusion analyzes the most famous attempt by a professional organization to adopt such a progressive language policy, the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s “Students’ Right to Their Own Language.” Deliberation over this policy deeply divided teachers in the language arts. My conclusion considers why both sides may be right—and wrong—to think their preferred means can achieve what turns out to be an agreed-upon end.Item Mitigation in Spanish discourse : social and cognitive motivations, linguistic analyses, and effects on interaction and interlocutors(2010-05) Czerwionka, Lori Ann; Koike, Dale April; Streeck, J�; Beaver, David; Kelm, Orlando; Hensey, FritzMitigation is the modification of language in response to social or cognitive challenges (stressors) in contexts of linguistic interaction (Martinovski, Mao, Gratch, & Marsella 2005). Previous mitigation research has been largely from social perspectives, addressing the word or utterance levels of language. This dissertation presents an empirical study of mitigating language resulting from both a cognitive stressor (degree of uncertainty) and social stressor (degree of imposition) in Spanish discourse, and the impacts of mitigation on interaction and interlocutors. The tripartite approach includes a: (1) quantitative analysis of discourse markers associated with mitigation (speaker-discourse, speaker-listener, and epistemic markers); (2) qualitative discourse analysis, relying on concepts from the Conversation Analysis framework; and (3) qualitative analysis of interlocutors’ perceptions of mitigation, using metalinguistic conversations. The results are discussed considering prior research on mitigation, politeness theories, and Clark’s (2006) model of ‘language use’ to address information types, interlocutor roles, and mutual knowledge. In addition, Caffi and Janney’s (1994) ‘anticipatory schemata’ and Pinker’s (2007) social psychological perspective of indirect language inform the theoretical framework. Results indicate that: (1) Mitigation devices vary depending on contextual factors prompting mitigation, significantly fewer speaker-listener markers are shown as evidence of mitigation, and epistemic markers, which are commonly analyzed mitigation devices, are infrequent overall in these data. These results provide evidence against the assumption that mitigation is associated with increased use of linguistic devices; (2) Two mitigating discourse structures were found, depending on the degree of uncertainty. Within contexts of high-imposition, the Co-reconstruction structure (CRS) is found in contexts with uncertainty and the Non-linear structure (NLS) is in contexts with certainty; and (3) The listeners’ metalinguistic comments indicate that the CRS, compared to the NLS, is preferred. Also, the results indicate how interlocutors address cognitive, social, and emotional stressors in interaction. Considering all analyses, a unifying definition of mitigation in discourse is provided. This phenomenon is characterized as the postponement of both confirmed knowledge and negotiation of the interlocutor relationship. This research contributes the first experimental investigation of mitigation as the result of cognitive and social stressors, and also the first systematic analysis of mitigation in Spanish discourse.Item A perceptual and experimental phonetic approach to dialect stereotypes : the tonada cordobesa of Argentina(2014-05) Lang-Rigal, Jennifer R; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 1963-This study investigates the perception of vowel lengthening in the tonada cordobesa, a feature of the Spanish spoken in Córdoba, Argentina. Unlike other dialects of Argentine Spanish, lengthening occurs in the pre-tonic syllable (Fontanella de Weinberg 1971; Yorio 1973; Lang 2010) and is believed to be accompanied by a pitch peak (Fontanella de Weinberg 1971). The goals of this dissertation are to determine if duration alone (i.e., without intonational changes) is significant in identifying a speaker’s Cordoba provenance, and to discover what listener features affect perception. A matched-guise methodology presents speech tokens with natural and manipulated pre-tonic vowel durations to Argentine listeners in a dialect identification task. Results show a main effect of speaker region and token type (natural versus manipulated). Shorter durations made Córdoba speakers difficult to identify, reducing accuracy from 59% for natural tokens to 28% for manipulated tokens with shortened pre-tonic syllables. Buenos Aires speakers received the highest identification accuracy for natural tokens (80%) and Tucumán speakers the lowest (43%). Longer pre-tonic vowel durations are associated with a Córdoba identity, regardless of speaker origin and other linguistic cues. Control tokens produced by speakers from Buenos Aires and Tucumán confirmed this effect: these tokens, when manipulated to have a longer pre-tonic vowel, induced the perception of a Córdoba identity. Listener experience is also shown to improve accuracy of dialect identification: listeners of more geographically distant provinces, relative to the speaker’s province of origin, present significantly reduced identification rates. Acoustical analyses of the Cordoba samples confirm pre-tonic lengthening as well as an early peak rise within the stressed syllable, and valley alignment before the onset of this syllable. Pre-tonic, tonic and post-tonic syllable durations are lengthened, resulting in a segmentally unbalanced intonational phrase for which prominence is disproportionately concentrated in these final segments. The durational, intonational, and rhythmic properties make the Cordoba dialect unique among regional lects within Argentina and across the Spanish-speaking world. This research contributes experimental evidence for the prosodic features marking this dialect and supports its saliency and social significance within Argentina.