Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, School of Education, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-221). Also available in electronic format on the World Wide Web. Access restricted to users affiliated with the licensed institutions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 360-373). Also available in electronic format on the World Wide Web. Access restricted to users affiliated with the licensed institutions.

<p> This dissertation explores the interaction of statistical learning and bias. While novel category learning is known to involve statistical learning mechanisms, there is clear evidence that learners bring bias of various forms into the process, resulting in learning patterns that differ from the expected outcome of purely distributional learning. Here, I explore the way that the learner's experienced-based expectations about the informativeness of acoustic cues interacts with the informativeness of those cues during novel category learning. This question is addressed using a combination of experimental and computational methods. These two sources provide complementary evidence about the role of learning bias in statistical category learning, examining the effects of bias under certain learning conditions and testing one way in which such bias might be computationally implemented in the learning process.</p><p> Chapter 3 presents experimental evidence that learners are sensitive to gradient differences in cue reliability and demonstrate evidence of using multiple cues in distributional learning, contrasting with previous results. Three groups of native English speaker participants were trained to distinguish a pair of novel vowel categories with cues which are, for them, either uninformative at the segmental level (F0) or highly informative for native vowel distinctions (F2), where the relative informativeness of the cues was varied between groups. Participants in groups where one of the cues was more informative showed cue weightings which were influenced by the weighting present in the stimuli, demonstrating that learners' cue weighting is modulated by the properties of the input. The balanced-cues group, more consistent with previous studies, showed less reliable learning. All groups showed a cue weighting pattern which is not directly attributable to L1 experience, preferring F0-based categorization boundaries over F2-based boundaries.</p><p> Chapter 4 presents a novel model of category learning which examines the interaction of bias and statistical learning from a computational perspective. This model implements category learning as a form of hierarchical inference where the learner makes inferences at the local level, learning individual categories, but also at a global level, making inferences about the expected properties of unobserved categories. The learner generalizes about cue informativeness in their L1. This influences what the learner expects cue weightings in novel vowel categories to look like. In a series of simulations, the model's ability to learn L1 categories and, subsequently, novel categories after L1 training, is tested and compared to a model which does not implement learning bias. These simulations test whether the presence of bias is beneficial in L1 learning, and how the bias developed over the L1 learning process influences later learning of novel categories.</p><p> The results of the simulations offer a potential explanation of the bias observed in the experimental results presented here, and suggests a number of avenues for future research. Notably, a number of other distributional learning results in previous research might also be amenable to the same explanation proposed here. This suggests that difficulties in multidimensional distributional learning for adults might arise more from issues of experimental and stimulus design than inherent difficulty of the task.</p>

<p> Learners&rsquo; L1 background can be one of the many factors affecting the acquisition of L2 phonology. This thesis examines native Armenian, Japanese, and English speakers&rsquo; weighting of acoustic cues, specifically vowel spectrum and duration, in production and perception of English high front tense-lax vowel contrasts. For the production experiment, participants (<i> N</i> = 28) were recorded producing three repetitions of 12 monosyllabic minimal pairs of [i] and [I] vowels in a carrier sentence which were acoustically measured for vowel length, and spectrum: vowel height (F1 &ndash; F0) and vowel frontness (F2 &ndash; F1). For perception experiment, two equal 7-step continua were created [beat-bit] by linear interpolation of vowel duration and spectrum. The data were examined through a series of ANOVAs and paired sample <i>t</i>-tests. Consistent with previous findings, spectral properties were given more weight by native speakers, while nonnative speakers were found to weigh duration more heavily than spectrum, suggesting L1 influence on L2 cue weighting strategies.</p>

This dissertation investigates how subject and object empty categories (ECs) in Japanese behave with respect to anaphoric construal in the focus construction, and how their interpretive behavior can elucidate the syntactic identity of ECs. The thesis also presents discussion of the syntactic and semantic behaviors of the following three constructions: (i) the behavior of the focused phrases themselves; (ii) the behavior of the reciprocal expressions; and (iii) the behavior of another focus construction, pseudo-clefts (PCs), in Japanese. As for (i), we explore the differences between association-with-focus (AWF) and in-construction-focus (ICF), based on island effects, and conclude that the former, but not the latter, is subject to Quantifier Raising. This follows from Chomsky's (1991, 1992) economy principle which prohibits unnecessary movement. In the case of (ii), the Japanese reciprocal expressions with otagai (each other) and sorezore (each), a nonmovement analysis such as Heim, Lasnik and May's (HLM's; 1991b) is found more desirable than a movement analysis as in HLM (1991a), though there is still a problem, i.e. the interpretation of ECs in the sentences with the interaction of reciprocals and focus. And for (iii), we argue that there are two types of PCs, ga-PCs and wa-PCs, based on semantic differences and movement effects. The construal of ECs in the AWF construction, the ICF construction, and PCs exhibits some subject/object asymmetries with respect to the bound variable (BV) reading vs. the referential reading, i.e. while a subject EC allows something like a combined reading of the BV reading and the referential reading, an object EC does not allow the BV reading. We discuss the two analyses of the syntactic identity of ECs, one by Hasegawa (1984/85, 1988) and the other by Hoji (1985), neither of which gives a full account of the data given, and conclude that a subject EC can be some kind of pronominal but not an object EC.

