Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-144). Also available in electronic version.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester, 1985. / Bibliography: p. 179-183.

Thesis (MA)--University of Montana, 2009. / "Major Subject: Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures" Contents viewed on November 11, 2009. Title from author supplied metadata. Includes bibliographical references.

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According to H. H. Price in "Our Evidence for the Existence of Other Minds", the belief in the existence of other minds is not one that can be strictly proven. The most that can be obtained in support of the belief is good reasons for holding it. Price suggests that the best evidence derives from one's understanding of language. An exposition of, and a commentary on, Price's paper are given. Price argues that if I can verify a sentence which I hear and which I did not utter but which states something I was not in a position to know, or did not at the moment of hearing believe—then the utterance stands as good evidence for the existence of an other mind. From analogy he argues that since he uses symbols to refer to objects in the world, the foreign use of the same symbols must have occurred as a result of perceiving and thinking on the part of the other user. If the foreign utterance gave old information or was a platitude I already believed, then it is not impossible that the hearer was unconsciously the cause of the symbolic noises coming from the other body. There are, according to Price, factual examples of intrusions of words and sentences from one's own 'unconscious'. In the commentary, criticism is directed at Price's belief that he learns that symbols mean by introspecting how he uses them. Also, the need, for the purposes of his argument, to verify alleged foreign utterances is challenged. This raises a discussion of Price's use of a theory of 'unconscious believings'. It is concluded that Price was barking up the wrong tree in replacing solipsism by the possibility of one's unconscious animation of other bodies. The suggestion is put forward that reference to the understanding of language as a means of settling the other minds problem is inadequate if it does not take into account the scheme of personal pronouns, particularly the pronoun 'I', since the rules governing their use are like rules for the separating of things, similar to the distinguishing of things in the world in order to make up a game. As an attempt to make up for the inadequacy mentioned, a study of aspects of the concept of speech is made in part III. It emerges that the existence of a plurality of speakers is a presupposition of saying that someone says something, or even that propositions say something. Reference is made to the common grammar of 'I'. Relevant passages regarding 'I' in Wittgenstein's The Blue and Brown Books and Ryle1s The Concept of Mind are examined. It is concluded that the primary sense of 'I* refers to, or, indicates the speaker, and that philosophically important senses of ‘I’ derive from that original sense. The speaker is claimed to be outside the mind-body problem as well as the other minds problem. Consequently, though it is possible for a speaker to refer to himself in the solipsis-tic manner, or to entertain doubts about the reality of other people's feelings, it makes no sense for him to imagine that his role as a speaker in a community of speakers thereby vanishes. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

It has often been alleged that the argument from illusion demonstrates that perceptual judgements expressed in ordinary or material object language are inherently vulnerable to scepticism, are imprecise, ambiguous, inconvenient, and imply somewhat more than we legitimately ought to say. Perceptual judgements about the same experience expressed in sense data language are, on the other hand, allegedly shown to be indubitable, precise, unambiguous, and, as such, to be the raw data from which our empirical knowledge is inferred. I contend there is no such essential asymmetry between an object language judgement (M-judgement) and a sense data language judgement (S-judgement) about the same perceptual experience provided the judgements are intended to have the same function. Arguments from illusion are, I contend, arguments by analogy. They argue that since we may be subject to illusion, then perhaps we are presently subject to illusion. But arguments by analogy are less arguments than hypotheses. We can easily counter that since we may not be subject to illusion, perhaps we are not presently subject to illusion. The problem is to discover whether or not we are subject to illusion and this, in principle we can do. M-judgements, as contingent judgements, can only be held to be contingently doubtful; they may in principle be verified or falsified. Further, if we attend closely to the conditions under which we make M-judgements and to our pragmatic interests and purposes in making them, we discover that such dubitability to which they are prone derives essentially from the fact that they are intended to effect a maximum differentiation of our sensory experience. S-judgements on the other hand are shown to derive their indubitability proportionately to the extent that they minimize differentiation of our experience. Indubitability is achieved only by diminishing the risk of contingency entailed by classifying experience. A completely doubt-free S-judgement then, would effect minimal differentiation of sensory experience and considering our pragmatic interests, would be singularly inutile. Thus it has been shown that such advantages as S-judgements have over M-judgements with respect to doubt derive only from a more radical asymmetry of intention, function, and utility. Further asymmetries regarding precision, ambiguity and convenience are shown either to be similarly untenable or to favor M-language. My conclusions are meant to undermine the tradition of basing sense data philosophy upon an inferiority of ordinary (M-statement) language as allegedly shown by a problematic asymmetry of M-judgements with S-judgements. No such troublesome asymmetry exists. I do recognize that arguments from illusion elucidate the extent to which ordinary language reflects conditions that are purely contingent and that it may well be possible to establish independently a sense data language which is less tied to purely contingent empirical conditions. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

