Linguistics Theses and Dissertations

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Open Access
A Grammar of Hakhun Tangsa
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06) Boro, Krishna; DeLancey, Scott
Hakhun Tangsa is one of around eighty ethnic and linguistic communities called Tangsa or Tangshang. Hakhuns live mostly in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and in Sagaing Division, Myanmar. The number of speakers is estimated at around ten thousand. Hakhun is a Tibeto-Burman language, and it forms a subgroup with Nocte, Wancho, Phom, Konyak, Chang, and Khiamngan called Konyak or Northern Naga. Hakhun is a tonal language with twenty-two consonants, six vowels, and a simple syllable structure. Open word classes include Nouns and Verbs; property concept terms form a subclass of verbs. Noun roots are mostly monosyllabic, and most multisyllabic nouns are compounds. Nominal morphology includes prossessive prefixes and a set of semantically specific suffixes. Case is coded by postpositions. Verb roots are also mostly monosyllabic. A few verbs have suppletive stems. Verb serialization is common, and expresses complex events like resultative and sequential. A few grammaticalized verbs/elements contribute abstract meanings like phase, associated motion, causative, benefactive, etc. Typical verbal categories are expressed by independent particles. The most extensive and grammatically obligatory set consists of single syllable particles called operators, which express verbal categories like tense, mood, deixis, negation, inverse, and argument indexation. The typical argument indexation pattern is hierarchical. Deviations from this pattern is used to express certain pragmatic effects like affectedness and politeness. Non-verbal clauses may take overt copulas depending on tense and polarity. Most semantic distinctions, such as equation, property-concepts, quantification, simulation, and location are expressed by the nominal strategy. Existential and possession are expressed by a distinct strategy. Typical verbal clauses include intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive; less typical ones include weather condition, sensation-emotion, reflexive, reciprocal, and ‘need’ constructions. Person-based split-ergativity is seen in case marking, where first and second person singular arguments follow accusative, and the rest ergative alignment. Accusative alignment is also found in argument indexation in non-final clauses. The object alignment is indirective in case marking. Complement clauses include sentence-like, non-finite, and infinitive complement clauses. Adverbial clauses include various kinds of temporal clauses, temporal/conditional clauses, counterfactual, concessive, purpose, and substitutive clauses. Clause chaining (medial-final) is prevalent. Independent sentences are linked through tail-head linking and through connectives.
Open Access
A Grammar of Wampis
(University of Oregon, 2016-02-23) Peña, Jaime; Payne, Doris
This dissertation constitutes the first attempt at describing the grammar of Wampis (Spanish: Huambisa), a language spoken in the Peruvian Amazon. Wampis belongs to the so-called Jivaroan family of languages and is closely related to sister languages Awajun, Shuar, Shiwiar and Achuar. The grammar introduces the Wampis people and some aspects of their culture and history before analyzing the major aspects of the language from a grammatical perspective. Wampis possesses a complex prosodic system that mixes features of tone and stress. Vowel elision processes pervade most morphophonological processes. Nasalization is also present and spreads rightward and leftward through continuants and vowels. Every word in Wampis needs at least one high tone, but more can occur in a word. Morphologically, Wampis is a very rich language. Nouns and especially verbs have very robust morphology. Affixes and enclitics contribute different meanings to words. Some morphemes codify semantic categories that are not grammatically codified in many other languages, such as sudden realization, apprehensive and mirative modalities. An outstanding feature of Wampis is the pattern of argument indexation on the verb, which follows an uncommon pattern in which the verb agrees with the object (and not with the subject) if the object is a Plural Speech Act participant. Parallel to this pattern of argument indexation is the typologically uncommon pattern of object marking in Wampis, whereby a third person object noun phrase is not marked as an object if the subject is a first plural, second singular or second plural person. Wampis exhibits a nominative-accusative alignment. All notional objects (direct, indirect, object of applicative) are treated identically in the syntax. The preferred order is A P V. Wampis also possesses a sophisticated system of participant tracking, which is instantiated in the grammar via switch-reference markers. Another typologically uncommon feature of Wampis is the presence of a sub-system of switch-reference markers that track a participant that is not a subject. Throughout the twenty-one chapters of this grammar, other issues of Wampis related to different areas of phonology, morphology and syntax are also addressed and described from a functional and a typological perspective.
