This project deals with the sociocultural and pragmatic aspects of second language acquisition. Most current research in this field examines the ability of second language learners to produce socioculturally appropriate utterances in simulated speech settings. Researchers are interested in whether students can interact adequately within the confines of both their linguistic competence and the foreign culture's interactional norms. Analyses of learners' speech routines are quite valuable to our understanding of their ability to enact conversational routines. However, they do not indicate to use what the learners understand; that is, they do not tease apart what learners understand to be true about the language from what they can do under the pressure of performance. The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether learners of Russian perceive the sociocultural weight of the two personal pronouns for 'you,' ty (informal/intimate) and Vy (formal/polite). In this project, the term understand is used in two ways, each of which is tested empirically. First, understanding implies knowledge about the pragmatic impact of the pronouns. Do learners correctly indicate which pronoun is appropriate in context? Second, understanding is listening ability. Do learners utilize their pragmatic knowledge when they listen to native speech? Or do proficiency factors, individual learner characteristics, syntactic saliency (overt pronoun vs. pro-drop), and overall attentional limitations affect their listening ability? Students at Middlebury College and at the University of Iowa participated in two experimental tasks evaluating their pragmatic knowledge and listening ability with the ty / Vy feature: (a) a metapragmatic judgment task and (b) a listening task using video clips from famous Russian films. Results indicate that pragmatic knowledge is not significantly different across proficiency levels, nor is perception of the pronouns in a listening task; that is, beginning learners and advanced learners demonstrate similar ability with the understanding of the feature. Furthermore, female learners outperformed male learners on the listening task, although performance on the pragmatic knowledge task did not vary by gender. These results add to the body of knowledge in second language acquisition and, more specifically, to our knowledge of how pragmatic features of a language are acquired.

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This report highlights the complexity of engaging in a post-acquisition integration process of a relatively large knowledge-intensive firm. Findings from a case study is analyzed in relation to previous theory, resulting in four propositions aiming at creating a foundation for further theory development, as well as increased understanding among practitioners in relation to the emphasized problem. It is argued by the authors that increased relative acquisition size of knowledge-intensive firms will: 1) increase demand for a centralized organizational structure, 2) decrease benefits of introducing a new top management, 3) decrease communicative attention towards lower levels, and 4) decrease attention towards subcultures. These factors will ultimately increase the risk for integration failure.

This paper discusses the necessity for consolidation and the related problems of the securities industry in Taiwan as it increases its economies of scale. The logistical planning for consolidations in the industry is profiled within the context of the theoretical motivations and legal issues underlying the changes to this industry. The necessity for consolidation and expansion in order to achieve economies of scale is illustrated by drawing upon the past history of the Taiwan securities industry in the last 40 years as well as the present circumstances as the industry is threatened by the multi-industry structure of foreign conglomerates and the internationalized competitive environment. The combination of industry characteristics and market trends is presented to provide some suggestions for further development. In the past ten years (from 1990 to 2000), the securities industry in Taiwan grew at a very fast pace, with the number of firms increasing from 199 to 531, 2.66 times. The market capitalization grew 6.86 times, increasing to NTD 3.7 trillion from NTD 533 billion. The amount of corporate bonds and savings trusts issued in the foreign market increased to USD 9.6 billion in 2000 from USD 74 million in 1990. At the same time, as the Taiwanese economy took off and grew at an amazing pace, the trade surplus and balance-of-payments surplus brought wealth and prosperity to the people of this country. The money supply grew from NTD 5.78 trillion to NTD 19.46 trillion, giving Taiwan new potential as a place to underwrite and issue new securities. The market in Taiwan has expanded tremendously in order to meet the spectacular growth in demand for these services. The market expansion took place at a time when mergers were the dominant trend around the world, and the securities industry increased not only its economies of scale but also its economies of scope in order to face the tougher world competition in the coming years. In November 1999, the securities industry witnessed a dramatic change in the market. Yuanta Securities and Core pacific Securities announced their merger plans and this lit a spark that led to the consolidation of large firms with sizes of a such magnitude that they have not been linked to firms active in the consolidation arena. In the future, Taiwan will ride the international merger wave that originates from the economies of scale and scope and many more mergers in the industry will take place to form companies that will combine the capital and foreign exchange markets in its operations. Through cross industry mergers and the establishment of holding companies, large scale securities and financial conglomerates will be formed. Securities and financial institutions in the domestic market and abroad will develop towards enlarging its size, increasing its lines of businesses, and expanding in the international market. This paper looks at the development trends in the securities industry and discusses the necessity for consolidation and its related problems. Having worked in the industry for over ten years, the author has a keen awareness of the market characteristics and its trends, as well as intuition about what motivates the market. Throughout this research, the author has found that the market forces on a theoretical level that drive the need for consolidation have originated from a need to increase the economies of scale to deal with the increased competition in the international marketplace and have made consolidation a necessity so that the industry can remain competitive as internationalization unfolds. As a whole, this research has found ten conclusions with regard to the consolidation of the securities industry and makes ten recommendations to guide future developments as the industry seeks to increase its economies of scale.

