Alumni

Click here to access alumni dissertations.

Christopher Adam

Year of Graduation: 2015

Dissertation Title: Three-Dimensional Constraints on Human Cognition as Expressed in Human Language

Dissertation advisor: Bill Croft

Benjamin Anible

Year of Graduation: 2016

Dissertation Title: Iconicity effects in translation direction: bimodal bilingual language processing

Dissertation advisor: Jill Morford

Evan Ashworth

Year of Graduation: 2014

Dissertation Title: Language Ideologies and Orthographies: Developing a Writing System for Than Ówîngeh

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Clay Beckner

Year of Graduation: 2013

Dissertation Title: Quantitative determinants of prefabs: A corpus-based, experimental study of multiword units in the lexicon

Dissertation advisor: Jill Morford

Personal Website

Keiko Beers

Year of Graduation: 2020

Dissertation Title: Exploring Language Endangerment and Language Change in Tohono O'odham Exploring Language Endangerment and Language Change in Tohono O'odham

Dissertation advisor: Rosa Vallejos

Josefina Bittar

Year of Graduation: 2021

Dissertation Title: Spanish-origin verbal and grammatical borrowing in Paraguayan Guaraní

Dissertation advisor: Rosa Vallejos

Susan Brumbaugh

Year of Graduation: 2017

Dissertation Title: Anglo and Hispanic Vowel Variation in New Mexican English

Dissertation advisor: Caroline Smith

Paromita Chakraborti

Year of Graduation: 2003

Dissertation Title: Diglossia in Bengali

Melvatha Chee

Year of Graduation: 2017

Dissertation Title: Longitudinal cross-sectional study on the acquisition of Navajo verbs in children aged 4 years through 11 years

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Sarah Grace Dalton

Year of Graduation: 2019

Dissertation Title: Using Electrophysiology to Investigate Changes in Brain Activation in Individuals with Chronic Stroke

Dissertation advisor: Holly Jacobson

Lukas Denk

Year of Graduation: 2023

Dissertation Title: Stable Complexity: Verbal Inflection in Prominent and Frequent Environments

Dissertation advisor: Caroline Smith

Paul De Palma

Year of Graduation: 2010 (PhD., emphasis in computational linguistics)

Dissertation Title: Syllables and Concepts in Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition

Dissertation advisor: Caroline Smith (Linguistics) and George Luger (Computer Science)

Agripino de Souza Silveira Neto

Year of Graduation: 2011

Dissertation Title: Subject Expression in Brazilian Portuguese: Construction and Frequency Effects

Dissertation advisor: Catherine E. Travis

Shelece Easterday

Year of Graduation: 2017

Dissertation Title: Highly complex syllable structure: A typological study of its correlates and diachronic development

Dissertation advisor: Caroline Smith

Paul Edmunds

Year of Graduation: 2009

Dissertation Title: ESL speakers’ production of lexical stress in English: Effects of acoustic correlates on perceived intelligibility and nativeness

Dissertation advisor: Caroline Smith

Hugo Garcia

Year of Graduation: 2016

Dissertation Title: From the Unexpected to the Unbelievable: Thetics, Miratives and Exclamatives in Conceptual Space

Dissertation advisor: Bill Croft

Angus B. Grive-Smith

Year of Graduation: 2009

Dissertation Title: The Spread of Change in French Negation

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Aubrey  Healey

Year of Graduation: 2017

Dissertation Title: Evolution of complex predicates with cuenta  expressing semantic events of cognition in Spanish

Dissertation advisor: Damián Vergara Wilson

Laura  Hirrel

Year of Graduation: 2018

Dissertation Title: Dissertation Title:  Cyclic gestures and multimodal symbolic assemblies: An argument for symbolic complexity in gesture

Dissertation advisor: Sherman Wilcox

Terry  Janzen

Year of Graduation: 1998

Dissertation Title: Topicality in ASL: Information Ordering, Constituent Structure, and the Function of Topic Marking

Dissertation advisor: Joan Bybee

Dagmar Jung

Year of Graduation: 1999

Dissertation Title: The dynamics of polysynthetic morphology

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Pavlina Kalm

Year of Graduation: 2022

Dissertation Title: Social verbs: a force-dynamic analysis 

Dissertation advisor: Rosa Vallejos

Ah Rim  Kim

Year of Graduation: 2015

Dissertation Title: The pragmatics and evolution of the utterance-final particles-ketun and-canha in Modern Spoken Koren

Dissertation advisor: Bill Croft

Daejin  Kim

Year of Graduation: 2024

Dissertation Title: Articulation of the tongue back in American English and Seoul Korean

Dissertation advisor: Caroline Smith

Personal Website

Michele  Kiser

Year of Graduation: 2014

Dissertation Title: Analyzing Navajo Discourse: Form and Function of Intonation Units

Dissertation advisor: Paul Platero

You Min  Lin

Year of Graduation: 2016

Dissertation Title: Chinese DE constructions in secondary predication: Historical and typological per

Dissertation advisor: Bill Croft

Amy  Lindstrom

Year of Graduation: 2017

Dissertation Title: Didn’t see that coming: An analysis of unexpressed subjects in English discourse

Dissertation advisor: Naomi Shin

Aaron W. Marks

Year of Graduation: 2024

Dissertation Title: Topics in Wappo Phonology

Dissertation advisor: Caroline Smith

Elisa  Maroney

Year of Graduation: 2004

Dissertation Title: Aspect in American Sign Language

Dissertation advisor: Phyllis Wilcox

Rebeca  Martinez-Gomez

Year of Graduation: 2018

Dissertation Title: Fresa Style in Mexico: Sociolinguistic Stereotypes and the Variability of Social Meanings

