thesis on linguistic diversity

The Effects of Community Linguistic Diversity and Multilingualism on Children’s Development of Language Awareness

• Atagi, Natsuki
• Advisor(s): Sandhofer, Catherine M

Growing up in a linguistically diverse language environment and/or a multilingual family shapes language and communicative development. This dissertation focused on how growing up in a linguistically diverse environment versus a multilingual family affects development of language awareness—the understanding of the communicative functions and conventions of language. Specifically, the present dissertation examined the effects of two kinds of foreign language experience on language awareness development: (1) exposure to many languages in your community (i.e., community linguistic diversity) and (2) exposure to one foreign language for a brief period of time. Moreover, this dissertation examined how these two kinds of foreign language experience impact children’s development of four aspects of language awareness: children’s (1) ability to name language(s); (2) awareness of their language environment; (3) understanding of the communicative consequences of speaking different languages; and (4) understanding of labeling conventions across languages—that objects have different names in different languages.

Experiment 1 examined whether exposure to community linguistic diversity affects monolingual children’s development of language awareness and whether those effects differ from the effects of multilingualism on children’s development of language awareness. Participants were three- to five-year-old children who were (1) monolingual and from a linguistically homogeneous community, (2) monolingual and from a linguistically diverse community, or (3) multilingual and from a linguistically diverse community. Results from Experiment 1 suggest that community linguistic diversity and multilingualism affect only some aspects of language awareness—specifically language labeling abilities and ability to talk about communicative consequences—but not other aspects of language awareness.

Experiment 2 sought to examine whether brief exposure to one foreign language affects language awareness development—specifically, the aspects of language awareness found to differ by exposure to community linguistic diversity in Experiment 1. Participants were four- and five-year-old children who were monolingual and from a linguistically homogeneous community. Half of these children participated in a brief foreign language exposure intervention, and their language awareness was measured before and after the intervention. Findings from Experiment 2 revealed that brief exposure to a foreign language did not affect any aspect of language awareness development examined in this dissertation and suggest that other aspects of foreign language exposure should be examined in future research.

By examining different types of foreign language experience and different aspects of language awareness, this dissertation begins to elucidate how different language environments and foreign language experiences may have differing effects on specific aspects of language awareness. This dissertation expands on the literature on the effects of diverse language environments on children’s language awareness development, and critically, provides a first step to understanding what aspect of foreign language exposure may be underlying language awareness development.

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Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Language Education Through Plurilingualism: Linking the Theory into Practice

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• First Online: 30 December 2016
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• Angelica Galante 3  

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Linguistic and cultural diversity is inherent in many societies around the world and, despite its importance, this diversity is typically neglected in many educational settings. In the field of language education, the historical prevalence of the monolingual theoretical framework has corroborated with the notion that learners should attain language proficiency based on the native speaker model, which has been mistakenly used as reference for language development. Due to the limitations of this framework, students’ knowledge of languages and cultures have often been underused and devalued. To address issues of diversity in language education, including heritage language programs, plurilingualism is an alternative framework that can be used to teach languages while respecting and encouraging this diversity. The aim of this chapter is to link the theory of plurilingualism to its practice by exploring empirical studies that have followed a plurilingual framework, with focus on the extent to which the theory is represented in practical terms. This chapter also raises fundamental issues – such as the prevalence of monolingual and neoliberal ideologies – that need further exploration in research so that knowledge about plurilingual education in different geographical locations and educational contexts can be advanced.

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Angelica Galante

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Galante, A. (2016). Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Language Education Through Plurilingualism: Linking the Theory into Practice. In: Trifonas, P., Aravossitas, T. (eds) Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38893-9_13-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38893-9_13-1

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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. the language inventory, 3. diversity of language populations, 4. genealogical diversity, 5. structural diversity, 6. investigating diversity for language evolution, 7. conclusion, acknowledgements.

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Linguistic diversity and language evolution

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Harald Hammarström, Linguistic diversity and language evolution, Journal of Language Evolution , Volume 1, Issue 1, January 2016, Pages 19–29, https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzw002

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What would your ideas about language evolution be if there was only one language left on earth? Fortunately, our investigation need not be that impoverished. In the present article, we survey the state of knowledge regarding the kinds of language found among humans, the language inventory, population sizes, time depth, grammatical variation, and other relevant issues that a theory of language evolution should minimally take into account.

Human language may be defined as a human-learnable communication system with conventionalized form-meaning pairs capable of expressing the entire communicative needs of a human society (cf. Hockett 1960 for a similar view and background).

With such a definition, two kinds of languages are attested as mother tongues, namely, spoken languages where form is acoustic and there is a vowel/consonant distinction, and, signed languages where form is given by constellations of the human body. Other kinds of language without native speakers are also attested, including whistled languages (form is acoustic but there is no vowel/consonant distinction and the signal is a free airstream formed by the lips), drummed languages (form is acoustic but there is no vowel/consonant distinction and the signal is produced by means of a drum), and written languages (form is symbolic). It turns out that all known whistled languages (cf. Thierry 2002 ; Gartner and Streiter 2006 ), all known drummed languages (cf. Stern 1957 ) as well as all known written languages actually (ever) used by a human society are renderings of a spoken language. That is, each one is representation of a spoken language at some level, such as phoneme, syllable, morpheme, word, or the like, possibly with imperfections but nevertheless systematic. A few sign languages in Aboriginal Australia are also of this kind, notably Warlpiri Sign language, as argued by Kendon (1988) . They are unlike all other known (fully developed) sign languages in that they can be analyzed as mapping to the corresponding spoken language, and did not emerge by way of a sizeable deaf (sub-)community but via cultural practices of silence in a predominantly hearing community.

There are approximately 6,500 attested spoken languages that are (or were) mutually unintelligible with each other (see Fig. 1 ). But let us spell out more carefully what this number actually counts.

The language inventory rendered with one dot per language at the centre of its geographical location. A language is given a red dot if it is (known to be) extinct ( Hammarström et al. 2015 ) and a green dot otherwise. (Colour online)

In order to be included in that count a language has to be mentioned in some publication in such a way that one can argue that it is different from, that is, mutually unintelligible, to all other languages. This can be argued with direct assessment of intelligibility or with actual linguistic data, that is, form-meaning pairs. For example, in very poorly known areas, one may have to resort to testimonies as to whether a now extinct ethnic group needed an interpreter or not when communicating with their neighbors. In most cases, however, we make use of direct data from the languages involved. For example, a standardized word list of 100 or 200-items of basic vocabulary (so-called Swadesh lists, cf. Tadmor et al. 2010 ) are commonly collected for the purposes of language comparison. It has been found empirically that if two languages share more than approximately 70 per cent of shared basic vocabulary ( Wurm and Laycock 1962 ), they are likely intelligible. This number is not an exact physical constant, but simply one heuristic which is somewhat more objective and practical than various other alternatives ( Casad 1974 ).

Second, the collecting of information regarding which languages exist(ed) is an extremely decentralized activity. The relevant information spans several centuries and involves missionaries, anthropologists, travelers, naturalists, amateurs, colonial officials, government censuses, and not least linguists. At least 40,000 bibliographical sources (thus, on average, six per language) went into the compilation of the language catalogs Glottolog and Ethnologue (described below). As can be expected, the evidence for the different languages varies tremendously, mostly according to region of the world.

