Ph.D. - Linguistics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/2092

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Managing competition in language: Neurodevelopment of syntactic ambiguity resolution in bilinguals and monolinguals
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2026) Kong-Johnson, Noelani; Deen, Kamil; Linguistics
Syntactic ambiguity is a pervasive feature of language, yet the mechanisms supporting its resolution remain incompletely understood, particularly in development and in bilingual populations. This dissertation investigates how the brain resolves different types of syntactic ambiguity and whether bilingual experience shapes these processes across development. Two research questions guide this work: (1) which language and conflict-related neural systems are engaged during ambiguity resolution, and (2) whether and how bilingualism modulates these systems over development.To address these questions, we conducted two studies with children (5-10 years) and adults, including English monolinguals and English-Hawaiian bilinguals. Study 1 included three experiments each targeting three forms of ambiguity: garden-path sentences requiring revision, globally ambiguous prepositional phrase (PP) attachments, and filler-gap dependencies. Study 2 used fMRI to examine neural activation during garden-path and PP attachment ambiguities, alongside structural measures derived from T1-weighted images. Behavioral results revealed no differences between language groups across experiments. Developmentally, accuracy improved with age for garden-path sentences, while PP attachment ambiguities showed age-related biases modulated by verb type. Filler-gap dependencies showed no age-related differences. Neuroimaging results showed strong age-related decreases in cortical thickness and gray matter volume in a widespread set of regions, covering medial frontal, medial parietal, temporal, frontal, and parietal areas. There were no reliable bilingualism-related effects for cortical thickness but we found limited increases in gray matter volume in superior frontal cortex and occipital cortex for bilinguals. Functional neuroimaging results further demonstrated that ambiguity resolution engages a distributed network spanning inferior and medial frontal regions, temporal cortex, and parietal areas. Different ambiguities recruited distinct subsets and patterns of this network: revision-based ambiguities engaged control-related regions more strongly over development, especially in bilinguals, whereas PP attachment ambiguities relied more on right hemisphere temporal areas and decreased control system reliance over development, especially in bilinguals. These findings suggest that syntactic ambiguity resolution is best understood in terms of how competition is managed, rather than simply the presence of ambiguity. Bilingualism did not alter behavioral outcomes but was associated with differences in the developmental recruitment of these neural systems, reflecting differential deployment rather than a global advantage. Together, these results provide a mechanistic account of syntactic ambiguity resolution that integrates language and control systems, while highlighting how developmental and bilingual experience shapes the interaction of these systems within a language revitalization context.
Documentary lexicography: A case study of building a Nasal dictionary
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2026) Billings, Blaine Timothy; McDonnell, Bradley; Linguistics
This dissertation presents a conceptual foundation for the notion of documentary lexicography, in the goal of refocusing documentary linguistics to fundamentally include significant lexically-oriented output, and provides a corresponding demonstration through the documentation and description of the Nasal lexicon. It discusses the need for lexicographic work in documentary linguistics and lays out the unique challenges and approaches relevant for this context. In exemplification of the arguments presented, this dissertation additionally details the methodology implemented for producing a first documentation and description, beyond basic vocabulary and translations of wordlists, for the lexicon of the Nasal language (pronounced [nɑˈsɑl]; ISO 639-3: nsy, Glottocode: nasa1289), an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 3,000 people in four villages of coastal southwest Sumatra, Indonesia. The lexical documentation produced as part of this dissertation comprises more than 180 total recording hours consisting of approximately 115 hours of semantic domain discussion, 40 hours of dictionary entry discussion, 20 hours of dictionary focus group discussion, and 5 hours of a community dictionary workshop. The corresponding lexical description contains definitions for more than 10,000 lexemes cross-referenced with a corpus of more than 225,000 token lexical items and informed by a corpus of approximately 2,000,000 token lexical items. This descriptive material is archived in the Kaipuleohone Language Archive (McDonnell et al. 2026) in SQL format and standard LIFT format for reuse in future linguistic research and has been compiled into draft community and academic dictionaries as well as an electronic dictionary. These draft outputs as well as the code developed for generating them are archived alongside the lexical database. Finalized first edition dictionaries are being prepared for publication in collaboration with members of the Nasal community and members of the broader documentation project team.
