Browsing by Author "Payne, Amanda"

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13
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    1-D TV: A Computational Investigation into the Lexical Representation of Black Womanhood In Reality Television News
    (2021) Habtu, Blien; Grissom, Alvin; Payne, Amanda
    It is well-established that when categorizing lexical associations of words in news corpora, women and minorities tend to be associated with negative terms (Manziniet al. 2019). This harm is also carried through other forms of media. For instance, Black women on television have been historically depicted as one dimensional characters, often forced into categories of strict binaries. Commonly, they are either extremely educated or they dropped out of school, either they are ambitious or they have lost all enthusiasm, either they are completely desexualized or they are hypersexualized, either they are always compliant or they are always aggressive (Boylorn 2008). While these depictions are known to cause harm, racism and sexism are not necessarily so overt, and more work is needed to quantify the effects and spread of stereotypes relating to intersections of identities. Through this thesis, I use the context of reality television to examine how racial representations in media can influence people's perceptions of Black womanhood. I begin with background information on some of the effects of media consumption and with a high-level computational overview of how words can be represented as vectors to quantify prejudicial bias in text representations. Then I conduct a literature review exploring some of the ways previous researchers (Parthasarthi et al. 2019; Garg et al. 2018) have measured bias in digital media both through text and over time. To conclude, I propose an experiment to examine the ways in which Black female reality television contestants are talked about in news article headlines using the Word2Vec algorithm and vector representation tools.
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    1-D TV: A Computational Investigation into the Lexical Representation of Black Womanhood In Reality Television News
    (2021) Habtu, Blien; Payne, Amanda; Grissom, Alvin
    It is well-established that when categorizing lexical associations of words in news corpora, women and minorities tend to be associated with negative terms (Manziniet al. 2019). This harm is also carried through other forms of media. For instance, Black women on television have been historically depicted as one dimensional characters, often forced into categories of strict binaries. Commonly, they are either extremely educated or they dropped out of school, either they are ambitious or they have lost all enthusiasm, either they are completely desexualized or they are hypersexualized, either they are always compliant or they are always aggressive (Boylorn 2008). While these depictions are known to cause harm, racism and sexism are not necessarily so overt, and more work is needed to quantify the effects and spread of stereotypes relating to intersections of identities. Through this thesis, I use the context of reality television to examine how racial representations in media can influence people’s perceptions of Black womanhood. I begin with background information on some of the effects of media consumption and with a high-level computational overview of how words can be represented as vectors to quantify prejudicial bias in text representations. Afterwards, I conduct a literature review exploring some of the ways previous researchers (Parthasarthi et al. 2019; Garget al. 2018) have measured bias in digital media both through text and over time. Then in order to understand more about the complexities of this task, I explore away in which word embeddings can be generated by using the Word2vec algorithm (Mikolov et al. 2013a) and visualized through vector representation tools. I conclude by addressing the challenges of my experiment and suggesting future improvements to this project.
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    Constraints on Obviation in Ktunaxa
    (2020) Freemond, Ally; Payne, Amanda
    In Algonquian languages, when a transitive sentence contains only third-person arguments, one of the arguments is marked as obviative. Factors such as animacy and possession govern the assignment of an argument as obviative. In this paper, I follow the framework of Aissen (1997) and use Optimality Theory to apply constraints on obviation to the language Ktunaxa. Ktunaxa is not an Algonquian language, yet obviation is morphologically marked and is not applied after the fact, unlike in Aissen’s application of the constraints to the languages Tzotzil and Chamorro. These constraint rankings from Algonquian hierarchies adhere to Ktunaxa with little modification needed.
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    The Documentation and Development of a Spelling System for San Bartolomé Quialana Zapotec
    (2020) Mauro, Graham; Payne, Amanda; Lillehaugen, Brook
    This thesis documents the spelling system created by Aurora Sánchez Gómez for Zapotec (Otomanguean) as spoken in San Bartolomé Quialana, Oaxaca. Beyond documentation, areas of over and underrepresentation of the underlying phonology are identified, and possible solutions are recommended. To my knowledge, there is currently no phonological analysis of the phonology of Quialana Zapotec. Thus, the phonological analysis of the neighboring town of San Lucas Quiaviní is used (Munro 2004). Data is drawn from the Quialana (Lillehaugen 2019b) and Quiaviní Talking Dictionaries (Lillehaugen et al. 2019a). A background and description of the Talking Dictionary project is provided.