As of 2015, the entire landmass has been surveyed for spoken languages at one time or another, with very few exceptions. The least well-surveyed areas include the northern and southern foothills of Indonesian Papua, the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland, the Javari river area (Brazil-Peru border area), pockets of the Democratic Republic of Congo and its border to Angola, the border area of Arunachal Pradesh (India) and China and the area around where Chad–Sudan–Central African Republic meet. Many regions of the world are or were politically difficult to survey for western scholars and are thus known only mainly from older surveys, for example, Myanmar and Libya. The world is so well-surveyed for languages that there are numbers, distribution and sometimes further information on peoples living without permanent contact with the outside world—one ethnic group in North Sentinel Island ( Sarkar and Pandit 1994 ), an unknown number in Indonesian Papua and some seventy ethnic groups in South America, compare the overview in Brackelaire and Azanha (2006) . Languages completely new to the scientific community continue to be discovered every year, but these are typically languages spoken by a (usually aging) fraction of an ethnic group who otherwise speak a known language, and that is how earlier surveys were never alerted to it. Apart from completely new languages, hundreds of revisions to the language inventory are made every year following newly collected information or more careful scrutiny of older data.

The survey situation with respect to nonspoken languages is very different. Sign languages taught in schools tied to nation states where deaf children from the same country are brought together are easy to track. But so-called village sign languages, that is, sign languages developed in a rural setting where a large proportion of the inhabitants is (often hereditarily) deaf, have not been systematically surveyed. Those reported in the literature are those that happened to catch the attention of sign language researchers. There is reason to believe there are proportionately more village sign languages in sub-Saharan Africa than in, for example, Western countries due to the prevalence of Bacterial Meningitis ( Molesworth et al. 2002 ). Similarly, lists of initiation languages, whistled languages, ritual languages, and secret languages can be expected to be incomplete, as they are only documented on the random occasion of an interested researcher.

For the people themselves it is the tribal dialect (= political language) that has a name (in all but a very few instances)—for example, Pitjantjatjarra, Yankuntjatjarra and Pintupi in the western deserts area. Speakers of Pitjantjatjarra, Yankuntjatjarra and Pintupi recognise that these are mutually intelligible and—once the linguistic sense of the term ‘language’ is explained to them—acknowledge that they are dialects of one language. But this language had no name, in traditional times. There is now an accepted label. ‘The Western Desert language’ currently in use, by Aborigines and non-Aborigines, to describe a chain of dialects, each mutually intelligible with its neighbours, which extends over one and a quarter million square kilometres (one-sixth of the area of Australia).

Ethnologue (18ed): http://www.ethnologue.com contains speaker numbers, detailed locations, and other metadata Glottolog (2.6): http://www.glottolog.org contains sources of data on languages and a more principled ( Hammarström 2015 : 733–4) classification

Both databases recognize something close to the structural definition of language but with deviations toward the political definition of language, and thus have inventories of around 7–8,000 languages ( Hammarström 2015 ). The major difference is that Ethnologue carries metadata but lacks systematic sources for the information given, while Glottolog points to the primary sources for metadata. The Ethnologue languages inventory is indexed by three-letter codes which form the iso-639-3 standard. Glottolog is indexed by four letter + four digit glottocodes which identify any variety above or below the language level, that is (sub-)families and dialects. Both Ethnologue and Glottolog allow full download of their underlying databases and there is a straightforward mapping between glottocodes and iso-639-3 codes.

As should be clear from the preceding discussion, the language inventory as represented in the above numbers and databases is entirely dependent on there being a written record, if even by a traveler. For example, many languages in the Amazon went extinct in the past few centuries, and for many of them we have scraps of data from travelers ascertaining their previous existence. For eastern Brazil, where the obliteration took place earlier, such information is much more scarce leaving the list of languages we can assert much shorter. But by analogy with the neighboring regions where we have more data, quite possibly in eastern Brazil there were many more that never made it into the written record. Similar calculations could be brought over into prehistory. If a language is left alone it would take approximately 1,000 years for it to reach unintelligibility with its former self. 1 One could then take archaeological information and infer how many languages would have been spoken in any place in the past, and obtain a far higher number than 6,500 ( Pagel 2000 ).

Some geographical conditions on language density have begun to be investigated. A general trend, in harmony with biological diversity, is that the nearer to the equator the more languages per (land) square kilometre ( Nettle 1999 ; Gavin and Stepp 2014 ). There is also the correlation that impassable terrain such as mountains, forests, and swamps would harbor more language density, but this relation is complicated by the lower population density often found in such areas ( Axelsen and Manrubia 2014 ).

Judging from the present inventory of languages, language populations ( Lewis et al. 2015 ) can consist of up to a billion speakers (English, Chinese, etc.) and go down to one speaker, if not already extinct. On all continents, the median number of speakers is below 1,000 (see Table 1 ). Most languages with a very low speaker number (less than 100) represent languages in a declining stage, that is, the low speaker number does not reflect a stable state, but an ongoing shift to another more widely spoken language often seen as more prestigious and/or economically advantageous. Such a shift starts with bilingualism in one generation, broken transmission to some later generation and finally no transmission at all to the latest generation, leaving the language alive only as long as the oldest members of the early generation. A large number of languages are somewhere in this process and thus labeled endangered languages . The languages are witnesses to the world’s linguistic diversity and the gradual disappearance is alarming ( Evans 2009 ) especially if they disappear without sufficient documentation (grammar, dictionary, and texts). The Ethnologue language inventory contains endangerment information for all languages (though this is not always up to date). The website www.endangeredlanguages.com aims to collect resources and track the status of endangered languages.

Median number of speakers across conventional macro-areas

The smallest linguistic populations attested in a stable state, that is, with full intergenerational transmission at least until the modern era are Masep (∼40, Indonesian Papua, Clouse et al. 2002 ), Marori (∼50, Indonesian Papua, Arka 2012 ), Mor (∼60, Indonesian Papua, own fieldwork), and Gurr-Goni (∼70, Australia, Green 2003 ). Thus, a number of three dozen presents itself as an empirical lower limit as to how small a language can be and still survive. Naturally, the speakers of these small languages are all (at least) bilingual. The smallest predominantly monolingual communities can be found in the Amazon forest (e.g. Zuruwaha ∼140 speakers, Suzuki 1997 : 13). However, such communities are often runaways from political turmoil in the wake of the rubber boom era (∼1900) and their monolingualism probably reflects their recent post-rubber boom situation, not a longer tradition of monolingualism.

There are no worldwide figures for bilingualism and multilingualism but impressionistically, bilingualism from childhood would appear to have been more the norm than the exception. Cases where entire communities speak five or more languages are known from sub-Saharan Africa ( Lionnet 2010 : 2; Lüpke 2013 ) where knowing that many languages is necessary for everyday social and economic activities. It remains to be seen if there are any cognitive constraints on human multilingualism. At present, nowhere is the sociopolitical situation such that interaction in even more languages, for example, a dozen or so, is necessary for daily life.

It will come as no surprise that large speaker populations can be linked to nation states and empires, and that essentially only small speaker populations are found in the dwindling fraction of societies less affected by the modern frontier. Before the advent of agriculture beginning some 12,000 years ago ( Diamond 1997 ), we must expect the speaker populations to have been similar to those of hunter-gatherer societies today. Given the marginalization of present-day hunter-gatherers, a faithful and/or generalizable speaker number distribution is difficult to produce, but would tend toward an average of a 1,000 or less and a ceiling within sight (a hunter-gatherer language of over, e.g. 100,000 speakers would be absurd to imagine in prehistory).

For centuries, linguists interested in the history of languages and their speakers have been primarily occupied with finding language families , that is, sets of languages that resemble each other so much—mainly in basic vocabulary—that one must assume they derive from a common ancestor ( Campbell and Poser 2008 ). The most well-known of all language families is Indo-European (∼580 languages) native to a wide area stretching from the British isles to Bangladesh, including Dutch, English, Kurdish, Greek, French, Armenian, Hindi, etc. The largest language family in terms of number of member languages is Atlantic-Congo (∼1430 lgs) covering most of sub-Saharan Africa. The largest language family in terms of geospatial distribution is Austronesian (∼1274 lgs) stretching from Hawaii to Madagascar. The smallest language families have only one member language (also called language isolates ), such as Basque (France–Spain), Etruscan (extinct, Italy), or Hadza (Tanzania). The current understanding of demonstrated families admits no less than 424 families in the count of Hammarström et al. (2015) . The genealogical diversity is unevenly distributed across continents, see Table 2 .

