​Modism revived
Applied to Hebrew grammar
In the Renaissance
​
Dror Ben-Arie
Bar-Ilan University

​Dissertation title: The Linguistic Theory of Abraham de Balmes According to His Grammatical Treatise “Miqneh Abram” (Peculium Abrae)
Abraham de Balmes composed in Padua (1523) a Hebrew grammar showing many unique features that make it different from any other Hebrew grammar and very difficult to understand. I study the concepts of De Balmes’ linguistic theory and prove that it is in part an adaptation of the grammatica speculativa of the Modists, dating back to the beginning of the fourteenth century, to the Hebrew language.

​Andyeshallfindthem
Fromthestarts andends ofphrases:
the word boundaries.
​
Robert Daland
Northwestern University

​Dissertation Title: Word segmentation, word recognition, and word learning
Fluent speech does not contain pauses between every word — you can hear this by listening to speech in a foreign language. Yet fluent listeners perceive speech in word-sized units. In order to learn words, infants must first break speech into words. Because they do not know most of the words they hear, they must be able to do this by exploiting knowledge of the language’s sound structure. Among other things, they use diphones — sequences of two consonants and/or vowels. Most diphones occur almost exclusively within words (ba, to) or across word boundaries (bt, tl). Once an infant knows which are which, they’re good to go. But to know whether a diphone spans a word boundary, you have to know the word boundary is there, which is exactly what the infant is trying to figure out. I proposed and tested a Bayesian, distributional learning algorithm that solves this problem by paying attention to the frequency of consonants at the beginnings and ends of phrases.

​At the root
Fog lifts for a split second
Features have no mercy either
​
Solveiga Armoskaite
UCLA

​In my dissertation I explored how categories (verb, noun, adjective) are formed in Blackfoot & Lithuanian: abstract features determine the categorial affiliation of roots. The next step is to explore the origin of features and feature clusters

​No subject, no verb
The harder, the better, eh?
Unique…and rule-based.
​
E. Allyn Smith
The Ohio State University

​Dissertation Title: “Correlational Comparison in English”
My thesis gives an analysis of the syntax (word order, structure) and semantics (meaning) of sentences like ‘the bigger they are, the harder the fall’ and ‘the faster we drive, the sooner we’ll get there’, etc. They’re ‘tricky’ because they seem to not have the regular structure of English sentences (good old ‘subject, verb, object’ order, etc.) and some, like ‘the more, the merrier’ don’t seem to even have a verb, subject, or object. One main question, then, is whether we have separate grammatical rules and categories in our brains to handle this kind of sentence that are different from the ones we use for other sentences. My conclusion is that these sentences are a combination of unique and rule-based elements but that most elements use the same rules as other kinds of sentences.

​Text is but a play
Translator but an actor
So RTFM
​
Yotam Benshalom
The University of Warwick

​Dissertation Title: “Performing Translation: Theatrical theory and its relevance to textual transfer”
The metaphor “translators are like actors” is common but under-developed. My dissertation expands and analyses it by examining various acting theories and considering their possible uses in actual translation.

​Mother tongues collide
One wins, the other loses
While the work gets done
​
Matthieu LeBlanc
University of Moncton, Canada

​Dissertation title: “Bilingualism and Language Use in the Canadian Public Service” (2008).
The study examines issues surrounding bilingualism (English-French) and language practices in the Canadian Public Service. It centres on language ideologies, power relations and social inequality in the workplace.

​Relevance Theory
Only see the useful stuff
Autists find this hard
​
Elizabeth Gerty
University College London

​My 2005 dissertation was titled “Autism, Relevance and Theory of Mind: Impairments of Relevance Theory and Theory of Mind, and the effects on individuals with autistic disorders”. It looked at two current theories which explain how people pick out what is important from the onslaught of sensory information that they take in every second, and suggested that some of the problems autistic people face may stem from an impairment in these cognitive filtering abilities.

The road to democracy
is slow and gradual
ultimately, progress?
​
Jennifer Eagleton
Macquarie University, Sydney

​Dissertation Title: “The ‘Ultimate Aim’: Discourses of future democratization in post-handover Hong Kong”
Hong Kong is an executive-led partial democracy and a Special Administrative Region of China with a constitution that provides the possibility of universal suffrage at some unspecified time in the future. My thesis is a critical discourse study focusing on how various groups discuss this future democratization using metaphor.