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- Creators: Computer Science and Engineering Program
- Creators: Pruitt, Kathryn
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
Modern curriculum requires students to purchase expensive handheld calculators, which has created a market with little competition or incentive for improvement. The purpose of this project was to create a competitive free alternative to be used outside the classroom for those who do not have the economic stability to purchase, for example, a TI-82, which costs approximately $100. Calculat3d is an Android application that matches the general-purpose functionality of the TI-82, including calculations, basic statistical functions, graphing, and creating programs. Additionally, a programming language and interpreter were created so programs can be written inside Calculat3d and be used alongside calculations, thus expanding the functionality of the calculator. Graphing functionality is also included in Calculat3d but expanded to three dimensions as opposed to the two-dimension limited TI calculator.
ContributorsEverhart, Ryan Matthew (Author) / Hansford, Dianne (Thesis director) / Bazzi, Rida (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This project serves as an extra learning tool for students enrolled in HEB 101 (Hebrew) at Arizona State University. This tool was developed using Axure Prototyping Software and can be used by anyone. The tool follows the HEB 101 course curriculum which also works alongside the textbook for the class (Hebrew From Scratch part 1). The tool fully covers the seven units that students learn in HEB 101. Each unit follows a standard structure. There is a unit title page which lays out the major concepts covered in the unit (i.e. personal pronouns, question words, prepositions, etc.) and links to different pages within the unit. Each unit has seven to ten lesson pages which introduce Hebrew concepts and provide exercises and examples to help the students practice the material they learned both in class and in the tool. Each unit also has links to Quizlet pages that have the units' vocab set up in a flashcard format so that they can study for upcoming quizzes and exams in the class. The Quizlet page for each unit also provides a randomly generated vocab quiz for the students. There is also a unit quiz for every unit which tests the students on the major concepts of the unit. There are also unit vocab pages that provide all the vocab covered in the unit. This tool provides students with numerous ways of practicing and mastering the material covered in the lectures. The main benefit of this tool for students is that it provides audio files for each vocabulary word learned in HEB 101 which will allow them to have quick access to the pronunciation of the words they are learning. This tool will be used in future HEB 101 classes.
ContributorsOsuna, Esteban Rene (Author) / Shemer, Judith (Thesis director) / Mirguet, Francoise (Committee member) / Computing and Informatics Program (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This thesis covers second language acquisition in regards to age, examining the difference between elementary and high school students. The primary language of all the students tested was English. The second language being tested in this study is German. The general age range in the elementary students observed was 7-12 years old. The high school students' ages were between 14-18 years old. The environment consisted of a physical education atmosphere, which includes: gyms, outside recreational areas, fitness equipment, fields, etc. Methods used to conduct this study were visual and auditory/verbal approaches. No direct instruction was provided to the students, they were assessed based on their ability to absorb the information when provided to them indirectly in a traditional classroom atmosphere. In addition, direct instruction is also not conducive to a physical education setting as it has the potential to detract from the necessary lesson content.
ContributorsMarch, Ashley Taylor (Author) / Pangrazi, Connie (Thesis director) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
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
Education in computer science is a difficult endeavor, with learning a new programing language being a barrier to entry, especially for college freshman and high school students. Learning a first programming language requires understanding the syntax of the language, the algorithms to use, and any additional complexities the language carries. Often times this becomes a deterrent from learning computer science at all. Especially in high school, students may not want to spend a year or more simply learning the syntax of a programming language. In order to overcome these issues, as well as to mitigate the issues caused by Microsoft discontinuing their Visual Programming Language (VPL), we have decided to implement a new VPL, ASU-VPL, based on Microsoft's VPL. ASU-VPL provides an environment where users can focus on algorithms and worry less about syntactic issues. ASU-VPL was built with the concepts of Robot as a Service and workflow based development in mind. As such, ASU-VPL is designed with the intention of allowing web services to be added to the toolbox (e.g. WSDL and REST services). ASU-VPL has strong support for multithreaded operations, including event driven development, and is built with Microsoft VPL users in mind. It provides support for many different robots, including Lego's third generation robots, i.e. EV3, and any open platform robots. To demonstrate the capabilities of ASU-VPL, this paper details the creation of an Intel Edison based robot and the use of ASU-VPL for programming both the Intel based robot and an EV3 robot. This paper will also discuss differences between ASU-VPL and Microsoft VPL as well as differences between developing for the EV3 and for an open platform robot.
ContributorsDe Luca, Gennaro (Author) / Chen, Yinong (Thesis director) / Cheng, Calvin (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
Gibberish seems to have a universal comedic appeal that transcends language barriers – Youtube sensation Crazy Frog goes “bing-ding,” stop-motion penguin Pingu goes “noot-noot,” and Chilean street clown Karcocha speaks in whistle. Clowns don’t need language to make people laugh – Charlie Chaplin did it silently – but what if their gibberish meant something? Intrigued, I sought to explore a species of clowns and how their naturalistic language could evolve the hoots and honks of clown gibberish through naturalistic processes of grammaticalization. First, I evolved a base language (which is not “clown-ish” in itself). Then, I modified the whistled register used by shepherds (not unlike Hmong and Silbo Gomero) into a clown register, which hides the true meaning of jokes in a series of whistles (to encode tone) and other sound effects (to encode consonants). Combined with a clownish subspecies of sapiens and a culture built around “facepaint as self” and humor as a leveling mechanism, this constructed language is vividly clownish. My ultimate intent is to demonstrate the limitless possibility of language change through a detailed, yet silly lens.
ContributorsSteiner, Reed (Author) / Van Gelderen, Elly (Thesis director) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / The Design School (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2022-05
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
Social media is explosively popular in discussing socio-political issues. This work provides a preliminary study on how polarization occurs online. Chapter I begins by introducing limitations of the internet in maintaining a free flow of information. Not only do users seek out groups of like-minded individuals and insulate themselves from opposing views, social media platforms algorithmically curate content such that it will be in line with a user’s preconceived notions of the world. The work then defines polarization and carefully discusses its most prominent causes. It then shifts focus to analyze a closely-related issue regarding political discourse: outrage, which is both a noticeable effect of and further cause of polarization. It is clearly prevalent in traditional media, but for completion, I provide a case study to measure its incidence in social media. In Chapter II, I scrutinize the language used in the #MeToo movement on Twitter and draw conclusions about the issues Twitter users focus on and how they express their views. This chapter details the method I used, the challenges I faced in designing the exploratory study, and the results I found. I benchmark patterns I find in the Twitterverse against those I find in The Wall Street Journal. The analysis relies upon the metric of word similarity, based on proximity of and frequency of words used together, to make distinctions about what users are most commonly saying with respect to given topics, or keywords. Chapter III closes the essay with conclusions of socio-political polarization, discourse, and outrage in social media. Finally, the essay outlines potential channels for future work.
ContributorsJain, Niharika (Author) / Simhony, Avital (Thesis director) / Lewis, Paul (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05