Numbers of languages and families (including isolates) across macro-areas

The demonstration of language families largely (but not exclusively) rests on the comparison of basic vocabulary. Because of vocabulary replacement the signal decays when tracing proto-stages into the past. Even under the most optimistic estimates of stability ( Pagel et al. 2013 ), at some point, too little is left to find even deeper genealogical relations. Therefore, in spite of the tremendous interest by amateur and professional linguists for finding ‘new’ deep language families, actual successes are few. The rate of vocabulary replacement is not regular like the half-life of a radioactive isotope but neither is it completely random ( Holman et al. 2011 ). An estimate of time-depth is possible thanks to a number of calibration points, either historical, inscriptional or archaeological (in the rare event that one can convincingly argue a link between an archaeological entity and a (proto-)language). The deepest families recognized as ‘demonstrated’ in, for example, Hammarström et al. (2015) are expected not to exceed 10,000 years. Unless there is a breakthrough in the way language families are demonstrated—that goes beyond basic vocabulary—this time limit cannot be improved upon: if languages share too little vocabulary we would not accept they are related while if languages share a lot of vocabulary, we do not think the relation is old. 2

Time depths such as 10,000 years have no chance of shedding light on what forms language might have had at the time of its emergence. Also the distribution of genealogical diversity is not directly indicative of time of original settlement by Homo sapiens of different continents. As per Table 2 , the most diverse areas are South America and Greater New Guinea which differ dramatically in the age of settlement—11,000 for South America ( Waters and Stafford 2007 ) vs 49,000 years ago for New Guinea ( Summerhayes et al. 2010 ) and, Africa, presumably the continent of origin, exhibits much less diversity. In essence, genealogical diversity can at any point in time be obliterated by the expansion of a random language, or one fueled by a technological advantage (such as agriculture) of its speakers.

By definition, all human languages can express the same set of meanings, but they differ endlessly in their ways to do so. Looking at only a few languages one might easily get the impression that there are only a few options a grammar might have, but this view breaks down quickly when considering an increasing number of languages ( Evans and Levinson 2009 ). Linguists and nonlinguists alike have typically theorized about human language as well as its emergence without due appreciation of the actual diversity attested, let alone the potential diversity of languages gone extinct. Partly, this is due to the asymmetry or even lack of information available on minority languages. However, thanks to increased documentation and organization in the past decade, we are now in a much better position to map and ultimately understand the diversity. A conventional way of documenting a language is the so-called Boasian trilogy of a grammar, text collection, and dictionary. 3 Focusing on grammatical description, Table 3 gives number for how many of the languages of the world we currently have grammatical descriptions of various lengths. For almost half of the languages of the world, we lack a grammatical description of any kind, let alone more extensive descriptions.

Present status of grammatical description of the world’s languages. Figures computed from the bibliography of Hammarström et al. (2015)

On the level of sounds used in spoken languages, some languages make extensive use of pitch for lexical contrasts, while other languages use none. Some languages break down their words into only eleven segmental sounds while others bin the combinatorics so that they obtain over 100 segmental sounds. For a long time it was thought that every language makes use of distinctive sounds passing air through the nose, either nasal stops or nasal vowels, but in the 1990s languages in the Lakes Plain area of Indonesian Papua were found that have no nasals either phonemically or phonetically ( Clouse 1997 ). A small minority of languages, mainly in Southern Africa, make use of distinctive sounds where air is drawn into the mouth, so called click consonants, but there is little beyond speculation to suggest that these sounds carry primordial clues ( Güldemann and Stoneking 2008 ).

All humans have the same body parts, yet even then, language divide up the lexical space differently. Some languages have a simplex lexeme than covers the hand and the arm (needing further specification if a distinction needs to be expressed) while others have one for each ( Brown 2005 ). Similarly, while we have the same machinery for sensory perception, some languages have elaborate sets of simplex smell terms, while other languages conventionalize very few ( Majid and Burenhult 2014 ).

Perhaps the most interesting kinds of variation is to be observed in the domain of grammar. Present-day humans face a world, communicative needs, perceptional capabilities, and organization of thought that is presumably congruent to that of the hominids who first evolved language. Therefore, we will review some conspicuous examples below.

In the temporal dimension, some languages obligatorily make the speaker distinguish between five past tenses ( Payne 1985 : 240), yet some other languages allow the speaker to leave this unspecified, understood from the context or optionally specified by a word like ‘yesterday’ ( Dol 2007 ).

Some languages divide all referents into classes/genders which show different agreement patterns. In some languages, the speaker is forced to mark the gender overtly all over the sentence, while other languages have minimal marking redundancy. Many class/gender systems systematically distinguish natural gender (masculine/feminine) but vary in their ways to do so. Sometimes referents that do not have natural gender (e.g. a stone) have a class of their own, sometimes all are feminine or all masculine, and sometimes each item is more or less arbitrarily assigned. In some languages, mixed groups default to masculine agreement, in other to feminine agreement, and so on.

Perhaps the most conspicuous distinction concerns that of speech-act participants, that is, you versus me, and so on. Typically, grammars have simplex and obligatory distinctions between 1/2/3 person and also some obligatory distinction in the number of participants, such as the pronoun system of Dutch ( Table 4 ). One might think that this is the only kind of ‘sensible’ system of oppositions, but many languages would disagree. For example, Indonesian ( Table 5 ), has an inclusive/exclusive distinction in that a different word for ‘we’ is used depending on whether it includes the person being addressed. Gula Sara, a Central Sudanic language of Chad, differs further in that it has a special simplex form for 1 + 2 person singular (you and me) as well as an inclusive/exclusive distinction ( Table 6 ). It also seems that, historically, a ‘plural’ ending containing a g might have been added to simplex forms of the categories person 1, 1 + 2, 2 and 3 (‘minimal’) to form the ‘plurals’ 1 exclusive, 1 inclusive, 2 and 3 (‘augmented’).

The pronoun distinctions in Dutch ( Donaldson 1997 )

The pronoun distinctions in Indonesian ( Sneddon 1996 )

The pronoun distinctions in Gula Sara ( Nougayrol 1999 : 106)

Every language must have conventions for expressing actions. The simplest division is between actions which require one participant, for example, ‘walk’ as in ‘she walks’, and those which require two participants, for example, ‘chase’ as in ‘she chases him’. The participant in the one-participant clause is conventionally labeled S and the agent and patient in the two-participant clause are labeled A and P, respectively. Most languages have conventional ways of marking the participants (so that the hearer can recover who did what to whom), either by ordering or by markers on the participants themselves. The question is now how languages chose to share the marking across the two kinds of clauses. One (uncommon) possibility is that there is no sharing between the two types, that is, that S, A, and P are marked in three different ways. But the most common possibility is that the S and A are marked the same, as opposed to P. This type is called nominoaccusative and encodes the worldview that there is always one actor, but for some kinds of clauses there are also participants acted upon. A third (not uncommon) possibility is that the S and P receive the same marking. This type is called ergative and encodes the mirror-image worldview. Curiously, languages which have ergativity, typically do not have it throughout the language, but only in certain tenses, or only for nonpronominal participants ( Dixon 1994 ).

