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Applied Linguistics Masters Theses Collection

This collection contains open access and campus access Masters theses, made possible through Graduate Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The full content of open access theses is available to all, although some files may have embargoes placed on them and will be made available as soon as possible. The full content of campus access theses is only available to those either on the UMass Boston campus or with a UMass Boston campus username and password. Click on the "Off-Campus UMass Boston Users" link on the record page to download Campus Access publications. Those not on campus and those without a UMass Boston campus username and password may gain access to this thesis through resources like Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global or through Interlibrary Loan.

Theses from 2024 2024

Writing For Your Profession: L2 English Students' Acquisition of Academic English , Sonja Haakonsen

Theses from 2023 2023

The "Messy Middle": A Framework for Analyzing Raciolinguistic Inequity , Casey Erin Anthony

Japanese Reading Japlish: High School Students Study Their Own Fashion Linguistic Landscape , Gabriel Frost Johnson

Theses from 2021 2021

Meaning-Making Dynamics of Job Interview Performances , Jacquelyn K. Bertman

Theses from 2020 2020

Computerized Dynamic Assessment of Grammar in Second Language Development , Tina S. Randall

Limited Viewpoints: The Implementation of Multimodal Constructs in an ELL Model Curriculum Unit , Deborah A. Smith

Theses from 2019 2019

Adult Educators at the Crossroads of Language Learning and Workforce Development: A Qualitative Study of Teacher Agency , Liz Ging

Language Learning and ADA: An Observation of d/Deaf Adults and Their Interpreters in ESL Classrooms , Katharine M. Ward

Theses from 2017 2017

Languaging at Work: The Language Socialization of Support Staff in the Healthcare Workforce , Kristen E. Schlapp

Theses from 2016 2016

Performing Language and Identities: Adult Immigrant Students and the Creation of a Play , Kathleen R. McGovern

Theses from 2015 2015

Discourses and Capital in Court Trials: Representation of Witness Accounts and Identity , Misty Crooks

Theses from 2014 2014

What's in a Game? Identity Negotiations and Pedagogical Implications of Gameplay Discourse , Caleb Reed

Their Decision to Wear Al Hijab: The Stories of U.S. Northeastern Muslim Women , Hadeel Salman

Theses from 2012 2012

Meanings and Typologies of Duboisian Double Consciousness within 20th Century United States Racial Dynamics , Marc E. Black

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Linguistics at UMass

We are internationally recognized as a major center for research and education in linguistics. Our doctoral program focuses on educating a small number of PhD students as high-quality researchers and teachers. Our undergraduate program develops broadly applicable skills in linguistic analysis and understanding of the diversity of human language.

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Linguistics is the systematic study of human language. Linguists are interested in language for its own sake, as a complex product of the human mind. They are also interested in how language develops in children, how it changes over time, and how it is used in human society.

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UMass linguistics hosted the 2023 Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute from June 19 to July 14. For more information, visit the 2023 institute website.

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Dissertations & Theses

Recent doctoral dissertations posted in scholarworks, recent masters theses posted in scholarworks.

• Things to know before you submit
• The Submission Process
• After Submission
• Retrospective Digitized Theses and Dissertations

Library Publishing & Institutional Repository Librarian

Completing and submitting your master's thesis or doctoral dissertation is an important part of completing your graduate degree.  This guide will help you prepare your thesis or dissertation for submission to ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst , the campus' open access institutional repository by providing step by step directions as well as guidance on copyright and permissions.

Throughout the guide, we will refer to electronic theses and dissertations as ETDs.

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• Last Updated: Mar 21, 2024 10:08 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.umass.edu/dissertations_theses

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Email: [email protected]

Office: N408 Integrative Learning Center, 650 North Pleasant Street Phone: (413) 545-0889,   Fax: (413) 545-2792

    Remembering Bill Hagamen (November 4, 1924 – March 26, 2007) with links to our works about his work, and our unfinished joint work.

    Remembering Petr Sgall (May 27, 1926 -- May 28, 2019)

Recent  (a more complete list is on Research page)

For those who speak Russian, I gave a non-technical talk in Russian on April 19, 2012, on the birth of formal semantics from linguistics and philosophy. It's for non-specialists, in the polit.ru public lectures series. There was about an hour of questions and answers after the talk. "Формальная семантика как порождение лингвистики и философии" Information, video, and photos here: http://polit.ru/article/2012/03/28/anons_partee/ Video plus transcript, with different photos: http://polit.ru/article/2012/05/18/Partee/

Partee, Barbara H. In press. A brief history of the syntax-semantics interface in Western formal linguistics. Semantics-Syntax Interface .  [ PDF ]

Partee, Barbara H. 2013. Portrait of a semanticist as a young man: Gennaro Chierchia 1979-1988. In From Grammar to Meaning: The Spontaneous Logicality of Language , eds. Ivano Caponigro and Carlo Cecchetto, 13-37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [ PDF ]

Partee, Barbara H., Borschev, Vladimir, Paducheva, Elena V., Testelets, Yakov G., and Yanovich, Igor. In press. Genitive of negation, genitive of intensionality, and subjunctive in Russian. Journal of Language and Verbal Behavior - Jazyk i Rečevaja Dejatel'nost' .