Open Access
A Historical Reconstruction of the Koman Language Family
(University of Oregon, 2020-02-27) Otero, Manuel; Payne, Doris
This dissertation is a historical-comparative reconstruction of the Koman family, a small group of languages spoken in what now constitutes the borderlands of Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan. Koman is comprised five living languages: Gwama, Opo, Komo, Uduk, and the previously unidentified Dana language. The Koman family has been relatively understudied though it has figured prominently in large-scale classifications of the Nilo-Saharan super family. These classifications are radically distinct, given the paucity of research on Koman as a whole at the time. Some current scholars even question Koman’s genetic affiliation to Nilo- Saharan entirely. One main issue in high-level classifications is the lack of low-level reconstructions of families established with verifiable sound correspondences coupled with morphological evidence to support the internal structure of a given family. This dissertation addresses this issue by reconstructing the basic phonology, including segmental and suprasegmental domains, and tracing the evolution from Proto-Koman down through the nodes to the modern-day sound systems. In addition, some of the core lexicon and morphology is reconstructed to Proto-Koman and to the subnodes. The data for this dissertation was collected in the field from native speakers of all of the living Koman languages including from previously undocumented varieties. In an effort to make the analyses as faithful to the data as possible, all of the data and all of the correspondence sets employed to reconstruct proto-sounds are provided in the Appendices. Further, an etymological wordlist of lexica reconstructed to distinct nodes within the family is also provided. While Koman’s affiliation to the purported Nilo-Saharan super family is still under debate, the overarching aim of this dissertation is to provide a conservative reconstruction of Proto-Koman which will hopefully serve future Koman scholars as well as those interested in higher-level genetic classifications of East African languages.
Open Access
Accessibility, Language Production, and Language Change
(University of Oregon, 2019-09-18) Harmon, Zara; Kapatsinski, Vsevolod
This dissertation explores the effects of frequency on the learning and use of linguistic constructions. The work examines the influence of frequency on form choice in production and meaning inference in comprehension and discusses the effect of each modality on diachronic patterns of change in language. In production, high frequency of a form increases its accessibility given its meaning, and other related meanings. Under the pressures of online real-time speech production, greater accessibility makes a frequent form more likely to be selected over its competitors. Consequently, frequent forms are extended to novel meanings in production, resulting in a synchronic correlation between frequency and polysemy. At the same time, frequency in comprehension results in entrenchment—the more often a form is experienced with a meaning, the more confident the learner becomes that the form is unlikely to be used to express other meanings. The findings reconcile two seemingly contradictory effects of frequency in language change and language acquisition. While frequency results in extension of a frequent form to other meanings in production, it can, at the same time, cause entrenchment in comprehension, which curbs over-extension. The struggle between the pressures from production to extend and from comprehension to entrench molds language. I further provide experimental evidence demonstrating that frequent forms push their infrequent competitors out of their shared meanings, and that infrequent forms competing with frequent forms tend to be assigned to novel related meanings in comprehension. This result suggests a mechanism for the survival of infrequent forms in specific niches and the existence of push chains in semantic change. This dissertation includes previously published co-authored material.
Embargo
Automatic Analysis of Epistemic Stance-Taking in Academic English Writing: A Systemic Functional Approach
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-10) Eguchi, Masaki; Kyle, Kristopher
Existing linguistic textual measures that investigate features of academic writing often focus on lexis, syntax, and cohesion, despite writing skills being considered more complex and multifaceted (e.g., Sparks et al., 2014). For this reason, writing assessment researchers seek ways to measure and assess various textual features beyond the traditional ones, including discourse moves and steps (Cotos, 2014), source use (Burstein et al., 2018; Kyle, 2020), and essay argument structures (Fiacco et al., 2022). The present dissertation attempts to extend this research by proposing an automated analysis of rhetorical discourse features of epistemic stance-taking strategies. Drawing on a theoretical framework of the engagement system from Appraisal Analysis (Martin & White, 2005), which originates from the Sydney School of the systemic functional discourse analysis tradition, the dissertation develops and evaluates a series of end-to-end machine learning models to conduct automated engagement resource analysis. The experiment in Study 1 indicated that the developed system can perform as well as (or even outperform) trained annotators’ intercoder agreement. Study 2 uses the natural language processing (NLP) systems to conduct the first large-scale analysis of engagement resources in university written assignments across genres and disciplines. The findings suggested that the registers of university writings are far more complex and nuanced than simple characterization by genres or disciplines. Study 3 investigates whether the developed measures of rhetorical features of engagement can provide additional information above and beyond the traditional linguistic measures at the levels of lexis, syntax, and cohesion, for modeling professional ratings of essay qualities in a standardized second language proficiency assessment. The results indicate that the features of engagement (particularly the diversity of rhetorical strategies) can complement the existing measures in predicting essay quality. The three studies together indicate that the proposed machine-learning approach is beneficial to scale up the analysis of rhetorical discourse features in academic writing for research and educational purposes. The dissertation concludes with a call for increased collaboration among discourse analysts, second language researchers, assessment researchers, and computational linguists to define essential textual features for writing assessments across contexts and automate the analysis of such constructs (Lu, 2021, Burstein et al., 2016).