Probably because it is relatively easy to ascertain, the most energetically investigated element of grammatical variation concerns the order of element in a clause. In the transitive clause, we have an agent (A), patient (P), and verb (V). Most languages have a specific ‘neutral’ order, such as English AVP ‘the dog kills the cat’, while other languages allow alternative orders depending on, for example, the tense, while yet others allow any order 4 (see Dryer 2005 for a more detailed definition). Conventionally, orders are often presented using the letters S instead of A and O instead of P, even though the terminology with A and P is the more appropriate one given that the roles are semantically defined. Table 7 shows the frequency of the various orders in the languages of the world in terms of raw numbers of languages 5 and by the majority value per language family. Figure 2 maps the values geographically.

Geographical distribution of basic constituent orders in languages across the world, adapted from Hammarström (2013) . Legend: SOV blue, SVO green, VSO red, VOS purple, NODOM gray, OVS yellow, OSV orange. (Colour online)

Raw counts of basic constituent orders in languages and families (majority value per family) across the world, adapted from Hammarström (2013)

The data on constituent order illustrate the basic challenge for all researchers of grammatical diversity on a global scale. While the logical possibilities are inhabited, the distribution is not random at all—if it were, we would expect essentially uniform frequencies in Table 7 . Languages from the same family are not independent, and language family sizes vary considerably, so the raw number of languages having a property is not a good indicator of any intrinsic preference for a certain property. However, when we stratify by language family ( Table 7 ), there is still a very skewed, if not more skewed, distribution. One can similarly eliminate other potential sources of nonindependence, such a horizontal transfer (borrowing), by areal stratification. Once such confounds are arguably eliminated, one is left with a nonrandom fact, or, tendency, requiring explanation. Such patterns that reoccur across families and areas are termed statistical universals . Traditionally, explanations of statistical universals are sought in terms of processing machinery preferences ( Hawkins 2014 ) or functional pressures related to communication ( Haspelmath 2008 ).

Turning our interest to language evolution, the principle of uniformitarianism suggests that, in want of indications to the contrary, the earliest language was subject to the same functional pressures. This idea would entail that the maximum likelihood hypothesis is that proto-world was an SOV language 6 contra, for example, Jackendoff (1999) , and by extension to other grammatical characteristics, probably quite unlike English.

Logically, there are other possible interpretations of linguistic features reoccurring across families and areas. One with much stronger implications for the evolution of language is the idea that such patterns reflect the proto-world stage rather than a cognitive/functional universal ( Newmeyer 2000 ; Gell-Mann and Ruhlen 2011 ; Maurits and Griffiths 2014 ). On this hypothesis, many families have SOV order because they inherited it from proto-world (which was SOV by coincidence), and those who do not have simply drifted away from SOV during the time after proto-world. It follows from this view that given more time, all languages will eventually have lost the trace of the original SOV state. Defenders of the classical view, that universals reflect cognitive-functional pressures rather than remnants of proto-world, emphasize that the age of known language families is very shallow compared to that assumed for proto-world and that a lot of change has happened within the time frame of those families. The argument for the proto-world view is that the changes that have happened recently seem to be in a consistent direction away from SOV ( Newmeyer 2000 ; Gell-Mann and Ruhlen 2011 ; Maurits and Griffiths 2014 ).

On the classical view, language evolution happened so long ago and because of the volatility of language change and population dynamics, even if we knew everything about the present-day languages, little could be said about language evolution. But this view does not have to be definitive. In particular, in recent times, large databases have been amassed that enables us to study the implications of linguistic diversity in quantitative terms. In the past, linguistic data of various kinds, if available at all, has been rather fragmented and it is only in the last decade that the use of worldwide scale databases has become practical. It also remains almost completely unexplored what can be learned, with respect to language evolution, from combining linguistic data on a global scale with data from other disciplines such as archaeology, ethnography, and genetics (cf. Holman et al. 2015 ).

PHOIBLE http://phoible.org : PHOIBLE Online is a repository of cross-linguistic phonological inventory data, which have been extracted from descriptive sources. The 2014 edition includes 2,155 inventories covering 1,672 distinct languages ( Moran et al. 2015 ). ASJP http://asjp.clld.org/ : The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) has a database of 40-item word lists of basic vocabulary for 6895 varieties covering 4,401 distinct languages. The word lists are transcribed in a simplified but uniform transcription system. WALS http://wals.info : The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) has 192 multistate grammatical features sparsely filled in for 2,679 languages ( Dryer and Haspelmath 2013 ). A subset of 200 languages are densely filled in. The features were individually designed by experts on the respective domain of grammar (and binned into maximally six feature values owing to the original publication as an atlas with no more than six colors on a map).

Some novel investigations along these possibilities are Roberts et al. (2014) who seek possible (but not necessary) reflections of Neanderthal admixture in language, Nichols (2008) who calculates spread rates of human migrations reflected in language families, and Wichmann and Holman (2009) who investigate the effect of population size on the rate of language change.

However, a few caveats are in order. A few direct global-scale studies did not lead to a breakthrough in our understanding of language evolution.

So far, no robust correlates of societal type has been found in grammar. In particular, the grammars of hunter-gatherer languages are not different from the more recent agriculture-based societal types ( Bickel and Nichols 2016 ). The famous quotes by ( Sapir 1921 : 22, 234) ‘The lowliest South African Bushman speaks in the forms of a rich symbolic system that is in essence perfectly comparable to the speech of the cultivated Frenchman’ and ‘When it comes to linguistic form, Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam’ hold empirically as true now as a century ago. Another study ( Atkinson 2011 ), tracing the origin of language through a series of founder effects, falls short on the lack of a genuine link between phoneme inventory size and population size ( Moran et al. 2012 ), and also fails to correct for multiple testing of 2,500 different potential points of origin in the significance values attributed to the correlation between phonemic diversity and distance from the putative origin.

It should also be kept in mind that large databases of linguistic diversity are approximations. For example, traditional grammatical feature divisions are akin to what a simple zoological questionnaire would be to the biological reality. That is, it is like asking, for each animal, does it have wings? can it fly? and so on, while in reality, there are many different kinds of wings (e.g. large, small, membranous, tegmina, and some arbitariness on what defines a wing in the first place) and degrees of flying (high altitude, duration, and so on), that are not captured by the questionnaire.

Language shows variation along a large number of dimensions that are relevant for any hypothesis on language evolution. In the present article, we surveyed the language inventory, population sizes, time depth, grammatical variation, and other relevant issues that a theory of language evolution should minimally take into account. Traditionally, language evolution is thought to have happened so far in the past that little could be inferred about language evolution from present-day information on language. But this view does not have to be definitive. In particular, in recent times, large databases have been amassed that enables us to study the implications of linguistic diversity in quantitative terms.

This article has benefited from comments by Dan Dediu, Simon Greenhill, and Bart de Boer. The usual disclaimers apply.

This research was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Language and Cognition Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Max-Planck Gesellschaft, and a European Research Council's Advanced Grant (269484 “INTERACT”) awarded to Stephen C. Levinson.

1 Needless to say, this is not a physical constant but some kind of average obtained from known cases. Conditions under which a faster or slower speciation is to be expected are known (see, e.g. Bakker 2000 ).

2 It is not known whether the corresponding vocabulary decay generalizations hold (or hold less) also for sign languages, since there is insufficient documentation of any sign language family or sign language passed down from generation to generation ( Fischer 2015 ).

3 This convention is now a century old. A more modern version would also include at least conversational data and multi-modal data as well ( Woodbury 2011 ).

4 Such languages, whenever needed, mark who did what to whom in other ways than through a conventional order.

5 For ease of comparability with other databases and figures, the counts are presented in terms of the slightly inflated (in comparison to strict mutual intelligibility) language inventory of Hammarström et al. (2015) .