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    Modeling Comparatives in English Based On a Pragmatic Handling of the Sorites Paradox
    (2021) White, Shaoni C.; Payne, Amanda
    Vagueness is an essential feature of natural language. Some scholars argue that vague predicates such as bald, at, and tall are necessary because humans are faced every day with situations where their ability to discriminate one thing from another is too limited to draw sharp boundaries (van Rooij 2011a). Others hold that without vagueness, the processing costs of natural language are too high; it might be harder to decide which non-vague term (e.g. exactly six feet tall ) to use rather than to resort to a vague one (van Rooij 2011a). Game theorists such as Myerson (1991) and de Jaegher (2003) argue that vague or \noisy" utterances communicate more than non-vague utterances in instances where the preferences of the speaker and the listener are not completely aligned or where the speaker is unsure of the listener's preferences. Still others suspect that vagueness is important because it helps with value judgments. (An example used by van Rooij (2011a) is that someone who already knows that \Quiza" is four feet tall might learn something new and relevant upon hearing that \Quiza" is \tall for a Martian.")
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    A Qualitative and Quantitative Study: A Look at the Production of Emotive Words and Questions by Children with ASD vs. TD Children
    (2020) Capps, Anya; Payne, Amanda
    This thesis investigates the language development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) versus that of typically developing (TD) children. This topic has been explored from various angles across various fields, but still many uncertainties remain in regard to the apparent language impairment in children with ASD. To home in on one area of language development, this thesis explores the production of emotive words and wh- and yes/no questions in children with ASD and TD children. I first provide a literature review of the general language acquisition process in TD children, the social development of children with ASD, and the ability of children with ASD to understand and correctly interpret communicative intents. To investigate their ability compared to TD children’s ability to produce such utterances, I collected data from the CHILDES and ASD TalkBank databases. A straight count of the emotive words and a count and analysis of the questions revealed a disparity in the language abilities of these two groups of children. While the emotive words data was not completely conclusive, the data from the wh- and yes/no questions suggested an impairment in the language abilities of children with an ASD diagnosis. This is likely due to differences in their semantic and pragmatic systems, in addition to their social behaviors and skills.
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    The Syntax of Aspect in Russian: A Proposed New Analysis
    (2020) Eiler, Marit; Payne, Amanda
    In this thesis, I show that there is an alternative method of syntactic analysis for aspect in Russian, where aspect is analysed as a null aspectual head that selects for a verb with a matching aspectual feature. First, I examine the structure of Russian verbs and how various types of verbs are broken down not only morphologically, but overall in relation to aspect. Then, I consider several pieces of literature from the field of Russian linguistics and related subjects, and evaluate not only the content of the writings, but also the effectiveness of the arguments made therein. In what follows, I discuss the methodology surrounding how I chose the data I am working with in this thesis. I then begin to discuss individual data sentences in the context of the analysis I have conceived. Finally, I discuss the limitations of my work and avenues for further research consideration, culminating in a conclusion of the work presented here and the implications thereof.
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    The Documentation and Development of a Spelling System for San Bartolomé Quialana Zapotec
    (2020) Mauro, Graham; Payne, Amanda; Lillehaugen, Brook Danielle, 1976-
    This thesis documents the spelling system created by Aurora Sánchez Gómez for Zapotec (Otomanguean) as spoken in San Bartolomé Quialana, Oaxaca. Beyond documentation, areas of over and underrepresentation of the underlying phonology are identified, and possible solutions are recommended. To my knowledge, there is currently no phonological analysis of the phonology of Quialana Zapotec. Thus, the phonological analysis of the neighboring town of San Lucas Quiaviní is used (Munro 2004). Data is drawn from the Quialana (Lillehaugen 2019b) and Quiaviní Talking Dictionaries (Lillehaugen et al. 2019a). A background and description of the Talking Dictionary project is provided.
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    Underinformative Implicature Derivation on the Broader Autism Phenotype
    (2020) Fennell, Rylee A.; Payne, Amanda
    Underinformative implicatures (UIs) are a type of inference that can give rise to two potential meanings. UIs can be either literal, which do not require the use of social inferences, or pragmatic, which necessitate social inferences. Given that individuals with autistic traits have marked deficits in communicative and social skills, there is reason to believe that these individuals approach deriving UIs differently than typically developing (TD) individuals. The current study is an attempt to replicate van Tiel and Kissine's (2018) online assessment of how individuals on the broader autism phenotype (BAPs) derive these inferences. The present study utilizes a previously untested technique to assess UI derivation; it employs a graded scale for participants to rate the appropriateness of stimuli rather than a binary response option as all prior research had done (Pijnacker, Hagoort, Buitelaar, Teunisse, & Geurts, 2009; Chevallier, Wilson, Happé, & Noveck, 2010; Su & Su, 2015; Van Tiel & Kissine, 2018). The current study found significant differences between how all BAPs and typically developing (TD) participants respond, but not between how low scoring individuals on the BAP (Low BAPs) compared to high scoring individuals on the BAP (High BAPs) based on autism spectrum quotient scores. The present study found nearly the exact opposite of what van Tiel and Kissine (2018) found in their study. Instead of only High BAPs responding more literally on distributivity implicatures, all BAPs responded more pragmatically on all implicature types except for distributivity. In addition, these results showed evidence of cognitive inflexibility via the tendency to answer using the ends of the scale on lexicalizable implicature types. The current study concludes that there are indeed significant differences in how BAPs respond to UIs in comparison to TDs. It is possible that such differences were revealed through the employment of a graded rating scale. These results are highly relevant to making educational spaces more linguistically inclusive for neurodiverse populations.
