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- All Subjects: Discourse analysis
- All Subjects: Language
- All Subjects: Spanish
- Creators: Gelderen, Elly van
Description
The nature of imperative syntax has remained an elusive, yet ever-present, subject in syntactic research, spanning several decades of linguistic inquiry and analysis, and it is therefore unsurprising that current views on the subject continue to be somewhat divided. This thesis examines the syntactic evidence from imperatives in Old English and ultimately seeks to develop a picture of the possibilities for imperative clauses in OE alongside an overall framework for imperative syntax within contemporary theoretical models of syntactic structure. The general, perceived pattern for OE imperative clauses (e.g. Millward 1971) is “verb−first,” and statistical data from the corpora confirm this perception, with the majority of imperative clauses exhibiting the verb in clause−initial position. Imperative constructions with post− and preverbal overt subjects are also examined at length, and postverbal subjects are found to be the majority case. These results are further expanded by examinations of data from verb−second and verb−third contexts, which include possibilities for topicalized constituents and adverbs. Ultimately, the relative position of both the verb and the subject and the relationship between these and other elements in the totality of the data provide essential clues for constructing a clearer model of OE imperative syntax. Within a relatively rich cartographic framework (Rizzi 1997), I therefore argue that the imperative verb is standardly fronted to the head of ForceP, with the overt subject remaining in spec−FinP, in parallel with other models for imperative syntax and OE syntax. Exceptions to this pattern for imperatives which suggest lower positions for the imperative verb (e.g. verb−second and verb−third constructions) are also accounted for, all with the central goal of demonstrating a consistent pattern underlying the realization of imperative syntax in Old English.
ContributorsKruger, William Wriley (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Adams, Karen (Committee member) / Major, Roy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Past research has isolated an extension of the copular verb estar into the domain previously sanctioned for its counterpart, ser. This extension has been found in areas of contact between American English and Spanish speaking Mexican immigrants. A similar situation of contact is in occurrence in Arizona, and this study endeavored to evaluate if this same extension was present, and to what degree. This study also explores the framework of linguistic hegemony in order to relate language attitudes in Arizona to language change in Arizona. The findings revealed minimal extension. This may be due to language maintenance in response to hegemony.
ContributorsBonnell, Jamie (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Major, Roy (Committee member) / Ryan, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This thesis examines the narratives and meta-commentary of Indonesian users of English about their English as a Second Language (ESL) experiences. It approaches interview data with ten Indonesian second language (L2) speakers of English from a narrative analysis/inquiry perspective. Each interview was transcribed according to a modified set of discourse analysis (DA) transcription conventions, then coded by the researcher. The first research question addressed what linguistic devices members of this population used to achieve cohesion and coherence in their narratives, and the second research question examined how members of this population portrayed their L2 selves in their narratives. The data yielded 21 linguistic devices that fell into three levels of frequency. Connectives, discourse markers, and repetition were by far the most common linguistic devices, followed by adverbials, embedded clauses, intensifiers, and the word like (non-comparison uses), which were somewhat frequent linguistic devices. The data also showed that participants constructed their L2 selves using three main categories: agency, identity, and perceptions of English and the U.S.. In regard to identity, participants invoked membership categorization, where they portrayed their identities in relation to other individuals. The study concludes with suggestions for future research, especially relating to Indonesian L2 users of English.
ContributorsTappendorf, Rebecca C (Author) / Renaud, Claire (Thesis advisor) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Gelderen, Elly van (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
ABSTRACT
This research is a study of the relationship between language acquisition and the status of equity. The history of the Maya people in Guatemala gives strong evidence that their failure to acquire competence in Spanish, which is the national language of their nation, has resulted in their failure to compete in the social, economic, and political components of their society. It also shows that they have failed to maintain their competence in Mayan, their own language, as a result of mistreatment from their conquerors who have shown a determination to eliminate their use of Mayan. Many Maya have left Guatemala and entered the United States in hope of finding the status of equity which has evaded them for hundreds of years.
The key to overcoming their poverty and loss of civil rights can be found in the US through compensatory programs offering them the opportunity of competency in English along with the opportunity to maintain their Mayan language. The US legal system guarantees equal rights for a quality educations for students who are learning English.
This study offers some suggestions for integrating the Guatemalan Maya into mainstream activities of the economy and social life of this country. It offers the idea of sustaining and increasing their competency in Mayan as a long-range possibility. The status of equity is available for the children of the Guatemalan refugees who enter the United States as they exercise their rights to a quality education.
