Matching Items (10)
Description
Complaints, characterized by LaForest (2002), are expressions "of dissatisfaction addressed by an individual A to an individual B concerning behavior on the part of B that A feels is unsatisfactory," (p. 1596) have been studied in the language of English speakers since the 1980's (Boxer, 1993a; 1993b; 1996; House & Kasper, 1981; Murphy & Neu, 1996; Trenchs, 1995; Vázquez, 2011; Wolfe & Powell, 2006). However, only a few studies on Spanish-language complaints have been carried out (Bolívar, 2002a; Márquez Reiter, 2005; Pinto & Raschio, 2008). Due to the lack of studies analyzing complaints among second generation Mexican-American Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States, role-plays were collected from 21 participants, ten males and eleven females, who interacted with a female interlocutor. The data was analyzed using Spencer-Oatey's (2005) Rapport Management in order to gain a better understanding of this population's politeness strategies used in complaining both in Spanish and English. In addition to acting out the role-plays, the participants were asked to fill out a Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q), in order to assess language proficiency. Upon completion of the role-plays, the participants completed a post role-play questionnaire, which evaluated their impressions of the interactions. The strategies used in the complaints included, but were not limited to: complaining/accusing, reason/explanation/ justification, threatening, suggesting/requesting/commanding, and providing information. The results showed that for the Spanish complaints the participants preferred the use of reason/explanation/justification, while they preferred suggesting/requesting/commanding in the English complaints. In addition, in both situations the participants chose to respect the association principle, however, this result was not statistically significant. With respect to face sensitivities, the participants chose to enhance the interlocutor's identity face in both the English and Spanish. It is concluded that these participants do not demonstrate a transfer of strategies from one language to another. Furthermore, no significant gender differences were observed. Moreover, the participants show a tendency toward positive politeness, which falls in line with other Hispanic cultures such as Cubans, Spaniards, Argentineans, Uruguayans, Peruvians, and Venezuelans. Although this study adds to the literature of Spanish in the U.S. pragmatics, further study of this population is needed.
ContributorsElias, Mariam (Author) / García Fernandez, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Lafford, Barbara (Thesis advisor) / Cerron-Palomino, Alvaro (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
A number of studies have been carried out on Spanish pragmatics and the speech act of refusals (Félix-Brasdefer 2006; García 1992). Many studies have also been conducted on the teaching of pragmatics and speech acts in the classroom (García 1996; Koike 1989). However, to date, not many studies have been conducted analyzing the acquisition of Spanish refusals in the classroom. To the author's knowledge, no study has investigated the acquisition of Spanish refusals at the various different levels in a university. Therefore, this study will analyze whether there is a significant effect of the level of Spanish instruction of intermediate and advanced university L2 learners on their ability to carry out appropriate refusals. Through discourse completion tests, data from students at the Spanish 202 and 314 levels will be analyzed to see how closely they compare to native Spanish speakers in their refusals. The results will be compared with previous studies on refusals in order to create a teaching plan for acquiring this speech act.
ContributorsSnider, Derek (Author) / Lafford, Barbara (Thesis advisor) / García, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Cerron-Palomino, Alvaro (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Although pragmatic analyses based on empirical data have been conducted throughout most of the Spanish-speaking world, Central America remains the most underrepresented region. This study examines the pragmatic strategies used by female Spanish speakers of Nicaragua and Panama in an advice-giving context. The data consists of eighteen role-plays recorded in Masaya, Nicaragua and Panama City, Panama in June and July of 2011. In the role-play situation, the interlocutor (fixed-role) requests advice from the participant, her best friend, regarding a serious issue in her marriage. The participant's advice-giving strategies are classified according to a categorization adapted from Blum-Kulka's request strategy taxonomy. This allows for a statistical analysis of how these strategies correspond to the three elements of Spencer Oatey's rapport management approach: behavioral expectations, face sensitivities and interactional wants. The results indicate strong similarities between participants from Nicaragua and Panama, both electing to respect all components of the association principle and to violate the equity principle, especially its autonomy control component. These results suggest that, at least in this advice-giving context between intimates, both Nicaraguan and Panamanian Spanish speakers prefer to impose their opinions and suggestions rather than respect the person's right to be treated fairly (i.e. equity principle) as well as to maintain a rapport-enhancing orientation rather than preserve their right to associate with others (i.e. association principle). The results of the pragmatic analysis show similarities with other research on directives in the Spanish-speaking world, including empirical studies in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela and Spain. Specifically, these cultures are all associated with direct strategies and less mitigation, positive politeness, conventional indirectness and high involvement.