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    Underinformative Implicature Derivation on the Broader Autism Phenotype
    (2020) Fennell, Rylee A.; Payne, Amanda
    Underinformative implicatures (UIs) are a type of inference that can give rise to two potential meanings. UIs can be either literal, which do not require the use of social inferences, or pragmatic, which necessitate social inferences. Given that individuals with autistic traits have marked deficits in communicative and social skills, there is reason to believe that these individuals approach deriving UIs differently than typically developing (TD) individuals. The current study is an attempt to replicate van Tiel and Kissine’s (2018) online assessment of how individuals on the broader autism phenotype (BAPs) derive these inferences. The present study utilizes a previously untested technique to assess UI derivation; it employs a graded scale for participants to rate the appropriateness of stimuli rather than a binary response option as all prior research had done (Pijnacker, Hagoort, Buitelaar, Teunisse, & Geurts, 2009; Chevallier, Wilson, Happé, & Noveck, 2010; Su & Su, 2015; Van Tiel & Kissine, 2018). The current study found significant differences between how all BAPs and typically developing (TD) participants respond, but not between how low scoring individuals on the BAP (Low BAPs) compared to high scoring individuals on the BAP (High BAPs) based on autism spectrum quotient scores. The present study found nearly the exact opposite of what van Tiel and Kissine (2018) found in their study. Instead of only High BAPs responding more literally on distributivity implicatures, all BAPs responded more pragmatically on all implicature types except for distributivity. In addition, these results showed evidence of cognitive inflexibility via the tendency to answer using the ends of the scale on lexicalizable implicature types. The current study concludes that there are indeed significant differences in how BAPs respond to UIs in comparison to TDs. It is possible that such differences were revealed through the employment of a graded rating scale. These results are highly relevant to making educational spaces more linguistically inclusive for neurodiverse populations.
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    Where does it mean? Case-Studies on the Epistemology of the Semantic-Pragmatic Divide
    (2022) Carvalho, João Pedro; Payne, Amanda
    Throughout most of the 20th century, Semantics and Pragmatics were understood to be related, but distinct fields of study. By the turn of the century, a substantial number of scholars put into question a strict division of the fields, arguing that context-dependency is fundamental for any theory of meaning in natural language. These scholars are called contextualists, and they stand in contrast to the minimalists that advocate for a strict division between Semantics and Pragmatics, affirming that most sentences in natural language can be assigned a meaning that is not context-dependent. In this thesis, I contextualize the debate, exploring common arguments in support of and against each theoretical framework, and defending contextualism. I also explore phenomena in Brazilian Portuguese that enlighten the ways in which pursuing a contextualist view of Semantics does not infringe on one’s ability to engage in practical analysis and modeling of meaning in natural language. Finally, I explore how psycholinguistic research can provide insights into how meaning in language is actually processed by speakers.
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    Where does it mean? Case-Studies on the Epistemology of the Semantic-Pragmatic Divide
    (2022) Carvalho, João Pedro; Payne, Amanda
    Throughout most of the 20th century, Semantics and Pragmatics were understood to be related, but distinct fields of study. By the turn of the century, a substantial number of scholars put into question a strict division of the fields, arguing that context-dependency is fundamental for any theory of meaning in natural language. These scholars are called contextualists, and they stand in contrast to the minimalists that advocate for a strict division between Semantics and Pragmatics, affirming that most sentences in natural language can be assigned a meaning that is not context-dependent. In this thesis, I contextualize the debate, exploring common arguments in support of and against each theoretical framework, and defending contextualism. I also explore phenomena in Brazilian Portuguese that enlighten the ways in which pursuing a contextualist view of Semantics does not infringe on one's ability to engage in practical analysis and modeling of meaning in natural language. Finally, I explore how psycholinguistic research can provide insights into how meaning in language is actually processed by speakers.
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    “Wild Eyed Socialist”: The Use of Rhetorical Tools in Republican Speeches
    (2023) Chalfoun, Emrys; Payne, Amanda
    It is impossible to escape entirely from politics, so it is important to understand the tactics used by politicians. In this thesis I explore political rhetoric surrounding the use of the term socialism in thirteen speeches by Republican politicians in an attempt to understand the ways in which it is used to persuade audiences. The term socialism has recently been used by these politicians to describe the Democratic party, its candidates, and its policies, and yet many don’t actually understand the term. This suggests that something else is at play in the use of socialism by Republicans. Through an analysis of the rhetorical tools used by Republicans in political speeches, I see how repetition, warlike speech, and the delineation of us and them are used in association with socialism as means of persuasion.