This research is a study of the relationship between language acquisition and the status of equity. The history of the Maya people in Guatemala gives strong evidence that their failure to acquire competence in Spanish, which is the national language of their nation, has resulted in their failure to compete in the social, economic, and political components of their society. It also shows that they have failed to maintain their competence in Mayan, their own language, as a result of mistreatment from their conquerors who have shown a determination to eliminate their use of Mayan. Many Maya have left Guatemala and entered the United States in hope of finding the status of equity which has evaded them for hundreds of years.
The key to overcoming their poverty and loss of civil rights can be found in the US through compensatory programs offering them the opportunity of competency in English along with the opportunity to maintain their Mayan language. The US legal system guarantees equal rights for a quality educations for students who are learning English.
This study offers some suggestions for integrating the Guatemalan Maya into mainstream activities of the economy and social life of this country. It offers the idea of sustaining and increasing their competency in Mayan as a long-range possibility. The status of equity is available for the children of the Guatemalan refugees who enter the United States as they exercise their rights to a quality education.
ContributorsHolder, Adela Berry (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Rodriguez, Sandra (Committee member) / Hernández-G, Manuel De Jesús (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Adult second-language learners of Spanish struggle with the acquisition of preterite and imperfect selection due to the overtly morphological representation of grammatical aspect. Prior studies have documented the effect of a default encoding without influence of the lexical aspect in the emergence of aspectual morphology, and have proposed the Default Past Tense Hypothesis (DPTH).
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 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.
ContributorsFistrovic, Tatiana Katy (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Renaud, Claire (Committee member) / Muñoz-Liceras, Juana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
While Huntington’s (1996) theory of “The Clash of Civilizations” illuminated the concept of the gap between the Western and non-Western cultures, the framework of an opposite approach, which intensively emphasizes and strives for mutual understanding, cooperation and solidarity towards peace, has created a new and vital discursive perspective and practice through the establishment of The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC). As the domain of UNAOC has not received linguistic attention yet, the goal of the current dissertation is to investigate and reveal the notions and messages conveyed in the related context of Turkey’s accession to the EU by the Turkish Prime Minister (2003-2014) and the co- founder of the Alliance of Civilizations, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It seeks answers to the following questions: How does Mr. Erdogan conceptualize Turkey, which has geopolitically bridged the Western and non-Western cultures throughout the centuries, and which borders the boiling pot of the Middle East? How does the Prime Minister construct identities in the context of the Western and non-Western countries especially in his discussion of Turkey’s accession to the EU? How does the Prime Minister further reconceptualize the urgent need for global peace and stability in the world, contributing to the UNAOC directly and indirectly? This dissertation employs a cognitive framework approach which entails speech act theory and analogical reasoning, in addition to Reisigl and Wodak’s (2001) Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to analyze Prime Minister Erdogan’s speeches in the international context. In conclusion, the discourse of UNAOC gives rise to new discursive practices for global peace, “countering the forces that fuel polarization and extremism” (http://www.unaoc.org/about/). The discursive construction of global phenomena, events and actions as defined in Erdogan’s speeches are reconceptualized on the basis of non-Western but secular pro-Western intertextuality and perspectivization.
ContributorsTumay, Jale (Author) / Adams, Karen L. (Thesis advisor) / Gelderen, Elly van (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
The issue of women driving remains to be highly debated in Saudi Arabia. Recent developments on its legalization have sparked conversation and discourse, particularly in social media sites like Twitter. Several hashtags have been used to indicate either support or criticism towards the movement.
Examining Twitter tweets and hashtags, the study explored how the discourse on women driving had been executed, particularly in between genders. The study analyzed a sizeable number of tweets as well as their context via linguistic corpora analysis. Following Norman Fairclough’s framework, the two opposing perspectives were investigated both at a level of textual analysis. The selected tweets were representative of the three hashtags that emerged on the heat of the discourse regarding the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia: #Women_car_driving, #I_will_drive_my_car_June15, and #I_will_enter_my_kitchen_June15.
The results showed, among others, that tweets with the hashtag #Women_car_driving presented a tremendous support towards the movement. On the other hand strong opposing reactions emerged from the hashtags #I_will_drive_my_car_June15 and #I_will_enter_my_kitchen_June15.
Examining Twitter tweets and hashtags, the study explored how the discourse on women driving had been executed, particularly in between genders. The study analyzed a sizeable number of tweets as well as their context via linguistic corpora analysis. Following Norman Fairclough’s framework, the two opposing perspectives were investigated both at a level of textual analysis. The selected tweets were representative of the three hashtags that emerged on the heat of the discourse regarding the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia: #Women_car_driving, #I_will_drive_my_car_June15, and #I_will_enter_my_kitchen_June15.
The results showed, among others, that tweets with the hashtag #Women_car_driving presented a tremendous support towards the movement. On the other hand strong opposing reactions emerged from the hashtags #I_will_drive_my_car_June15 and #I_will_enter_my_kitchen_June15.
