The perception and encoding of voice cues in consonants have been well studied, whereas there has been relatively little research on aspiration. The current study examined the encoding and perception of aspiration and voicing in Hindi, American English, and Tamil listeners when relevant cues were and were not degraded by noise. This study is novel…

The number of non-western students migrating to western countries for higher education is increasing every year. They suffer from stereotypes and often perceived as non-critical thinkers. However, it is not the lack of critical thinking skills, rather it is the lack of understanding of the different approaches and different styles of practicing…

This research documents the experience of 12 local leaders implementing an oral curriculum over 13 months in Karnataka, India. These leaders were Change Agents interested in influencing a community with new information. They created audio materials referred to as "content" in their group's mother tongue: In a Kannada-Telegu mix for the…

In this dissertation, I investigate specificational copular clauses (Higgins 1973). My aim is to not only propose an analysis for how such specificational copular clauses are derived but also to use such constructions as a testing ground for evaluating and/ or revising different aspects of linguistic theory. The language I primarily use towards…

Reduplication of numerals and pronouns in Kannada is shown to be subject to locality conditions similar to those constraining binding. This dissertation explores an account of distributivity which exploits the similarity to binding, arguing that the source of the distributive reading in Numeral Reduplication is a bound element. [The dissertation…

This thesis examines reflexive pronouns, such as Icelandic "sig" (Cf. Thrainsson 2007), which may be bound from outside of an infinitive clause (which I call MD "medium distance" binding) in addition to being bound locally. I propose that such reflexives are linked to their antecedents via sisterhood followed by movement: the…

This dissertation introduces Minimal Reduplication, a new theory and framework within generative grammar for analyzing reduplication in human language. I argue that reduplication is an emergent property in multiple components of the grammar. In particular, reduplication occurs independently in the phonology and syntax components, and in both cases…

Research on syllable weight in generative phonology has focused almost exclusively on systems in which weight is treated as an ordinal hierarchy of clearly delineated categories (e.g. light and heavy). As I discuss, canonical weight-sensitive phenomena in phonology, including quantitative meter and quantity-sensitive stress, can also treat weight…

The purpose of this study was to examine the perception of vowels by speakers of English and Malayalam, native language of the state of Kerala, India. Three groups of subjects participated in the study, native speakers of English (L1E), native speakers of Malayalam (L1M) and native speakers of Malayalam who learnt English as a second language…

My study explores Adjunct Control in two South Asian languages, Telugu (Dravidian) and Assamese (Indo-Aryan), within the Minimalist Program of syntactic theory. Adjunct Control is a relation of obligatory co-referentiality between two subjects, one in the matrix clause and one in an adjunct/subordinate clause of the same structure. Telugu and…