Partee, Barbara H. 2013. On the history of the question of whether natural language is “illogical”. In History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences (Blog), ed. James McElvenny.  [ LINK ]

Partee, Barbara H. In press. The starring role of quantifiers in the history of formal semantics. In The Logica Yearbook 2012, eds. Vit Punčochár and Petr Svarny. London: College Publications. [ PDF ]

Partee, Barbara H. 2013. Montague’s “linguistic” work: Motivations, trajectory, attitudes. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17, September 8-10 2012, eds. Emmanuel Chemla, Vincent Homer and Grégoire Winterstein, 427-453. Paris: ENS. [ PDF ] 

Partee, Barbara H. 2012. Appreciating functions: Ed Keenan in the early history of formal semantics. In Theories of Everything: In Honor of Ed Keenan . UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 17, eds. Thomas Graf, Denis Paperno, Anna Szabolcsi and Jos Tellings, 330-336. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Linguistics Dept. [ PDF ]

Partee, Barbara H. 2012. Remembering Aleksandr Evgenevich Kibrik. In Aleksandr Evgen'evich Kibrik. In Memoriam. Materialy nauchno-memorial'nyx chtenij pamjati A.E. Kibrika 9 dekabrja 2012 g ., eds. V.I. Belikov et al., 104-105. Moscow: OTiPL, Philological Faculty, MGU imeni M.V.Lomonosova. Partee, Barbara H., and Borschev, Vladimir. 2012. Dva stakana moloka: Substances and containers in Genitive of Measure constructions in Russian. Russkij jazyk v naučnom osveščenii 24.2:140-166.  [ PDF ]

Partee, Barbara H., and Borschev, Vladimir. 2012. Sortal, relational, and functional interpretations of nouns and Russian container constructions. Journal of Semantics . [ PDF ]

Borschev, Vladimir, and Partee, Barbara H. 2011. Genitiv mery v russkom jazyke, tipy i sorta [The genitive of measure in Russian, Types and sorts]. In Slovo i jazyk. Sbornik statej k 80-letiju akademika Ju.D.Apresjana [Word and Language. A Collection of Articles for the 80th Birthday of Academician Ju.D. Apresjan], eds. I.M. Boguslavsky, L.L. Iomdin and L.P. Krysin, 95-137. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskix kultur'. Prepub version with some misprints: [ PDF]

Partee, Barbara H., Borschev, Vladimir, Paducheva, Elena V., Testelets, Yakov, and Yanovich, Igor. 2012. The Role of verb semantics in genitive alternations: Genitive of Negation and Genitive of Intensionality. In The Russian Verb. Oslo Studies in Language 4(1). eds. A. Grønn and A. Pazel'skaya. [ PDF ] (This version is a somewhat expanded version of Borschev et al (2011).

Partee, Barbara H., Borschev, Vladimir, Paducheva, Elena V., Testelets, Yakov, and Yanovich, Igor. 2011. Russian Genitive of Negation alternations: The role of verb semantics. Scando-Slavica 57.2:135-159. [ PDF ]

Borschev, Vladimir, and Partee, Barbara H. 2011. Genitiv mery v russkom jazyke, tipy i sorta [The genitive of measure in Russian, Types and sorts]. In Slovo i jazyk. Sbornik statej k 80-letiju akademika Ju.D.Apresjana [ Word and Language. A Collection of Articles for the 80th Birthday of Academician Ju.D. Apresjan ], eds. I.M. Boguslavsky, L.L. Iomdin and L.P. Krysin, 95-137. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskix kultur'.

Partee, Barbara H. 2011. Formal semantics: Origins, issues, early impact. In Formal Semantics and Pragmatics. Discourse, Context, and Models. The Baltic Yearbook of Cognition, Logic, and Communication . Vol. 6 (2010), eds. B.H. Partee, M. Glanzberg and J. Skilters, 1-52. Lawrence, KS: New Prairie Press. [ PDF ]

Partee, Barbara H. 2011. The History of Formal Semantics, with special attention to quantification. Presentation in Angelika Kratzer's Linguistics 720 proseminar, September 6, 2011.  (unpublished talk). [ Power point slide show ]  [ 4-up PDF handout ]

Partee, Barbara H. 2011. The Semantics Adventure. Ms., MIT 150th Symposium Panel May 3: The Golden Age – a look at the original roots of AI, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Linguistics. Cambridge, MA. (unpublished talk) [ PDF ]

