Matching Items (15)
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- All Subjects: Linguistics
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Pruitt, Kathryn
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
Arabic is widely known for the lack of copulas in nominal sentences in the present tense. Arabic employs a copula ‘kana’ in the past and future tenses. However, in some constructions the presence of a third person pronoun is necessary for the purpose of emphasis or ambiguity reduction. The data investigated in this thesis was from Classical Arabic, Standard Arabic, and the Western Saudi ‘Hijazi’ dialect. The thesis briefly discussed the grammaticalization of a transitive verb to a non-present tense copula in Classical Arabic. In addition, the thesis discussed the process of copularization that was a result of grammaticalization of the demonstrative third person pronoun ‘huwa’ to a present tense copula in Standard Arabic. It was shown that the pronoun went through a process of reanalysis from the specifier to the head position of PredP driven by Feature Economy and the Head Preference Principle. The result was the loss of the person feature. The new copula developed and attached to the negative particle ‘ma’ in the Hijazi dialect losing all its phi-features. These phenomena are known as the copula and negative cycles, respectively. The analysis was based on the Generative Grammar framework and the Minimalist program. This study attempted to shed light on Arabic copulas and contribute to more understanding of the use of these copulas in question and negative constructions. It may also help in typological studies, which may lead to a better understanding of the linguistic theory and the language faculty.
ContributorsAlsaeedi, Mekhlid Owaidh M (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / Adams, Karen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The use of blogging tools in the second language classroom has been investigated from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives (Alm, 2009; Armstrong & Retterer, 2008; Dippold, 2009; Ducate & Lomicka, 2008; Elola & Oskoz, 2008; Jauregi & Banados, 2008; Lee, 2009; Petersen, Divitini, & Chabert, 2008; Pinkman, 2005; Raith, 2009; Soares, 2008; Sun, 2009, 2012; Vurdien, 2011; Yang, 2009) and a growing number of studies examine the use of microblogging tools for language learning (Antenos-Conforti, 2009; Borau, Ullrich, Feng, & Shen, 2009; Lomicka & Lord, 2011; Perifanou, 2009). Grounded in Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Engestrom, 1987), the present study explores the outcomes of a semester-long project based on the Bridging Activities framework (Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008) and implemented in an intermediate hybrid Spanish-language course at a large public university in Arizona, in which students used microblogging and blogging tools to collect digital texts, analyze perspectives of the target culture, and participate as part of an online community of language learners with a broader audience of native speakers. The research questions are: (1) What technology is used by the students, with what frequency and for what purposes in both English and Spanish prior to beginning the project?, (2) What are students' values and attitudes toward using Twitter and Blogger as tools for learning Spanish and how do they change over time through their use in the project during the semester course?, and (3) What tensions emerge in the activity systems of the intermediate Spanish-language students throughout the process of using Twitter and Blogger for the project? What are the underlying reasons for the tensions? How are they resolved? The data was collected using pre-, post-, and periodic surveys, which included Likert and open-ended questions, as well as the participants' microblog and blog posts. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and the qualitative data was analyzed to identify emerging themes following the Constant Comparative Method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Finally, three participant outliers were selected as case studies for activity theoretical analysis in order to identify tensions and, through their resolution, evidence of expansive learning.
ContributorsAlvarado, Margaret (Author) / Lafford, Barbara (Thesis advisor) / González, Verónica (Committee member) / Cerron-Palomino, Alvaro (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
ABSTRACT
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.
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.
