Ph.D. - Linguistics

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

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 201

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.
Western Austronesian Applicative Constructions: Typological and Functional Approaches
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Truong, Christina L.; McDonnell, Bradley; Linguistics
This dissertation investigates applicatives in the western Austronesian languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore—that is, West Nusantara—and adjacent areas of the Philippines and mainland Southeast Asia. As used in this study, an applicative construction (AC) is a kind of clausal construction in which overt morphology on the verbal complex coincides with the selection of a peripheral semantic role (e.g. beneficiary, goal, instrument) as a core clausal argument. In many of these languages, applicative alternations signalled by such verbal morphology—as well as causative, aspectual, and semantic alternations signalled by the same morphemes—shape and color the use of verbal predicates throughout the entire language. A primary goal of the study is to understand the applicative systems of West Nusantara in typological context, but also on their own terms, in the context of the diachronic and synchronic systems in which they developed and are used. Special attention is also given to broadening the description and cross-linguistic comparison of West Nusantara ACs and their functions, properties, and usage. In Part I of the study, I present a case study of applicatives in Sundanese and show how these data and similar examples in other West Nusantara languages present several problems under previous approaches. These include the non-discrete nature of applicative and causative functions marked by applicative morphemes (AMs), and marking of canonical and non-canonical ACs with the same AMs. I argue for a constructional approach—one in which ACs are viewed as associations of form and meaning at different levels of specificity—which allows these data to be better accounted for. I also show how the unique Philippine-type voice systems found in western Austronesian languages may be understood using a descriptive category of symmetrical voice and a comparative concept of applicative (see Haspelmath 2010), and I propose the terms pivot-selecting applicatives for Philippine-type locative voice (LV) and circumstantial voice (CV) constructions as opposed to pivot-neutral applicatives found in the so-called ‘Indonesian-type’ languages. Part II presents a typological survey examining 85 languages from lower-level subgroups indigenous to West Nusantara. Based on distributional patterns and evidence from languages showing transitional states, I argue that the development of pivot-neutral applicatives is associated with the demise of Philippine-type voice, but not the rise of a coherent ‘Indonesian-type’ grammatical profile. I further argue that the pivot-neutral ACs selecting locations and goal roles are derived from earlier LV constructions in Proto Malayo-Polynesian, while the pivot-neutral ACs selecting beneficiaries, instruments, and/or themes are derived from earlier CV constructions. Earlier LV morphology gives rise to pivot-neutral locative/goal AMs, while many benefactive/instrumental AMs are reflexes of the Proto Austronesian CV imperative suffix *-an. However, this *-an has been replaced with newer suffixes like -kan and -akən in a number of subgroups. In Part III, I develop a typology of ACs and other AM-marked constructions in West Nusantara languages according to functional and formal properties. Notably, beneficiary-selecting ACs are much more likely to be valency-increasing while most other ACs are more likely to show remapping of the selected peripheral role and patient/theme. The observed patterns underscore that ACs have their own consistent, non-derived properties. I also explore the relationship between lexical semantics and functions of AMs. Across languages, some lexical bases show consistent attraction to constructional meanings of AMs based on compatible semantic properties. Large variance is observed, however, in the productivity of constructions with different functions across the lexicon and across languages. I conclude that functional patterns for applicatives observed in better known languages like Indonesian and Javanese cannot be generalized to Sulawesi languages and other West Nusantara languages spoken outside of a narrow band of western Indonesia.
ISAN-THAI DIGLOSSIA: INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION AS THE KEY INDICATOR TO VITALITY
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2023) Nusartlert, Anongnard Nusartlert a.k.a.; Deen, Kamil; Linguistics
ABSTRACTIsan-Thai Diglossia: Intergenerational Transmission as the Key Indicator to Vitality Minority languages in diglossic situations with a majority language face the danger of eventual loss of vitality. The first sign of this is when child language acquisition begins to erode. This dissertation investigates the intergenerational transmission of the Isan language, spoken in the Northeastern region of Thailand. While the Isan community believes that their language is robust and not at risk of extinction, there are potential signs of losing its vitality, including loss of vocabulary in certain domains, lower prestige for the language than Thai, amongst others. This dissertation quantitatively assesses various aspects of intergenerational transmission of both Isan and Thai among children in Northeastern Thailand. The dissertation begins by establishing that Isan and Thai are indeed different languages, and not dialects of the same language, as is commonly thought. Tests of mutual intelligibility test developed by Yang et al. (2019) and O’Grady et al. (2022) are used. The main study of this dissertation employs the Tool for Intergenerational Transmission Assessment (TITA, Deen et al., 2017), a suite of instruments designed to measure various aspects of a child’s linguistic environment and their abilities in different language domains. TITA consists of six instruments in total; however, the first five instruments are used in this study. TITA 1 and TITA 2 consist of parental questionnaires. The former uses the Household Language Questionnaire and assesses the language environment that children find themselves in. The latter used the Child Language Questionnaire which gathers parental responses on which languages their child uses and in what domains and capacities. In TITA 4 and TITA 5, children’s ability to comprehend and produce lexical items is assessed in both Isan and Thai using a picture selection task and a picture naming task. TITA 6 addresses whether children have acquired a key grammatical pattern (the passive) equally well in the two languages. We use a picture selection task and elicited production task to assess this. The ultimate results indicate that Thai surpasses Isan in many aspects, and this reveals clear signs of weakness in Isan. Lexical production lags in Isan compared to Thai, and children struggle with comprehension of passive in Isan (though not Thai) as well as production. We conclude that the language of Isan, far from being strong and entrenched, might be on its way to erosion, and may become weaken for its vitality sign in the coming decades. I hope this research will spur further attention to Isan’s preservation and revitalization.