ContributorsAljarallah, Rayya Sulaiman (Author) / Adams, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Gelderen, Elly van (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This dissertation provides an account of evidentiality of a number of selected verbs of perception in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The verbs are divided into three categories: activity, experiential, and source-based, following Viberg (1983). The data shows that the activity P.Vs in MSA are rarely used evidentially whereas the experiential and the source-based ones are commonly used to indicate evidential meaning. It also shows that while the source-based verb is mostly used with an inferred evidential meaning, the evidentiality encoded by the experiential perception verbs is determined by the complementation pattern and the person of the subject (first or third person subject). With the non-finite complement, these verbs indicate a direct evidentiality when having a first person subject, and a reported evidentiality when having a third person subject. With the finite CP complement, they indicate an indirect evidentiality. This corpus-based study also examines the grammaticalization of these verbs when used evidentially. I argue that only the verb ra’aa of the selected experiential verbs is fully grammaticalized, but only when it is in the past tense and followed by a verbal non-finite complement. In this usage, it becomes a light verb. The source-based verb badaa/yabduu when indicating an evidentiality, it is grammaticalized into copulative verb when followed by an adjectival predicate, and modal verb when followed by a finite complement.
ContributorsHarthi, Jaber (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Adams, Karen (Committee member) / Gebhardt, Lewis (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This study explores the topic of Discourse Markers from an Interdisciplinary perspective. Applying the frameworks of Speech Act Theory, Syntax, Conversation Analysis, and Discourse Analysis, to empirical data, it answers the following important questions. What specific types of Speech Actions are performed in everyday Utterances? What Syntactic Mood & Clause Type is used to perform the various Speech Actions? What Discourse Markers occur in the Left-Periphery of the Clause? What Meaning-Functions do Discourse Markers perform? What interactions do Discourse Markers have with the various types of Speech Actions and with the Clause Type with which they are expressed? The results of this study contributed valuable insights to each of the aforementioned fields individually, as well as to the study of human language in general. Among these contributions are the following: Searle’s Taxonomy of Speech Acts was refined by dividing Representatives into Informing and Opinionating and Directives were divided into Commanding and Inquiring. The frequencies of the various Speech Acts relative to each other was identified. Furthermore, 79 distinct and specific Speech Actions were identified. The Speech Act type as well as the Clause Types with which they are expressed were identified. Among the many insights with respect to the interactions between the Speech Action Types and the Clause types with which they are expressed were each of the major Clause Types perform many different Speech Actions that are in addition to those normally attributed to them. Many of the particular Speech Acts are performed via various of the different Clause Types. The Indicative Clause type has the ability to perform most, if not all of the Speech Actions performed by all of the other Clause types. The 200 most frequently-occurring Left-Periphery Elements were identified and observations regarding their Word Class and the Meaning-Functions they perform were identified. The Meaning-Functions of the 10 most frequently-occurring Discourse Markers were identified and defined. The interactions between these Discourse Markers and the Speech Actions to which they attach as well as the Clause Types with which they are expressed were identified, thus documenting empirically that Discourse Markers are intricately connected to the Clause.
ContributorsLopez Villegas, Cristian (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / James, Mark A. (Committee member) / Cerron-Palomino, Alvaro (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This study tests the hypothesis and assumption of much critical scholarship that the discourse of mass media news transmits prejudicial ideologies to news consumers, influencing the way they think about social justice issues and non-dominant groups in American society, including immigrants, women, and African-Americans. Taking off from the motivations and premises of Critical Discourse Analysis concerning language, power, and ideology, this study aims to extend that paradigm in several ways by applying the analytic techniques of cognitive and critical linguistics to uncover implicit representations in biased discourse. This study also goes beyond previous work by examining the reader comments on media texts to understand how the media’s discourse was received and interpreted, with a focus on the covert transmission of ideological messages. The results reveal how ideologies of prejudice are communicated implicitly through media discourse and how readers’ own ideologies influence that process, as evidenced by their comments. As a study in Critical Discourse Analysis, this study uncovers abuses of power impacting social justice – in this case, the power of writing for the mass media to mold American minds, and therefore influence Americans’ behavior, including elections. Specific news articles from the American networks CNN and Fox were chosen on each of two topics for their relevance to current sociopolitical issues of prejudice and social justice: the US Supreme Court June 2018 decision to uphold the Trump administration “travel ban” and the January 2019 Gillette advertisement, considered controversial for its seemingly feminist criticism of male behavior.
ContributorsTaha Muhammad, Tahseen (Author) / Adams, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Gelderen, Elly van (Committee member) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019