6 At least when assuming that proto-world was a spoken language. In raw numbers, SOV is almost as common as SVO in ( Kimmelman 2011 : 8)’s survey of twenty-four signed languages. However, a more complete survey and an attempt to count independent cases are needed before we can pronounce a preferred word order for sign languages.

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Multilevel dynamics of language diversity and disparity in Oceania

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There are more than 7,000 languages on our planet today and they are not evenly distributed over the population. Why might this be? This thesis explores the dynamics of language diversification in Remote Oceania, where some islands have 20 times the number of languages of others. In this thesis I investigate, first, environmental and social factors of language proliferation; second, grammatical and lexical dissimilarity of island groups; third, stability of grammatical features and grammatical ... [Show more] conservatism of Oceanic languages; and fourth the particular case of language variation in Samoan. Remote Oceania consists of Temotu, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Polynesia and Micronesia. The region was settled more recently than the rest of Oceania (3,500 years ago) and entirely by Austronesian speakers. Through studies in archaeology, history and linguistics much is known of migration patterns and societal organisation. The comparatively shallow time depth, relatedness of the languages and established knowledge about the history of this region makes it an ideal base for understanding of language diversification. There is a large discrepancy between the number of languages per island group in Remote Oceania. There are over 100 languages in Vanuatu and but one in Samoa. What could be the cause of this discrepancy? Scholars have suggested reasons such as societal organisation, environmental factors and settlement time. Statistically modelling languages per island group given environmental, archaeological and societal variables in this thesis shows that the primary factors in the proliferation of languages in the sample are likely to be political complexity, time depth and island area. The impact of political complexity is most probably due to the fact that more hierarchical societies lead to more interactions and cohesion over large distances, which reduces language splitting. However, counts of languages are not enough when studying language diversification, it is also important to consider linguistic dissimilarity. Do languages of certain island groups stand out as unusually varied in their structure or vocabulary? The results show that no island group stands out as containing unusually high levels of structural disparity, but that Temotu, New Caledonia and, to a lesser extent, Southern Vanuatu have higher levels of lexical divergence than the rest. This finding is consistent with previous literature on "aberrant" Oceanic languages. This thesis also explores the stability of structural features, and conservatism of Oceanic languages, using computational phylogenetic methods for ancestral state reconstruction. The two computational methods of Maximum Parsimony and Maximum Likelihood methods largely concur with findings in historical linguistics as to the grammar of Oceanic proto-languages. However there are few features which are consistently stable across both methods. The most conservative island group of the Oceanic subgroup is the Bismarck archipelago, which is consistent with established theories of the homeland of the Oceanic subgroup. Among the most structurally progressive are Central Pacific, which runs counter to measurements of the lexical retention rate of the languages there. Finally, we take a closer look at one language of the region in particular and the language variation there - Samoan. While we do not find regional variation that can cause a split, there is still substantial variation present - but tied to the social sphere. Samoa has not historically been centrally governed, but village district chiefly offices may have been more stable and may have been enough to retard internal diversification and splitting. In conclusion, change and diversity is conditioned by many local social, historical and environmental conditions - social structure potentially being one of the most powerful. Structure and lexicon, operate under different evolutionary constraints and can tell different stories of the past.

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Managing linguistic diversity in literacy and language development : an analysis of teachers' attitudes, skills and strategies in multilingual Kenyan primary school classrooms

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Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in Early Childhood Teacher Preparation: The Impact of Contextual Characteristics on Coursework and Practica

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• March 20, 2019
• Affiliation: School of Education
• The population of children in early childhood settings is becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse, and these changes in demographics have warranted teachers becoming more culturally responsive and better prepared to work with diverse young children and families. Teacher preparation programs across the nation have responded differently to this critical issue because of the different contexts in which they are in. Some promising strategies are including cultural and linguistic diversity in both course content and clinical experiences into early childhood teacher preparation programs. Using data from the National Prekindergarten Center's (NPC) National Study of Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Programs and the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) Integrated Post-Secondary Education Dataset (IPEDS), this research study examined the variables that contributed to how much cultural and linguistic diversity content and experiences were required of Bachelor's degree students in their coursework and practica in early childhood teacher preparation programs. Specifically, geographical contexts, program and institutional characteristics were analyzed from a sample of 417 Bachelor's degree programs to determine how these variables predicted the amount of diversity content and experience required in teacher preparation programs. Results indicated that percentage of non-Hispanic White in a state, geographic region, degree of urbanization, governance of institutions, NCATE accreditation, and the presence of non-White full-time faculty in early childhood programs were predictors of coursework or practica requirements. Implications and recommendations for policy, future research, and early childhood teacher preparation are discussed.
• https://doi.org/10.17615/rvam-0a33
• Dissertation
• In Copyright
• Maxwell, Kelly
• Open access
• October 19, 2010

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Home > Humanities > Linguistics > Theses and Dissertations

Linguistics Theses and Dissertations

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Linguistic diversity'

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Nettle, Daniel. "The evolution of linguistic diversity." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.243588.

Wagner, Andreas. "Unity in diversity : integrating differing linguistic data in TUSNELDA." Universität Potsdam, 2005. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2006/862/.

Everett, Bronwyn L., University of Western Sydney, and of Nursing Family and Community Health School. "The impact of linguistic diversity on postoperative opioid consumption." THESIS_CSHS_NFC_Everett_B.xml, 2000. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/465.

Haji-Othman, Noor Azam. "Linguistic diversity in Negara Brunei Darussalam : an ecological perspective." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/30897.

Everett, Bronwyn L. "The impact of linguistic diversity on postoperative opioid consumption." Thesis, View thesis, 2000. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/465.

Everett, Bronwyn L. "The impact of linguistic diversity on postoperative opioid consumption /." View thesis, 2000. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20031118.123321/index.html.

Morais, Katia Vieira. "Negotiating Linguistic Diversity in World Englishes and World Portugueses." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194113.

Cruttenden, Aidan. "Linguistic unity and diversity in the mid-nineteenth century novel." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.385232.

Ward, Natalia, Amber N. Warren, A. Rountree, and M. Dias. "Analyzing Science Read-Aloud Texts for Cultural and Linguistic Diversity." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2019. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/5949.

Chitrapu, Sunitha. "Linguistic diversity and changing technology in India's regional film markets." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2009. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3344567.

Cox, Murray P., Georgi Hudjashov, Andre Sim, Olga Savina, Tatiana M. Karafet, Herawati Sudoyo, and J. Stephen Lansing. "Small Traditional Human Communities Sustain Genomic Diversity over Microgeographic Scales despite Linguistic Isolation." OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/620928.

Dooly, Melinda. "Linguistic Diversity: A qualitative analysis of foreign language teachers' category assembly." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/4662.

Wolf, Matthew Christopher. "Money talks: investigating the relationship between linguistic diversity and financial inclusion." Master's thesis, Faculty of Commerce, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/33981.

Williams, Cristan. "Engaging differences linguistic diversity and critical literacy pedagogy in the classroom." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10816.

Saternus, Julie. "Critical Language Pedagogy: Linguistic Diversity in the First-Year Composition Classroom." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1396538686.

Sayers, Dave. "Reversing Babel : declining linguistic diversity and the flawed attemps to protect it." Thesis, University of Essex, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.502138.

Mensah, Henry Amo. "Language policy and practice in a multilingual classroom : managing linguistic diversity in a Namibian high school." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/86615.

Sargazi, Hossnieh. "Managing linguistic and cultural diversity in Merseyside's primary schools : theory, policy and practice." Thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2011. http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/6120/.

Carder, Maurice. "Challenging the English-only orthodoxy : linguistic pluralism recognition and diversity rather than assimilation." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2011. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10019957/.

