ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Linguistics
- Creators: Renaud, Claire
The absence of the consonant sound /p/ in Libyan Arabic leads Libyan speakers of English to pronounce /p/ as /b/. This study examines how Libyan Arabic speakers distinguish the English /p/ and /b/ in their production of L2 English. The study also examines the effect of the production contexts and the learning environment on two groups of Libyan Arabic speakers' attainment of the English /p/ in the USA and Libya. The study collected voice recordings of word-initial /p/ and /b/ in isolated-words, minimal pairs, and sentences in English from both Libyan Arabic speakers and American English speakers. The study also collected Libyan Arabic stop consonants /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, and /g/ from the Libyan participants. The voice recording data were collected using the WhatsApp mobile application from all participants and the Libyan Arabic participants were also asked to fill an online survey. Using voice onset time (VOT) as a measurement tool, this study measured the English and Libyan Arabic data through Praat software. The findings show that most Libyan Arabic participants distinguish between /p/ and /b/, but they did not have as high VOT averages as the American participants' /p/. It also reveals that the production context, especially in minimal pairs and sentence contexts, has an effect on their participants' production. However, the learning environment does not have an effect on the Libyan participants' pronunciation of /p/ in this study.
In order to understand how strong of a role linguistics plays in language instruction, I evaluate how language teachers use their linguistic knowledge, and what factors affect the application of that knowledge. This paper aims to fill this gap in understanding how much and what factors affect L2 teachers’ application of linguistic knowledge by interviewing L2 teachers at an intensive English program at a university in the Southwestern United States. To do so, the study uses interviews with open-ended questions involving hypothetical teaching scenarios that probe different areas of linguistics: phonology, grammar, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics.
The general findings suggest that teachers use their linguistic knowledge and awareness in their teaching: such as, with sociolinguistics, in how they control the classroom and interact with students; with phonology, in how they teach pronunciation; with grammar, in how they edit students’ writing and meet with students about their writing; and with pragmatics, in how they teach vocabulary usage and formal requests. Additionally, the results suggest that years of experience appear to be the largest factor in the application of linguistic knowledge and that contextual factors, like time and curriculum goals, also play a role. Moreover, in relation to teacher cognition, how a L2 teacher conceptualizes or defines linguistic terms also seemed to affect their awareness of the application of linguistic knowledge. In conclusion, it appears that L2 teachers’ linguistic knowledge and TLingA help them to evaluate their students’ needs and influence their lesson planning.
This study investigates the emergence of aspectual morphology by testing the DPTH and the effect of adverbials at interpreting grammatical aspect in this process of acquisition. Twenty-eight English-speaking learners of Spanish (beginning, intermediate and advanced) and twenty native-Spanish speakers are tested with two written comprehension tasks that assess the interpretation of habitual/imperfect and episodic/preterite readings of eventive verbs. The truth-value judgment task incorporates forty short stories with two summary sentences, from which participants must choose one as true. The grammaticality judgment task presents sixty-four sentences with temporal adverbials of position and duration, thirty-two are grammatical and thirty-two are ungrammatical. Participants must accept or reject them using a 5-point likert scale.
The findings indicate that the DPTH is partially supported by the statistical data showing a default marker, imperfect for beginning learners, and preterite for intermediate learners. This provides support to the argument of unsteady aspectual checking of [-bounded] in the spec of AspP and not necessarily by only checking [+past] in the TP for intermediate learners. The influence of the lexical aspect value of the verb is partially evident with advanced learners. Temporal adverbials play an important role at interpreting grammatical aspect with intermediate and advanced learners. Results show that beginning learners are not influenced by the presence of adverbials due to their inexperience with the Spanish aspectual morphology.
The findings also allow the confirmation of prior results about factors that influence the interpretation of preterite and imperfect. First, the instruction of aspectual morphology co-indexed with specific temporal adverbials, and second, that learners rely on lexical cues at the sentential level, while native speakers rely on discursive ones.
This study is an addition to the body of research surrounding language acquisition and the concept of Universal Grammar’s Principles and Parameters framework. The bases for this study is Klima & Bellugi’s (1968) established three steps for acquisition of negation by children in English, as well as Zeijlstra’s (2004) analysis of languages in regards to phases of the Jespersen cycle. The data of this study suggest that there are five basic steps to parameter setting, and that as utterances become syntactically more complex, children value uninterpretable features with interpretable ones. This is seen in both languages studied. The parameters categorized based on the data available for this study are the following: 1) negative particle outside of the VP, 2) NegP creation and development with preverbal negative marker, 3) Negative Concord (NC), 4) True Imperatives (banned or not), and 5) Negative Polarity Items (NPI).
Also important is the placement of the NegP, as it is above the TP in Spanish and c-commanded by the TP in English. The development of the NegP and uninterpretable negation [uNeg] valuation by interpretable negation [iNeg] is also explored in the utterances of the four children studied.
This study confirms Klima & Bellugi’s account of steps and further defines child negation in English as well as in Spanish. The focus on [iNeg] and [uNeg] features is further explained using Zeijlstra’s Phases of the Jespersen cycle as a springboard. I add salient information regarding parameter setting and how negation and the NegP are developed across two languages.
This study complicates the traditional view of discrete, simplified stages of DP acquisition, arguing instead for an ongoing and complex process. Application of the Minimalist model of syntactic analysis provides essential insights into the underlying processes of child grammar, and suggests a number of previously unaddressed characteristics and patterns in French DP development.