http://hdl.handle.net/10027/8347 Fri, 24 May 2013 15:20:47 GMT 2013-05-24T15:20:47Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9763 La Tramoyera: A New Role for Women in the Golden Age Comedia de Capa y Espada This thesis offers a new classification for the female protagonists of the capa y espada plays in early modern Spain. The term tramoyeras, the 17th century vernacular epithet for scheming women, depicts a new distinction for these intelligent and cunning characters of agency and sets them apart from the similar yet different categories of female figures in the nueva comedia. The tramoyeras are women who take up subject positions in order to become agents of their own desire. This study presents a revisionist approach to the highly popular, comedic genre that challenged the success of tragedies and tragicomedies in seventeenth-century Spain. This thesis analyzes female agency through the lens of masquerade, transvestism, sex, language, voice, and property. The images of female insubordination displayed in the action, the dramatic discourse, and the opportunistic weddings emphasize possibilities and ruptures in the gender and social discourses of the dominant culture. Closure as meaning is produced not only by structural closing but by all the factors of representation and response implicated in the interactive process of dramatic production. The aim of this dissertation is to reaffirm women’s position as subject in literature and history. Thu, 21 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9763 2013-02-21T06:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9552 Presentational Focus in Heritage and Monolingual Spanish In Spanish, it is most commonly claimed that constituents in narrow presentational focus appear rightmost, where they also get main stress (1a), while stress in situ (1b) is infelicitous. (1) [Context: Who bought a car?] a. Compró un carro mi [MAMÁ]. bought a car my mom b. Mi [MAMÁ] compró un carro. However, some recent evidence challenges this view, claiming that stress in situ (1b) is a possible strategy for marking focus in Spanish. This dissertation contributes new experimental evidence to this debate. Additionally, because focus involves the complex interplay of prosody, syntax, and discourse context, it is especially of interest when considering bilingual individuals. The grammars of heritage speakers of Spanish (that is, U.S.-born English-dominant bilinguals) are significantly different in a number of ways from those of Spanish monolinguals. One way they have been shown to differ is in phenomena regulated by the interfaces of syntax with other linguistic systems, i.e., precisely phenomena like presentational focus. We might thus expect that monolinguals and bilinguals would realize focus differently, as with other interface phenomena, and this dissertation brings experimental evidence to bear on this question as well. This dissertation thus has the dual motivation of investigating both presentational focus in Spanish and heritage grammars. It proposes an analysis of focus in Spanish in terms of conflicting constraints on well-formedness, using Optimality Theory, and then tests this analysis experimentally. The experiment consists of a contextualized aural acceptability judgment task, in which both monolinguals and heritage speakers listened to sentences in context and judged their discourse appropriateness. The main findings of the experiment were (i) both heritage speakers and monolinguals use stress shift (1b) to realize presentational focus, and (ii) monolinguals and heritage speakers did not differ from one another. The first finding runs contra the consensus in the literature and thus contributes to the growing challenge to this view, indicating that some common approaches to focus in Spanish may need to be rethought. The second finding was also counter expectations, and thus contributes evidence toward a more fine-grained understanding of heritage grammars with regard to interface phenomena. The results of this study are relevant to future studies of focus and other information-structural phenomena, as well as to future studies of heritage grammars and language contact, and it contributes new experimental data to both fields. Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9552 2012-12-13T06:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/8679 Second Language Processing Shows Increased Native- Like Neural Responses after Months of No Exposure Morgan-Short, Kara; Finger, Ingrid; Grey, Sarah; Ullman, Michael T. Although learning a second language (L2) as an adult is notoriously difficult, research has shown that adults can indeed attain native language-like brain processing and high proficiency levels. However, it is important to then retain what has been attained, even in the absence of continued exposure to the L2-particularly since periods of minimal or no L2 exposure are common. This event-related potential (ERP) study of an artificial language tested performance and neural processing following a substantial period of no exposure. Adults learned to speak and comprehend the artificial language to high proficiency with either explicit, classroom-like, or implicit, immersion-like training, and then underwent several months of no exposure to the language. Surprisingly, proficiency did not decrease during this delay. Instead, it remained unchanged, and there was an increase in native-like neural processing of syntax, as evidenced by several ERP changes-including earlier, more reliable, and more left-lateralized anterior negativities, and more robust P600s, in response to word-order violations. Moreover, both the explicitly and implicitly trained groups showed increased native-like ERP patterns over the delay, indicating that such changes can hold independently of L2 training type. The results demonstrate that substantial periods with no L2 exposure are not necessarily detrimental. Rather, benefits may ensue from such periods of time even when there is no L2 exposure. Interestingly, both before and after the delay the implicitly trained group showed more native-like processing than the explicitly trained group, indicating that type of training also affects the attainment of native-like processing in the brain. Overall, the findings may be largely explained by a combination of forgetting and consolidation in declarative and procedural memory, on which L2 grammar learning appears to depend. The study has a range of implications, and suggests a research program with potentially important consequences for second language acquisition and related fields. © 2012 Morgan-Short et al. The original version is available through PLoS One at DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0032974 Wed, 28 Mar 2012 05:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/8679 2012-03-28T05:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/8591 Growing up and apart: Gender divergences in a Chicagoland elementary school Cameron, Richard A characteristic of children’s social orders is gender segregation. When children can choose, girls play more with girls and boys with boys. This begins around age three and peaks in later childhood. If children separate into same-gender groups, their interactions across the gender line will not be as frequent as those with members of the same sex. Following on Bloomfield’s assertion (1933:46) that “density of communication” results in the “most important differences of speech” within a community, I predict that differences will increasingly emerge between girls and boys. I test this using two sociolinguistic variables, (dh) and (ing), in the English spoken by children in an elementary school. The prediction is supported. Results contribute to research into language socialization and the acquisition of gendered linguistic expression. © 2010 by Cambridge University Press, Language Variation and Change DOI: 10.1017/S0954394510000074 Fri, 01 Jan 2010 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/8591 2010-01-01T06:00:00Z