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Title: A systematic evaluation of computational models of phonotactics
Creator: Sarver, Isaac
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In this thesis, recent computational models of phonotactics are discussed and evaluated and two new models are implemented. Prior phonotactic modeling, motivated by gradient acceptability judgments in nonce word judgment tasks (Albright 2009), claim that phonotactic grammaticality is gradient, and these models are evaluated by their ability to judge nonce words with scores that correlate with human acceptability judgments. Gorman (2013) argues that these gradient models do not account for the...
Show moreIn this thesis, recent computational models of phonotactics are discussed and evaluated and two new models are implemented. Prior phonotactic modeling, motivated by gradient acceptability judgments in nonce word judgment tasks (Albright 2009), claim that phonotactic grammaticality is gradient, and these models are evaluated by their ability to judge nonce words with scores that correlate with human acceptability judgments. Gorman (2013) argues that these gradient models do not account for the facts sufficiently and claims phonotactic grammaticality is categorical. In this thesis, the account of Gorman (2013) is implemented as well as a prominent gradient model from Hayes and Wilson (2008) and compared with the performance of two machine learning models (a support vector machine and a recurrent neural network), with all models trained on a corpus of English onsets. Results in this thesis show that the computational models are unable to correlate with human judgment data from Scholes (1966) as well as a categorical prediction of acceptability based on whether a sequence is attested in the lexicon or not, and that these models rely on assumptions which when challenged show that the models do not convincingly capture the gradience of the human judgment data used for evaluation.
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Title: Use of number and gender features in the interpretation of Spanish noun ellipsis
Creator: Armstrong, Andrew
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Various studies have investigated the formal properties of Spanish noun ellipsis (Saab 2010, Depiante & Masullo 2001, among others). The theory developed by Saab (2004, 2010) proposes that noun ellipsis in this language is licensed by matching two components between the elided noun and its antecedent: the gender feature and the lexical root. Crucially, there is no constraint requiring the matching of number features between these two elements. This study presents an experimental approach to...
Show moreVarious studies have investigated the formal properties of Spanish noun ellipsis (Saab 2010, Depiante & Masullo 2001, among others). The theory developed by Saab (2004, 2010) proposes that noun ellipsis in this language is licensed by matching two components between the elided noun and its antecedent: the gender feature and the lexical root. Crucially, there is no constraint requiring the matching of number features between these two elements. This study presents an experimental approach to investigate if Spanish speakers’ online and offline interpretation of noun ellipsis reflects this theoretical distinction. A between subjects, combined eye tracking and picture selection task asks participants to identify the referent of an elided noun. The elided noun phrase matches or mismatches the antecedent in number or gender. While the test phrase is played, participants’ gaze patterns are monitored before they point to the referent of the ellipsis at the end of the phrase, thus providing an online and offline measurement. This task was completed with both adult and child participants to see if the interpretation of ellipsis develops over time. The results provide evidence that for adults, gender mismatches are more difficult for participants to process than number mismatches, which is reflected in slower reaction times and fewer looks to target on gender mismatching trials. We also show that this pattern in adults is also reflected in the children’s pointing data. Additionally, children’s reduced performance on number items involving plural markers is interpreted as a reflection of the delayed acquisition of plural morphology that has been previously documented in Spanish-speaking Chilean Children.
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Title: The acquisition and syntax of the passive in English
Creator: Liter, Adam
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Children have been found to acquire passives of “actional” verbs prior to passives of “nonactional” verbs. This has come to be known as the Maratsos Effect (ME) and has been widely replicated (Sudhalter & Braine 1985, Gordon & Chafetz 1990, Fox & Grodzinsky 1998, Hirsch & Wexler 2006).I present two experiments that further investigate the ME. Researchers have not always been careful about using linguistic diagnostics for categorizing a verb as “actional” or “nonactional”. In the experiments...
Show moreChildren have been found to acquire passives of “actional” verbs prior to passives of “nonactional” verbs. This has come to be known as the Maratsos Effect (ME) and has been widely replicated (Sudhalter & Braine 1985, Gordon & Chafetz 1990, Fox & Grodzinsky 1998, Hirsch & Wexler 2006).I present two experiments that further investigate the ME. Researchers have not always been careful about using linguistic diagnostics for categorizing a verb as “actional” or “nonactional”. In the experiments reported here, verbs are split into three categories based on linguistic diagnostics for eventivity and agentivity. In Exp. 1, eventive agentive verbs (paint, fix, and wash) are tested against eventive nonagentive verbs (forget, find, and spot). In Exp. 2, the same eventive nonagentive verbs are tested against noneventive nonagentive verbs (hate, know, and love). I find evidence for a three-way distinction in the English- acquiring child’s acquisition path, rather than the two-day distinction which has classically been reported as the ME. Children learn the passives of eventive agentive verbs before the passives of eventive nonagentive verbs, which are in turn learned before the passives of noneventive nonagentive verbs.I then explore possible accounts of this three-way distinction. I explore the intuition that children initially posit a structure for the eventive nonagentive verbs and the noneventive nonagentive verbs where both arguments of the eventive nonagentive and noneventive nonagentive verbs are projected internally to the VP. If one adopts Collins’ (2005) analysis of the passive, then an account of the acquisition facts emerges on the basis of this intuition. However, this intuition cannot account for the facts if one adopts either Bruening’s (2013) analysis of the passive or Legate’s (2014) analysis of the passive.
