This study explores the topic of Discourse Markers from an Interdisciplinary perspective. Applying the frameworks of Speech Act Theory, Syntax, Conversation Analysis, and Discourse Analysis, to empirical data, it answers the following important questions. What specific types of Speech Actions are performed in everyday Utterances? What Syntactic Mood & Clause Type is used to perform the various Speech Actions? What Discourse Markers occur in the Left-Periphery of the Clause? What Meaning-Functions do Discourse Markers perform? What interactions do Discourse Markers have with the various types of Speech Actions and with the Clause Type with which they are expressed? The results of this study contributed valuable insights to each of the aforementioned fields individually, as well as to the study of human language in general. Among these contributions are the following: Searle’s Taxonomy of Speech Acts was refined by dividing Representatives into Informing and Opinionating and Directives were divided into Commanding and Inquiring. The frequencies of the various Speech Acts relative to each other was identified. Furthermore, 79 distinct and specific Speech Actions were identified. The Speech Act type as well as the Clause Types with which they are expressed were identified. Among the many insights with respect to the interactions between the Speech Action Types and the Clause types with which they are expressed were each of the major Clause Types perform many different Speech Actions that are in addition to those normally attributed to them. Many of the particular Speech Acts are performed via various of the different Clause Types. The Indicative Clause type has the ability to perform most, if not all of the Speech Actions performed by all of the other Clause types. The 200 most frequently-occurring Left-Periphery Elements were identified and observations regarding their Word Class and the Meaning-Functions they perform were identified. The Meaning-Functions of the 10 most frequently-occurring Discourse Markers were identified and defined. The interactions between these Discourse Markers and the Speech Actions to which they attach as well as the Clause Types with which they are expressed were identified, thus documenting empirically that Discourse Markers are intricately connected to the Clause.

Temporal adverbial clauses are present in many forms of writing. These clauses can impact the complexity of a sentence. Sentence complexity can have some effect on how readers with a diagnosed reading disability, such as dyslexia, process language. This study incorporated Hawkins’ (1994) theories about Early Immediate Constituency into a self-paced reading task designed to evaluate whether or not temporal adverbial clause positioning caused the main clause of the sentence to become more difficult to understand. Hawkins theorized that main clauses appearing at the beginning of a sentence would create an environment where a reader could reach sentence comprehension faster (CITE). The experiment used software called Linger to present the self-paced reading task. Eight participants – four with dyslexia and four without – volunteered to read sentence items from a college level textbook that had temporal adverbial clauses appearing before and after the main clause of sentences. Statistical significance in the findings show that participants read sentences more quickly when the temporal adverbial clause appeared before the main clause; however, more research is required to determine the difference between sentences fronted by adverbial clauses and sentences fronted by main clauses.

Determining guilty parties in homicide cases is not always straight forward. The more tools investigators have to assist them, the better. 911 calls are often the least influenced form of linguistic evidence, in the sense that the caller has not yet been influenced by lawyers, law enforcement, etc.. This paper analyzes the reliability of using the Considering Offender Probability in Statements (COPS) scale and concordance program to evaluate veracity in 911 homicide calls. To do this, six 911 homicide calls from Mesa, Arizona were transcribed, evaluated based on the COPS scale, and put through a concordance program. The results showed high reliability with the COPS scale and varying reliability with the concordance program, with benefits and drawbacks to each. This study unveils the need for more research to be done on 911 calls.

Languages have long been studied through the rhythm class framework, which discriminates them into separate classes on the basis of shared rhythmic properties. Originally these differences were attributed to the isochronous timing of different prosodic units, such as stress intervals in “stress-timed” languages and syllables in “syllable-timed” languages. More recent work has turned to durational metrics as a means of evaluating rhythm class, by measuring the variability and proportion of segmental intervals in the speech stream. Both isochrony and durational metrics are no longer viewed as correlative with natural language rhythm, but durational metrics in particular have remained prevalent in the literature. So long as the conclusions of durational metrics are not overextended, their analysis can provide a useful mechanism for assessing the compatibility of a language with a given rhythm class by way of comparative analysis. This study therefore presents a durational-metric comparison of Scottish Gaelic, a language which has frequently been described as stress-timed but has never been empirically tested for rhythm class, with English, a prototypical and well-studied example of a stress-timed language. The Gaelic metric scores for %V (percentage of vocalic content), ΔV (standard deviation in vocalic interval length), and ΔC (standard deviation in consonantal interval length) (Ramus et al. 1999) are shown to be very similar to those measured for English, indicating that the language displays similar patterns of durational variability and segmental proportion typically ascribed to a rhythmically stress-timed language. This provides clear support for the classification of Scottish Gaelic as stress-timed.

