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.

2025

Dissertations

Theses

2024

Dissertations

Theses

2023

Dissertations

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

Theses

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

2022

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: Diana Ranson

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

Stephen D. Looney. Ph.D. 2013.
Interactional competence in the introduction to physics lab
Advisors: Linda Harklau and Kathryn Roulston

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