Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 133 p. : map. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-100).

I have investigated the theme of imposters in three Hispanic American plays and two Caribbean plays from the early twentieth century; I selected each play from a different country so that I can present a broader perspective of Hispanic American and Caribbean themes. In these five plays, the main characters fabricate their own identities for various reasons. My focus is on analyzing those imposters and on presenting how the dramatists present this type of imposters in their works. Identity is one of the most prominent themes in Hispanic American and Caribbean literature because the history of these regions involves a long period of European colonization. As a result of this colonization the cultures of these regions imitated European culture for centuries. For this reason the act of constructing a distinct American identity has been a struggle for Hispanic American and Caribbean writers. The five plays analyze this struggle by depicting main characters who pretend to be someone else and abandon their own identity. I have analyzed the imposters and incorporated findings from various studies that make a connection between the play and Hispanic American and Caribbean history. My goal is to demonstrate the historical circumstances that provoke the characters into falsifying their own identities. In the final chapter I will perform a contrastive analysis of the five plays and focus on their similarities and differences. Each of the five plays demonstrates a different circumstance, and the characters fabricate their own identities for a different reason. However, all five cases produce a negative consequence in the play or give the readers a negative impression of imposters.

This study examines L2 learners’ difficulties in the acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive. In particular, it investigates the interpretations English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish assign to the subjunctive in temporal, concessive, and conditional clauses, where mood choice involves the interaction of morpho-syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge. In contrast to previous research that has given little attention to the difficulties L2 learners experience, this study hypothesizes they might be attributed to “input traps” resulting from L1 transfer of syntactic and semantic properties of the subjunctive adjuncts and misanalysis of the input due to the lack of integration of different types of information. This study tests this claim by comparing the grammars of English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish with those of native Spanish speakers. If L2 learners share similar patterns with L1 speakers in contexts where both languages behave similarly, and exhibit different patterns from L1 speakers in contexts where both languages behave differently, difficulties should be attributed to L1 influence on the L2. On the other hand, if L2 learners exhibit different patterns from L1 speakers in contexts where semantic or pragmatic features determine the use of the subjunctive, difficulties should be attributed to failures in form-meaning mappings. Data collection involved a Preference Task with three possible options: a sentence with the indicative, with the subjunctive, or no preference. Subjects were asked to select which of the three choices they preferred according to the context presented in the story. Twenty advanced English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish and twenty native speakers from different Spanish-speaking countries, who served as the control group, took part in this study. Results indicate that subjunctive adjuncts present difficulties in L2 acquisition even for advanced L2 learners. Although they exhibit sensitivity to certain subjunctive features and contextual meanings, data reveal that convergence and non-convergence were primarily determined by L1 influence on L2. Crucially, those features absent from the L1 give rise to greater efforts and difficulties in L2 form-meaning mappings of mood selection.

This study examines L2 learners’ difficulties in the acquisition of the Spanish subjunctive. In particular, it investigates the interpretations English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish assign to the subjunctive in temporal, concessive, and conditional clauses, where mood choice involves the interaction of morpho-syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge. In contrast to previous research that has given little attention to the difficulties L2 learners experience, this study hypothesizes they might be attributed to “input traps” resulting from L1 transfer of syntactic and semantic properties of the subjunctive adjuncts and misanalysis of the input due to the lack of integration of different types of information. This study tests this claim by comparing the grammars of English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish with those of native Spanish speakers. If L2 learners share similar patterns with L1 speakers in contexts where both languages behave similarly, and exhibit different patterns from L1 speakers in contexts where both languages behave differently, difficulties should be attributed to L1 influence on the L2. On the other hand, if L2 learners exhibit different patterns from L1 speakers in contexts where semantic or pragmatic features determine the use of the subjunctive, difficulties should be attributed to failures in form-meaning mappings. Data collection involved a Preference Task with three possible options: a sentence with the indicative, with the subjunctive, or no preference. Subjects were asked to select which of the three choices they preferred according to the context presented in the story. Twenty advanced English-speaking L2 learners of Spanish and twenty native speakers from different Spanish-speaking countries, who served as the control group, took part in this study. Results indicate that subjunctive adjuncts present difficulties in L2 acquisition even for advanced L2 learners. Although they exhibit sensitivity to certain subjunctive features and contextual meanings, data reveal that convergence and non-convergence were primarily determined by L1 influence on L2. Crucially, those features absent from the L1 give rise to greater efforts and difficulties in L2 form-meaning mappings of mood selection.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Portland, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Sept. 22, 2008). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 288-304). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-57).

This report examines the dynamic mood alternation attested in fear emotive clauses, i.e. (Me) temo que mi hija sea/es anoréxica, 'I fear/am afraid my daughter (SUBJ/IND) is anorexic'. It does so by using data gathered in electronic sources, implementing two model analyses from the vast literature on the topic and presenting and analyzing the results. It then concludes which of the two chosen models better predicts and clarifies the mood alternation usage for this phrase. The two models come from Terrel and Hooper (1974; Model A) and Lunn (1989 and 1995; Model B). It is expected that one of the two analyses will better explain mood choice patterns for temer(se) expressions and, in future research, it may become a validated tool to explain mood variation in other comment clauses as well. / text

This study explores the manifestation patterns of speech revisions in monolingual English and Spanish-English bilingual children. All speakers exhibit speech revisions to some degree and some researchers have indicated that they may manifest due to linguistic uncertainty (Bedore et al., 2006; Loban, 1976). In the current study, speech revisions were documented in the context of two narrative conditions manipulated to elicit revisions. In one context, a high uncertainty condition, the narrative picture sequence depicted a vague or unclear ending to a story, therefore increasing the speaker’s linguistic uncertainty. In the second condition, the low uncertainty condition, the narrative picture sequence had a logical ending reducing linguistic uncertainty. These tasks were designed to elicit speech revisions in children ranging in age from 3;5 to 5;11. Participants included 33 Spanish-English bilingual Kindergarten-age children, 32 language-matched monolingual English-speaking pre-K children, and 37 age-matched monolingual English- speaking children. All children exhibited typical language abilities based on a language screening measure. The first research question was whether there was a difference in the rate of speech revisions in English between the narratives with high and low uncertainty across the 3 groups of children. The second question pertained to whether the rate of speech revisions in their narrative samples was influenced by task (high vs low uncertainty condition) when language productivity as measured by lexical diversity (NDW), mean length of utterance (MLU) and grammaticality. Results indicated that all of the children across the three groups exhibited fewer speech revisions in the low uncertainty condition than in the high uncertainty condition. There were no differences observed by group for frequency of revisions across task condition. Further, NDW accounted for a significant amount of the variance in frequency of revisions across all three groups. Again, there were no group differences observed in frequency of speech revisions when measures of language productivity were controlled. These results indicate that in an experimental condition, bilinguals were no more susceptible to exhibit revisions than their monolingual peers. Implications for these results and further considerations regarding revisions and the speech production process for monolinguals and bilinguals are discussed. / text

Not available / text