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Title: Incremental processing effects in nominal compounds
Creator: Parrish, Alicia
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Sentence processing shows the effects of a series of continual building, repairing, predicting, accessing, and remembering operations that may be the output of one underlying process or many. Within even smaller phrases such as nominal compounds, we see all of these operations having an effect. What is relatively unknown, though, is how these processes interact with each other in real time as the phrase is build up incrementally. This ERP study, through the use of an Icelandic triple noun...
Show more"Sentence processing shows the effects of a series of continual building, repairing, predicting, accessing, and remembering operations that may be the output of one underlying process or many. Within even smaller phrases such as nominal compounds, we see all of these operations having an effect. What is relatively unknown, though, is how these processes interact with each other in real time as the phrase is build up incrementally. This ERP study, through the use of an Icelandic triple noun compound paradigm that manipulates agreement features on the first and second constituents of the compound, investigates the nature of commitments to a structure and the processes that predict more structure or revise an interpreted structure. The findings are generally in line with models that have a parser make commitments to a structure as soon as possible, and the findings expand on that to say that syntactic mismatch is sufficient to trigger a structural prediction and that a revision of that prediction is identical to the revision of a structure built from incoming lexical items. This study further uses the paradigm to assess the predictions of Gibson's (1998) model of sentence processing that makes use of working memory costs. The study finds that, when incremental commitments are taken into account, we see the effects of syntactic agreement cues modulating working memory effects."--Page ii.
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Title: The generalizable nature of lexical retuning
Creator: Nelson, Scott (Graduate of Michigan State University)
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Auditory speech identification has been observed to be influenced by both lexical and visual information. Perceptual learning experiments have used two unique paradigms to test how each of these information sources affects the identification of ambiguous stimuli. In both cases, listeners are more likely to identify ambiguous stimuli in the direction of the disambiguating information they receive. It has been further argued that the resulting effects are the same and can be traced back to the...
Show more"Auditory speech identification has been observed to be influenced by both lexical and visual information. Perceptual learning experiments have used two unique paradigms to test how each of these information sources affects the identification of ambiguous stimuli. In both cases, listeners are more likely to identify ambiguous stimuli in the direction of the disambiguating information they receive. It has been further argued that the resulting effects are the same and can be traced back to the same general speech perception mechanism. Despite this claim, there have been conflicting results in regards to generalization. Lexically induced perceptual learning has been observed to generalize to new contexts, while visually induced perceptual learning has been observed to be context dependent. While the difference in these observed results could be explained by the information source (lexical vs. visual), there are also crucial differences in the experimental designs that may offer a better account. The training stimuli set for lexically induced perceptual learning experiments includes many unique tokens that are presented one time each. For visually induced perceptual learning experiments, the training set includes just one unique token presented multiple times. Listeners therefore only receive type variation in the lexically induced perceptual learning experiments. Crucially, type variation has been observed to be necessary for learning linguistic patterns and therefore may explain the differences in observed results between the two paradigms. This current study uses three new experiments to study the generalizable nature of lexically induced perceptual learning. The results corroborate the idea that generalization of the effect to new contexts is possible in lexically induced perceptual learning experiments when listeners are trained with type variation, but when type variation is eliminated the ability to generalize the effect to new contexts is no longer observed."--Page ii.
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Title: Translanguaging, investment and gendered identity : a case of Nepali immigrant women in Michigan
Creator: Rawal, Hima
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This study explored the identity of Nepali immigrant women in Michigan from three different theoretical notions: their gendered identity, investment in learning English, and translingual practices. Data were collected using multiple sources: interviews, questionnaires, journal entries, observations and group chats on Facebook. The collected data were recursively read to trace the recurring themes related to the three themes in question. The analysis and interpretation of data were done on the...
Show moreThis study explored the identity of Nepali immigrant women in Michigan from three different theoretical notions: their gendered identity, investment in learning English, and translingual practices. Data were collected using multiple sources: interviews, questionnaires, journal entries, observations and group chats on Facebook. The collected data were recursively read to trace the recurring themes related to the three themes in question. The analysis and interpretation of data were done on the basis of those themes and subthemes to support the research questions. This study yielded three key findings. First, the Nepali immigrant women in Michigan have re-constructed their initial gendered identity after their arrival in the US. Second, they are not only motivated to improve their English but are also highly invested in doing so. Third, they adopt different translingual negotiation strategies for the purpose of meaning-making among linguistically diverse groups of multilingual speakers. They resort to mobilizing their multiple resources to achieve communicative success. The study will be significant mainly for those directly or indirectly connected to ESL classrooms for adult immigrants as these immigrants constitute a substantial proportion of the US population.
