How the Sky Tastes is not simply a collection of stories. It is my representation of moments in life, social commentaries, bits of humor, and pure entertainment all in one. Each story, although unique and easily able to stand alone, shares qualities I find important in writing fiction. First, each story features realistically flawed, yet sympathetic characters dealing with difficulties in life. Secondly, the actual moment is important in each story--whether that moment is something shared between two or more characters or simply the time a certain character comes to a serious realization. Finally, the style can make or break the story. I do not believe in gimmicky writing--form must always have function--but I do feel that the writing must be representative of the characters and the stories that it serves. Experimentation is important in writing. Each story should have its own way of telling itself. All these stories can be seen as experimental in some way, but also all these stories are told the way they have to be told. The characters tell the stories themselves and the writing just follows suit. It is my hope that readers can identify with most, if not all, of these stories, and engage interest in these characters enough to care about what happens to them, even if they don't necessarily like them.

This thesis will examine the character of Mrs. Medlock in the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre's "Theatre for Young Audiences" stage production of The Secret Garden. While recording my preparation and performance of the role, I will be drawing on and integrating many of the skills I have been acquiring in my Master's Degree program at UCF, including not only acting, movement, and voice, but also theatre research. My goals are twofold: first, to document the method of creating a rich, multi-layered, remarkable character, and second, to try to solidify what I have learned about this process and thus prepare for future roles in my career.

The project objective is to improve clinical assessment and diagnosis of the voice disorder, vocal hyperfunction (VH). VH is a condition characterized by excessive laryngeal and paralaryngeal tension, and is assumed to be the underlying cause of the majority of voice disorders. Current clinical assessment of VH is subjective and demonstrates poor inter-rater reliability. Recent work indicates that a new acoustic measure, relative fundamental frequency (RFF) is sensitive to the maladaptive functional behaviors associated with VH and can potentially be used to objectively characterize VH. Here, we explored and enhanced the potential for RFF as a measure of VH in three ways. First, the current protocol for RFF estimation was optimized to simplify the recording procedure and reduce estimation time. Second, RFF was compared with the current state-of-the-art measures of VH – listener perception of vocal effort and the aerodynamic ratio of sound pressure level to subglottal pressure level. Third, an automated algorithm that utilized the optimized recording protocol was developed and validated against manual estimation methods and listener perception. This work enables large-scale studies on RFF to determine the specific physiological elements that contribute to the measure’s ability to capture VH and may potentially provide a non-invasive and readily implemented solution for this long-standing clinical issue.

Semi-occluded vocal tract exercises (SOVTEs) have been a topic of research and interest among voice specialists for over three decades. An SOVTE is "any exercise in which the vocal tract is made partially closed at or near the lips." When this kind of occlusion occurs there are numerous consequences that follow, but of primary interest is a beneficial change of impedance. These beneficial changes are still being studied, but efficiency in phonation, as well as a shift in the configuration of the vocal folds during phonation are two significant findings thus far. Efficiency in vocal production is paramount to a performer's vocal health. Therefore, a dissipating impedance or a hindering reactance would be undesirable. Research over the last three decades has largely addressed the degree of reactive inertance possible through such impedance and its health benefits on the speaking and singing voice. The performing arts health aspects of these benefits are increasingly relevant to professional voice users. Although research on SOVTEs has become plentiful and widely available to voice teachers, it is unknown how or if this population is digesting the current performing arts health research and implementing it within their vocal instruction. Understanding the extent to which SOVTE science is known and implemented by the current voice-teaching population could inform the current and future voice-science community on how to best alter the dissemination of upcoming research.

Re-evaluations of the category of deponency in recent years have been the leading cause of a paradigm shift taking place in studies on the ancient Greek voice system, opening up new avenues for further remodelling. The present study contends that verbal voice operates according to an ergative two-voice system, active and middle-passive, producing two contrastive roles the subject plays in a clause. Within a nominativeaccusative alignment patterning, which marks out transitive operations of a clause, ergative functions centered on verbal voice are present in the language’s verbal morphology and syntax. An ergative view of voice specifies different transitive participant roles and focuses on the affected element of the clause that realizes or actualizes the verbal process. Clearer expression of the subject’s function in the clause occurs by distinguishing between two opposing roles: the subject functioning either as realization of the process or as cause of the process. Two basic and contrastive roles of the subject, therefore, mean that two semantic domains for voice are operational in the language system network despite the occurrence of three morphological forms in the aorist and future tense-forms. The middle and passive uses, together comprise the middlepassive voice, and the active voice comprises the other voice domain. Middle and passive functions share the common feature of subject-affectedness, but middle uses occur when there is a feature of internal agency in addition to the subject actualizing the verbal process. Passivity occurs when the subject actualizes the verbal process with an added feature of external agency to the clause. Moreover, passivity takes place through specific grammatical constructions within the middle-passive voice that operate as agentive augmentations (specified or not) of a middle-passive clause type. This is frequently expressed using the so-called, ‘passive marker,’ -(θ)η, that was encroaching upon middle forms during this stage of the language and gradually expanding its range of function in the New Testament writings. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

M. S.

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