The present study aims to address the question of how vowel quality varies between rural and town-dwelling male speakers of Irish-English in South Roscommon, Ireland. Previous studies have identified four distinct varieties of Irish-English in Ireland: the Eastern, South &Western, Midland, and Northern varieties, loosely based on the political provinces of Munster, Connaught, Leinster, and Ulster. County Roscommon straddles the provinces of Connaught and Leinster, complicating the presence of phonological features associated with one of two different ‘accent regions’. The last phonological study carried out in Roscommon was by Patrick Leo Henry in 1957. While this was a promising start in assessing regional distinctions, rural ones in particular, the lack of recent studies leaves a sizeable gap that does not address modern changes in the linguistic landscape of Ireland, nor the availability of modern methods of acoustic analysis. In particular, the present study investigates the pre-nasal merging of front unrounded vowels /ɛ/ and /ɪ/, vowel centralization, and a lower /æ/, associated with the Western variety of Irish English. Factors such as supraregionalization lead to my hypothesis that rural speakers will demonstrate higher frequency of the vowel features associated with the Western variety. To assess the frequency of certain vowel sounds, twenty participants were recorded and formant data was extracted for F1 and F2 values of the tokens. It was found that the rural speakers in Roscommon demonstrated a more prominent merger between /ɛ/ and /ɪ/, a lower [æ], and the rural speakers demonstrated an overall trend toward centralization.

This study investigates sociophonetic stress variation in the Onondaga County area of Upstate New York. I argue that five variations of stress correlate to factors of age, education level, place of residence, frequency, and analogical change. Dinkin and Evanini (2010) have examined and discovered similar outcomes of stress variation in his work with dialectal features across the state of New York. Rather than analyze the state and its borders in their entirety, I focus on morpheme-specific analogical change of stress in specific social categories within the Syracuse, New York region. In terms of lexical items, I analyze stress placement within four-, five-, and six-syllable words containing the -mentary affix and explore how stress shifts in these words depending on those social and linguistic factors. Data were collected through formal and informal sociolinguistic interviews in which each instance of the target words were analyzed as belonging to one of five types of stress. Results indicate that Syracuse is one of the locations in the state that see all five stress patterns. To further investigate, I take the provided evidence of stress variation and filter for sociological relevance for factors of age, gender, and residence.

This thesis examines the variety of English spoken in East Dorm at Harvey Mudd College. It describes aspects of the syntax and phonology of Eastspeak, focusing in particular on how Eastspeak has been influenced by the language of the internet. This includes tendencies toward brevity and language play, as well as the use of specific constructions used on the internet, and playful pronunciations that are influenced by creative misspellings used online. Specific Eastspeak phenomena discussed include conversion, deletion, and unusual determiner and quantifier use.

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.

In the Stockton Junior College it is common practices that the freshmen who have passed the English matriculation examination are allowed to make their own selection of courses in either the field of English or in the field of speech; those who have failed to pass the Subject A examination are obliged to enroll is a Laboratory English course in which special emphasis is given to increasing the affective use of English skills. Probably, Laboratory English i conceded to accomplish this most effectively or this obligation would not exist. Is this factually trust.

The study of kana 仮名 development has only begun in the last fifteen years, with much scholarship focused upon discerning either the Heian origins of kana or such later developments as furigana 振り仮名 (phonetic guides) and spelling rules. However, these perspectives have largely overlooked a key moment in Japanese writing history: in 1900, the Meiji government standardized the kana, from hundreds of possible variant graphemes to the forty-six used today, one symbol per sound. From then on, what had commonly been known only as kana were divided into two groups: hiragana 平仮名, the standard set, and hentaigana 変体仮名, the set of all non-standard graphemes. This standardization represented a seismic shift in Japanese writing culture, affecting everything from education to aesthetics, and yet it occurred without any bureaucratic debate—or, it seems, any post-legislation public outcry. This study addresses the apparent incongruity by examining a variety of primary sources for evidence of a pre-Meiji acceptance of a standardized set of graphemes, before the official standardization in 1900. Arguing from this evidence, a convincing case is made that the kana made standard in 1900 had been historically recognized as distinct from all other variants, despite there being no demonstrable difference in their use in context. This project, by closely examining long-neglected sources, sheds new light on the issue of pre-modern Japanese script usage.

The research studies the Southern Appalachian dialect present in five poems in Melissa Range’s Scriptorium: Poems. The linguistic phenomena characteristic of Southern Appalachian English observed and analyzed in the poems include lexicon, grammatical features, and phonological aspects. The research seeks to bring attention to this Appalachian woman writer as well as to bring understanding of her reasoning behind incorporating the dialect in her poetry. It establishes that the five poems by Range contain the lexicon, grammatical features, and phonological aspects of the SAE dialect. It holds meaning both grammatically and pragmatically within the context of the poem and Appalachia.

