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Theses/Dissertations

Since 1999, most theses and dissertations submitted by graduate students at the university are published online in the UGA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Database (ETD). This page is a list of recent theses and dissertations produced by graduates of the University of Georgia M.A. and Ph.D. programs in Linguistics, with a link to the UGA ETD page for the pdf file.

2024

Dissertations

Advisor: John T. Hale

Theses

Michael Alexander Wolfman. M.A., 2024
Advisor: John T. Hale
 
Elizabeth Marie McNeely. M.A., 2024
Advisor: Dustin Chacon
 
Sara Epps. M.A., 2024
Advisor: Ruth Harman
 
Caroline Schneider. M.A., 2024
Advisor: Margaret Renwick

2023

Dissertations

Andreea Sandu Karas. Ph.D., 2023.
Advisor: Diana L. Ranson
 
Julia Steele Josephs. Ph.D., 2023.
Variable Que in Three Francophone Regions
Advisor: Diana L. Ranson

Trevor Ramsey. Ph.D., 2023.
Phonetic Trend in the Speech of Transgender Speakers of English and German
Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Theses

Savannah Jane Williams. M.A., 2023
Advisor: Margaret Renwick
 
Jacob Emerson. M.A., 2023. 
Emojis: Perceptions by Online Communities
Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Julia Horton. M.A., 2023.
So What Does It Do?: the Multifunctionality of Discourse Marker so in Two Television Sitcoms
Advisor: Sarah E. Blackwell

Michael Gray. M.A., 2023.
Emojis and the Expression of Queer Identity: A Sentiment Analysis Approach
Advisor: Chad Howe

Dissertations

Andrew Robert Bray. Ph.D., 2022.
A Hockey-Based Persona: The Sociolinguistic Impact of Canadian English on American-Born Players
Advisor: Chad Howe

Kit Callaway. Ph.D., 2022.
From Ey to Ze: Gender-neutral Pronouns as Pronominal Change
Advisor: Chad Howe

Wonbin Kim. Ph.D., 2022.
Distributional Corpus Analysis of Korean Neologisms using Artificial Intelligence
Advisor: William A. Kretzschmar 

Katherine Ireland Kuiper. Ph.D., 2022.
Patterns of Health: A Corpus Analysis of Health Information and Messaging
Advisor: William A. Kretzschmar

Rachel Miller Olsen. Ph.D., 2022.
IT’S ALL IN HOW YOU SAY IT: PROSODIC CUES TO SOCIAL IDENTITY AND EMOTION
Advisor: Margaret E. L. Renwick

Shannon Penton Rodriguez. Ph.D., 2022.
Constructing, Performing, and Indexing “Southern” Latino Identities: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Intersection of Ethnicity and Place in the Speech of Young Adult Latinos in Georgia
Advisor: Chad Howe

Theses

Rachel A. Ankirskiy. M.A., 2022.
VARIATION IN JAPANESE NOMINAL PARTICLE OMISSION: TOWARDS A CORPUS-BASED SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS
Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Joseph Finnegan Beckwith. M.A., 2022.
THE DECLINE OF THE SIMPLE PAST: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SIMPLE AND COMPOUND PAST FORMS IN ROMANCE AND GERMANIC LANGUAGES
Advisor: Jared Klein

2021

Dissertations

Lisa Lipani. Ph.D., 2021.
Subphonemic Variation in English Stops: Studies using automated methods and large-scale data
Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Michael Olsen. Ph.D., 2021.
CULTURAL KEYWORDS IN AMERICAN EDITORIAL DISCOURSE
Advisor: William A. Kretzschmar

Theses

Bailey Bigott. M.A., 2021.
Mock Infantile Speech: A Sociolinguistics Perspective
Advisor: Jon Forrest

Kora Layce Burton. M.A., 2021.
Lexical and Thematic "Peculiar Mood" Development of Faërie Language in the Germanic Cauldron of Story
Advisor: Jared Klein

