Current Projects

Student Projects

The following are undergraduate research projects led by students and mentored by faculty from the Department of Linguistics. Projects are listed in alphabetical order by title, with the student(s) and mentor names following each title. When available, a link is provided to the abstract and work.

• Acknowledging the Implications of Native North American Language Revitalization Efforts: A Focus on the Teaching of Western Shoshoni (Taylor M. Sharp / Tim Thornes)
• A New Translation of Canestrelli’s A Kootenai Grammar (Emma A. Halverson / Tim Thornes)
• A Perception Study of Rioplatense Spanish (Cecelia Staggs / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Complicating Factors of English Usage in a Post-Colonial Context: A Linguistic Survey of Sri Lanka (Paige Ashmead and Galvin Olsen-Smith / Gail Shuck)
• Developing an Online Portal for Categorical Perception (Kelsey Montzka / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• English Versus Dutch Utilization in the Netherlands (Kirby Carlson, Anh Dang, and Ellen Geary / Gail Shuck)
• Go Native or Go Home: A Linguistic Analysis of Beliefs About Accents (Jesús Rivera Orozco / Gail Shuck)
• It’s Fine When I Do It?: Competitive Forensics Performances and Hidden Language Ideologies (Ari Ashby / Gail Shuck)
• I Want to be Successful: Identity and Investment in Language Learning Among Adult Refugees with Interrupted Schooling  (Desirée Midby / Casey Iezzi and Gail Shuck)
• Japanese Sequential Voicing – Rendaku (Zachary Espil / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Linguistic Perception on Multilingual/Unknown Speakers (Jesús A. Rivera Orozco / Gail Shuck)
• “No Problemo”: Mock Spanish and Language Hierarchies in the United States (Ben Geffon / Gail Shuck)
• Pattern Analysis of Perceived Dialect Regions (Oliver MacDonald / Gail Shuck)
• People’s Perceptions of Language Variation, South Korea (Subin Jang / Gail Shuck)
• Pitch Differences in Bilingual Speakers (Anna Cox / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Prosodic and Semantic Portrayal of Emotion in Music (Ivana Müllner / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Prosodic Encoding of Sexuality in the Speech Patterns of Gay and Straight Men (Christopher Dale / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Refugees in American Schools; Examining English Language Learning of Adolescent Refugees (Desiree Midby / Casey Iezzi and Gail Shuck)
• Sentence Processing in First Language Acquisition (Elly Zimmer / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Speech Properties of Deception (Jared Albrecht / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• The Influence of Language Ideologies on Education in Trinidad and Tobago (Michael Wallingford and Autumn Ellis / Gail Shuck)
• The Impact of Language on the Academic Experience of Multilingual Students (Daniela Duran / Nicole Brun-Mercer)
• The Phonology of Hiligaynon (Tyler Casperson / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• There’s an Identity Label for Me? Perceptions by First-Generation College Students of an Institutional Label (Curtis Green-Eneix / Gail Shuck)
• To Switch or Not to Switch: Does Code-Switching Reveal a Speaker’s Stance in Relation to Others? (Anh Dang / Gail Shuck)
• Using Corpus Linguistics to Analyze Reporting Verbs in Literary Narratives (Laurel Hinds / Casey Iezzi)

Course-Related Group Projects

• Assessing the Pre-Service Training at the English Language Center (Students from LING 306 Spring 2010 / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Exploring the Ebembe Language Through Proverbs (Students From LING 498 Spring 2024 / Tim Thornes)
• Kifuliiru Language Structures (Students from LING 498 Spring 2026 / Tim Thornes)
• Kifuliiru Language Structures (Students from LING 498 Spring 2018 / Tim Thornes)
• Linguistic Features of Kibembe (Students from LING 498, Spring 2013 / Tim Thornes and Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Linguistic Features of Kikoongo (Students from LING 498, Spring 2015 Tim Thornes)
• Linguistic Features of Kizigua (Students from ENGL 498, Spring 2011 / Jon Dayley and Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Linguistic Features of MaayMaay (Students from LING 498, Spring 2012 / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Linguistic Features of Shona (Students from LING 498, Spring 2020 / Tim Thornes and Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Linguistic Features of Somali Chizigula (Students from LING 498 Spring 2017 / Tim Thornes and Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Linguistic Features of Tshiluba (Students from LING 498, Spring 2014)
• Linguistic Features of Uzbek (Students from ENGL 498, Spring 2010 / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Presentations from the Spring 2025 Undergraduate Research Showcase (Students from the LING 498 course in ethnography / Aiden VanderStouwe)
• Presentations from the Spring 2026 Undergraduate Research Showcase (Students from the LING 498 course in ethnography / Aiden VanderStouwe)
• Sounds of the Dari Language (Students from the LING 498 course in language documentation / Michal Temkin Martinez and Tim Thornes)
• Structure of the Ebembe Language (Students from the LING 498 Spring 2019 course in language documentation / Michal Temkin Martinez)
• Word Formation in the Dari Language (Students from the SPring 2021 LING 498 course in language documentation / Tim Thornes and Michal Temkin Martinez)

Archiving Indigenous Language Materials by Jon P. Dayley

During his years as a field linguist, Professor Jon P. Dayley documented indigenous languages ranging from those spoken in Idaho to Mayan languages spoken in Central America. Starting Fall 2010, we have been digitizing and archiving materials collected by Professor Dayley including recordings, field notes, and publications.