Open Access
Aviation English Is Distinct From Conversational English: Evidence From Prosodic Analyses And Listening Performance
(University of Oregon, 2018-10-31) Trippe, Julia; Pederson, Eric
International aviation professionals converse in a register of English derived from postwar radiotelephony. Decades of use and regulatory pressure established Aviation English (AE) as the lingua franca for pilots and air traffic controllers. Recently, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) required aviation professionals prove AE proficiency, resulting in development of a variety of AE programs and tests derived from English language pedagogy, without accounting for unique aviation language requirements. This dissertation explores linguistic characteristics that must be accounted for in international AE programs. Historically, issues of English language dominance were sidestepped by letting speakers of regional languages use their own aviation jargon, allowing native English speakers (NESs) to claim AE proficiency without learning a language comprehensible to international AE users. By allowing limited “plain language” use, this practice paved the way for colloquial jargon that is often opaque to non-native English speakers (NNESs). This led to an ICAO requirement that international pilots and controllers have conversational English (CE) proficiency. A phonological examination of AE must begin by defining a baseline in comparison with other language forms. Regarding AE, it is critical to determine if there are differences with CE, because of the assumption of compatibility inherent in ICAO proficiency requirements. This dissertation compared AE with CE by examining the prosody and intelligibility of each language variety. Prosodic differences in AE and CE were examined in two radio corpora: air traffic controllers and radio newscasters. From these data I examined rhythm, intonation and speech rate differences that could affect intelligibility across registers. Using laboratory studies of pilot and non-pilot NESs and NNESs, I examined AE intelligibility differences based on language background. NNES pilots scored worse on CE tasks and better on AE tasks than NES non-pilots, indicating CE proficiency is not a predictor of AE proficiency. Dissertation findings suggest AE language training should focus on AE and not on CE, as is current practice. Given phonological and other differences between AE and CE, enlisting all AE users to learn and adhere to AE phraseology will save time and money in training and alleviate miscommunication and confusion in flight, potentially saving lives.
Open Access
Bantu Applicative Construction Types Involving *-ID: Form, Functions, and Diachrony
(University of Oregon, 2018-04-10) Pacchiarotti, Sara; Payne, Doris
This dissertation first addresses various shortcomings in definitions of “applicative” when compared to what is actually found across languages. It then proposes a four-way distinction among applicative constructions, relevant at least to Bantu, a large family of languages spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa. Because of the gradual nature of historical change, differences among construction types may be somewhat graded. In what are called Type A applicative constructions, the applicative morpheme expands the argument structure of its root by introducing an obligatorily present applied phrase. This expansion might result, but need not, in increased syntactic valence of the derived verb stem. Type A includes cases where the applicative on a lexicalized applicative stem still has the ability to introduce an applied phrase. In Type B applicative constructions, the applicative expands the argument structure of its root by introducing an obligatorily present applied phrase and performs other semantic/pragmatic functions on the applied phrase or on the whole clause (e.g. the applied phrase becomes the narrow-focused constituent in the clause). As in Type A, syntactic valence might be increased, but need not be. In Type C applicative constructions, the applicative does not introduce an applied phrase. Instead, it provides semantic nuances to the lexical meaning of its root (e.g. the action described by the root is performed to completion, repetitively, in excess, etc.). Unlike Type A and Type B, Type C constructions are not fully productive and may undergo lexicalization. Fourthly, in Pseudo-applicative constructions, the applicative morpheme found on a lexicalized stem does not introduce an applied phrase and does not perform semantic and/or pragmatic functions described for Type B and Type C. Because the last type, especially, has not been acknowledged in prior literature, the dissertation presents a historically informed case study of 78 pseudo-applicative forms in Tswana (S31), a southern Bantu language spoken in Botswana and South Africa. Finally, this study argues that both the synchronic functions of the Bantu applicative suffix *-ɪd and the lexicalization paths emerging from the study of Tswana pseudo-applicative forms support an original Location/Goal function of *-ɪd in Proto-Bantu, rather than an original Beneficiary function.