Hong, Huili, Karin Keith, Renee Rice Moran, and LaShay Jennings. "Listening to Teachers’ and Teacher Candidates’ Discounted Stories about Cultural and Linguistic Diversity." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/994.

Heusing, Gerald. "Aspekte der linguistischen und kulturellen Komplexität Ugandas." Universität Leipzig, 2005. https://ul.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A33605.

Guerrero, Becerra Maria Paula. "Acknowledging linguistic diversity in a multicultural society: the issue of indigenous languages in Colombia." Bachelor's thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2015. http://amslaurea.unibo.it/9199/.

Wang, Rayna. "Exemplary practices that affirm and promote cultural and linguistic diversity in head start classrooms." Thesis, Boston College, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:107433.

Grossman, Kelly Marie. "Negotiating the Non-Negotiable: Re-visioning Writing Center Approach to Cultural and Linguistic Diversity." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1375279778.

Loh, Jonathan. "Indicators of the status of, and trends in, global biological, linguistic and biocultural diversity." Thesis, University of Kent, 2017. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/61424/.

Wilson, Garth John. "Themes on Linguistic Diversity Encountered in the Plenary Debates of the European Parliament 2000-2003." Thesis, University of Canterbury. National Centre for Research on Europe, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/2914.

Charanovska, Yuliya <1991&gt. "The utility of linguistic diversity. A study on the economic value of the Ryukyuan languages." Master's Degree Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/12348.

Madanchi, Shahzad. "Diversité des langues et politiques linguistiques en Iran." Thesis, Le Mans, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015LEMA3004.

Le, Nevez Adam. "Language diversity and linguistic identity in Brittany : a critical analysis of the changing practice of Breton /." Electronic version, 2006. http://adt.lib.uts.edu.au/public/adt-NTSM20060905.165032/index.html.

Runciman, Talya. "From Deficit to Diversity: Inviting learners to use their linguistic and cultural repertoires for Literacy Learning." Master's thesis, Faculty of Humanities, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/30120.

Power, Cian Joseph. "Many Peoples of Obscure Speech and Difficult Language: Attitudes towards Linguistic Diversity in the Hebrew Bible." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845462.

Shearer, Karen. "PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT: TEACHERS' AND PARENTS' VOICES." Doctoral diss., University of Central Florida, 2006. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/4146.

Santos, Marcia Andrea dos. "Nos não conseguimos enxergar dessa maneira ... = representações e formação de educadores." [s.n.], 2010. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/269693.

Nyaga, Susan Karigu. "Managing linguistic diversity in literacy and language development : an analysis of teachers' attitudes, skills and strategies in multilingual Kenyan primary school classrooms." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/79899.

Barbieri, Chiara <1983&gt. "Comparing genetic and linguistic diversity in African populations with a focus on the Khoisan of southern Africa." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2013. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/5668/1/barbieri_chiara_tesi.pdf.

Barbieri, Chiara <1983&gt. "Comparing genetic and linguistic diversity in African populations with a focus on the Khoisan of southern Africa." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2013. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/5668/.

Barichello, Alessia <1992&gt. "Foreign language education of tour guides in Italy. Language diversity and linguistic tolerance in foreign language users." Master's Degree Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/14930.

Lim, Chih Ing Maxwell Kelly. "Cultural and linguistic diversity in early childhood teacher preparation the impact of contextual characteristics on coursework and practica /." Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,785.

Leek, Patricia A. "Pre-Service Teachers' Attitudes Toward Language Diversity." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2000. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2629/.

Barinaga, Ester. "Levelling vagueness : a study of cultural diversity in an international project group." Doctoral thesis, Stockholm : Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics (EFI), 2002. http://www.hhs.se/efi/summary/594.htm.

Cramer, Ashleigh Jay. "Diverse Teacher Candidates' Perceptions of a University's Special Education Preparation Program." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3156.

Smith, Benjamin C. "Compounding and Incorporation in the Ket Language: Implications for a More Unified Theory of Compounding." UKnowledge, 2014. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/ltt_etds/1.

Kwok, Wai Paik. "Subordinate—leader trust in mergers and acquisitions in multicultural emerging economies." Thesis, Aix-Marseille, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018AIXM0229.

Kinney, Angela. "An Investigation into the Funds of Knowledge of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse U.S. Elementary Students' Households." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1393235629.

Lovelace, Sherri. "THE ROLE OF BOOK TYPE IN THE RETENTION OF NOVEL VOCABULARY AMONG CHILDREN AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDREN WITH VOCABULARY DEFICITS." Lexington, Ky. : [University of Kentucky Libraries], 2006. http://lib.uky.edu/ETD/ukyresc2006d00422/Dissertation.pdf.

Hardymon, Nathan. "THE SHAWNEE ALIGNMENT SYSTEM: APPLYING PARADIGM FUNCTION MORPHOLOGY TO LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR'S M-STRUCTURE." UKnowledge, 2015. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/ltt_etds/8.

Jacumasso, Tadinei Daniel. "Diversidade linguística, cultural e políticas linguísticas: estudo de uma comunidade ucraniana de Irati/PR." Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Parana, 2009. http://tede.unioeste.br:8080/tede/handle/tede/2496.

Nouiouar, Ahlam. "Identité et diversité culturelles dans quelques collections de littérature de jeunesse au Maroc." Thesis, Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017UBFCH012.

Munsch, Mathieu. "English as a Lingua Franca in Europe : How is Cultural Diversity Expressed in the Common Tongue?" Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-232456.

Martiny, Franciele Maria. "Estudos de gêneros emergentes em aulas de português como estratégias de ensino." Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Parana, 2011. http://tede.unioeste.br:8080/tede/handle/tede/2503.

Theses/Dissertations

Since 1999, most theses and dissertations submitted by graduate students at the university are published online in the UGA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Database (ETD) . This page is a list of recent theses and dissertations produced by graduates of the University of Georgia M.A. and Ph.D. programs in Linguistics, with a link to the UGA ETD page for the pdf file.

Dissertations

Julia Steele Josephs. Ph.D., 2023. Variable Que in Three Francophone Regions Advisor: Diana L. Ranson

Trevor Ramsey . Ph.D., 2023. Phonetic Trend in the Speech of Transgender Speakers of English and German Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Jacob Emerson. M.A., 2023.  Emojis: Perceptions by Online Communities Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Julia Horton. M.A., 2023. So What Does It Do?: the Multifunctionality of Discourse Marker so in Two Television Sitcoms Advisor: Sarah E. Blackwell

Michael Gray. M.A., 2023. Emojis and the Expression of Queer Identity: A Sentiment Analysis Approach Advisor: Chad Howe

Andrew Robert Bray. Ph.D., 2022. A Hockey-Based Persona: The Sociolinguistic Impact of Canadian English on American-Born Players Advisor: Chad Howe

Kit Callaway. Ph.D., 2022. From Ey to Ze: Gender-neutral Pronouns as Pronominal Change Advisor: Chad Howe

Wonbin Kim.  Ph.D., 2022. Distributional Corpus Analysis of Korean Neologisms using Artificial Intelligence Advisor:  William A. Kretzschmar 

Katherine Ireland Kuiper. Ph.D., 2022. Patterns of Health: A Corpus Analysis of Health Information and Messaging Advisor: William A. Kretzschmar

Rachel Miller Olsen. Ph.D., 2022. IT’S ALL IN HOW YOU SAY IT: PROSODIC CUES TO SOCIAL IDENTITY AND EMOTION Advisor: Margaret E. L. Renwick

Shannon Penton Rodriguez. Ph.D., 2022. Constructing, Performing, and Indexing “Southern” Latino Identities: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Intersection of Ethnicity and Place in the Speech of Young Adult Latinos in Georgia Advisor: Chad Howe