ContributorsPlatz, Ryan (Author) / García, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Cerron-Palomino, Alvaro (Committee member) / Lafford, Barbara (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The purpose of this study is to explore the syntax and pragmatics of subject doubling in spoken French. Many prescriptivists have considered it a redundant and ungrammatical form, but over the years, it has gained more interest from syntacticians. It is widely acknowledged that dislocations involve topics, but the position of these structures is very disputed. Some linguists believe in base generation while others state there is movement. The status of subject clitics also comes into play and their role as arguments or agreement markers is crucial to understanding the issues at stake with a topic analysis. It is often argued that the clitics are undergoing a linguistic cycle whereby they lose their function of argument, and need to be reinforced by disjunct pronouns. In this study, I examined which analyses support my data and I attempted to determine what structures tend to be most dislocated by looking at the environment of the discourse in a corpus of spoken French.
ContributorsBlanquart, Eleonore (Author) / Ossipov, Helene (Thesis advisor) / Bahtchevanova, Mariana (Thesis advisor) / Gelderen, Elly van (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This investigation's goal was to add to the small body of research on pragmalinguistic acquisition of L2 Spanish. Specifically, it centered on the production of complaints in Spanish. Data was collected via a written Discourse Completion Task (DCT) of a complaint-provoking situation presented in a website voiceboard to two non-native speaker (NNS) students groups of different proficiency levels and to a native speaker (NS) control group. The lower proficiency group was comprised of 11 NNS enrolled in a 200 level beginning/intermediate Spanish grammar class and the advanced proficiency group of 11 NNS enrolled in a 400 level advanced Spanish conversation and composition class. Neither group contained any participants who had studied abroad or lived in a Spanish-speaking country for more than 3 months. The control group consisted of 10 NSs of Spanish who were all natives or current residents of Northern Mexico. Data from the DCT was categorized into strategies which were organized into Head Acts and Supporting Moves, Deference and Solidarity Politeness systems, according to the frameworks of Blum-Kulka, et al. (1989) and Scollon and Scollon (1983), respectively. The results of the analysis revealed that all three groups of participants have overarching similarities in the use of multiple Head Acts, some used several times throughout a response, to realize a complaint and used some Supporting Moves to mitigate these Head Acts. The lower proficiency group diverged from the advanced proficiency group and NS control group in that lower proficiency students not only used a fewer total strategies and strategy types, but also preferred Head Acts and Supporting Moves that expressed discomfort or dislike over strategies that expressed criticism, or requested a solution from the listener, these being the primary strategies preferred by the advanced proficiency and control group participants. It was also found that the percentage of Supporting Moves decreased with the raise in proficiency level, also. After a discussion of the results, pedagogical implications are given based on these results to help students notice and acquire pragmalinguistcally appropriate responses to complaint-provoking situations.
ContributorsMorningstar, Kira (Author) / Lafford, Barbara (Thesis advisor) / García Fernandez, Carmen (Thesis advisor) / Elorrieta, Jabier Elorrieta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Extensive cross-linguistic data document a wide gamut of semantic and pragmatic uses of the diminutive that revolve around the fundamental concepts of `small' and `child'. As typical inventory of informal registers, diminutives are utilized as pragmatic markers of politeness in a wide range of contextual meanings. This dissertation is intended to fill some major gaps in the systematic and empirical research on the formation and pragmatic uses of the diminutives in Macedonian and to explore the role of diminutivization in a broader linguistic framework, by examining the consistency of the field of diminutives, the core and peripheral meanings of the diminutive, their typology, as well as their pragmatic potential. The morphology and pragmatics of the diminutive is examined by combining data from electronic and printed sources, video recordings of natural conversations, as well as from material collected from participant and non-participant observations. At the level of morphology, it is argued that three fundamental semantic constraints underlie the formation of diminutives: [-big], [+ emotional], and [+ informal]. Furthermore, it is shown how diminutive combinability is rule governed in Macedonian by proposing sets of formal constraints for all grades of diminutives. At the level of pragmatics, the pragmatic functions of the diminutives proper and the related periphrastic diminutive malku are investigated in a variety of contexts involving child-directed speech (CDS) and adult communication. By analyzing the pragmatic functions of the diminutive in a series of speech acts, and drawing upon cross-cultural interpretations suggested by Wierzbicka (1991), it is argued that, in Macedonian, social bonding, cordiality, intimacy or affection are pragmatically more salient than personal autonomy in the Anglo-Saxon societies, realized through non-imposition, tentativeness, or similar pragmatic strategies for saving face. Additionally, it is contended that there exist cultural differences in the assessment of the concept of imposition between these societies. The analyses of the pragmatic potential of the diminutive proper and the periphrastic diminutive 'malku' give rise to the claim that Macedonian culture is predominantly founded on the pragmatic principle of positive politeness.