Open Access
Case and Gender Loss in Germanic, Romance, and Balkan Sprachbund Languages
(University of Oregon, 2023-03-24) Alhazmi, Mofareh; Vakareliyska, Cynthia
My dissertation investigates the loss of morphological case and grammatical gender in the Germanic, Romance, and Balkan Sprachbund languages. Crucial language-internal and language-external motivations are considered. To illustrate the changes of morphological cases, the languages are divided into historical stages. Every change in nominal inflection between stages is attributed to either sound change or analogical change; these choices are justified through consideration of historical sound changes and the motivations behind analogical processes. The changes are also discussed in terms of their effects on number syncretism, case and gender mergers, order of case loss, and the relationship between gender and declension.These motivations can be classified as language-internal or language-external. Phonological, morphosyntactic, and semantic factors are among the former. Different types of sound change can neutralize inflection differences, but two closely related types, prosodic change, and vowel reduction have been suggested as key causes in case and gender loss in IE languages. A usual direction of change in morphological case loss includes variation between two or more cases in one or more functions, followed by functional narrowing and occasionally a complete functional merger of the case markings. Similarly, there can be differences between a case and an analytic construction, which can lead to the former being replaced by the latter in some or all functions. External motivations for case and gender loss include the kinds of contact conditions that cause or accelerate simplification in internal developments. Essential contact situation is the establishment of a sprachbund, or linguistic region, which usually entails structural convergence among surrounding languages during a long period of profound contact. Interactions among number, case, and gender are analyzed using original quantitative measures of number syncretism on nouns and gender syncretism on agreement targets. Overall, the results of my study support the general hypothesis that the loss of case and gender categories can be explained by the neutralization of distinctions in these categories as a direct result of sound change and by the profiling of a more relevant category through analogical processes.
Open Access
Clear speech production and perception of Korean stops and the sound change in Korean stops
(University of Oregon, 2009-09) Kang, Kyoung-Ho
The current dissertation investigated clear speech production of Korean stops to examine the proposal that the phonetic targets of phonological categories are more closely approximated in hyperarticulated speech. The investigation also considered a sound change currently underway in Korean stops: younger speakers of the Seoul dialect produce the aspirated and lenis stops differently from older speakers of the same dialect. Hyperarticulated, clear speech provided evidence for difference in the phonetic targets of the stops between the two age groups. Compared with conversational and citation-form speech, younger speakers primarily enhanced the F0 difference between the aspirated and lenis stops in clear speech, with only a small VOT enhancement, whereas older speakers solely enhanced VOT difference between the two stops. These different clear speech enhancement strategies were interpreted to indicate that younger speakers have developed different phonetic targets for stop production than older speakers. The results from a perceptual experiment using re-synthesized stimuli indicated that the production differences between the younger and older speakers are linked to perceptual differences. The perceptual processing of the stops differed between the groups in a manner parallel to the production differences. When identifying aspirated and lenis stops, younger listeners evidenced greater cue weight for F0 than older listeners, whereas older listeners evidenced greater cue weight than younger listeners for VOT and H1-H2. In addition, the results from a perceptual experiment using noise-masked stimuli confirmed an intelligibility improvement effect of clear speech and also indicated that the three speaking styles were on a continuum from the most casual, conversational speech, to the most careful, clear speech, with citation-form speech in the middle. In the final chapter, the different findings of the current study were discussed in view of various theoretical models and hypotheses. This dissertation includes previously published co-authored material.
Open Access
The concept of intentional action in the grammar of Kathmandu Newari
(University of Oregon, 1991-08) Hargreaves, David J., 1955-
This study describes the relationship between the concept of intentional action and the grammatical organization of the clause in Kathmandu Newari, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken primarily in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. In particular, the study focuses on the conceptual structure of "intentional action" along with the lexical, morphological, and syntactic reflexes of this notion in situated speech. The construal of intentional action consists of two distinct notions : one involving the concept of self-initiated force and the other involving mental representation or awareness. The distribution of finite inflectional forms for verbs results from the interaction of these two notions with a set of evidential/discourse principles which constrain the attribution of intentional action to certain discourse roles in situated interaction .
Open Access
Contingency, Contiguity, and Capacity: On the Meaning of the Instrumental Case Marking in Copular Predicative Constructions in Russian
(University of Oregon, 2020-12-08) Tretiak, Valeriia; Vakareliyska, Cynthia
This study investigates the use of the Instrumental case marking in copular predicative constructions in Russian. The study endeavors to explain why the case marking whose prototypical meaning cross-linguistically is that of an instrument, occurs with predicative nominals (nouns and adjectives), what meaning it has in predicative constructions, and how this meaning resonates with the rest of the Instrumental meanings in the language. While cross-linguistically the Instrumental case marking is notoriously known for a wide array of meanings and functions, only in Slavic and Baltic languages it is used to mark predicative nominals. On a broader scale, I use the Russian Instrumental case marking as a case study to examine the internal organization of a complex grammatical category. The study uses the prototype model based on Wittgenstein’s (1953) family resemblance to establish semantic relatedness among the various meanings of the Instrumental case marking. The study also proposes a general meaning of the Instrumental case marking, which I define in cognitive terms as relations of contingency and contiguity. Using evidence from Early East Slavic manuscripts, the study demonstrates that the Instrumental case marking in predicative constructions has as its semantic source the Instrumental case marking in similative constructions. I propose that besides denoting the manner of motion, the referent of the Instrumental noun phrase in similative constructions also denotes a new capacity of the subject referent which emerges when the subject referent metaphorically adopts the most salient features associated with the referent of the Instrumental noun phrase, that is, its particular manner of motion. This emerging capacity is contiguous with and contingent on the specific mode of acting. In predicative constructions, the referent of the Instrumental noun phrase is a capacity, as opposed to an inherent or essential property, of the subject referent and is realized through acting/ performance. That acting/ performance is crucial in delimitating Nominative vs. Instrumental-marked properties in predicative constructions is supported by the semantic unacceptability of the Instrumental case marking in instances where the implied acting is negated in the conjunct clause. Capacity is a role which has its designated function and purpose. Function links the meaning “capacity” with the meaning “instrument”. Inasmuch as function is what delimitates instruments from other physical objects, function is what tells apart, respectively, capacities from properties in Instrumental vs. Nominative predicative constructions. That all the individual meanings of the Russian Instrumental case marking, including its meaning in predicative constructions, are interrelated and form a coherent grammatical category is further corroborated by the analysis of Instrumental constructions with predicative nouns and adjectives.
