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 […]

Mormon Insights

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Shane Peterson and Marvin Gardner, English Language Introduction It’s hard to believe that we’ve made it this far. In a matter of months, Mormon Insights went from being an idea Brother Gardner had thought of to an actual online publication and editing capstone course. We’ve been hard at work the entire time, trying to create […]

A Quichua Video Dictionary: The Sight and Sound of Ideophones

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Diana Shelton (née Sun) and Janis Nuckolls, Linguistics and English Language Introduction Quichua is a branch of Quechua, a group of indigenous South American languages, which is found in Amazonian Ecuador. This language utilizes a type of adverb, called ideophones, which symbolizes sound, motion, and other sensations. Ideophones are often foregrounded with speaker movements and […]

Defining the Obvious, Or Not

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Emily Furner and William Eggington, Linguistics and English Language When a new word premieres in a publication in the English language, the word is normally followed with a definition (hereafter gloss) that defines or restates its meaning1. But generally, words will eventually stop being defined as readers come to understand the meaning of the word. […]

Access in the Accent: Career Opportunity Based on Differences in Regional Accents

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Stephanie Hedges and David Eddington, Linguistics Accents affect employment ratings more when the accent is perceived to be stronger (Carlson & McHenry, 2006). When the accent is strongly perceived by the employer, employment ratings drastically dropped for those speaking Spanish-influenced, Asian-influenced and African American English dialects (Carlson & McHenry, 2006). However, when the accent was […]