Facilitating language documentation through incremental development of digital archive infrastructure
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Hooshiar, Kavon; Holton, Gary M.; Linguistics
This dissertation engages in the methodology of language documentation by exploring how technology augments and/or hinders the processes of language documentation, with a specific focus on digital archive infrastructure. It seeks to make incremental improvements to the design of this infrastructure and thus the processes of language documentation. To do so, it asks: how can the design of digital infrastructure for archives be modified to increase archives’ abilities to uphold principles of better practice in language documentation without drastically increasing the demand for resources placed on archives to deploy this infrastructure? To answer this and related questions, I conducted a literature review, and I participated in conducting a series of workshops for users of the Native American Languages (NAL) archive to engage them in discussions and elicit feedback on what they want from digital archive infrastructure. With the information collected from these steps, I developed a design for digital archive infrastructure, in collaboration with NAL staff and IT development personnel at the University of Oklahoma, which incrementally modifies existing designs with the goal of furthering the effectiveness of language archives at preserving language data and providing appropriate access to these data in ways that empower Indigenous language communities. The literature review identified key principles defined by the field for better practices in language documentation, and divided these principles into three categories from the perspective of archives: bringing data into the archive, getting data out of the archive, and cultivating relationships among stakeholders in language documentation and users of the archive. With these categories established, it identified the movement of data out of archives and cultivating relationships as areas of focus in the development of digital archive infrastructure. Finally, it presented recent and ongoing developments of archive infrastructure, and key aspects of modern web application software that can enable future developments. The results from the workshops with NAL archive users confirmed the areas of focus identified in the literature review, in the sense that the interests, desires, and needs expressed by workshop participants mostly fell into these areas, specifically providing access to collections and maintaining relationships between Indigenous communities and the archive. These discussions motivated the inclusion of specific features in the design for digital archive infrastructure, including metadata fields, specific search and browse capabilities, and a system of user roles for moderation of collections and items in order to enable context specific co-curation. Based on the information gathered from the literature review and workshops, a design for digital archive infrastructure was developed that modifies existing designs with the use of features from modern web applications in order to further the archive's ability to implement better practices by enabling different forms of access, co-curation, iterative archiving, and digital return. In summary, this study engaged in the development of the methodology of language documentation by seeking to understand its foundational principles for better practice, and developing a design for digital archive infrastructure that further enables archives to enact these principles.
Kala Phonology in a Typological and Regional Context
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Ransdell-Green, Margaret Neal; Easterday, Shelece; Linguistics
The Kala language is a Western Oceanic (Austronesian) language spoken in Papua New Guinea. This dissertation provides a phonological sketch of all four dialects of Kala, as well as detailed quantitative acoustic phonetic and phonological studies performed on three dynamic processes found in Southern Kala. These include vowel deletion, vowel laxing, and nasality and nasalization of vowels. All of these processes show unusual and unpredicted characteristics that place them in liminal spaces between cross-linguistic categories. Finally, a wider context is provided through a phonological typology survey of 50 nearby languages, illuminating Kala phonology's unique position amongst its relatives and neighbors.
Reciprocity and language work: Considering the role of the outsider linguist
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Surma, Ashleigh; Berez-Kroeker, Andrea; Linguistics
Since the early twentieth century, non-Indigenous linguistic researchers have beenstudying languages spoken by the Indigenous Peoples in North America and participating in linguistic fieldwork within Indigenous communities (e.g., Rosenblum & Berez-Kroeker 2010; Crowley 2007; Floyd 2018). In undertaking these endeavors, many of these “outsider” linguists tended to prioritize the needs and desires of their own research without actively identifying or taking into account those of the local language community. Historically, this linguist-focused framework in North America has led to inequitable and unethical research practices resulting in extractive, exploitative language work that disadvantages Indigenous Peoples (e.g., Davis 2017; Wilson 2008). With these histories in mind, I explore within this dissertation how outsiderlinguists can more ethically design and carry out language work with Indigenous Peoples and languages in Canada. I consider how one of these four Rs – reciprocity – factors into relationships in language work between outsider linguists and Indigenous communities in Canada. Guided by an Indigenist methodology, I conduct interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous language workers to explore how reciprocity is expressed in language work and how outsider linguists can leverage reciprocity to inform ethical practices in language work with Indigenous Peoples. Participants share explicit recommendations to help outsider linguists incorporate and improve upon reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities in language work. Knowledge and perspectives shared by participants also highlight the intimateties between reciprocity and relationships and emphasized that reciprocity in language work can be best understood in how these relationships connect to and express other important values such as respect, responsibility, and relevance. Though this study began by isolating reciprocity from the other four Rs, I reflect on the perspectives shared by participants and conclude with a discussion of how a framework of relational reciprocity better represents how reciprocity can guide relationships between outsiders and Indigenous communities in language work.

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