Open Access
Cross-Linguistic Perception and Learning of Japanese Lexical Prosody by English Listeners
(University of Oregon, 2011-09) Shport, Irina A., 1975-
The focus of this dissertation is on how language experience shapes perception of a non-native prosodic contrast. In Tokyo Japanese, fundamental frequency (F0) peak and fall are acoustic cues to lexically contrastive pitch patterns, in which a word may be accented on a particular syllable or unaccented (e.g., tsúru 'a crane', tsurú 'a vine', tsuru 'to fish'). In English, lexical stress is obligatory, and it may be reinforced by F0 in higher-level prosodic groupings. Here I investigate whether English listeners can attend to F0 peaks as well as falls in contrastive pitch patterns and whether training can facilitate the learning of prosodic categories. In a series of categorization and discrimination experiments, where F0 peak and fall were manipulated in one-word utterances, the judgments of prominence by naïve English listeners and native Japanese listeners were compared. The results indicated that while English listeners had phonetic sensitivity to F0 fall in a same-different discrimination task, they could not consistently use the F0 fall to categorize F0 patterns. The effects of F0 peak location and F0 fall on prominence judgments were always larger for Japanese listeners than for English listeners. Furthermore, the interaction between these acoustic cues affected perception of the contrast by Japanese, but not English, listeners. This result suggests that native, but not non-native, listeners have complex and integrated processing of these cues. The training experiment assessed improvement in categorization of Japanese pitch patterns with exposure and feedback. The results suggested that training improved identification of the accented patterns, which also generalized to new words and new contexts. Identification of the unaccented pattern, on the other hand, showed no improvement. Error analysis indicated that native English listeners did not learn to attend specifically to the lack of the F0 fall. To conclude, language experience influences perception of prosodic categories. Although there is some sensitivity to F0 fall in non-native listeners, they rely mostly on F0 peak location in language-like tasks such as categorization of pitch patterns. Learning of new prosodic categories is possible. However, not all categories are learned equally well, which suggests that first language attentional biases affect second language acquisition in the prosodic domain.
Open Access
Cross-modal reduction: Repetition of words and gestures
(University of Oregon, 2017-05-01) Vajrabhaya, Prakaiwan; Pederson, Eric
This dissertation examines speakers’ production of speech and representational gesture. It utilizes the Repetition Effect as the investigative tool. The Repetition Effect appears to vary by the tendency for some items to shorten when repeating, at least under the condition that speakers can primarily operate by their assumption of the state of knowledge of the listener. In speech, a highly conventionalized form of performance, word duration reduces within the same stretch of coherent discourse; then, it resets in the first mention of a new stretch of coherent discourse regardless of the state of knowledge to the speaker or the listener. Therefore, the Repetition Effect in speech is best analyzed as an automatic behavior triggered by discourse structure, rather than reflecting online changes in word accessibility for either interlocutor, be it for the speaker (Listener-neutral explanation) or for the listener (Listener-modeling explanation). The Repetition Effect in speech production in this dissertation will be accounted for within an exemplar model of the perception/production loop. However, in representational gestures, a much less conventionalized form of performance compared to speech, the Repetition Effect shows a different pattern. When speakers only operate by their assumption of the state of knowledge of the listener, without dynamic, appreciable listener feedback, they steadily reduce most types of representational gesture across tellings. Based on these results, it can be argued that representational gestures primarily serve as a part of speech production, rather than as communicative acts. That is, they are produced without regard to the novelty of the information to the listener, thus, consistent with the Listener-neutral explanation.