Rachel A. Ankirskiy. M.A., 2022. VARIATION IN JAPANESE NOMINAL PARTICLE OMISSION: TOWARDS A CORPUS-BASED SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Joseph Finnegan Beckwith. M.A., 2022. THE DECLINE OF THE SIMPLE PAST: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SIMPLE AND COMPOUND PAST FORMS IN ROMANCE AND GERMANIC LANGUAGES Advisor: Jared Klein

Lisa Lipani. Ph.D., 2021. Subphonemic Variation in English Stops: Studies using automated methods and large-scale data Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Michael Olsen. Ph.D., 2021. CULTURAL KEYWORDS IN AMERICAN EDITORIAL DISCOURSE Advisor: William A. Kretzschmar

Bailey Bigott. M.A., 2021. Mock Infantile Speech: A Sociolinguistics Perspective Advisor: Jon Forrest

Kora Layce Burton. M.A., 2021. Lexical and Thematic "Peculiar Mood" Development of Faërie Language in the Germanic Cauldron of Story Advisor: Jared Klein

Mary Caroline Clabby. M.A., 2021. Comme Y’all Voulez: Translanguaging Practices in Digitally Mediated Communication Advisor: Linda Harklau

Jordan Grace Graham. M.A., 2021. #WHOSE LIVES MATTER: A MIXED MEDIA ANALYSIS OF THE #BLACKLIVESMATTER AND #BLUELIVESMATTER ON TWITTER DURING THE SUMMER OF 2020 Advisor: John Hale

Lindsey Antonini. Ph.D., 2020. The Copula in Malayalam Advisor: Pilar Chamorro

Joey Stanley. Ph.D., 2020. Vowel Dynamics of the Elsewhere Shift: A Sociophonetic Analysis of English in Cowlitz County, Washington Advisor: Lewis Chadwick Howe

Longlong Wang. Ph.D.., 2020. The Past Tenses in Colloquial Singapore English Advisor: Pilar Chamorro

Douglas C. Merchant. Ph.D., 2019. Idioms at the interface(s): towards a psycholinguistically grounded model of sentence generation Advisor: Timothy Gupton

Aidan Oliver Cheney-Lynch.  M.A., 2019. Studies in feminine derivation in Vedic Advisor: Jared Klein

Conni Diane Covington.  M.A., 2019. Frequency and the German(ic) verb: a historical sociolinguistic study of class VII Advisor: Joshua Bousquette

William James Lackey III . M.A., 2019. Denasalization in early austronesian Advisor: Jared Klein

Kelly Wade Petronis . M.A., 2019. Finding the game: a conversation analysis of laughables and play frames in comedic improv Advisor: Ruth Harman

Mohammad Fahad Aljutaily . Ph.D. 2018. The influence of linguistic and non-linguistic factors on the variation of Arabic marked consonants in the speech of Gulf Pidgin Arabic : acoustic analysis Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Sofia Alexandrovna Ivanova . Ph.D. 2018. Cue weighting in the acquisition of four American English vowel contrasts by native speakers of Russian Co-Advisors: Victoria Hasko and Keith Langston

Elisabeth Wood Anderson Lacross .   Ph.D. 2018. Variation in future temporal reference in southern France Advisor: Diana Ranson

Sandra McGury .   Ph.D. 2018. Passives are tough to analyze Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Amanda Nicole Walls . Ph.D. 2018. Israel's Pagan Passover Advisor: Richard Friedman

Alexander Ankirskiy . M.A. 2018. Investigating the potential for merger of Icelandic 'flámæli' vowel pairs through functional load Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Ryan Michael Dekker . M.A. 2018. Income effects on speech community: : Oconee County within northeastern Georgia Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Nicole Elizabeth Dreier . M.A. 2018. Gender in Proto-Indo-European and the feminine morphemes Advisor: Jared Klein

Melissa Ann Gomes . M.A. 2018. A Holistic Analysis of Get Constructions Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Jason D Hagler . M.A. 2018. Call of qatullu: towards an understanding of the semantic role of terminal root consonant reduplication in the Semitic languages Advisor: Baruch Halpern

Joshua Robert Hummel . M.A. 2017. Conflict's connotation: a study of protest and riot in contemporary news media Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Madeline Asher Jones . M.A. 2017. The impact of EFL teacher motivational strategies on student motivation to learn english in Costa Rica Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Mariah Lillian Copeland Parker . M.A. 2017. Flippin' the script, joustin' from the mouth: a systemic functional linguistic approach to hip hop discourse Advisor:  Ruth Harman

Christa August Rampley . M.A. 2017. Ratchet: an etymological origin & social dispersion theory Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Joseph Thomas Rhyne . M.A. 2017. Quantifying the comparative method: applying computational approaches to the Balto-Slavic question Advisor: Jared Klein

Wei Chen . Ph.D. 2016. The impact of environmental factors on the production of english narratives by Spanish-English bilingual children Advisor: Liang Chen

Richard Moses Katz Jr . Ph.D. 2016. The resultative in Gothic Advisor: Jared Klein

Martin Jakub Macak . Ph.D. 2016. Studies in classical and modern Armenian phonology   Advisor: Jared Klein

Judith Allen Oliver . Ph.D. 2016. When fingerspelling throws a curveball Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Andrew Michael Paczkowski . Ph.D. 2016. Toward a new method for analyzing syntax in poetry: discriminating grammatical patterns in the Rigveda Advisor: Jared Klein

Jennimaria Kristiina Palomaki . Ph.D. 2016. The pragmatics and syntax of the Finnish -han particle clitic Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Calvin Ferst . M.A. 2016. Walhalla: language shift in the garden of the gods Advisor: Joshua Bousquette

Maisy Elizabeth French . M.A. 2016. When orthography and phonology collide: an examination of the effect of orthography on the phonetic production of homophones Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Karen Elizabeth Sesterhenn . M.A. 2016. An overview of the phenomenon of doublets in English Advisor: Jared Klein

Steven Slone Coats . Ph.D. 2015. Finland Twitter English: lexical, grammatical, and geographical properties Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Xiangyu Jiang . Ph.D. 2015. Ultimate attainment in the production of narratives by Chinese-English bilinguals Advisor: Liang Chen

Rachel Virginia Nabulsi . Ph.D. 2015. Burial practices, funerary texts, and the treatment of death in Iron Age Israel and Aram Advisor: Richard Friedman

Tomoe Nishio . Ph.D. 2015. Negotiating contradictions in a Japanese-American telecollaboration: an activity theory analysis of online intercultural exchange Advisor: Linda Harklau

Xiaodong Zhang . Ph.D. 2015. A discourse approach to teachers? beliefs and textbook use: a case study of a Chinese college EFL classroom Advisor: Ruth Harman

Michael Reid Ariail . M.A. 2015. Language and dialectal variation in request structures: an analysis of Costa Rican Spanish and southern American English Advisor: Sarah Blackwell

Eleanor Detreville . M.A. 2015. An overview of Latin morphological calques on Greek technical terms: formation and success Advisor: Jared Klein

Luke Madison Smith . M.A. 2015. External possession and the undisentanglability of syntax and semantics Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Scott Lee . Ph.D. 2014. The phonetics of intonation in learner varieties of French Advisor: Keith Langston

Laura Brewer . M.A. 2014. Cognitive connections between linguistic and musical syntax: an optimality theoretic approach Advisor: Keith Langston

Courtney Ann Macer . M.A. 2014. Relearning heritage language phonology Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Tiffany Strickland . M.A. 2014. Eat their words: a corpus-based analysis of grocery store discourse Advisor: Jonathan Evans

Julia Catherine Patterson Sturm . M.A. 2014. Idiomatization of preverb + verb compounds in the ?g Veda Advisor: Jared Klein

