Approaching Arabic Automatic Speech Recognition with Usage

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James Longstaff and Deryle Lonsdale, Linguistics Introduction and Purpose The purpose of this project is to improve Arabic automatic speech recognition (ASR) by distinguishing between different dialects with the use of machine learning. Machine learning is the teaching of computers to recognize and distinguish between categories by themselves. Machine learning works off of statistical and […]

How Teachers Grade Native and Non-Native Writing: Exposing Biases and Grading Discrepancies

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Jenna Snyder and Faculty Mentor: Dr. Grant Eckstein, Linguistics and English Language With Dr. Grant Eckstein leading our research team, we gathered TESOL writing teachers together to start our data collection. Using an eye-tracker, we monitored the different grading tendencies of 10 different writing teachers. Using this data, we made important observations and applications to […]

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 […]

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 Challenges and Solutions of Online Surveys

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Cannon, Rachel Loh, Amanda The Challenges and Solutions of Online Surveys Faculty Mentor: Dan Dewey, Department of Linguistics and English Language Surveys are a valuable tool in research. However, there is currently no place where researchers can find compiled information about the challenges of online surveys and their corresponding solutions. Research publications typically address a […]

Mongolian Vowel Harmony and Palatalization

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Sims, Joshua Mongolian Vowel Harmony and Palatalization Faculty Mentor: Dirk Elzinga, Linguistics Introducation The Mongolian language is spoken by approximately 3,000,000 people in the East Asian nation of Mongolia. The language exhibits vowel harmony, a rare phenomenon where the vowels in a single word must belong to matching categories. Mongolian grammars traditionally classify the seven […]

Will we let a language die?

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Heath, Joseph Will We Let a Language Die? Analyzing Efforts by the European Union to Protect Minority Languages Joseph Heath josephaheath@ gmail.com jheath92 William Eggington, Department of Linguistics and English Language Introduction My project examined efforts to maintain the Rusyn language (also known as Ruthenian ). Rusyn is spoken by 50,000 people living primarily in […]

Domain Adaptation in Machine Translation

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Mathias, Joshua Domain Adaptation in Machine Translation Faculty Mentor: Deryle Lonsdale, Linguistics Department Abstract This study uses an open source statistical machine translation system (Moses) to perform machine translation for specific domains, or text types. A machine translation system can be adapted to a specific domain by using training data from the same domain. In […]

My Father’s Name: A Study of Patronymic Naming in Mozambique

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Preston Christensen and Cynthia Hallen, Linguistics Abstract Patronymic naming is very common in parts of Mozambique but there has possibly been no formal documentation of this practice prior to this study. Patronymic naming involves the passing of the father’s name to the children and is not to be confused with patronymic surnames. The research was […]

Word borrowing in Riograndenser Hunsrückisch

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Trenton Hyer and Faculty Mentor: Dirk Elzinga, Department of Linguistics Introduction The objective of this project is to document word borrowing in Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, an understudied variety of German spoken in southern Brazil. UNESCO’s The Red Book of Endangered Languages listed Riograndenser Hunsrückisch as an endangered language in 1992, but linguists have written very little […]