Open Access
Deciding to Look: Revisiting the Link between Lexical Activations and Eye Movements in the Visual World Paradigm in Japanese
(University of Oregon, 2019-01-11) Teruya, Hideko; Kapatsinski, Vsevolod
All current theories of spoken word recognition (e.g., Allopenna et al., 1998; McClelland & Elman, 1986; Norris, 1994) suggest that any part of a target word triggers activation of candidate words. Visual world paradigm studies have relied on the linking hypothesis that the probability of looking at the referent of a word directly tracks the word’s level of activation (e.g., Allopenna et al., 1998). However, how much information is needed to trigger a saccade to a visual representation of the word’s referent? To address this question, the present study manipulated the number and location of shared segments between the target and competitor words. Experimental evidence is provided by two visual world paradigm experiments on Japanese, using natural and synthesized speech. In both experiments, cohort competitor pictures were not fixated more than unrelated distractor pictures unless the cohort competitor shares the initial CVC with the target. Bayesian analyses provide strong support for the null hypothesis that shorter overlap does not affect eye movements. The results suggest that a listener needs to accumulate enough evidence for a word before a saccade is generated. The human data were validated by an interactive computational model (TRACE: McClelland & Elman, 1986). The model was adapted to Japanese language to examine whether the TRACE model predicts competitor effects that fit human data. The model predicted that there should be effects when words share any amount with a target which confirms the current theory. However, the model did not fit the human data unless there is longer overlap between words. This indicates that eye movements are not as closely tied to fixation probabilities of lexical representations as previously believed. The present study suggests that looking at a referent of a word is a decision, made when the word’s activation exceeds a context-specific threshold. Subthreshold activations do not drive saccades. The present study conclude that decision-making processes need to be incorporated in models linking word activation to eye movements.
Open Access
The Effect of Age of Acquisition and Second-Language Experience on Segments and Prosody: A Cross-Sectional Study of Korean Bilinguals' English and Korean Production
(University of Oregon, 2011-09) Oh, Grace Eunhae, 1980-
The current dissertation investigated segmental and prosodic aspects of first- (L1) and second-language (L2) speech production. Forty Korean-speaking adults and children varying in L2 experience (6 months-inexperienced vs. 6 years-experienced) as well as twenty age-matched native English speaking adults and children participated. Experienced children born in the U.S. were first exposed to English much earlier than inexperienced children. Group differences were investigated for insight into the effect of differing language experience on speech production. For segmental aspects, spectral quality and duration of English and Korean vowels (Chapter II), the effect of English coda consonant voicing on vowel and consonant closure duration (Chapter III), and language-specific voice onset time (VOT) in English and Korean stops (Chapter IV) were examined. All Korean groups except the experienced children differed from the native English speakers in vowel spectral quality and coda voicing production. The experienced children showed native-like production of both English and Korean vowels and also used VOT to distinguish Korean aspirated and English voiceless stops. These results suggest that the experienced children have separate phonological representations for their two languages. For prosodic aspects, stressed and unstressed vowels in English multisyllabic words (Chapter V) and Korean four-syllable phrases (Chapter VI) were elicited. The results of stressed and unstressed vowel production revealed that the Korean adults were able to acquire English prosody in a native-like manner, except for reduced vowel quality. Contrary to the little L1-L2 interaction in prosody for adults, Korean experienced children's production suggested a strong influence of English acquisition on the development of Korean prosody in terms of fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration patterns. Different degrees of L1-L2 interaction between Korean experienced children's production of segments and prosody are discussed from the developmental standpoint of simultaneous bilingual children's language shift from the mother tongue to English. In addition to children's greater plasticity of language acquisition, external (e.g., peer pressure, language input) and internal (e.g., ethnic self-identity) factors are likely to have created a language learning environment different from that of the Korean adults. As a result, the degree and direction of L1-L2 interaction varied by linguistic domains, depending on the age of the learner and the language experience.
Open Access
Elements of Lushootseed Grammar in Discourse Perspective
(University of Oregon, 2019-04-30) Zahir, Zalmai; DeLancey, Scott
Previous analyses have made insightful progress on how Lushootseed functions primarily based upon elicitation work and morphosyntactic observations. Much of this work is based upon a structural linguistic analysis. For years, this form of analysis has been the primary way Lushootseed has been presented and these insights have been helpful in understanding how Lushootseed functions. Indeed, much of what has been said about Lushootseed on this level is the basis for my analysis in this dissertation. However, there are elements of Lushootseed that do not fit well within this more traditional frame work and are not fully understood through just a structural linguistic analysis. This includes morphological elements, such as: the functions of the s- ‘nominalizer’; ʔu-, previously analyzed as a perfective marker; and =əxʷ, previously analyzed as marking a change of state. In addition, previous analysis on the diachronic Salish passive construction does not hold as a synchronic passive among four Central Salish languages. The methodology in this dissertation examines natural speech patterns and leans towards analyzing morphosyntactic elements in terms of focus and discourse marking. When certain Lushootseed constructions are analyzed using this approach, their distributions have promising results.