<p> The 2016 United States presidential election stirred topics of racism and gender equality between candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump won the presidency, but had a disapproval rating a year into his presidency of 59%. To investigate the attitudes of Americans towards Donald Trump, this study aimed to answer the research question: how do political attitudes change over time? A dataset from the CBS network television show 60 Minutes was used to analyze the responses of a panel of 14 participants interviewed in Michigan discussing their views on Donald Trump. The state of Michigan was chosen by CBS as it was split in the election with 47% of voted going to Clinton, and 47.4% to Trump. The panel of participants discussed Donald Trump&rsquo;s first months of presidency and was interviewed three months later as they formed an online chat group and formed relationships. </p><p> To test the hypothesis: If political attitudes were negative in the first interview, they will remain negative in the second interview, the methodologies of corpus analysis and appraisal analysis were used. The interviews were compared to each other using corpus analysis to examine the keywords dominating each interview, and the system of appraisal analysis was used on transcripts of both interviews to identify the attitude tokens of affect, judgement, and appreciation in the participant&rsquo;s responses. It was found that tokens of affect, judgement, and appreciation rejected the hypothesis. Instead, the findings supported a null hypothesis since the subsystem of appreciation changed from negative in the first interview to positive in the second. Attitudes towards the president&rsquo;s social media use and language use remained the same, negative; however, they valued the first interview to such an extent that all appreciation tokens became positive. The findings stress the importance of engagement between people of opposing political views.</p><p>

<p> The present study seeks to provide a descriptive analysis of three phonological topics in Qassimi Arabic (QA)&mdash;a local variety of Najdi Arabic spoken mainly in Qassim, Saudi Arabia&mdash;based on data collected from a total of twenty-two native QA speakers. The topics are phonemic vowels, syllable structure and epenthetic vowels, and affrication. The participant recruitment was the same for all the three topics, but each topic was investigated using its own materials and methods. </p><p> Regarding the phonemic vowels in QA, the study based the results on 157 words collected from three native Qassimi speakers. Previous studies have claimed that QA has eight phonemic vowels&mdash;three short and five long. However, the findings argue that QA has nine phonemic vowels&mdash;four short vowels and five long ones. The four-short vowel system is an empirical claim since previous studies indicated that /<i><b>a</b></i>/ is a conditioned allophone, which is challenged in the present study by providing clear minimal pairs, such as /daf/ &lsquo;warm up&rsquo; and /d<i><b>a</b></i>f/ &lsquo;he pushed&rsquo;. It also indicates that short vowels have narrow vowel space compared to their long counterparts. </p><p> As for the syllable structure and epenthetic vowels, the study based its results on the analysis of 419 words targeting the syllable structure, and 72 words targeting epenthetic vowels. The results reveal that QA has 12 syllable structures, which are CV, CVV, CCV, CCVV, CVC, CVVC, CCVC, CCVVC, CVCC, VC, and VCC. The latter two structures are empirical findings to the study since the previous body of research claim that QA has the first ten structures. Regarding the location epenthetic vowels, the results suggest that they can occur, in a sequence of multiple consonants, after the first consonant, after the second consonant, and after the third consonant. These different locations are conditioned by the surrounding environment and/or the syllable structure. In addition, the quality of epenthetic vowels seems to be inconsistent, in coda group, since the participants inserted either [i], [a], [&epsiv;], or [i], while it is consistent in across-stem group. </p><p> In discussing the affrication, the present study investigates the environment that triggers the affrication process in the Qassimi Arabic (QA), and explores whether the syllabic structure or position in the word play a role in the process. It also investigates the phonological domain of the affrication, and the activeness of the affrication process. Based on the 282 words that have the sounds /ts, dz, k, g/, the study has identified important counter evidence to the claim that the affrication process is triggered by front vowels. This study shows that the alveolar affricates /ts/ and /dz/ occur in the environment of almost all vowels since it is occurred before/after [i, e, a, &ldquo;special character omitted&rdquo;, o] as well as providing multiple contrastive environments including several minimal pairs, (e.g. [j<p style="font-variant: small-caps">I</p>mk<p style="font-variant: small-caps"> I</p>n] &lsquo;maybe&rsquo; [j<p style="font-variant: small-caps">I</p>mts<p style="font-variant: small-caps">I</p>n] &lsquo;overtake&rsquo;). It also provides counter evidence for the claim that geminate consonants block the affrication. This study also demonstrates that the syllabic structure is irrelevant to the affrication process since it occurs in onset and coda position in monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. Finally, the study reveals that the affrication process cannot be triggered by affixation, even if the claimed environment is met, which might indicate that to domain of the affrication is the stem in which all the affricated words are monomorphemic words. </p><p> In sum, the present study suggests that Najdi varieties should be studied individually since they tend to have specific features that might not be shared with other varieties. That is, just because a feature may be found to exist in one type of Najdi Arabic, it cannot be assumed that feature is also attested in all other closely related varieties.</p><p>