A spatial grammar of Kubulau Fijian
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2026) Osborne, Henry Severino; Holton, Gary; Linguistics
This dissertation describes the grammar of spatial language of Kubulau Fijian, an under-described variety of the East Fijian language [ISO 639-3 fij] an Austronesian language spoken in the Kubulau district of Bua province on Vanua Levu island, Fiji. The goals of this work are to 1) introduce and 2) situate Kubulau within the historical context of Fijian linguistics; 3) identify the state of the field with regards to spatial language research; 4) identify the state of the field of spatial language research within the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian; 5) present a sketch of the grammar of Kubulau and compare it to previous work on other East Fijian varieties; and 6) provide a comprehensive description of the spatial language used by Kubulau speakers. The literature reviews presented in the first three chapters provide an overview of the long history of Fijian language linguistics, a tradition which stretches back over two centuries of work. They also detail the development of spatial language as a research topic within the discipline of linguistics and the different aspects of grammar which index space. The Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian has been an area of particular focus in the tradition of spatial language research, and these chapters document the elements of spatial language which have received the most attention in the literature. This includes the prevalence of absolute axes for orientation such as those based on land/sea and elevation-based coordinate systems as well as the indexation of these axes in various directional and demonstrative lexemes. The analyses presented here draw on a corpus of elicited and conversational audio and visual language data totalling 12 hours, which is publicly available at the Kaipuleohone Language Archive. This dissertation highlights the numerous points of divergence between Kubulau and other Fijian languages, especially in the demonstrative system, the phonology and the verbal affixes. Additionally, it identifies several unique features of the Kubulau spatial system, including a typologically unusual use of projective left and right at small scales and an absolute axis motivated by the tradewinds which is primarily indexed in terms for ‘up’ and ‘down’. Also included is a description of topological relations in Kubulau and a description of place-naming strategies in the language, the first such description in the Fijian languages. It is my hope that this work demonstrates the immense potential for future research on East Fijian language varieties and can contribute to the long and storied tradition of linguistic inquiry in the Fijian languages. The research contained herein identifies several innovative features of spatial language in Kubulau which deserve further consideration. It is also my hope that the corpus created in the course of this research will be utilized for future research in spatial language not only in the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian but also across the energetic subfield of spatial language research.
Diversity in a diasporic language: Sociolinguistic variation in minority Yiddish contexts
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2026) Breslow, Emma; Cheng, Andrew; Linguistics
This dissertation applies the theories and methods of Labovian sociolinguistics to phonetic variation in the small, diasporic minority-context community. This community is delineated by usage of Yiddish despite it not being a widely-spoken language in their neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and other aspects of their daily lives. While community members are spread around the world, this study focuses on those in three cultural centers: Boston, Montreal, and New York City. In analyzing the varied ways speakers produce Yiddish vowels, rhotics, and word-final plosives, this study illuminates how a minoritized linguistic community of practice maintains diversity and innovates new Yiddish varieties. From 30 hours of interviews with Yiddish speakers and learners, I use qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze patterns of variation. The two qualitative analysis chapters use discourse and thematic analysis. The first of these chapters discusses how the community understands and refers to itself, as well as emic perceptions of Yiddish’s language vitality. The next chapter examines language attitudes and ideologies related to authenticity, standardization, and how community members define ‘good’ Yiddish.The following three chapters take a quantitative approach to sociophonetic variables. The first focuses on particular diaphonemes, or vowels which are the primary linguistic distinctions between historical European Yiddish dialects: proto-vowel *ei, as in fleysh ‘meat,’ which can be pronounced /fleɪʃ/ or /flaɪʃ/, *ɔː, as in bodn ‘to bathe,’ which can be /bodn/, /budn/, or /buːdn/, and *u or *uː, such as in kumen ‘to come,’ which can be /ˈkʊmɛn/ or /ˈkɪmɛn/. Normalized vowel plots for each speaker were compared to aggregate plots grouped by the three main Yiddish dialects in order to analyze how individual speakers pattern compared to the average speaker of each dialect. I furthermore explored speakers with complicated dialect patterns, such as those who exhibit balanced multidialectalism leading to a bimodal distribution for a vowel, or those who mix dialect patterns by using more salient features from one dialect while another dialect is represented in the less salient vowels. This chapter’s analysis shows how historical Yiddish dialects are shifting in today’s dispersed community and how less salient dialectal features are merging to create new varieties of Yiddish. The second chapter examines speakers’ productions of Yiddish rhotics, called reysh. Unlike dialectal vowels, the choice between alveolar or uvular rhotics has not been subject to any systematic phonetic analysis. Speakers vary between an alveolar tap/trill, an English-influenced alveolar approximant, and a velar or uvular fricative or trill. I focus on auditory analysis of word-initial or intervocalic rhotics, in order to find a pattern to this variation. Unlike prior literature which suggests these forms are entirely in free variation, I posit that which rhotic a speaker uses will be influenced by where they live, the other languages they are exposed to, and their language attitudes regarding Yiddish pronunciation. This is more in line with historical literature on Yiddish reysh, which describe a complex geographic pattern combined with some apparent free variation. Results of this study show that speakers in Montreal use more uvular varieties, likely due to their exposure to French, while speakers in New York City use the alveolar tap, which may be due in part to the large presence of Hasidic Yiddish speakers in the city. The last analysis chapter focuses on final-/t/ release, which is a well-documented sociophonetic variable—including in certain varieties of Jewish English—but has not been previously explored in Yiddish. Given that the majority of interviewees in my corpus are native English speakers, I hypothesize that the English trends of /t/ being released more to index qualities like intelligence or authority may also hold in Yiddish. Indeed, I find that /t/-release is more frequent in careful and authoritative speech contexts in Yiddish. I also note that—potentially due to an inherent property of Yiddish, the artifice of an interview, and/or the postvernacular situation of the minority-context Yiddish community—Yiddish speakers in my corpus release /t/ at higher rates than have been documented for speakers in English. Overall, this chapter offers an example of one way to identify socially-meaningful variation in an underdocumented language. Overall, my dissertation helps address the lacuna of instrumental acoustic documentation of Yiddish and diversifies the academic discussion of Yiddish speakers by focusing on minority-context speakers from a wide range of backgrounds, proficiency levels, and amounts of involvement in the community. It furthermore offers an example of how methods from language documentation can enrich traditional sociophonetic analysis when working with under-documented varieties of minoritized languages, and supports Yiddish language maintenance efforts by providing insight into the varied ways people pronounce the language.
