The place of the French language in our society
Thesis - 11 pages - Linguistics & languages
The French language is one those languages which are spoken all around the world. It's the 11th most used language through the world, the second most commonly-taught second language in the world (after English) and the official language in 29 countries . According to some estimations, more than...
Foreign language inadequacies in America
Thesis - 7 pages - Linguistics & languages
What do you call a person who speaks more than two languages? Multilingual. What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. And what do you call a person who only speaks one language? An American. So goes the oft-told joke, particularly loved by my European friends (all of whom...
Fighting fire with fire
Tutorials/exercises - 4 pages - Linguistics & languages
The antebellum viewpoint on slavery remains controversial. Presaging the Civil War, a fierce political debate took place between the Southern defenders of slavery and the Northern abolitionists. The two sides argued over the political, economic, social, religious, biological, and racial...
Barack Obama's use of the indefinite article /a/
Thesis - 6 pages - Linguistics & languages
The purpose of my research project was to examine Barack Obama's use of and pronunciation of the indefinite article /a/ during his speeches for the 2008 presidential campaign. I examined this element because I wanted to find out if there was any correlation between Obama's use of the indefinite...
Kristevan themes in "Sula" and "The Bluest Eye"
Thesis - 6 pages - Linguistics & languages
When Morrison describes her attempt to express black feminine subjectivity in The Bluest Eye, she claims that, “the problem, of course, was language”(211). According to Morrison, “ ‘civilized' languages debase humans”(Afterward, 216). Pauline, Pecola's mother, finds...
Breaking up the body: Dissecting the Baroque period
Thesis - 7 pages - Linguistics & languages
During the Baroque period, things fell apart; the center of beliefs, institutions, and truisms could no longer hold. Indeed, not even one's body was free of speculation, debate, and change; with scientific discoveries and experiments, as well as the thinkers and philosophers challenging...
The difference between sentences that are evaluated by linguistic significance alone and sentences that are evaluated by linguistic significance and other circumstances
Essay - 16 pages - Linguistics & languages
Significant differences among sentences of natural language certainly occur. It is not a matter of theoretical philosophy or theoretical linguistics but simply common sense. The difference I would like to focus on is the one between sentences that are evaluated using linguistic significance alone...
The Mohawk people
Essay - 7 pages - Linguistics & languages
The Mohawk are survivors. From the days of their early ancestors to the present day, the Mohawk have dwindled in number but have lived on. This is an exploration of the history and culture of the Mohawk. In this paper I will attempt to explain the past and present state of the Mohawk nation:...
Language evolution: Anthropology
Essay - 8 pages - Linguistics & languages
Its tops, it's the queens square, it's fabulous, it's cool, it's off the hook. All of these phrases mean the same thing, “It's great”. This is one of many phrases that have taken the twists and turns of the ages through our youth. Throughout history human language continues to evolve...
Second language processing and the access question
Essay - 8 pages - Linguistics & languages
The rest of the paper will be spent expositing and, when necessary, critiquing, some of the literature on second language processing. I will pay particular attention to the recent Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH), due to Clahsen and Felser. In contrast to squabbles about the vague notion of...
Multiple Wh -Questions: Logical form and paired list readings
Essay - 10 pages - Linguistics & languages
In her paper “Multiple Wh Questions,” Veneeta Dayal takes a comprehensive approach to the topic of questions involving multiple wh-elements. She begins the paper by discussing the way in which a study of multiple wh-questions might provide valuable insight into important theoretical...
Linguistic adaptation, English instruction, and the second generation Latino immigrant
Tutorials/exercises - 6 pages - Linguistics & languages
Since colonial times, the U.S. has been a nation both divided and united by its ethnic and linguistic diversity. Benjamin Franklin himself regarded the German minority of Pennsylvania as linguistically and racially inferior, yet also printed the first German newspaper in Philadelphia (Baron,...
A Radial Category Perspective on Mandarin Verb Complements
Essay - 6 pages - Linguistics & languages
In his treatment of Claudia Brugman's work on the English preposition over, Lakoff (1987) extends Brugman's analysis of that preposition as a radial category, one in which the different meanings of the word can be described in terms of a category structured radically, containing with a central...
The Rhetoric of Growth in Colorado: Reconciling Perceptions and Reality
Essay - 8 pages - Linguistics & languages
In 1990, Colorado was a state of about 3.3 million (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001b). By 2000, Colorado's population had grown to 4,301,261 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001b). Colorado's new residents spurred development in areas once sparsely inhabited. The population of Superior in Boulder County, for...
Gender Representation and the Curation of Chicano Visions
Essay - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
The Chicano Art Movement began in part as an effort on the part of Chicanos to take agency in their own representation. Before the Movement, most available representation of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans cast them in a negative light — often as servile or violent (Davalos 3). It is...