Creativity is increasingly cited as an educational goal in many international contexts and as a facet of academic and economic success. However, many myths surround creativity that impede its facilitation in the classroom: it is an individual talent, not teachable, and not relevant to adult life outside of artistic domains. Further, perceptions of creativity are largely informed by treatment in North American contexts. In second language instruction, linguistic creativity in particular faces greater hurdles for recognition and value, as language learners’ creative language use is often treated as error. In this paper, I argue that creative pedagogies and second language instruction can inform each other; creative pedagogy can lead to greater recognition of the creative power of language learners, and second language research can provide a cultural lens through which to gain understanding of how creativity is enacted in language. To argue that creativity facilitates language learning and is a necessary component of proficiency, I employ B. Kachru’s (1985) notion of bilingual creativity to demonstrate the ubiquity of linguistic creativity in the lives of bilingual language users. With support from Carter (2016) and G. Cook’s (2000) works on everyday creative language and language play, respectively, I demonstrate the value of linguistic creativity for language learning and language socialization. I end by suggesting five guidelines for second language instructors interested in implementing a creative pedagogy framework: (1) promote reflection and noticing in learning and creativity, (2) offer authentic models of linguistic creativity, (3) provide emotion language and multiple methods for emotional expression in interaction, (4) allow for a fusion of L1 and L2 linguistic and cultural knowledge, and (5) respond actively to opportunities for collaborative creativity.

This study explores positivist and Indigenous research paradigms as they relate to Indigenous language reclamation. Paradigms, as defined by Kuhn (2012) describe verifiable epistemological approaches that can be utilized in providing solutions for researchers and practitioners. Moreover, in the modern realm of academia, research paradigms are the keystones of research. Nevertheless, when a Eurocentric paradigm such as positivism is utilized in an Indigenous space, it can lead to further colonial trauma. Thus, through an analysis of the philosophical components from the two paradigms this study proposes a paradigmatic pivot in how linguistic students approach research. The purpose of recommending this pedagogical shift is to encourage the academy to normalize the use of Indigenous research paradigms which are intrinsically infused with Indigenous epistemologies and intercultural best practices. Furthermore, to exhibit the expediency and validity of Indigenous research paradigms, this study utilizes Walker’s (2001) Medicine Wheel paradigm to create a self-assessment tool which seeks to assist linguistic students in achieving a more relationally accountable sense of cultural awareness.

ABSTRACT

This study explores some grammatical aspects of Rural Palestinian Arabic (RPA), spoken in the vicinity of the city of Tulkarm in the Northwest part of the West Bank, and compares the variety to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Urban Palestinian Arabic (UPA). The study introduces an overview of the Arabic language and its colloquial dialects and the status of diglossia in the Arab world. Subject-verb agreement in MSA and RPA is also discussed.

The focus of this study is on the pronominal system and negation in both MSA and RPA. It investigates the correlations between dependent subject pronouns and independent pronouns and their phonological and syntactic relationships. I argue that dependent subject pronouns are reduced forms of the independent subject pronoun. The study explains how dependent subject pronouns are formed by deleting the initial syllable, except for the first person singular and the third person masculine plural, which use suppletive forms instead. Dependent object pronouns are also derived from their independent counterparts by the deletion of the second syllable, with the exception of third person plural pronouns, which take the same form as clitics attached to their hosts.

I argue that dependent subject pronouns are agreement affixes used to mark verb argument features, whereas pronominal object and possessive pronouns are clitics attached to their hosts, which can be verbs, nouns, prepositions, and quantifiers. This study investigates other uses of subject pronouns, such as the use of third person pronouns as copulas in both MSA and RPA. Additionally, third person pronouns are used as question pronouns for yes
o questions in RPA.