Experimental approaches to assessing vitality for endangered languages: The case of Jejueo
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2026) Ohara-Saft, Sebastian; O'Grady, William; Linguistics
Language endangerment is a global concern, and established vitality frameworks such as Fishman's Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale, UNESCO's Language Vitality and Endangerment framework, and the Language Endangerment Index provide valuable macro-level assessments. However, these approaches do not, on their own, reveal what individual speakers still know, how efficiently they can access that knowledge, or how such knowledge is distributed across linguistic domains within a bilingual community undergoing shift. This dissertation investigates these questions through the case of Jejueo, a critically endangered Koreanic language spoken on Jeju Island alongside Standard Korean.
The syntax of voice and case in Yami, an Austronesian language of Taiwan
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Vondiziano, Gregory; O'Grady, William; Linguistics
Yami is an highly endangered Malayo-Polynesian language spoken on Orchid Island, a small island off the southeast coast of Taiwan. It possesses a system of Philippine-type voice and a conservative four-way case system. This dissertation examines the voice and case systems in Yami with a particular focus on distributional properties of the four different voice forms and the syntactic properties of case-marked elements in the clause. This is predominantly a descriptive work that seeks to provide more fine-grained empirical data on the instantiation of Philippine-type voice and case in Yami.
Sociophonetic variation in Ende
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Strong, Katherine; Lindsey, Kate; Holton, Gary; Linguistics
Variationist sociolinguistics (Labov 1963) explores the myriad of linguistic choices that individuals make in their language use, and how those choices map onto and interact with various social categories that are relevant to the speakers’ lives. These choices are dynamic examples of language variability and change, identified at all levels of the grammar, and can be understood through comparisons both within and between social groupings. Some of these linguistic variables are found to be used together in patterns of covariation, forming cohesive sets of forms that can be selected to reflect a range of meanings, from characteristics of the speaker’s identity to elements of the speech act to features of the broader language community. Many variables can also be linked across the various spectra of speech types, such as formality, spontaneity, politeness, and regional variation.This dissertation presents the first study of multiple sociolinguistic variables in Ende (ISO 369-3: kit), a Pahoturi River language of Papua New Guinea. Drawing on previous work, which identified evidence of sociolinguistic variation in Ende with regard to retroflex affrication (Strong, Lindsey & Drager 2020; 2022) and verb-final /n/-elision (Lindsey 2021b), this study uses a quantitative lens to examine social and linguistic factors that are linked with three phonetic variables: retroflex affrication, word-initial velar nasal deletion, and (post)alveolar affrication (termed /z/-variation throughout this work). I am especially interested in how the variation patterns relate to a traditional oratorical practice of the region called kawa, in which speakers (i.e. orators) who hold positions of leadership, respect, and prestige within the community participate in acts of speech-making. These speeches (i.e. kawa orations) include daily announcements, addresses at special occasions, instructional teachings, admonishments, and more. I am interested in both the status of these speakers, where “orator” is a social characteristic and marker of identity relevant to their linguistic choices, as well as the performance of kawa oratory itself and how the use of select conservative variants may be indexing speech genre or elements of speech type. This study also discusses relationships of the variables with the macro-social categories of speaker age and gender, considering how these categories and their associated linguistic choices are related to elements of power and prestige in the Ende-speaking community. This work speaks to the importance of studying sociolinguistic variation in minority languages and using ethnographic methods to identify social parameters that are most relevant or best fit to the speech community and its unique cultural makeup.