Quine has been mainly opposed to sentences that feature cross-quantification. That is, he is critical of sentences that involve quantifying into a context that Quine labels 'opaque1. Quine's opposition to cross-quantification grew out of an earlier attack on the notion of combining quantification theory and modal logic. Quine initially dismissed, in 1943, cases of quantifying into modal contexts as meaningless. Later in the same year, Alonzo Church argued that there was a meaningful way to quantify into modal contexts, thus vindicating the notion that quantification theory could be merged with modal logic. In 1956, in "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes," Quine pointed out that quantification into belief contexts, though indispensable, also features the improper quantification into opaque contexts. In the same paper, Quine introduced the distinction between a relational and a notional sense of propositional attitude ascriptions. The former sense concerns the problematic sentences that feature cross-quantification. In the thesis that follows, I appropriate Quine's terminology and critically evaluate his reasons for rejecting the relational idiom in both modal and doxastic contexts. Such an evaluation reveals some startling results in the philosophy of language. One of the major problems that Quine sought to address was that of reconciling the evident significance of instances of the relational idiom with their many alleged difficulties. Quine restricted himself to acknowledging the idiom's meaningfulness in doxastic contexts. Most of Quine's criticisms of the relational idiom are argued by me to be unsound. It is contended that some of Quine's criticisms involve the improper exploitation of ambiguities inherent in such sentences. This fallacy is exposed and subjected to a critical evaluation. The exposure of this fallacy, which I term 'the relational fallacy' is a novel contribution to the philosophy of language. Another novel contribution to the philosophy of language is my critique of Quine's use of semantic ascent to account for intuitively meaningful relational modal sentences. A third, slightly less novel, contribution to the philosophy of language involves extending Quine's temporary view that there are meaningful relational sentences in doxastic contents to the analogous observation that there are meaningful relational sentences in modal contexts. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

For almost 20 years, research on Processing Instruction (PI) has shown that PI is an effective tool for altering the processing strategies of learners, and has been generalized over a variety of linguistic structures and for a variety of target languages. This presentation seeks to extend the PI research agenda by investigating a processing problem that has not been widely researched: the Preference for Nonredundancy Principle. Specifically, if learners receive PI targeting gender agreement (that falls under this principle), will they make gains on interpretation and production tasks with gender agreement? This dissertation examines whether PI targeting noun-adjective gender agreement leads to L2 Spanish learners improved performance on interpretation and production tasks. In addition, it asks if PI will improve noticing of gender agreement mismatches in an online self-paced reading task. Another goal of this dissertation is to investigate whether the effects of PI on gender agreement (primary effects) will extend to subject-verb agreement, which is a similar form with a similar processing problem (secondary transfer-of training effects). L2 Spanish learners (N = 112) received either Processing Instruction (PI group) or no instruction (Control group). A pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest design was used to examine the impact of PI on learners' performance on interpretation, production and self-paced reading tasks. The participants in this study made significant improvements on production tasks at the delayed posttest, which suggests a positive effect for the PI treatment. On the other hand, the self-paced reading task shows that the learners' did not recognize mismatches in the primary structure (gender agreement), which suggests that it is not yet part of their internal grammar (i.e., their developing system). We propose that PI is effective in altering how learners approach a production task, but that more input is needed to see results on a sensitive measure like self-paced reading. We discuss our findings in light of the Input Processing theory and its implications for future PI research. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2015. / April 29, 2015. / gender, input processing, morphology, processing instruction / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael J. Leeser, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Kaschak, University Representative; Gretchen Sunderman, Committee Member; Lara Reglero, Committee Member.

This study explores the acquisition of intonation by Spanish second language speakers while on a study abroad program in Valencia, Spain. The investigation consists of two groups: a control group and an instruction group. The instruction group participated in perception trainings while the control group did not. As this region of Spain is also bilingual, and there are no studies currently in the literature that describe the Spanish of Valencian speakers, this study also presents data from native speakers who completed the same task as the non-native speakers. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Summer Semester 2015. / June 18, 2015. / Bilingualism, Intonation, Second Language Acquisition, Spanish, Study Abroad / Includes bibliographical references. / Carolina González, Professor Directing Thesis; Lara Reglero, Committee Member; Antje Muntendam, Committee Member; Anel Brandl, Committee Member.

Nonmainstream American English, or dialect, among children may have important implications for reading research and practice. The purpose of this dissertation study was to examine dialect use in various language contexts and to investigate potential relations between dialect and reading outcomes among elementary students. First, a meta-analysis of recent empirical research examining quantitative relations among dialect use and reading, spelling, and writing outcomes is presented. In summary, the meta-analysis revealed a negative and moderate relationship between dialect production and literacy. Next, the study analyzed and compared dialect production across an oral language task and specifically between two different written language samples, one elicited by a narrative prompt and the second by an expository prompt, among 250 second and third grade students. The study also examined dialect use in the oral narrative task and the two writing samples in relation to concurrent and longitudinal reading outcomes. Finally, the study examined the dialect-reading relationship for students diagnosed with speech, language, and learning disabilities in comparison to their typically developing peers. The study found that overall, most students used features of dialect in their oral language samples and that students generally used several features of dialect in their written language samples as well. However, the frequency of dialect use was greater in the written narrative sample than in the written expository samples. In addition, dialect use, particularly in the oral and written narrative, was predictive of reading outcomes in the same year and two years later. Moderator analyses for students with speech, language, and learning disabilities indicated that relationships between dialect use and reading did not differ for students identified with these particular disabilities. However, students with these disabilities who also use dialect may be at increased risk for reading difficulties. Implications for practice and future research are provided. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Teacher Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2015. / June 17, 2015. / African American English, dialect, oral language, reading, writing / Includes bibliographical references. / Jeanne Wanzek, Professor Directing Dissertation; Christopher Schatschneider, University Representative; Barbara Foorman, Committee Member; Young-Suk Kim, Committee Member.