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Title: The influence of first language reading practices and attitudes on reading in a second language
Creator: Khodakova, Olga
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The current study investigates the influence of learners’ attitudes toward reading in their native language (L1) on reading in their second language (L2). Since attitude is one of the factors contributing to positive learning outcomes, an understanding of learners’ attitudes to reading can be instrumental in encouraging L2 learners’ engagement in extensive reading. The study aims to identify the relationship between L1 and L2 reading attitudes and how L2 attitudes change over time as the...
Show moreThe current study investigates the influence of learners’ attitudes toward reading in their native language (L1) on reading in their second language (L2). Since attitude is one of the factors contributing to positive learning outcomes, an understanding of learners’ attitudes to reading can be instrumental in encouraging L2 learners’ engagement in extensive reading. The study aims to identify the relationship between L1 and L2 reading attitudes and how L2 attitudes change over time as the participants are enrolled in an extensive reading course. The study draws on the three-component view of reading attitude represented by cognitive, affective and conative attitudes. Participants are three university-level ESL learners from Angola, Saudi Arabia, and China. The data collected from a questionnaire, interviews, journals and classroom observations are analyzed thematically. The findings indicate that there is a direct relation between L1 and L2 reading attitudes and that family literacy practices have a bigger influence on learners’ attitude to reading than their cultural background.
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Title: Identity, language socialization, investment, and power dynamics in L2 English among Burmese women refugees
Creator: Kelley, Lauren
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The following study investigated the naturalistic L2 English encounters of 5 Burmese women refugees in the United States. Identity, language socialization, investment, and power dynamics were precursory themes used as a framework throughout the investigation. Data were collected from questionnaires, interviews, and language journals over a three month period of time. Following the data collection process, the information was reviewed in a recursive manner in an effort to identify elements of...
Show moreThe following study investigated the naturalistic L2 English encounters of 5 Burmese women refugees in the United States. Identity, language socialization, investment, and power dynamics were precursory themes used as a framework throughout the investigation. Data were collected from questionnaires, interviews, and language journals over a three month period of time. Following the data collection process, the information was reviewed in a recursive manner in an effort to identify elements of the precursory themes and any other themes that arose. It was found that the participants spoke English primarily while shopping and during medical encounters. These experiences were often negative and shed light on the participant's identity and power dynamics. Language socialization and investment did not appear as themes within the data. The findings of this research may aid educators working with refugee populations in understanding their students' naturalistic L2 experiences which could have implications in the classroom. -- Abstract.
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Title: On the nature of concessivity in predicate focus : a study of sigma in Korean verb doubling and English verb phrase focus
Creator: Kim, Taehoon Hendrik
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This thesis studies verb doubling in Korean:1. It aims to explain why we find implicit concessivity in only one configuration of verb doubling, i.e. contrastive verb doubling.2. It argues that the features within the Σ Phrase (Laka 1990) trigger the concessivity.The corollary of this thesis is twofold:1. It explains the deep syntactic symmetry between contrastive verb doubling and long form negation structures in Korean.2. It expands on the analysis of VP focus in English.

Title: Disjunction in Mandarin Chinese : yaome XP yaome YP
Creator: Lin, Yi Chen
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Yaome XP yaome YP is often translated into English as "either XP or YP". Both allow a disjunctive interpretation when they occur in a sentence. This similarity, however, ends there. First, there are restrictions on the types of syntactic phrases that the paired yaome conjoins while either or is free to conjoin phrases of di21B5erent types in English. In particular, yaome does not conjoin nominal phrases while either or doesn't exhibit such a restriction. This asymmetry (namely the asymmetry...
Show more"Yaome XP yaome YP is often translated into English as "either XP or YP". Both allow a disjunctive interpretation when they occur in a sentence. This similarity, however, ends there. First, there are restrictions on the types of syntactic phrases that the paired yaome conjoins while either or is free to conjoin phrases of di21B5erent types in English. In particular, yaome does not conjoin nominal phrases while either or doesn't exhibit such a restriction. This asymmetry (namely the asymmetry that yaome doesn't conjoin DPs, while either or does) shows an interesting phenomenon, specifically the sentence 'Either John hit Bill or Mary' is ambiguous in English but not in Mandarin. Second, the paired yaome and either or di21B5er in their placement in environments that licenses Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). Particularly, paired yaome doesn't occur in the scope of negation, in interrogatives and in the antecedent clause of conditionals, while either or occurs in these environments. This behavior of yaome indicates that it is a Positive Polarity Item and therefore must escape from environments that license NPIs."--Page ii.
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