Browsing by Subject "fieldwork"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Clausal Complementation in Nepal Bhasa
    (2021-11) Zhang, Borui
    This dissertation examines the syntax and lexical semantics of finite verbal de- pendent clauses in Nepal Bhasa through fieldwork and by creating a shallow parsing model and corpus-based search to test descriptive generalizations. Nepal Bhasa deploys two main different syntactic complementation strategies: head-final pre-verbal CPs, which I argue are true complements and head-initial post-verbal CPs, which I argue are parataxis. Complementation additionally introduces certain syntactic and morpho- logical constraints. Inchoative and perfective morphemes appear in free alternation in some mono-clausal environments, whereas in embedding structures, an embedding predicate with the inchoative suffix is restricted. By annotating a small dataset from open-source Nepal Bhasa data, I train a chunking model by adopting the technique of transfer learning in machine learning, with fine-tuning the pre-trained mBERT lan- guage model. The preliminary test results show the potential usefulness of using NLP tools to effectively build a corpus for research in low-resource languages. In particular, this method corroborates my descriptive generalization that inchoative is restricted on embedding predicates in Nepal Bhasa. Additional search over the structural treebank corpora of typologically related languages adds evidence to a cross-linguistic generaliza- tion on embedding verb restrictions.
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    Critical Community Literacy: Looking With Local Resistance
    (2018-05) Puett, Sarah
    This dissertation considers the relationship between literacy and activism in the public sphere. In the fall of 2016 I participated with a local racial justice organization where I took part in a series of public meetings. Focused on alternative means of public safety, the meetings were planned in response to local state violence—multiple incidents of police shooting and killing Black community members—as well as the broader interlocking systems of oppression which fail to protect people of color. This study exhibits how one decentralized organization helps establish critical literacy in a segregated urban area, better known for its progressive politics than its proclivity for lethal state violence. These meetings warrant a more complex, critical frame than community literacy scholarship currently provides. Drawing on both literacy and rhetorical studies, my analysis reveals the ways in which literacy events represent a type of intervention, and in this case, serve to disrupt mythic timelines. During the events, I contend, local Black organizers occupy and transgress the role of a literacy sponsor by calling on their (kn)own experiences with racial oppression. My analysis nuances the relationship between literacy events and practices, and in turn, I offer a series of dialectics for participant-observation in community literacy studies. I hope to establish precedent for speaking more plainly about racism and whiteness in community literacy scholarship, and to challenge the dominant notion that community literacy projects are categorically just. Looking With Local Resistance signals that if we participate as activists in communities outside the academy, we must do so as reflexively and sustainably as we do critically.
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    Information Circular 7. Summary of Fieldwork 1969
    (Minnesota Geological Survey, 1969) Sims, P.K.; Westfall, I.
    The purpose of this report is to summarize the status and results of field work and other research carried out by personnel of the Minnesota Geological Survey during the past year. In addition, summaries are presented for research financed mainly by other sources but supported by the Survey. The report supplements the annual newsletter, which contains outline maps showing the status of the State geologic (bedrock) map atlas and gravity programs and other data on Survey activities. An index map that shows the status of detailed geologic mapping in northeastern Minnesota is included in the report. Maps of areas of immediate interest to the mining industry will be placed in open files during the year, to make them available at the earliest possible time. A list of other maps and reports that are being prepared currently for publication is given in the 1969 Newsletter.
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    Information Circular 8. Summary of Fieldwork 1970
    (Minnesota Geological Survey, 1970) Sims, P.K.; Westfall, I.
    Summary of fieldwork in Minnesota during 1970.