<p> This dissertation investigates the production and perception properties of diphthong vowels at different speech rates in order to advance the understanding of diphthong phonetics and to incorporate diphthongs into the phonological theory of vowel dispersion. Dispersion Theory (Flemming, 2004; Liljencrants &amp; Lindblom, 1972; Lindblom, 1986) models vowel inventories in terms of contrast between all vocalic elements, yet currently only accounts for quality contrasts. Problematically, diphthongs have been excluded from previous acoustic and theoretical work due to their complex duality of being composed of two vowel targets while acting as one phonological unit. Two experiments are presented which test diphthong production and perception by altering speech rate and duration to determine fundamental properties of diphthongs cross-linguistically. </p><p> In an elicitation experiment that uses a novel methodology for speech rate modulation, it is shown that speakers maintain diphthong endpoint targets in Vietnamese, Faroese, and Cantonese. Both diphthong endpoints and monophthong targets show similar movement as a natural effect of reduction of the vowel space at faster speech rates, unifying monophthongs and diphthongs in terms of their phonetic properties. Contra the predictions of Gay (1968), it is shown that diphthong slope is variable across speech rates and slope variability is language-dependent. </p><p> The second section examines the effect of duration manipulation on diphthong perception with a vowel identification experiment. Results show that the effect of duration manipulation is dependent on phonological vowel length, but otherwise increasing duration improves perception through an increase in percent correct, lower confusability, and lower reaction times. Increasing duration also reduces confusability between diphthongs and monophthongs. </p><p> This study finds that duration is an important dimension of contrast both within diphthongs and the vowel inventory as a whole. The analysis shows that in order to adapt Dispersion Theory to account for diphthongs, the theory must include an additional contrast dimension of time. Based on the results of the experiments, three constraints are proposed to initiate the inclusion of diphthongs into Dispersion Theory: *DUR, MINDIST ONSET, and MINDIST OFFSET. Including duration in theoretical models of vowel dispersion is the first step in accounting for vocalic elements that are contrastive along multiple dimensions.</p><p>

abstract: ABSTRACT This thesis investigates the acceptability of a new variety of English among the English teaching community in Germany. A number of linguists claim there is a new variety of English developing in continental Europe, also known as Euro-English. Their research has surfaced multiple features that are unique to European speakers of English. Twenty-one teachers participated in a survey. They answered a questionnaire consisting of two parts. Part one investigates the background of the teachers, their attitudes towards different varieties of English, and their awareness of the research regarding Euro-English. Part two tests the acceptability of ten features that have been claimed to be specific for mainland Europeans. Results of this study reveal that there is little awareness of non-native varieties and many find it hard to accept the features of Euro-English. However, the teachers show a genuine interest in this topic. Where there is a general preference in holding on to the guidelines of standard norms, many comments indicate that teachers think about issues of identity and how their teaching could be affected by a broader scope that exceeds traditional methods. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2012

abstract: Spanish-speaking (SS) dual language learners (DLLs) have shown differential developmental profiles of the native language (L1). The current study examined whether or not the Spanish acquisition profile, specifically accusative clitics, in predominantly SS, Latino children continues to develop in an English-language contact situation. This study examined (1) accuracy rates of clitic production, total substitutions, and total omissions across 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds; (2) accuracy rates of clitic production, total substitutions, and total omissions across low and high English proficiency groups; and (3) whether or not there was a trend to use the default clitic lo in inappropriate contexts. Seventy-four SS children aged 5;1 to 7;11 participated in a clitic elicitation task. Results indicated non-significant effects of age and proficiency level on the accuracy of clitic production. These results suggest dual language learners are in an environment that does not foster the maintenance of the L1, at least in the accuracy of accusative clitic pronouns. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2012