ContributorsSpasovski, Lupco (Author) / Adams, Karen L (Thesis advisor) / Gelderen, Elly van (Committee member) / Sipka, Danko (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Unmanned aerial vehicles have received increased attention in the last decade due to their versatility, as well as the availability of inexpensive sensors (e.g. GPS, IMU) for their navigation and control. Multirotor vehicles, specifically quadrotors, have formed a fast growing field in robotics, with the range of applications spanning from surveil- lance and reconnaissance to agriculture and large area mapping. Although in most applications single quadrotors are used, there is an increasing interest in architectures controlling multiple quadrotors executing a collaborative task. This thesis introduces a new concept of control involving more than one quadrotors, according to which two quadrotors can be physically coupled in mid-flight. This concept equips the quadro- tors with new capabilities, e.g. increased payload or pursuit and capturing of other quadrotors. A comprehensive simulation of the approach is built to simulate coupled quadrotors. The dynamics and modeling of the coupled system is presented together with a discussion regarding the coupling mechanism, impact modeling and additional considerations that have been investigated. Simulation results are presented for cases of static coupling as well as enemy quadrotor pursuit and capture, together with an analysis of control methodology and gain tuning. Practical implementations are introduced as results show the feasibility of this design.
ContributorsLarsson, Daniel (Author) / Artemiadis, Panagiotis (Thesis advisor) / Marvi, Hamidreza (Committee member) / Berman, Spring (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
The aim in this sociopragmatic study was to identify the linguistic and nonlinguistic types of responses used by Saudi Facebook users in the comments of congratulations on the events of happy news status updates on Facebook. People usually express their feelings and emotions positively to others when they have happy occasions. However, the ways of expressing congratulation may vary because the expressive speech act “congratulations” is not the only way to express happiness and share others their happy news, especially on the new social media such as Facebook. The ways of expressing congratulation have been investigated widely in face-to-face communication in many languages. However, this has not yet been studied on Facebook, which lacks prosodic strategies and facial expressions that help to convey feelings, despite a few contributions on studying various expressive speech acts such as compliment, condolences, and wishing, among others. Therefore, a total of 1,721 comments of congratulation were collected from 61 different occasions and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively by using the frame-based approach to understand the construction of politeness of congratulation on Facebook. The results showed 23 verbal types of responses used by the users; however, the use of “congratulations,” “offer of good wishes,” “praise,” and “statements indicating the situation was warranted” were the most frequently used strategies. The results also showed 100 patterns of verbal compound strategies, but the use of “congratulations” with “offer of good wishes” was the most frequently used compound strategy. In addition, 42 types of emojis were found in the comments and categorized into seven different functions. However, the function of expressing endearment was the most frequently used one. Finally, the results showed that the posts received 31 sharings and 3 types of emoji reactions, such as “like” (Thumbs up), “love” (Beating heart), and “wow” (Surprised face), but the use of “like” was the most frequent emoji reaction to the posts. The explored different ways of expressing congratulation and sharing with others their happy news indicated that the linguistic strategies are not the only way to express happiness on Facebook. Therefore, users employed nonlinguistic strategies to express happiness and intensify their congratulations.
ContributorsMahzari, Mohammad (Author) / Adams, Karen (Thesis advisor) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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
There has been a vast increase in applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in civilian domains. To operate in the civilian airspace, a UAV must be able to sense and avoid both static and moving obstacles for flight safety. While indoor and low-altitude environments are mainly occupied by static obstacles, risks in space of higher altitude primarily come from moving obstacles such as other aircraft or flying vehicles in the airspace. Therefore, the ability to avoid moving obstacles becomes a necessity
for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
Towards enabling a UAV to autonomously sense and avoid moving obstacles, this thesis makes the following contributions. Initially, an image-based reactive motion planner is developed for a quadrotor to avoid a fast approaching obstacle. Furthermore, A Dubin’s curve based geometry method is developed as a global path planner for a fixed-wing UAV to avoid collisions with aircraft. The image-based method is unable to produce an optimal path and the geometry method uses a simplified UAV model. To compensate
these two disadvantages, a series of algorithms built upon the Closed-Loop Rapid Exploratory Random Tree are developed as global path planners to generate collision avoidance paths in real time. The algorithms are validated in Software-In-the-Loop (SITL) and Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulations using a fixed-wing UAV model and in real flight experiments using quadrotors. It is observed that the algorithm enables a UAV to avoid moving obstacles approaching to it with different directions and speeds.
for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
Towards enabling a UAV to autonomously sense and avoid moving obstacles, this thesis makes the following contributions. Initially, an image-based reactive motion planner is developed for a quadrotor to avoid a fast approaching obstacle. Furthermore, A Dubin’s curve based geometry method is developed as a global path planner for a fixed-wing UAV to avoid collisions with aircraft. The image-based method is unable to produce an optimal path and the geometry method uses a simplified UAV model. To compensate
these two disadvantages, a series of algorithms built upon the Closed-Loop Rapid Exploratory Random Tree are developed as global path planners to generate collision avoidance paths in real time. The algorithms are validated in Software-In-the-Loop (SITL) and Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulations using a fixed-wing UAV model and in real flight experiments using quadrotors. It is observed that the algorithm enables a UAV to avoid moving obstacles approaching to it with different directions and speeds.
ContributorsLin, Yucong (Author) / Saripalli, Srikanth (Thesis advisor) / Scowen, Paul (Committee member) / Fainekos, Georgios (Committee member) / Thangavelautham, Jekanthan (Committee member) / Youngbull, Cody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015