ContributorsGarib, Ali A. A (Author) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Renaud, Claire (Committee member) / González López, Verónica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This thesis investigates similarities in the diachronic sound changes found in Eastern Old Japanese dialects and in Ryukyuan languages and tests a hypothesis of language contact. I examine three sound changes attested in the Eastern Old Japanese corpus of Kupchik (2011). These three are denasalization of prenasalized obstruents, the fortition of the labial glide [w] and prenasalized / simple voiced fricative [(n)z], and the irregular raising of Eastern Old Japanese mid vowels. Extralinguistic and linguistic evidence is presented in support of a hypothesis for language contact between 8th century Ryukyuan speakers and Eastern Old Japanese speakers. At present, many assumptions bog down any potential evidence of contact. However, cases where reconstructed Ryukyuan could have donated a form into EOJ do exist. With future research into early Ryukyuan development and the lexicons, phonologies, and syntactic patterns of Ryukyuan languages, more can be said about this hypothesis. Alongside testing a hypothesis of language contact, this thesis can also be viewed as an analysis of Eastern Old Japanese spelling variation of the three changes mentioned above.
ContributorsMakiyama, Alexander Koji (Author) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Adams, Karen (Committee member) / Gelderen, Elly van (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This thesis offers a contrastive analysis of the causative alternation phenomenon in English and Standard Arabic variety. This phenomenon has received a lot of attention in the literature on argument structure. It has traditionally been presented in terms of the causativization of inchoative verbs/unaccusatives. It is argued here that this analysis conflicts with the way the causative alternation is molded in Arabic. Causative alternation in Arabic is not only limited to inchoative verbs, but it incorporates unergative verbs as well, which play a vital role in this alternation. The implication of this observation is that the different syntactic behaviors between English and Arabic may reflect people’s different perception of events and lead to different syntactic computation. Therefore, this thesis highlights the role of this subset of intransitives/anti-causatives in the Arabic causative alternation and answers one of the highly considered questions on the causative alternation; that is, which version of the alternation is the lexical base, and which one is derived? This thesis also reveals that there is some significant difference between English and Arabic in terms of the alternatability of unaccusative verbs. Therefore, this study shows that most of the Arabic unaccusative verbs, except denominal verbs, have a causative alternant. This thesis also addresses the vital role of the Arabic verbal template in clarifying this phenomenon. In sum, this thesis provides an overview of the semantic, syntactic, and morphological properties of Arabic verbs undergoing the causative alternation. Besides employing the researcher’s native-speaker intuition, the English/Arabic Lexicon Dictionary and Arabicorpora are consulted to support the validity of the argument.
ContributorsAl-qadi, Mona (Author) / Gelderen, Elly v. (Thesis advisor) / Adams, Karen (Committee member) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The purpose of this thesis is to provide an in-depth examination of the syntactic rules and pragmatic structures that govern the construction of Thai nominal phrases. There is a current debate among linguistic researchers of the Thai language (and others within the Tai-Kadai family) contemplating whether the inherent syntactic structure of nominal phrases projects a Determiner Phrase [DP] or a Noun Phrase [NP] (Birmingham, 2020; Jenks, 2011; Piriyawiboon, 2010; and Singhapreecha, 2001). An examination of the grammatical and pragmatic features that dictate the formation of Thai nominals, as well as an investigation of the prevailing linguistic theories focused on nominal phrase construction supporting each structure, has been conducted and is presented within this thesis. This extensive research, performed to address the dilemma “Does the Thai language project a DP or an NP?”, has resulted in the conclusion that the Thai language, with its free word-order and its fascinating pragmatic structures, projects an underlying NP phrase structure that allows for an optional determiner, used to indicate specificity.
ContributorsBirmingham, Sabrina A (Author) / Van Gelderen, Elly (Thesis advisor) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / Peterson, Tyler (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Languages have long been studied through the rhythm class framework, which discriminates them into separate classes on the basis of shared rhythmic properties. Originally these differences were attributed to the isochronous timing of different prosodic units, such as stress intervals in “stress-timed” languages and syllables in “syllable-timed” languages. More recent work has turned to durational metrics as a means of evaluating rhythm class, by measuring the variability and proportion of segmental intervals in the speech stream. Both isochrony and durational metrics are no longer viewed as correlative with natural language rhythm, but durational metrics in particular have remained prevalent in the literature. So long as the conclusions of durational metrics are not overextended, their analysis can provide a useful mechanism for assessing the compatibility of a language with a given rhythm class by way of comparative analysis. This study therefore presents a durational-metric comparison of Scottish Gaelic, a language which has frequently been described as stress-timed but has never been empirically tested for rhythm class, with English, a prototypical and well-studied example of a stress-timed language. The Gaelic metric scores for %V (percentage of vocalic content), ΔV (standard deviation in vocalic interval length), and ΔC (standard deviation in consonantal interval length) (Ramus et al. 1999) are shown to be very similar to those measured for English, indicating that the language displays similar patterns of durational variability and segmental proportion typically ascribed to a rhythmically stress-timed language. This provides clear support for the classification of Scottish Gaelic as stress-timed.