Mary Caroline Clabby. M.A., 2021.
Comme Y’all Voulez: Translanguaging Practices in Digitally Mediated Communication
Advisor: Linda Harklau

Jordan Grace Graham. M.A., 2021.
#WHOSE LIVES MATTER: A MIXED MEDIA ANALYSIS OF THE #BLACKLIVESMATTER AND #BLUELIVESMATTER ON TWITTER DURING THE SUMMER OF 2020
Advisor: John Hale

2020

Dissertations

Lindsey Antonini. Ph.D., 2020.
The Copula in Malayalam
Advisor: Pilar Chamorro

Joey Stanley. Ph.D., 2020.
Vowel Dynamics of the Elsewhere Shift: A Sociophonetic Analysis of English in Cowlitz County, Washington
Advisor: Lewis Chadwick Howe

Longlong Wang. Ph.D.., 2020.
The Past Tenses in Colloquial Singapore English
Advisor: Pilar Chamorro

2019

Dissertations

Douglas C. Merchant. Ph.D., 2019.
Idioms at the interface(s): towards a psycholinguistically grounded model of sentence generation
Advisor: Timothy Gupton

Theses

Aidan Oliver Cheney-Lynch. M.A., 2019.
Studies in feminine derivation in Vedic
Advisor: Jared Klein

Conni Diane Covington. M.A., 2019.
Frequency and the German(ic) verb: a historical sociolinguistic study of class VII
Advisor: Joshua Bousquette

William James Lackey III. M.A., 2019.
Denasalization in early austronesian
Advisor: Jared Klein

Kelly Wade Petronis. M.A., 2019.
Finding the game: a conversation analysis of laughables and play frames in comedic improv
Advisor: Ruth Harman

2018

Dissertations

Mohammad Fahad Aljutaily. Ph.D. 2018.
The influence of linguistic and non-linguistic factors on the variation of Arabic marked consonants in the speech of Gulf Pidgin Arabic : acoustic analysis
Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Sofia Alexandrovna Ivanova. Ph.D. 2018.
Cue weighting in the acquisition of four American English vowel contrasts by native speakers of Russian
Co-Advisors: Victoria Hasko and Keith Langston

Elisabeth Wood Anderson Lacross. Ph.D. 2018.
Variation in future temporal reference in southern France
Advisor: Diana Ranson

Sandra McGury. Ph.D. 2018.
Passives are tough to analyze
Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Amanda Nicole Walls. Ph.D. 2018.
Israel's Pagan Passover
Advisor: Richard Friedman

Theses

Alexander Ankirskiy. M.A. 2018.
Investigating the potential for merger of Icelandic 'flámæli' vowel pairs through functional load
Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Ryan Michael Dekker. M.A. 2018.
Income effects on speech community: : Oconee County within northeastern Georgia
Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Nicole Elizabeth Dreier. M.A. 2018.
Gender in Proto-Indo-European and the feminine morphemes
Advisor: Jared Klein

Melissa Ann Gomes. M.A. 2018.
A Holistic Analysis of Get Constructions
Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Jason D Hagler. M.A. 2018.
Call of qatullu: towards an understanding of the semantic role of terminal root consonant reduplication in the Semitic languages
Advisor: Baruch Halpern

2017

Theses

Joshua Robert Hummel. M.A. 2017.
Conflict's connotation: a study of protest and riot in contemporary news media
Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Madeline Asher Jones. M.A. 2017.
The impact of EFL teacher motivational strategies on student motivation to learn english in Costa Rica
Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Mariah Lillian Copeland Parker. M.A. 2017.
Flippin' the script, joustin' from the mouth: a systemic functional linguistic approach to hip hop discourse
Advisor: Ruth Harman

Christa August Rampley. M.A. 2017.
Ratchet: an etymological origin & social dispersion theory
Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Joseph Thomas Rhyne. M.A. 2017.
Quantifying the comparative method: applying computational approaches to the Balto-Slavic question
Advisor: Jared Klein