A grammar of Woleaian
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Mayer, Clemens Johannes; Holton, Gary; Linguistics
Woleaian [ISO 639-3 woe], endonymically Kapetale Faliuwesh (lit. 'language of our [is]land') or Kapetale Wolea (lit. `language of Woleai'), is a nuclear Chuukic (Micronesian-Austronesian) language mainly spoken on the six atolls of Woleai (Wolea), Eauripik (Yaurepig), Ifaluk (Ifaliug), Faraulap (Fatialap), Elato and Lamotrek (Lamocheg), located in Yap state of the Federated States of Micronesia. The current speaker community is estimates to be between 3,000 and 4,000 speakers, with at least a quarter of those now residing outside of these atolls. This dissertation gives a grammatical description of Woleaian naturalistic speech, mainly focused on the Eauripik variety. The data used for the linguistic analysis comes from a community-based and -oriented language documentation project with over 35 hours of naturalistic speech data. As such, all analysis is essentially data-driven, being led by the corpus rather than pre-conceived linguistic categorizations. Since naturalistic speech is the focal point of data analysis, it also means that elicitation was not used as an analytical tool outside of the phonetics and phonology. Instead, elicitation served to support analysis of grammatical structures from the naturalistic speech corpus in a few rare instances. Because of this methodological approach, it is necessarily non-exhaustive, and leaves many open ends for further research avenues. However, I hope that this dissertation forms the start of an accurate linguistic analysis of how the Woleaian language is spoken by its community. \\ The dissertation covers phonetics and phonology (Chapter 2), the word classes (Chapter 3), nouns and noun phrases (Chapter 4), verbs, verbal morphology and the verb phrase (Chapter 5), minor word classes and particles (Chapter 6), simple clauses (Chapter 7), complex clauses and clause combining (Chapter 8), and finally focus, argument structure and discourse organization (Chapter 9).
Processing of empty subjects: Evidence from control constructions
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Lee, Youngin; O'Grady, William D.; Linguistics
The phenomenon of control has been central to syntactic theory since its introduction into generative literature. Despite extensive research, much of the work has concentrated on English and a limited range of control constructions. Particularly, previous processing studies have predominantly focused on the role of control verbs, arguing that verb-specific control information is critical for real-time processing of control constructions. However, much less attention has been paid to languages beyond Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) languages, such as Korean.This dissertation broadens our understanding of the control phenomenon by examining real-time processing of control constructions in Korean and English. Six experiments explore (i) whether L1-Korean comprehenders use morphosyntactic cues early in sentences to interpret infinitival empty subjects in Korean control constructions, and (ii) how L1-English comprehenders and L1-Korean L2ers of English interpret adjunct infinitive control constructions in English, with a particular focus on purpose clauses (e.g., Sarah hired Tim to finish the work quickly). Korean, a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) language, requires the matrix verb to appear at the end of the clause, and the embedded verb to be followed by at least one verbal suffix. Notably, specific control verbs select from a range of complementizers. Given these characteristics of Korean, I test the hypotheses that (i) Korean comprehenders use control information encoded in specific embedded verb suffixes to establish referential dependencies between empty subjects and their antecedents, and that (ii) L1-Korean comprehenders’ processing strategies influence their L2 sentence processing. Findings from Experiments 1 through 3 show that complementizers contribute to the interpretation of empty subjects in Korean control constructions by supporting control verbs, and that Korean comprehenders rely on complementizer cues when access to the control verb is limited. Crucially, complementizer cues trigger the interpretation of empty subjects, highlighting their important role in Korean control constructions. Results from Experiments 4 to 6 demonstrate that although advanced L2 learners can exhibit native-like interpretive behaviors in some contexts, their interpretations remain more variable than those of native speakers. For L1-English comprehenders, the data suggest a strong reliance on linear proximity cues when resolving referential dependencies in real-time comprehension of adjunct control constructions. As the first experimental study to investigate the role of complementizers in real-time processing of Korean complement control, this dissertation contributes to the growing body of research on theoretical syntax and sentence processing. The findings provide cross-linguistic evidence that control is not a uniform phenomenon and that no single theoretical framework is able to fully account for cases of control across languages. Furthermore, this dissertation expands the scope of control research by focusing on understudied adjunct control constructions in both L1 and L2 processing.