Implicit learning is the learning of underlying regularities hidden in the environment without the learner being conscious of what is being learnt. First language acquisition in young children is essentially implicit (Krashen, 1982), but the role of implicit learning in second language acquisition is debatable. Previous research on learning of tonal languages focused on perception and identification of language tones in relatively explicit settings, and showed that tonal language experience may not help with learning a new tonal language in an explicit setting (So & Best, 2010; Wang, 2006). Yet, little research was done on the implicit learning of language tones, and on whether prior tonal language experience plays a role in such implicit learning. In this study, simplified Thai tonal rules were used as a learning target to investigate if implicit learning of such rules is possible. Implicit learning performance among native tonal language speakers with no knowledge of Thai, non?tonal language native speakers who have learnt/have been learning tonal languages other than Thai, and non?tonal language speakers with little knowledge of tonal languages were compared. Results showed that the native tonal language group implicitly learnt the target, and some trends of learning were found in the tonal language learner group, but not in the tonal language na?ve group. This advantage of tonal language experience over the learning of tonal patterns suggested that tonal language experience can be transferable to the learning of a new tonal language in implicit settings. This suggested that, rather than being hindered by their prior linguistic experience, learners with some tonal language background may benefit from implicit settings when learning a new tonal language. / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

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ITC/USA 2014 Conference Proceedings / The Fiftieth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 20-23, 2014 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA / The wireless acquisition system LISA has been designed for mechanical phenomenon analysis onboard aircrafts. It has been in use for more than one year now. This paper describes the organization of this equipment and the experiences related by first users.

Current research into L2 motivation addresses all aspects of language learning. However, there is a paucity of research into students’ L2 motivations to improve their speaking skills. Specifically, research on pronunciation issues is very rare. This report sheds light on factors that relate to pronunciation issues and their facilitating or hindering effects on L2 motivation. It starts by reviewing research that informs about students’ social-psychological and utilitarian motivations to acquire a second language. Interestingly, these general L2 motivations are mostly affected by factors related to students’ pronunciation skills. The second section discusses the negative factors, which have been found to hinder students’ motivations to learn, and in particular to improve their pronunciation. Based on these research findings, the third section of the report offers recommends pronunciation-teaching strategies to motivate and empower students. This report makes a case for Multi-competence that focuses on increased intelligibility through suprasegmentals and sociopragmatic awareness. / text

Right-of-Way (R/W) acquisition is a critical function in the project development process (PDP). Improving this acquisition process requires both a good collaboration among the functions of the PDP and a good understanding of the factors affecting R/W acquisition. This research has two phases. Phase I aims at developing a systematic method for risk and scope management using scope elements that cover the work of all functions of the entire PDP. Phase II aims at studying the inherent factors that might have significant impact on the R/W acquisition schedule. As a result, the Advance Planning Risk Analysis (APRA) was successfully developed. It contains 59 scope elements with descriptions and a mechanism to assess the project’s level of definition. The APRA can provide a platform for project participants to cooperate and coordinate project activities and responsibilities. The method provides a high level approach to improving the effective of the PDP and its functions, including R/W acquisition. In studying the R/W acquisition inherent factors in phase II, the research was able to draw conclusions on the impact of the identified inherent factors on R/W acquisition durations based on statistical analyses. The research was also successful in developing a statistically significant model for predicting the total R/W acquisition duration, from R/W Release to Possession, using inherent factors. This research provides a number of significant contributions toward the better understanding and improvement of the PDP process in general and the R/W acquisition process in particular. Further research in this area and direction was recommended and believed to be promising, productive, and highly valuable. / text

This thesis examines the use of conjunctions in texts, and in particular their function as a marker of text type. Children's acquisition of this aspect of conjunction usage is the main focus. An examination of the characteristics of various text types and the nature of coordinate and subordinate conjunctions in English serves as a framework within which the experimental evidence from adults and children (aged three to five) is considered. Three types of texts--conversation, narratives, and game explanations--were collected. It was found that both the types of conjunctions used and the frequency of conjunctions as a class vary according to text type; conjunctions are much more frequent in narratives and explanations than in conversation. It is shown here that pragmatic or cognitive factors cannot account for these findings; they can only be explained as a function of text type. The data from the children provide evidence that their conjunction usage is also constrained by text type, although their patterns of use are not exactly the same as the adults'. The results indicate that by age five children have a definite conception of text as a linguistic entity.