2016

Dissertations

Wei Chen. Ph.D. 2016.
The impact of environmental factors on the production of english narratives by Spanish-English bilingual children
Advisor: Liang Chen

Richard Moses Katz Jr. Ph.D. 2016.
The resultative in Gothic
Advisor: Jared Klein

Martin Jakub Macak. Ph.D. 2016.
Studies in classical and modern Armenian phonology 
Advisor: Jared Klein

Judith Allen Oliver. Ph.D. 2016.
When fingerspelling throws a curveball
Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Andrew Michael Paczkowski. Ph.D. 2016.
Toward a new method for analyzing syntax in poetry: discriminating grammatical patterns in the Rigveda
Advisor: Jared Klein

Jennimaria Kristiina Palomaki. Ph.D. 2016.
The pragmatics and syntax of the Finnish -han particle clitic
Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Theses

Calvin Ferst. M.A. 2016.
Walhalla: language shift in the garden of the gods
Advisor: Joshua Bousquette

Maisy Elizabeth French. M.A. 2016.
When orthography and phonology collide: an examination of the effect of orthography on the phonetic production of homophones
Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Karen Elizabeth Sesterhenn. M.A. 2016.
An overview of the phenomenon of doublets in English
Advisor: Jared Klein

2015

Dissertations

Steven Slone Coats. Ph.D. 2015.
Finland Twitter English: lexical, grammatical, and geographical properties
Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Xiangyu Jiang. Ph.D. 2015.
Ultimate attainment in the production of narratives by Chinese-English bilinguals
Advisor: Liang Chen

Rachel Virginia Nabulsi. Ph.D. 2015.
Burial practices, funerary texts, and the treatment of death in Iron Age Israel and Aram
Advisor: Richard Friedman

Tomoe Nishio. Ph.D. 2015.
Negotiating contradictions in a Japanese-American telecollaboration: an activity theory analysis of online intercultural exchange
Advisor: Linda Harklau

Xiaodong Zhang. Ph.D. 2015.
A discourse approach to teachers? beliefs and textbook use: a case study of a Chinese college EFL classroom
Advisor: Ruth Harman

Theses

Michael Reid Ariail. M.A. 2015.
Language and dialectal variation in request structures: an analysis of Costa Rican Spanish and southern American English
Advisor: Sarah Blackwell

Eleanor Detreville. M.A. 2015.
An overview of Latin morphological calques on Greek technical terms: formation and success
Advisor: Jared Klein

Luke Madison Smith. M.A. 2015.
External possession and the undisentanglability of syntax and semantics
Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

2014

Dissertations

Scott Lee. Ph.D. 2014.
The phonetics of intonation in learner varieties of French
Advisor: Keith Langston

Theses

Laura Brewer. M.A. 2014.
Cognitive connections between linguistic and musical syntax: an optimality theoretic approach
Advisor: Keith Langston

Courtney Ann Macer. M.A. 2014.
Relearning heritage language phonology
Advisor: Margaret Renwick

Tiffany Strickland. M.A. 2014.
Eat their words: a corpus-based analysis of grocery store discourse
Advisor: Jonathan Evans

Julia Catherine Patterson Sturm. M.A. 2014.
Idiomatization of preverb + verb compounds in the ?g Veda
Advisor: Jared Klein

2013

Dissertations

Kenneth Jeffrey Knight. Ph.D. 2013.
L1 English vocalic transfer in L2 Japanese
Advisor: Don McCreary

Heather Lee Mello. Ph.D. 2013.
Analysis of language variation and word segmentation for a corpus of Vietnamese blogs: a sociolinguistic approach
Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Hugo Enrique Mendez. Ph.D. 2013.
Canticles in translation: the treatment of poetic language in the Greek, Gothic, Classical Armenian, and Old Church Slavonic gospels
Advisor: Jared Klein

Theses

Nicole Elizabeth Siffrinn. M.A. 2013.
Using appraisal analysis to map value systems in high-stakes writing rubrics
Advisor: Ruth Harman