The path of decolonization for linguistics: A qualitative analysis of insights from indigenous scholars
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Yarbrough, Dannii; Berez-Kroeker, Andrea; Linguistics
This dissertation engages in a practice of “disciplinary reflexivity,” critically examining the epistemological foundations of Linguistics and their entanglement with colonial legacies which are embedded in academic research. Using Relationality and Reflexive Thematic Analysis, it presents a qualitative study based on interviews with seven Indigenous scholars who have either participated in Linguistics programs or collaborated with linguists in the context of Indigenous Language Reclamation (ILR) from Turtle Island and Ko Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina. The study explores the epistemological tensions that emerge from these interactions and identifies core conflicts rooted in how the field conceptualizes language. A central critique voiced by participants is the treatment of language as an isolated object of study, which underpins a range of problematic practices: extractive data-centric approaches, lack of holistic perspective, contested ownership and intellectual property claims, failure to recognize Indigenous expertise, harmful academic rhetoric, and the dehumanization of Indigenous speech communities. These issues collectively support a disciplinary stance that often marginalizes ILR as a legitimate research domain within Linguistics, perpetuating inequitable and damaging dynamics between Indigenous and non-Indigenous linguists and communities. In response, this dissertation calls for a reorientation of Linguistics toward relational, reflexive, and responsibility-centered approaches. It concludes with actionable recommendations for reshaping the field to better support inclusive, respectful relationships.
The Origins of Yapese Glottalization
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Dougherty, Thomas Michael; Easterday, Shelece; Linguistics
Yapese is a phonologically divergent Austronesian language. One aspect of this, glottalization, is found in only one other language in the Pacific. The historical development of glottalization in languages is often resistant to explanation; it appears to be primary in most language families where it occurs. This dissertation seeks to determine the history of these segments in Yapese. I found four distinct processes which create glottalized consonants in Yapese. These are glottalization by fusion, glottalization from laryngeal spreading, glottalization as sound symbolism, and glottalization as a result of loan phonology. Most forms, however, resist explanation, given the extensive lexical innovations of Yapese. This dissertation also revises Ross’ (1996) original reconstruction of the inherited Proto-Oceanic phonology and lexicon of Yapese, providing updated consonant correspondences, and adding vowel correspondences, in addition to demonstrating the origin of the glottalized consonants.
A prosodic description of Nasal: investigating stress and intonation in an endangered Sumatran language
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Hakim, Jacob Abadir; McDonnell, Bradley; Schafer, Amy; Linguistics
This dissertation presents the first description of the prosody of Nasal, a Sumatran languageof the Austronesian language family spoken in Indonesia. This includes descriptions of both the word- and utterance-level prosodic features. This prosodic description was undertaken as part of the documentation of Nasal, and is considered a crucial part of the documentation and description of the language as a whole. Although much prosodic research in the past has involved description of languages based significantly (or wholly) on impressions of the researcher, this research takes a different approach by basing any descriptions of or conclusions about the prosodic organization of Nasal on both experimental and quantitative evidence. Impression is still an important part of description, but impressions are always supplemented with empirical evidence gleaned directly from speaker audio. The experimental portion of the study was organized in two parts: the first experiment was a question/answer elicitation task designed to be read by native speakers in pairs; this task featured target words in carrier sentences in which the targets varied by both sentence position and focus. The second experiment was a controlled reading/roleplay task in which speakers read scripted dialogues featuring a variety of real-life scenarios. It was found there is no convincing evidence for word-level stress in Nasal. Additionally, multiple methods of analysis were applied to the data from the second experiment and revealed that Nasal has evidence for pitch accents and intermediate phrases in its intonation. It was also found that questions are marked by falling intonation, while final rises are used almost exclusively for statements or commands. These findings form an important part of the documentation of Nasal, and support a better understanding of the prosodic typology of languages in this region.
ACQUISITION OF INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN KOREAN : A PERCEPTION-BASED APPROACH
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Lee, Yuri; O’Grady, William; Linguistics
This dissertation investigates the perception of information structure in Korean, focusing on how adults and children perceive and process focus and topic marking. The study is organized into four experiments that examine different strategies for marking focus on direct objects and topic on subjects. Experiments 1 and 2 examine how Korean speakers use accusative case markers, prosodic cues, and null marking to indicate focus on direct objects. The results reveal that adults prefer prosodic cues over case marking, while six-year-olds show delayed development in focus perception. By age ten, children’s abilities begin to align more closely with adult patterns, although challenges remain in processing non-focused elements and deaccentuation. Experiments 3 and 4 explore topic marking on subjects, analyzing participants' preferences for using the topic marker -(n)un versus the nominative marker -i/ka across different types of topics. Adults and ten-year-olds generally favor the topic marker for anaphoric, generic, and contrastive topics, while using the nominative marker for broad focus. However, ten-year-olds show some differences from adults in the frequency of using markers for contrastive topics, indicating ongoing development. Six-year-olds exhibit even less consistent preferences, particularly in their selection of markers for contrastive topics and broad focus, highlighting their developing understanding of topic marking. The findings suggest that the acquisition of topic marking precedes focus marking, with children mastering non-contrastive topics before developing the ability to handle contrastive topics and focus on direct objects. This sequence reflects broader cognitive and linguistic development, where simpler, more general categories are acquired before more complex, specific ones. This research contributes to the understanding of language acquisition in Korean, emphasizing the gradual and multifaceted nature of developing information structure. It highlights the interplay between prosodic, morphological, and syntactic cues in marking focus and topic, and it underscores the challenges children face in achieving adult-like proficiency in these areas.