Dissertation advisor: Christian Koops

Alfred Jana  Matiki

Year of Graduation: 2001

Dissertation Title:   Language planning and social change: A study of linguistic exclusion and the legislative process in Malawi      

Dissertation advisor: Garland Bills

John Mitchell Sances

Year of Graduation: 2022

Dissertation Title: Seeing is Believing: The Role of the Visual Stimulus in Cognitive Knowledge of Sound Structure 

Dissertation advisor: Caroline Smith

Ricardo Napoleao de Souza

Year of Graduation: 2019

Dissertation Title: The Interaction of Domain-initial Effects with Lexical Stress: Acoustic Data from English, Spanish, and Portuguese

Dissertation advisor: Caroline Smith

Karen Naughton

Year of Graduation: 2001

Dissertation Title: Linguistic description and analysis of verbs of visual perception in American Sign Language (ASL)

Dawn Nordquist

Year of Graduation: 2006

Dissertation Title: Corpus patterns and elicited language : implications for language storage and processing

Dissertation advisor: Joan Bybee

Corrine  Occhino

Year of Graduation: 2016

Dissertation Title: A Cognitive Approach to Phonology: Evidence from Signed Languages

Dissertation advisor: Sherman Wilcox

David Paez Acevedo

Year of Graduation: 2023

Dissertation Title: Conceptual Meaning in Phonology: Multimodal Iconic Expressions in Discourse Focus

Dissertation advisor: Jill Morford

Michael Regan

Year of Graduation: 2021

Dissertation Title: Causal structure prediction for causal reasoning 

Dissertation advisor: William Croft

Andres  Sabogal

Year of Graduation: 2018

Dissertation Title: Argument Focus Alternatives in Wayuunaiki Clauses

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Daniel  Sanford

Year of Graduation: 2009

Dissertation Title: Figuration and Frequency: a usage-based account of metaphor

Dissertation advisor: Catherine Travis

Personal Website

Joanne Scheibman

Year of Graduation: 2000

Dissertation Title: Structural patterns of subjectivity in American English conversation

Dissertation advisor: Joan Bybee

Christopher  Shank

Year of Graduation: 2007

Dissertation Title: The Relationship Between Metaphorical Language Use and Transitivity: A Cognitive Linguistic Case Study of the English Verbs of Tactile Perception

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Personal Website

Benjamin  Sienicki

Year of Graduation: 2014

Dissertation Title:  “Hey, you guys!”: A diachronic usage-based approach to changes in American English address

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Sara Siyavoshi

Year of Graduation: 2019

Dissertation Title: The Expression of Modality in Iranian Sign Language (ZEI)

Dissertation advisor: Sherman Wilcox

K. Aaron  Smith

Year of Graduation: 2003

Dissertation Title: The Dilemma of the English Progressive: Evaluating its Historical Sources in a Universal Context

Dissertation advisor: Joan Bybee

Natalya P.  Stukova

Year of Graduation: 2011

Dissertation Title: The Role of Formulaic Language in the Construction of Grammar

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Logan  Sutton

Year of Graduation: 2014

Dissertation Title: Kiowa-Tanoan: A Synchronic and Diachronic Study

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Jason  Timm

Year of Graduation: 2016

Dissertation Title: Lexical variation, lexical innovation, and speaker motivations: a historical psycholinguistic approach

Dissertation advisor: Bill Croft

Hien  Tran

Year of Graduation: 2018

Dissertation Title: Conceptual Structures of Vietnamese Emotions

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Simoni Maria  Valadares

Year of Graduation: 2019

Dissertation Title: Palikur Language (Arawak, Amazonian): Sociolinguistics, Grammar Sketch, and the Morphosyntax and Semantics of Spatial Terms

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Victor A.  Valdivia Ruiz

Year of Graduation: 2016

Dissertation Title: Verbs of Speech and Cognition: Structural Patterns in New Mexico Spanish 

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Jackelyn  Van Buren

Year of Graduation: 2017

Dissertation Title: CUASI NOMÁS INGLÉS: Prosody at the Crossroads of Spanish and English in 20th Century New Mexico

Dissertation advisor: Christian Koops

Jens Van Gysel

Year of Graduation: 2024

Dissertation Title: A usage-based account of ongoing structural changes in Sanapaná: Grammar sketch and case studies

Dissertation advisor: Rosa Vallejos-Yopán

Personal Website

Erin  Wilkinson

Year of Graduation: 2009

Dissertation Title: Typology of signed languages: Differentiation through kinship terminology

Dissertation advisor: Bill Croft

Personal Website

Jay S.  Williams

Year of Graduation: 2009

Dissertation Title: An Intermediate Grammar of Navajo: A Guide for Bilingual Educators

Dissertation advisor: Melissa Axelrod

Joan Esse  Wilson

Year of Graduation: 2020

Dissertation Title: Treatment Intervention for Social Functioning and Social Cognition in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Utilizing Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) at the Right Temporoparietal Junction (rTPJ)

Dissertation advisor: Sherman Wilcox

Kazuyuki Yamaguchi

Year of Graduation: 2004

Dissertation Title: A typological, historical, and functional study of adpositions in the languages of the world

Tim Zingler

Year of Graduation: 2020

Dissertation Title: Wordhood issues: Typology and grammaticalization

Dissertation advisor: Bill Croft & Caroline Smith