English as a Second Language Speakers’ Ability to Replicate Native Speaker Speech Forms When Engaged in Imitative Interaction

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Ariana Avila and Dr. Mark Tanner, Linguistics and English Language Department Introduction: The purpose of this study was to gather acoustic data aimed at empirically assessing the degree to which non-native English speakers can approximate the linguistic features of native speech when engaged in imitative interaction. The focus of my study was to investigate the […]

Perscriptivist Rules by Type Finding the Values in English Usage Manuals

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Delaney Barney and Faculty Mentor: Don Chapman, Department of Linguistics and English Language Introduction The popular view of usage manuals like Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926) and Garner’s Modern American Usage (2003) is that they contain a well-established set of rules. We expect to find the same language rules we’ve been practicing since elementary school: […]

Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà: Construction, Creation, and Sculptural Meditation

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Heidi Pyper Faculty Mentor: Elliott D. Wise, Department of Comparative Arts and Letters I organized this research project to better understand Michelangelo’s final work and sculpture, the Rondanini Pietà, which contains an upright Jesus supported from behind by Mary (Fig. 1). Michelangelo labored on the sculpture up until the last days of his life, and […]

Recognizing the Portuguese Immigrants of the 1940s through Photographs by Visual Anthropologist John Collier Jr.

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Anna Giberson and Faculty Mentor: James Swensen, Department of Comparative Arts and Letters This project focused on the study of the photographs of Portuguese immigrants in Massachusetts taken in 1942 by John Collier Jr., an important pioneer in visual anthropology. My goal was to analyze Collier’s photographs in order to raise awareness of the contributions […]

Digital Analysis of Norwegian Tourist Journals: Searching for the Ecological Imaginary

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Andrew Tate and Dr. Christopher Oscarson, Department of Comparative Arts and Letters I wanted to understand how Norwegians’ perceptions of their own country, particularly with regards to ecology, changed between the years 1868 and 1921. The Norwegian Tourist Association (or Den Norske Turistforening) has been publishing yearbooks since 1868. These publications are packed with articles […]

Hildegard von Bingen: A Work of Virtues

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Gina Fowler and Faculty Mentor: Rob McFarland, Department of German Researchers seeking historical primary and secondary source documents in a foreign language must often overcome the challenge of finding those resources without actually travelling to their country of origin. The Sophie Digital Library is an online database that was created by BYU faculty to address […]

Exploration of the Feminist and Judaic Components in the Art of Bracha L. Ettinger

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Hannah Sandorf and Faculty Mentor: Heather Jensen, Department of Comparative Arts and Letters Bracha L. Ettinger is considered by many contemporary art scholars as one of the most important living artists of our day that addresses cultural trauma transferal. The child of Jewish immigrants who escaped the Lodz Ghetto, Ettinger grew in Israel, becoming interested […]

An Eye Tracking Study: Composition Teachers’ Assessment of Native and Non-Native

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Rachel Casper and Faculty Mentor: Grant Eckstein, Department of Linguistics & English Language Introduction Applied linguists are interested in the cognitive processes of writing teachers within the subfields of both second language writing and writing assessment. Such cognitive insights as how a teacher reads and scores a piece of non-native English speaker (L2) writing can […]

The Herculaneum Papyri: A Paleographic Approach to the Latin Library

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Jordan Rawlings and Faculty Mentor: Roger Macfarlane, Department of Comparative Arts and Letters In the 1750’s AD, military engineers commissioned by the Bourbon rulers found many black, chalky chunks while excavating an underground Roman villa. Initially these lumps were thought to be coal or other detritus and were thus handled with little care. Later, some […]