The Making of an Official Language : Chaofen Sun
Essay - 6 pages - Linguistics & languages
The foundation for the unification of Chinese has already come into being. It is none other than the standard form of Modern Chinese with the Beijing phonological system as its norm of pronunciation, Northern dialects as its base dialects, and looking to exemplary modern works in vernacular...
A Common Tongue: A Bit About Dialects in a Language
Essay - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
Dialect is a variety of language used by people from a particular geographic area. This language is a complete system of verbal communication with its own vocabulary and grammar (“Dialect”).In America today, the common language is English. But what does English mean? While Standard...
The Humanity of the Greek Gods
Essay - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
If you lived in Athens, Greece around the time when the great poet Homer lived, you probably would be acquainted with the many Greek gods. Homer's written compilation of the epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, which were formerly only told through oral tradition, would be easy for you to...
Are Theories Incommensurable Due to the Untranslatability of One Scientific Language to Another?
Essay - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
The most famous exponent of the theory of incommensurability is Thomas Kuhn. To state his theory in the simplest form, incommensurability is simply the idea that theories within science are not compatible, and that the languages they use are, at least in part, mutually untranslatable. This is...
Does the Argument from the Systematicity of Thought to the Language of Thought Hypothesis Work?
Essay - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
One of the main arguments to support the language of thought hypothesis (LOTH), as proposed by Fodor (1975), is that of the systematicity of thought. This argument consists of the idea that the ability to entertain certain thoughts is linked to the ability to entertain certain other thoughts....
Surf's Up, Dude: Cowabunga
Tutorials/exercises - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
The mission lies before us: how are we, the American people, going to come together so that “cowabunga” is reinvigorated into mainstream conversation. It was not too terribly long ago, maybe 15 years, that this delightfully lighthearted interjection tickled the ears of various...
A Systematic Method for Interpreting Novel Compounds
Tutorials/exercises - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
A novel word is one that is not found in the lexicon of the general population; in other words, it is a word that people have not heard or seen previously. A novel compound is a compound word formed out of two or more individual known words where the combination of these words has not previously...
Syntactic Movement and Locative Incorporation in Exocentric Compounds
Tutorials/exercises - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
Most people will agree that there are two main types of compound words, endocentric and exocentric. Endocentric compounds are those where the rightmost constituent, called the grammatical head, is what defines the category of speech and the semantic interpretation of the word. Exocentric...
The Prominence of "ANIMAL for HUMAN" Metaphor
Essay - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
The role metaphor plays in language is viewed differently by scholars in different fields. The extremes are the classical view based on Aristotle's writings about metaphor and the Romantic view. Those that follow the classical view see metaphor as a purely literary device used to decorate...
The Morpho-Semantics of English Compound Words: Formation, Meaning and Productivity
Essay - 3 pages - Linguistics & languages
The ability to compound words in the English language has always been a very productive method of adding new words to the lexicon. Compound words are generally formed in one of two ways, as root compounds or synthetically. Whichever way they are formed, the rightmost constituent is always the...
Dialect as a Form of Identity
Tutorials/exercises - 7 pages - Linguistics & languages
Every time a person opens his or her mouth to speak that person is speaking not only a language but a dialect of that language as well. It is a common misconception that only certain people whose pronunciations vary from what is considered Standard American English, speak a dialect. In fact,...
Similarities and Differences in Men's and Women's Cooperative Speaking Styles: An Analysis of Book Club Discussions
Tutorials/exercises - 11 pages - Linguistics & languages
Some of the most frequently referred to but potentially erroneous stereotypes regarding gendered speaking style differences involve dichotomies. Men are competitive - women are cooperative. Men focus on impersonal topics - women focus on personal topics. Men's speech is to report - women's...
Michigan's Upper Peninsula Variety of English and its Usage
Thesis - 7 pages - Linguistics & languages
Every time a person opens his or her mouth to speak that person is speaking not only a language but a dialect of that language as well. It is a common misconception that only certain people whose pronunciations vary from what is considered Standard American English, speak a dialect. In fact,...
The Connection between Crossword Puzzles and Semantics
Tutorials/exercises - 9 pages - Linguistics & languages
When a person sits down to work on a crossword puzzle the thought probably does not cross their mind that they are calling on various forms of linguistic knowledge in solving the crossword clues. The majority of basic language knowledge and usage is an unconscious phenomenon. It has been said...
The Trip Turns Dark: From Abbey Road to Paranoid
Essay - 2 pages - Linguistics & languages
From the summer of 1967 through 1969, rock-and-roll floated on a cloud of acid and love. The formerly mop-topped teen idols the Beatles did not miss the magic bus, first dabbling in psychedelia on 1965's Rubber Soul. The Fab Four continued to experiment throughout the decade, culminating in the...