The perception and production of the interaction of tone and intonation in Thai
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Camp, Amber Briana; Schafer, Amy J.; Linguistics
F0 contours convey multiple types of information, including lexical and post-lexical meanings, as well as affective and socio-indexical indicators. This dissertation investigates the interaction between lexical tone and sentence-level intonation in Thai, focusing on how sentence position influences the acoustic realization and perceptual categorization of tone and what this reveals about the underlying phonological representation of tone. To explore these questions, three experiments were conducted to examine the perception and production of High and Falling tones in sentence-medial and sentence-final contexts.Chapter I provides a general introduction, framing the research questions and dissertation goals. It includes a brief overview of existing research on Thai tone and intonation, as well as the interaction between the two. In Chapter II, the categorical perception of High and Falling tone in sentence-medial versus sentence-final positions is tested using classic identification and discrimination tasks (Experiment 1). An original contribution of this study is the use of whole-sentence stimuli containing target words synthesized along tone continua to simulate ecological validity and provide acoustic context. The results from these tasks demonstrate clear categorical perception of the target tone words and reveal an effect of intonational context, in which the categorical tone boundary shifts depending on context. Chapter III details a production study (Experiment 2), where multiple participants read aloud sentences placing target tone words in either medial or final context. Analysis of these productions shows minimal variation between participants. It also confirms an effect of intonational context, with words in the sentence-final position exhibiting a global lowering effect due to the associated low boundary tone (L%). Chapter IV describes a word recognition task using eyetracking in the Visual World Paradigm (Experiment 3) to test the online perception of tone words in different sentence contexts. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggested that there are specific acoustic landmarks that lead to tonal recognition, and so it was hypothesized that cues such as F0 peak alignment would trigger eye fixations toward a target word. Results from this experiment showed very early and rapid fixations to a target word, as the High and Falling tone words used in the experiment were immediately distinguishable at the onset of the audio stimulus. Chapter V presents a general discussion. The overall combined findings of the three experiments align with predictions that tone and intonation interact in a way that affects not just acoustic realizations but also perception. Implications for underlying phonological representations and processing of suprasegmentals are also discussed, as are potential future directions for future research.
The Acquisition of Coastal Bikol
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Zubiri, Louward Allen; Deen, Kamil; Linguistics
The dissertation presents a pioneering investigation into child speech among Bikolano children. It aims to address the underdescription and underdocumentation of Child Bikol as spoken in the Philippines. Bikol, an Austronesian macrolanguage, often coexists with more dominant languages, making Bikolano children both emergent multilinguals and heritage speakers. The study uses a longitudinal corpus sample from multiple Bikol-using children to examine language acquisition through the lenses of speech production, concentrating on vocabulary and morphosyntactic development. Vocabulary development analysis explores child forms and the acquisition of words, while morphosyntactic development investigates voice and agreement in Child Bikol. By investigating language acquisition in multilingual contexts and in underrepresented languages, this dissertation contributes to our knowledge of emergent multilingualism and heritage language acquisition. It forms part of a broader effort to construct a corpus of child-directed speech and child speech among Bikolano and other Austronesian families, enriching our understanding of language development and intergenerational transmission in diverse linguistic environments.
On Mandarin Unaccusativity: a perspective from language acquisition
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Lin, Kaiying; Deen, Kamil; Linguistics
The field of Linguistics has long been interested in the verb meanings of intransitive verbs and their argument structure, specifically the breakdown of intransitive verbs into unaccusative and unergative verb types. Despite extensive research, a universally applicable explanation for this breakdown remains elusive due in part to the variability observed across languages. The diverse categories and exceptional outcomes from various paradigms across multiple languages have further complicated attempts to find a definitive understanding of unaccusativity. This dissertation seeks to contribute new insights into this longstanding problem, approaching it from the perspective of language acquisition. In this dissertation, I regard the unaccusativity of verbs as a continued learning outcome and frame the investigation of its determinants as a language acquisition problem. Through a series of computational and behavioral experiments, I have discovered several semantic and constructional factors that can lead to differential learning outcomes during children’s acquisition of unaccusativity. Subsequently, I propose a statistical and probabilistic framework that integrates these factors, as well as their interaction, which collectively contribute to the process of categorizing intransitive verbs. The results of this categorization form a dynamic and multicategorical system. By introducing these influencing factors and regarding their relationship as probabilistic and statistical, this dissertation aims to shed light on the nature of unaccusativity and the ongoing debates surrounding it.