ContributorsKellogg, Jackson (Author) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Gelderen, Elly van (Committee member) / Peterson, Tyler (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
The purpose of this thesis is to identify the ways neurodivergent people engage with tone and intent, in spaces where the expression of such things is missing the audible and visual cues that exist in face-to-face communications. Interviews were conducted with four participants who self-identify as neurodivergent, with each of the interviews seeking to understand their experiences with the written expression of tone and intent. The interviews shed light on how direct, semi-direct, and indirect tone indicators are used as tools for understanding the intent and tone of a message, as well as which of the three types of tone indicators are the most helpful in practice. The interviews also touched on how social interactions in digital spaces are often viewed through a neurotypical lens, and thus make understanding the sociolinguistic rules of digitally-based interactions difficult for neurodivergent individuals who are expected to know said rules without being told. Through the course of the interviews, participants expressed a desire for people as whole to be clearer about their tone and intent when communicating in digital spaces, and that tone indicators are vital for communicating such things.
ContributorsHadden, Sydney (Author) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Adams, Karen (Committee member) / Peterson, Tyler (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
In this thesis, I explore Cognate Object Constructions COCs (e.g. The clown "laughed" a creepy "laugh") through three research questions: (1) What verbs can accept Cognate Objects COs? (2) Why can these verbs accept COs and other verbs cannot? and (3) How are COCs derived? I demonstrate that Sorace's Hierarchy sheds light on which verbs can accept COs and which cannot by explaining the discrepancies in grammaticality judgments that exist in the literature. I then argue that Hale and Keyser's Conflation account of COCs is not minimalist because it relies on a phenomenon that can be reduced to Merge. After commenting and repairing their account, I provide an outline for a more minimalist framework, which I refer to as "Problems of Projection Extensions" PoP+, that focuses on MERGE, workspaces, labeling theory, phases, and determinacy. Inside this framework, I then develop my own account that depends on only Internal Merge and the constraint in English against stranded articles. With my account situated in this PoP+ framework, I am able to approach the research questions from a syntactic perspective, arguing that the Unergative Restriction on COCs is a result of a determinacy violation in the derivation of Unaccusative COCs. Finally, I point out that, being situated in the PoP+ framework, my account opens COCs up to further investigation not possible before.
ContributorsWillson, Jacob (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / Peterson, Tyler (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Temporal adverbial clauses are present in many forms of writing. These clauses can impact the complexity of a sentence. Sentence complexity can have some effect on how readers with a diagnosed reading disability, such as dyslexia, process language. This study incorporated Hawkins’ (1994) theories about Early Immediate Constituency into a self-paced reading task designed to evaluate whether or not temporal adverbial clause positioning caused the main clause of the sentence to become more difficult to understand. Hawkins theorized that main clauses appearing at the beginning of a sentence would create an environment where a reader could reach sentence comprehension faster (CITE). The experiment used software called Linger to present the self-paced reading task. Eight participants – four with dyslexia and four without – volunteered to read sentence items from a college level textbook that had temporal adverbial clauses appearing before and after the main clause of sentences. Statistical significance in the findings show that participants read sentences more quickly when the temporal adverbial clause appeared before the main clause; however, more research is required to determine the difference between sentences fronted by adverbial clauses and sentences fronted by main clauses.
ContributorsClaire, Jordan (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020