The Kwelth Tahlkie Culture and Heritage Board (KTC&HB) of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (CTGR) have made it a priority to revitalize one of the languages which historically has been associated with being a Grand Ronde Indian-Chinook Jargon, referred to as činuk wawa 'Chinook talk' or simply činuk. The purpose of the present study was to observe the language planning process as executed by the KTC&HB. Initial guiding questions were: (i) What stages is the KTC&HB going through in the process of planning for činuk revitalization? (ii) How do these efforts compare with theory and actual practice in other settings? (iii) How will the KTC&HB achieve their goals, and how successful will they be? The researcher participated in the language planning process, functioning as a linguistic consultant. From January through May 1998, over 150 hours were spent on location in Grand Ronde, working primarily with the Tribe's language specialist to develop materials on činok. The language planning efforts have resulted in the production of a variety of language materials, which are, at this point, still in draft form. They include an orthography-developed to increase readability and learnability of the language, a grammar—including both syntactic and phonological descriptions, and a dictionary—based on a wide variety of sources on činuk. Participant observation reveals that there is support for the language planning efforts in GR at a number of levels: the Tribal Council, the KTC&HB, and the činuk lu?lu,, a group often to fifteen tribal members committed to learning the language. This group will assist the language specialist in future language planning decisions. The success of the early stages of language planning in this case can be attributed, at least in part, to the Native locus of control, which has been established. Clearly defined and articulated relationships with outside linguists will also contribute to the success of this case. The cinok lu?lu is off to a good start, as well, with highly motivated community members striving to learn the language quickly.

Ce projet vise la documentation et la description du mako, une langue autochtone parlée par environ 1200 personnes dans l’Amazonie vénézuélienne et pour laquelle le seul matériel accessible à date se limite à 38 mots. L’objectif principal est de créer une collection de textes ethnographiques annotés et, à long terme, une grammaire de la langue qui puisse servir comme point de départ pour des activités d’appui au maintien de la langue dans la communauté et pour avancer la recherche linguistique. Un objectif secondaire est d’établir le degré de vitalité de la langue telle que parlée chez les différentes communautés mako. Cette recherche mènera à une description des différents aspects de la grammaire de la langue, par exemple sa phonologie, sa morphologie et sa syntaxe. En plus de contribuer à l’étude et description des autres membres de la famille linguistique sáliba et à la reconstruction de leur proto-langue commune, les données du mako contribueront aussi à des discussions sur comment le langage fonctionne et seront donc un apport précieux pour la théorie linguistique. Cette recherche fera avancer la théorie de la documentation des langues et pourra donc faciliter les efforts de documentation et maintien des langues d’autres communautés indigènes. Le projet constitue une application du modèle de travail de terrain Community-Based Language Research. / This dissertation focuses on the documentation and description of Mako, an indigenous language spoken in the Venezuelan Amazon by about 1000 people and for which the only available published material at the start of the project were 38 words. The main goals of the project were to create a collection of annotated ethnographic texts and a grammar that could serve as a starting point for both language maintenance in the community and for further linguistic research. Additionally, the project sought to assess the language’s vitality in the communities where it is spoken and to understand the relationship of Mako to the two other extant Sáliban languages, namely Piaroa and Sáliba.This research has thus led to an assessment of language vitality in the Mako communities of the Ventuari River, a comprehensive description of the Mako language—heretofore undescribed—, and an evaluation of the genetic relationship between the three Sáliban languages. The description of the language covers a wide range of topics in areas such as phonetics and phonology, nominal and verbal morphology, and syntax of both simple and complex sentences. Discourse-level morphology and discourse-organization strategies are also covered. Aside from facilitating the study of other members of the Sáliban family and reconstruction of the common ancestral language, the description of Mako also contributes to the typology of Amazonian languages and to our understanding of the pre-history of this area of the Orinoco basin. The products of this project also have the potential to be mobilized in language literacy efforts in the Mako communities.

This project explores research-based methods for creating an e-learning resource to teach an intellectual skill. Intellectual skills are one of the five domains of learning defined by Robert M. Gagné. The intellectual skill taught via the e-learning resource is the rules of Turkish vowel harmony, a fundamental phonological feature of the Turkish language. The purpose of the e-learning resource is to provide novice learners with a set of tools and strategies with which to approach the future study of Turkish. A literature review was conducted in three areas: Gagné’s instructional design theories, Turkish language learning, and best practices for the design of multimedia e-learning. Two rapid prototypes in the form of Moodle course sites were developed. Guidance for improving the prototypes was sought from experts in instructional design, usability, and computer software. The resulting finished e-learning product is a nine-topic Moodle course based on Gagné’s nine events of instruction. The main Moodle course content teaches the rules of Turkish vowel harmony as an intellectual skill which has been broken down into discriminations (the Turkish vowels), concepts (the Turkish vowel groups) and rules (Turkish vowel harmony). Higher order rules are taught in the form of exceptions to the rules of Turkish vowel harmony found in foreign loan-words in Turkish. Practice is provided in applying the rules of Turkish vowel harmony as a set of word attack skills for approaching Turkish language artifacts found online and in the environment. A comprehensive list of resources relating to learning Turkish, learning about the Turkish language, and learning about learning Turkish, is provided to facilitate future extension and application of what was learned in this course. Each lesson is presented in the form of a Moodle book. Each lesson is followed by an ungraded assessment in the form of an Adobe® PDF quiz. The quizzes and accompanying answer keys are designed to provide guided practice, feedback, and self-assessment to help students extend and apply the lesson material. All lessons were beta-tested to ensure usability and reduction of extraneous cognitive load. The project resulted in the development of a Best Practices Checklist for designing e-learning resources to teach intellectual skills. The Best Practices Checklist, which can be found in Appendix B, was used to develop the outline for e-learning resources to teach intellectual skills in other subject areas and was found to be an effective rapid prototyping and instructional design tool. Insight was gained into the significance of prior knowledge for teaching intellectual skills, and on how to calibrate cognitive load in e-learning design relative to the learner’s prior knowledge of the subject matter being taught.