2012

Dissertations

Mark Raymund Wenthe. Ph.D. 2012.
Issues in the placement of enclitic personal pronouns in the Rigveda
Advisor: Jared Klein

Theses

Ellen Marie Ayres. M.A. 2012.
Influences on gender agreement in adjectives among adult learners of Spanish
Advisor: Don McCreary

Marcus Paul Berger. M.A. 2012.
Parallel hierarchies: a minimalist analysis of nominals and gerunds
Advisor: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld

Kelly Patricia Dugan. M.A. 2012.
A generative approach to homeric enjambment: benefits and drawbacks
Advisor: Jared Klein

Kristen Marie Fredriksen. M.A. 2012.
Constraints on perfect auxiliary contraction: evidence from spoken American English
Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Anastasia Nikolaevna Sorokina. M.A. 2012.
The dynamics of bilingual mental lexcon: the effects of partical conceptual equivalence on acquisition of Russian as an L2
Advisor: Victoria Hasko

Allison Rebecca Wachter. M.A. 2012.
Semantic prosody and intensifier variation in academic speech
Advisor: Lewis (Chad) Howe

Sam Zukoff. M.A. 2012.
The phonology of verbal reduplication in Ancient Greek: an Optimality Theory approach
Advisor: Jared Klein

2011

Dissertations

Radia Benzehra. Ph.D. 2011.
Arabic-English/ English-Arabic lexicography: a critical perspective
Advisor: Don McCreary

Satomi Suzuki Chenoweth. Ph.D. 2011.
Novice language learners? Off-screen verbal and nonverbal behaviors during university synchronous Japanese virtual education
Advisors: Kathryn Roulston & Linda Harklau

Willie Udo Willie. Ph.D. 2011.
Lexical aspect and lexical saliency in acquisition of past tense-aspect morphology among Ibibio ESL learners
Advisor: Lioba Moshi

Theses

Renee Lorraine Kemp. M.A. 2011.
The perception of German dorsal fricatives by native speakers of English
Advisor: Keith Langston

Erin Beltran Mitchelson. M.A. 2011.
Implicature use in L2
Advisor: Don McCreary

Justin Victor Sperlein. M.A. 2011.
A Phonetic Summarizer for Sociolinguists: concordancing by phonetic criteria
Advisor: William Kretzschmar

2010

Dissertations

Garrison E. Bickerstaff Jr. Ph.D. 2010.
Construction and application of Bounded Virtual Corpora of British and American English
Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Paulina Bounds. Ph.D. 2010.
Perception versus production of Polish speech: Pozna?
Advisor: William Kretzschmar

Alberto Centeno-Pulido. Ph.D. 2010.
Reconciling generativist and functionalist approaches on adjectival position in Spanish
Advisor: Sarah Blackwell

Janay Crabtree. Ph.D. 2010.
Roads and paths in adaptation to non-native speech and implications for second language acquisition
Advisor: Don McCreary

Jeff Kilpatrick. Ph.D. 2010.
The development of Latin post-tonic /Cr/ clusters in select Northern Italian dialects
Advisor: Jared Klein

Joseph Allen Pennington. Ph.D. 2010.
A study of purpose, result, and casual hypotaxis in early Indo-European gospel versions
Advisor: Jared Klein

Theses

Aram Cho. M.A. 2010.
Influence of L1 on L2 learners of Korean: a perception test on Korean vowels and stop consonants
Advisor: Don McCreary

Frances Rankin Gray. M.A. 2010.
It's like 120 milliseconds: a search for grammaticalization in the duration of like in five functions
Advisor: Don McCreary

Magdalene Sophia Jacobs. M.A. 2010.
The decline of the French passe simple: a variationist analysis of the passÉ simple and passe compose in selected texts from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries
Advisor: Diana Ranson

Nathan Loggins. M.A. 2010.
Mandarin loanword phonology: a case study of three English mid vowels
Advisor: Keith Langston

Caley Charles Smith. M.A. 2010.
The development of final [asterisk]/-as/ in Pre-Vedic
Advisor: Jared Klein

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