The dissertation also explores the morphosyntactic properties of sentential negation in RPA in comparison to sentential negation in MSA. The study shows that the negative markers ma: and -iš are used to negate perfective and imperfective verbs, while muš precedes non-verbal predicates, such as adjectives, prepositional phrases (PPs), and participles. The main predicate in the negative phrase does not need the noun phrase (NP) to raise to T if there is no need to merge with the negative element.

Keywords: Standard Arabic, Rural Palestinian Arabic, Urban Palestinian Arabic, independent pronouns, dependent pronouns, pronominal clitics, copula pronouns, negation

This dissertation investigates a subtle yet complex contemporary issue of colorism in India that traces its ideological roots back in the British colonial period or even prior to that. It focuses on the issue of skin-color discrimination in urban Indian men, which is significantly under-researched. This project aims at investigating the issue of skin-color discrimination through analyzing a small corpus of thirteen YouTube commercials dating from 2005 to 2017 for men’s skin-lightening products of a popular skin-care brand called “Fair and Handsome” from a multimodal critical discourse analytic perspective. This study further aims to understand how the discourse of colorism is operating in these Indian commercials for men’s skin-lightening products, what kinds of semiotic and socio-cultural (discourse) elements are naturalizing the notion of “fairness,” and finally, how the construction of male gender is facilitated. Although the project’s main theoretical arc is critical discourse analysis (CDA), the methodological needs necessarily require drawing upon theoretical tools from advertisement analysis, multimodal analysis, gender studies, social psychology, history, cultural anthropology, race theory, and other related fields of study. After successfully facilitating an exhaustive analytical undertaking, this dissertation contributes to the understanding of colorism as more than intra-group racism in India and situates this perpetuating issue as a contemporary research target in the socio-cultural contexts of globalization and urbanization.

This dissertation provides an account of evidentiality of a number of selected verbs of perception in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The verbs are divided into three categories: activity, experiential, and source-based, following Viberg (1983). The data shows that the activity P.Vs in MSA are rarely used evidentially whereas the experiential and the source-based ones are commonly used to indicate evidential meaning. It also shows that while the source-based verb is mostly used with an inferred evidential meaning, the evidentiality encoded by the experiential perception verbs is determined by the complementation pattern and the person of the subject (first or third person subject). With the non-finite complement, these verbs indicate a direct evidentiality when having a first person subject, and a reported evidentiality when having a third person subject. With the finite CP complement, they indicate an indirect evidentiality. This corpus-based study also examines the grammaticalization of these verbs when used evidentially. I argue that only the verb ra’aa of the selected experiential verbs is fully grammaticalized, but only when it is in the past tense and followed by a verbal non-finite complement. In this usage, it becomes a light verb. The source-based verb badaa/yabduu when indicating an evidentiality, it is grammaticalized into copulative verb when followed by an adjectival predicate, and modal verb when followed by a finite complement.

This study tests the hypothesis and assumption of much critical scholarship that the discourse of mass media news transmits prejudicial ideologies to news consumers, influencing the way they think about social justice issues and non-dominant groups in American society, including immigrants, women, and African-Americans. Taking off from the motivations and premises of Critical Discourse Analysis concerning language, power, and ideology, this study aims to extend that paradigm in several ways by applying the analytic techniques of cognitive and critical linguistics to uncover implicit representations in biased discourse. This study also goes beyond previous work by examining the reader comments on media texts to understand how the media’s discourse was received and interpreted, with a focus on the covert transmission of ideological messages. The results reveal how ideologies of prejudice are communicated implicitly through media discourse and how readers’ own ideologies influence that process, as evidenced by their comments. As a study in Critical Discourse Analysis, this study uncovers abuses of power impacting social justice – in this case, the power of writing for the mass media to mold American minds, and therefore influence Americans’ behavior, including elections. Specific news articles from the American networks CNN and Fox were chosen on each of two topics for their relevance to current sociopolitical issues of prejudice and social justice: the US Supreme Court June 2018 decision to uphold the Trump administration “travel ban” and the January 2019 Gillette advertisement, considered controversial for its seemingly feminist criticism of male behavior.