The Abui people's language and plants: An ethnobotanical investigation in Eastern Indonesia
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Blake, A.L.; Holton, Gary; Linguistics
This dissertation describes foundational plant knowledge and associated speech practices by the Abui people of Alor Island, Indonesia. The Abui are an ethnolinguistic marginalized community undergoing interrelated social, economic and environmental changes. The Abui language (ISO 639-3 abz) has been assessed as threatened (Abui 2024); Abui people’s traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) likewise appears to be diminishing. Abui is a language of the Timor-Alor-Pantar (TAP) family. While there have been notable linguistic documentation efforts of this language family in recent decades, the ethnobotanical knowledge of TAP speech communities has been little studied. Furthermore, the flora of Alor Island has not been thoroughly surveyed. A basic description of Abui ethnobotany is needed so as to provide a foundation for subsequent, in depth research on Abui TEK topics. Main topics covered in this dissertation include Abui people’s plant identification, naming, and classification. A broad coverage of these topics is attempted. The identification chapter explores strategies used in collaborative learning and identification. The naming chapter analyzes plant names structurally, as well as semantically through the encoding of knowledge within plant names. Other patterns found in Abui lexical expressions of the plant domain are also described. The classification chapter covers the Abui general-purpose folk taxonomy. This interdisciplinary investigation incorporates a variety of methods, including ones from ethnobotany and documentary linguistics. Technologies such as the use of action cameras (GoPros) and plant identification by photographic vouchers are employed. This dissertation makes several original contributions to the scientific fields of linguistics and ethnobotany, as well as to cognitive science more broadly: First, it provides a basic description of Abui ethnobotany, which can be used as a basis for other future investigations of interactions between Abui people and their environment. Cultural preservation and revitalization initiatives, indigenous rights activism, as well as conservation monitoring and resource management plans, may draw on this most basic description. The coverage of Abui ethnobotanical topics adds a particularly endangered semantic domain to the Abui language documentation as well as the documentation of TAP languages more broadly. Next, it creates an organizational structure for describing folk identification of live plants based on what is known about visual object recognition. While undoubtedly imperfect, this novel framework supplies a new tool for the under-researched study of folk identification of plants. Furthermore, in pioneering a unique blend of methods, this dissertation demonstrates that principles and tools from language documentation can benefit ethnobotanical investigations. These include the use of audio and video recording, transcription, translation, and archiving of data. Finally, this dissertation also highlights some of the theoretical issues and decisions that arise when a “basic ethnobotanical description” is attempted. Linguistics’ main engagement with ethnobiology has been through cognitive anthropology, with its emphasis on formal taxonomies and related nomenclatural systems (Si 2016). Along with Si (2016), I encourage researchers such as documentary linguists to explore other language-centered approaches to ethnobotanical studies. In particular, for basic descriptive investigations, I suggest less emphasis on the folk taxonomic framework of Berlin 1992, and greater documentation of the Traditional Knowledge (TK) encoded in local languages.
Acquiring the unobservable: empathy verbs, belief verbs, and long-distance binding of zibun 'self' in child Japanese
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Ohba, Akari; Deen, Kamil; Linguistics
One of the fundamental questions in the field of language acquisition is a learnability problem, which considers how learners acquire certain aspects of language which are not directly provided in the input or whose referents are not readily observable in the world. This dissertation investigates Japanese children’s acquisition of various linguistic phenomena, each posing a learnability challenge due to either the absence of direct evidence or the unobservability of the referent in the world. The first focus is on the acquisition of verbs referring to mental states and those encoding a speaker's empathy. Verbs that refer to mental states (e.g., 'think') present a particular challenge as their referents, being internal mental states, are not unobservable. Similarly, empathy verbs in Japanese, reflecting the speaker’s mental closeness to a certain discourse referent, also present a potential learnability challenge. Empathy verbs encode speaker’s empathy to specific discourse referents, such as verbs of giving and receiving in Japanese (ageru ‘give,’ kureru ‘give,’ and morau ‘receive’). Importantly, which empathy verb to use depends on which discourse referent the speaker empathizes with (feels closer to). Empathy verbs present a particular challenge for learners because which discourse referent the speaker empathizes with is determined in the speaker’s mind, which is unobservable from outside. Moreover, the two verbs of giving, ageru ‘give’ and kureru ‘give’ have the same subcategorization frame (the same argument structure). Therefore, the verbs ageru and kureru look like synonyms. The second focus is on the fact that both mental verbs and empathy verbs license long-distance binding of the Japanese reflexive zibun ‘self.’ Previous research argued that Japanese children are hardly exposed to zibun ‘self’ referring to a long-distance antecedent. This poses a serious learnability challenge for children: How do children (come to) know that zibun can refer to long-distance antecedents, even if there is almost no evidence in the input? Moreover, it has been reported that children generally have difficulty in accessing long-distance interpretations with a reflexive, including zibun ‘self,’ and the cause of this difficulty is not clear. The first investigation of this dissertation is corpus analyses examining how frequent empathy verbs are in child-directed speech and what kinds of cues for speaker’s empathy children receive. I show that Japanese children are exposed to linguistic cues and non-linguistic cues for speaker’s empathy with the empathy verbs fairly robustly. Based on this finding, I experimentally investigate whether children can really use these cues to learn novel empathy verbs, and the experiment found that the linguistic cue is far more helpful than the non-linguistic cue in learning the novel empathy verbs. Moreover, I also show that Japanese children come to master the empathy-encoding properties of the empathy verbs by around age 6yrs, but some children have already mastered them as young as age 4yrs or possibly younger. I further investigate whether children extend their knowledge of the empathy verbs to other empathy-related phenomena, which are not provided in the input. My third experiment examines how early Japanese children (come to) restrict an antecedent of zibun ‘self’ to the long-distance subject when it is required by an empathy verb. The result shows that 6-year-old children are almost at ceiling, and some younger children are able to restrict zibun’s antecedent to the long-distance subject with the empathy verb, even if there is almost no direct evidence in the child-directed speech. The final experiment examines children’s acquisition of long-distance interpretations of zibun ‘self’ licensed by one of the mental verbs, the belief verb omou ‘think.’ The results show that children’s interpretation of the belief verb, omou ‘think,’ significantly affects their interpretation of zibun. This result supports a view that one of the causes for children’s difficulty with long-distance interpretations of zibun is their non-adult-like interpretation of the belief verb, omou ‘think.’
On Mandarin Unaccusativity: a perspective from language acquisition
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Lin, Kaiying; Deen, Kamil; Linguistics
The field of Linguistics has long been interested in the verb meanings of intransitive verbs and their argument structure, specifically the breakdown of intransitive verbs into unaccusative and unergative verb types. Despite extensive research, a universally applicable explanation for this breakdown remains elusive due in part to the variability observed across languages. The diverse categories and exceptional outcomes from various paradigms across multiple languages have further complicated attempts to find a definitive understanding of unaccusativity. This dissertation seeks to contribute new insights into this longstanding problem, approaching it from the perspective of language acquisition. In this dissertation, I regard the unaccusativity of verbs as a continued learning outcome and frame the investigation of its determinants as a language acquisition problem. Through a series of computational and behavioral experiments, I have discovered several semantic and constructional factors that can lead to differential learning outcomes during children’s acquisition of unaccusativity. Subsequently, I propose a statistical and probabilistic framework that integrates these factors, as well as their interaction, which collectively contribute to the process of categorizing intransitive verbs. The results of this categorization form a dynamic and multicategorical system. By introducing these influencing factors and regarding their relationship as probabilistic and statistical, this dissertation aims to shed light on the nature of unaccusativity and the ongoing debates surrounding it.
Attitudes & Ideologies Surrounding ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi: A Qualitative Study
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Solomon, N. Haʻalilio; Berez-Kroeker, Andrea; Linguistics
In its fourth decade of progress, the movement to revitalize ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi is largely seen as successful, such that some have claimed the movement is now in the phase of language (re)normalization. The factors usually identified as conducive to ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi’s successful revitalization include its co-official status, a robust system of educational and immersion programs, sufficient documentation, intergenerational transmission, and the increasing number of speakers. However, there persist some significant hindrances to the extent to which ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi can be reclaimed and expand across a wider functional range, and many of these hindrances are ideological and attitudinal. Employing a research methodology based on grounded theory, this dissertation presents a qualitative study analyzing sociolinguistic interview data conducted with ten (10) Native Hawaiians who have a close demonstrated relationship to ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi to explore the particularly negative sentiments that impact the language, its speakers, and the ongoing efforts to revitalize and renormalize ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. The ideologies and attitudes span a wide range of issues complicating the movement toward language renormalization, including language authenticity, ambivalence, cultural revitalization, identity reclamation, language planning, language policy, multilingualism, language pedagogy, and language monetization. The ideological and attitudinal findings are embedded within Hawaiʻi’s history of language shift away from ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, as well as revitalization back toward it. Similarly, some sentiments shaped Hawaiʻi’s linguistic history and evolution while others stem from it. Because these sentiments constrain the potential outcomes of the language movement in Hawaiʻi, the goals of this dissertation are to bring these issues to light and generate healthy, cathartic discussion that help us move beyond them, ushering the language movement into the next phase by realizing its sociolinguistic renormalization in society.

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