Open Access
Empirical Foundations of Socio-Indexical Structure: Inquiries in Corpus Sociophonetics and Perceptual Learning
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-09) Gunter, Kaylynn; Kendall, Tyler
Speech is highly variable and systematic, governed by the internal linguistic system and socio-indexical factors. The systematic relationship of socio-indexical factors and variable phonetic forms, referred to here as socio-indexical structure, has been the cornerstone of sociophonetic research over the last several decades. Research has provided mounting evidence that listeners track and exploit cross-talker variability during speech processing tasks. As one such example, recent work has demonstrated listeners’ sensitivity to talker characteristics via retuning phonetic categories (i.e., perceptual learning) in response to talker-specific patterns. Drawing on Bayesian models, researchers have argued that listeners’ perceptual learning is influenced by listeners’ prior experience with socio-indexical factors conditioning segmental variation. From experience listeners form beliefs about the underlying cause of variation to determine when to adapt to talker-specific forms and generalize to other similar talkers. However, theoretical work has over-simplified descriptions of socio-indexical structure, leaving open questions about the nature and range of phonetic variation that listeners track and exploit.This dissertation seeks to provide both theoretical and empirical foundations of socio-indexical structure at the intersection of individual talkers and geographic dialects drawing on mixed methods. Using large-scale datasets of American English vowel measurements, the corpus analyses probe different quantitative descriptions of socio-indexical structure under various scopes of socio-indexical granularity and internal organizations across the vowel space. The corpus analyses reveal an asymmetry in socio-indexical conditioning of the joint cue distributions (i.e., F1xF2) across several simulations whereby some categories (e.g., /eɪ/) are conditioned by dialect, while others are conditioned by individual talker identity alone (e.g., /ʊ/; Chapter 4). Additionally, analyses show that individual talkers diverge from their dialect areas less for dialect conditioned vowels compared to talker conditioned vowels, confirming talkers’ distributional patterns generally align with their communities. Additional analyses highlight how internal principles provide specificity to socio-indexical conditioning of variability, focusing on the acoustic overlap of vowel pairs and individual cue dimensions (Chapter 5). Such descriptions suggest acoustic overlap across some vowel pairs may be attenuated by socio-indexical information while other vowel pairs generally demonstrate stability across talkers and dialects (e.g., /æ/ and /a/). Finally, descriptions of individual cue dimensions demonstrate multimodal distributions both across and within talkers for some categories conditioned by dialects (e.g., /ɔ/; Chapter 5). Following from Bayesian models of speech processing and causal inference, this dissertation tests whether a priori links to socio-indexical structure influence perceptual learning (Chapter 6). A lexically guided perceptual learning experiment tests whether the asymmetry of socio-indexical conditioning (dialect vs. talker) observed in the corpus analyses correlates with listeners’ learning and generalization behavior after exposure to novel shifts in one of two vowels (/eɪ/ and /ʊ/) in a female speaker’s voice. The results demonstrate learning a novel shift in /ʊ/ but not in /eɪ/, with generalization of post-test categorization to a novel male talker but not a novel female talker. These results suggest that the asymmetry of social conditioning alone may guide listeners’ behavior for these vowels and challenge our current understanding of listeners’ adaptation to vocalic variability and the role of socio-indexical structure in perceptual learning. Overall, this dissertation advances our understanding of socially conditioned variation across speech production and perception.
Open Access
Event construal and its linguistic encoding: Towards an Extended Semantic Map model
(University of Oregon, 2009-09) Kim, Yongtaek, 1968-
This dissertation investigates constructional alternation among the English verb- at , verb- away-at , and verb- away constructions. The primary purpose is to lay a fundamental conceptual framework on the interrelation between how we perceive a situation in an external world and how we construe it as an event structure in a conceptualized world to encode it linguistically. This study suggests an Extended Semantic Map (hereafter ESM) model. It presents an in-depth analysis of the three constructions, derived from the BNC (British National Corpus), and resultative constructions in Korean and Japanese. I argue that language has conceptual bases rooted in perception and cognitive construal. Construal allows one to view the same situation in a number of alternative ways. Construal is closely related to distribution of attention, which has two main patterns: focus of attention and windowing of attention. Focus of attention is mainly based on perceptual prominence. It is placed on participants and is typically encoded in the selection and arrangement of nominals. Windowing of attention operates on cognitive prominence. It is a cognitive process to segment some relation(s) out of an event structure. It is typically encoded in predicate or adverbial expressions. I further argue that any mismatch between perceptual and cognitive prominence requires overt marking. For example, the English passive construction requires the overt marking of ' be/get + past participle,' which directs an addressee's primary focus of attention to a perceptually secondary but cognitively primary patient. It also places windowing of attention on the perceptually secondary but cognitively primary Change. Windowing and focus of attention will be used to define the X- and Y-axes of the ESM. The X-axis consists of five causal relations -- Volition, Activity, Force Transfer, Change, and State, on which attention is windowed. The Y-axis is composed of four types of configuration for the semantic roles of the participants -- Agent, Agent-Location, Agent-Theme, and Theme. The ESM visually maps relations among constructions within and across languages. It illustrates how event structures can be categorized typically as either [Activity]-windowing or [Change]-windowing. Finally, it also allows us to represent cross-linguistic differences in the available constructions for construing event structures.