Kenneth Jeffrey Knight . Ph.D. 2013. L1 English vocalic transfer in L2 Japanese Advisor: Don McCreary

Heather Lee Mello . Ph.D. 2013. Analysis of language variation and word segmentation for a corpus of Vietnamese blogs: a sociolinguistic approach Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Hugo Enrique Mendez . Ph.D. 2013. Canticles in translation: the treatment of poetic language in the Greek, Gothic, Classical Armenian, and Old Church Slavonic gospels Advisor: Jared Klein

Nicole Elizabeth Siffrinn . M.A. 2013. Using appraisal analysis to map value systems in high-stakes writing rubrics Advisor: Ruth Harman

Mark Raymund Wenthe . Ph.D. 2012. Issues in the placement of enclitic personal pronouns in the Rigveda Advisor: Jared Klein

Ellen Marie Ayres . M.A. 2012. Influences on gender agreement in adjectives among adult learners of Spanish Advisor: Don McCreary

Marcus Paul Berger . M.A. 2012. Parallel hierarchies: a minimalist analysis of nominals and gerunds Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Kelly Patricia Dugan . M.A. 2012. A generative approach to homeric enjambment: benefits and drawbacks Advisor: Jared Klein

Kristen Marie Fredriksen . M.A. 2012. Constraints on perfect auxiliary contraction: evidence from spoken American English Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Anastasia Nikolaevna Sorokina . M.A. 2012. The dynamics of bilingual mental lexcon: the effects of partical conceptual equivalence on acquisition of Russian as an L2 Advisor: Victoria Hasko

Allison Rebecca Wachter . M.A. 2012. Semantic prosody and intensifier variation in academic speech Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Sam Zukoff . M.A. 2012. The phonology of verbal reduplication in Ancient Greek: an Optimality Theory approach Advisor: Jared Klein

Radia Benzehra . Ph.D. 2011. Arabic-English/ English-Arabic lexicography: a critical perspective Advisor: Don McCreary

Satomi Suzuki Chenoweth . Ph.D. 2011. Novice language learners? Off-screen verbal and nonverbal behaviors during university synchronous Japanese virtual education Advisors: Kathryn Roulston & Linda Harklau

Willie Udo Willie . Ph.D. 2011. Lexical aspect and lexical saliency in acquisition of past tense-aspect morphology among Ibibio ESL learners Advisor: Lioba Moshi

Renee Lorraine Kemp . M.A. 2011. The perception of German dorsal fricatives by native speakers of English Advisor:  Keith Langston

Erin Beltran Mitchelson . M.A. 2011. Implicature use in L2 Advisor: Don McCreary

Justin Victor Sperlein . M.A. 2011. A Phonetic Summarizer for Sociolinguists: concordancing by phonetic criteria Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Garrison E. Bickerstaff Jr . Ph.D. 2010. Construction and application of Bounded Virtual Corpora of British and American English Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Paulina Bounds . Ph.D. 2010. Perception versus production of Polish speech: Pozna? Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Alberto Centeno-Pulido . Ph.D. 2010. Reconciling generativist and functionalist approaches on adjectival position in Spanish Advisor:  Sarah Blackwell

Janay Crabtree . Ph.D. 2010. Roads and paths in adaptation to non-native speech and implications for second language acquisition Advisor: Don McCreary

Jeff Kilpatrick . Ph.D. 2010. The development of Latin post-tonic /Cr/ clusters in select Northern Italian dialects Advisor: Jared Klein

Joseph Allen Pennington . Ph.D. 2010. A study of purpose, result, and casual hypotaxis in early Indo-European gospel versions Advisor: Jared Klein

Aram Cho . M.A. 2010. Influence of L1 on L2 learners of Korean: a perception test on Korean vowels and stop consonants Advisor: Don McCreary

Frances Rankin Gray . M.A. 2010. It's like 120 milliseconds: a search for grammaticalization in the duration of like in five functions Advisor: Don McCreary

Magdalene Sophia Jacobs . M.A. 2010. The decline of the French passe simple: a variationist analysis of the passÉ simple and passe compose in selected texts from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries Advisor: Diana Ranson

Nathan Loggins . M.A. 2010. Mandarin loanword phonology: a case study of three English mid vowels Advisor: Keith Langston

Caley Charles Smith . M.A. 2010. The development of final [asterisk]/-as/ in Pre-Vedic Advisor: Jared Klein

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Home — Essay Samples — Science — Language and Linguistics — Language Diversity

Essays on Language Diversity

Language diversity is a rich and expansive field of study, reflecting the myriad ways in which language shapes cultures, identities, and communication across the globe. Essays on language diversity offer a unique opportunity to explore the complexities of linguistic variation and its impact on society, education, and personal identity.

The Significance ... Read More Language diversity is a rich and expansive field of study, reflecting the myriad ways in which language shapes cultures, identities, and communication across the globe. Essays on language diversity offer a unique opportunity to explore the complexities of linguistic variation and its impact on society, education, and personal identity. The Significance of Language Diversity

Language diversity is not merely a matter of linguistic interest; it holds profound implications for understanding human culture, social dynamics, and cognitive development . Essays on this topic can cover a wide range of subjects, including but not limited to:

• Sociolinguistics and Language Variation: Exploring how language varies across different social groups and regions, and how these variations reflect and shape social identities and hierarchies.
• Language Endangerment and Revitalization: Examining the causes and consequences of language endangerment, as well as efforts to revitalize and preserve endangered languages.
• Multilingualism and Bilingual Education: Investigating the benefits and challenges of multilingualism, both at the individual cognitive level and within educational systems that seek to promote language diversity.
• Language Policy and Planning: Analyzing how language policies influence societal linguistic practices, including the promotion of national languages or the suppression of minority languages.

Utilizing Language Diversity Essay Samples

The use of essay samples on language diversity can significantly benefit students in several ways:

• Structural and Content Inspiration: Samples can provide a clear model for essay structure, as well as ideas for content, arguments, and case studies.
• Diverse Analytical Perspectives: By engaging with a variety of samples, students can gain insights into different analytical approaches to language diversity, enriching their own essays.
• Understanding Academic Standards: Essay samples demonstrate the application of academic standards in writing, including proper citation, argumentation, and evidence integration.
• Encouragement for Original Thought: Samples serve as a springboard for original thinking, encouraging students to develop unique viewpoints and contribute new insights to the discourse on language diversity.

Strategies for Crafting an Engaging Language Diversity Essay

Crafting a compelling essay on language diversity involves several key strategies:

• Narrow Your Focus: Language diversity encompasses a broad array of topics. Choose a specific aspect to explore in depth for a more focused and comprehensive essay.
• Incorporate Real-World Examples: Use case studies or personal experiences to illustrate the real-world implications of language diversity, making your essay more relatable and impactful.
• Engage with Contemporary Issues: Address current debates and issues related to language diversity, such as digital language practices, migration, and globalization.
• Reflect on the Importance of Language Diversity: Consider the broader significance of language diversity for fostering cultural understanding, social inclusion, and cognitive flexibility.

Conclusion: Celebrating and Exploring Language Diversity

Writing a language diversity essay is an invitation to delve into the rich tapestry of languages that populate our world. It offers a chance to celebrate the complexity and beauty of linguistic variation, while also confronting the challenges and opportunities that come with preserving and promoting language diversity. By employing essay samples as a guide and embracing a thoughtful, analytical approach, students can contribute meaningful insights to the ongoing conversation about language, culture, and identity.

Language diversity is not just a subject of academic inquiry; it's a reflection of the human experience, a testament to our capacity for adaptation, creativity, and communication. Through their essays, students can advocate for the value of linguistic diversity, highlighting its role in enriching our lives and deepening our understanding of one another.

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