Open Access
Factors affecting the incidental formation of novel suprasegmental categories
(University of Oregon, 2021-11-23) Wright, Jonathan; Baese-Berk, Melissa
Humans constantly use their senses to categorize stimuli in their environment. They develop categories for stimuli when they are young and constantly add to existing categories and learn novel categories throughout their life. A key factor when learning novel sound categories is the method a person uses to acquire the novel sound categories. Different learning methodologies interact with different neural processes and mechanisms, leading to diverse learning outcomes. However, auditory learning research has only recently begun to focus on the ways that various auditory processing structures interact with different learning methodologies. This dissertation investigates the acquisition of novel tone categories using natural tokens and an incidental learning paradigm. Throughout the experiments we demonstrated that native English participants with no prior experience with the target tone categories, from 18 to 66 years old, can use an incidental learning paradigm with natural tokens to form four novel tone categories after 30 minutes of training with very high, even perfect, accuracy. These findings confirm results from previous studies that suggest that participants can effectively learn novel sound categories through incidental learning paradigms, and we extend the investigation of factors impacting incidental learning into natural speech sound categories. Across the four experiments we examined factors known to impact novel sound category acquisition. We demonstrated that high variability of tokens within trials resulted in greater learning than when the variability was spread out across trials. We also demonstrated that training on a single talker results in robust learning to novel tokens but a sharp decline when generalizing to novel talkers. By contrast, if participants are trained on multiple talkers during training, there is less learning, but there is little or no difference when generalizing learning to novel talkers. We also demonstrated that the presence of an unfamiliar vowel in the auditory stimuli did not impact the incidental formation of novel tone categories during perception only training. Further, we demonstrated that producing the tokens on each trial destroyed perceptual learning, and we presented multiple hypotheses regarding the nature of the disruption for future investigation. We also demonstrated that the presence of an unfamiliar vowel did not further disrupt perceptual learning over training with familiar segments. Thus, as a whole, this dissertation illustrated that incidental learning paradigms are an effective and efficient means for learning novel tone categories and investigating factors known to impact novel sound category acquisition.
Open Access
Factors that affect generalization of adaptation
(University of Oregon, 2023-03-24) Lee, Dae-yong; Baese-Berk, Melissa
As there is a growing population of non-native speakers worldwide, facilitating communication involving native and non-native speakers has become increasingly important. While one way to help communication involving native and non-native speakers is to help non-native speakers improve proficiency in their target language, another way is to help native listeners better understand non-native speech. Specifically, while it may be initially difficult for native listeners to understand non-native speech, the listeners may become better at this skill after short training sessions (i.e., adaptation) and they may better understand novel non-native speakers (i.e., generalization). However, it is not well-understood how native listeners adapt and generalize to a novel speaker. This dissertation investigates how speaker and listener characteristics affect generalization to a novel speaker. Specifically, we examine how acoustic characteristics and talker information interact in generalization of adaptation, how accentedness of non-native speech affects generalization to a novel speaker, and how listeners’ linguistic experience affects generalization of adaptation. The results suggest that acoustic similarity between speakers may help generalization and that listeners’ reliance on talker information is down-weighted, as long as speakers that listeners are trained with and tested with have similar acoustic characteristics. Furthermore, the results show that exposure to more accented non-native speech disrupts generalization of adaptation compared to exposure to less accented non-native speech, suggesting that having exposure to non-native speakers does not always help generalization. The results also show that having extended linguistic experience with non-native speakers may disrupt generalization to a novel non-native speaker. The results of the present study have implications for how speaker- and listener-related factors affect generalization of adaptation. Specifically, we suggest that, at least in the early stages of learning, generalization of adaptation is constrained by acoustic similarity and that generalization to a non-native speaker utilizes mechanisms that are general to speech perception, rather than specific to this type of adaptation. We suggest that exposure to non-native accented speech that is too different from the speech that listeners are familiar with may disrupt generalization. Further, we suggest that the representation of non-native accents becomes less malleable with extended linguistic experience.