Partee, Barbara H. 2011. Teaching formal semantics. In Teaching Linguistics: Reflections on Practice, ed. Koenraad Kuiper, 40-50. London: Equinox Publishing.  [ PDF ]

Borschev, V., Paducheva, E.V., Partee, B.H., Testelets, Y.G., and Yanovich, I.S. 2010. On semantic bleaching and compositionality: Subtraction or addition? (On the bleaching of "lexical verbs" in Russian negated existential sentences). In Proceedings of Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics 26, Bar Ilan University (IATL 26), ed. Yehuda N. Falk. Jerusalem. [ PDF ]

Video: April 2010, Riga: “Is This a Good Time for Formal Semantics?”: a video in the “Is This a Good Time?” series, put together by two young journalism scholars in Riga. You aren’t told what the question is until you come to the interview, then you have 5 minutes to think, and then the cameras start rolling! And there are no pauses or second takes – it is what it is.   Video is here:  http://vimeo.com/isthisagoodtime/barbarapartee   or http://vimeo.com/20664367 .

A number of my older papers have now been turned into PDF form and put onto the Semantics Archive . For specific links, see Research page.

Partee, Barbara H. 2005. Reflections of a formal semanticist as of Feb 2005. Ms. (longer version of introductory essay in 2004 book) [ PDF version ]

Partee, Barbara H. 2004. Compositionality in Formal Semantics: Selected Papers of Barbara Partee . Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Retirement party Sept 18 2004

Barbara Partee Doctoral Guidance Genealogy by Chris Potts  [as of 2004; needs to be updated]

All of the teaching materials for my formal semantics courses in Moscow since 2003 are online on my Teaching page, as are a number of my UMass courses in mathematics for linguists (some of those taught jointly with Vladimir Borschev) and a few of my UMass semantics seminars.

Useful Links

Background Information

Education B.A. 1961 in Mathematics with High Honors, Swarthmore College. Minors in Russian and Philosophy. Ph.D. 1965, MIT, linguistics, minor in mathematics. Dissertation: Subject and Object in Modern English. Dissertation advisor: Noam Chomsky.

Professional Taught at UCLA 1965-1972, first Linguistics, then Linguistics and Philosophy. Joined UMass Amherst faculty in 1972. Professor since 1973, department head 1987-93. Emerita as of January 2004. Taught at 1966, 1974, 1987, 1989, and 1991 LSA Summer Institutes. Visiting Professorships at El Colegio de Mexico; Charles University, Prague; Moscow State University, Russian State Humanities University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow; University of Leipzig; University of Canterbury, Christchurch. Board of Managers, Swarthmore College, 1990-2002.

Honors and Awards , Editorial boards and positions Woodrow Wilson Fellow (Hon. '61), NSF Fellow (1961-65) NSF grants, Co-P.I. or P.I., 1973-75, 1979-81, 1988-92, 1989-90, 1999-2003, 2004-08. Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1976-77 Chancellor's Medal, University of Massachusetts, 1977 Faculty Fellowship, University of Massachusetts, 1981-82 NEH Fellowship 1982-83, IREX Fellowships 1989, 1995, Fulbright Senior Lectureship 2000, 2005 President of Linguistic Society of America, 1986 Member (= Fellow), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1984), National Academy of Sciences (elected 1989) Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (elected 1996), Linguistic Society of America (2005), Massachusetts Academy of Sciences (2008), Cognitive Science Society (2012) Max Planck Research Award jointly with Hans Kamp 1992-95 Foreign Member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected 2002 Honorary doctorates: Swarthmore College (1989), Charles University (1992), Russian State Humanities University (2001), Copenhagen Business School (2005) Past member of editorial boards for Language, Linguistic Inquiry, Semantikos, Linguistics & Philosophy (inception to 1982), The Linguistic Review, Theoretical Linguistics, Grammars, Revista di Linguistica, Natural Language Semantics (1992-2006) Current member of editorial boards for: Linguistics and Philosophy (1998 -), Language and Linguistics Compass (2010 -), Academic Press S yntax and Semantics series  (2011- ), Semantics-Syntax Interface (2013 - ); Honorary editorial board, Natural Language Semantics (2007 -); Advisory Board, Journal of Semantics (2009 -) Inaugural co-editor (with Mark Liberman) of new journal Annual Review of Linguistics (2012 - )

Personal Page - family links and more photos (not up to date)

[ Research ]     [ Teaching ]      [ CV ]      [ Links ]    [ Personal ]  

Last revised  November 2, 2013 .   Web page created by Barbara H. Partee, with help from John McCarthy, Paul de Lacy, Ji-Yung Kim, Florian Schwarz.    

UMass Linguistics Internal Website

Author archives: partee, partee to zoom to moscow for talk for logicians nov 18.

November 18, 2020, (8am EST, 4pm in Moscow) Barbara gives a Zoom talk “in Moscow” called “Language and Logic: Ideas and Controversies in the History of Formal Semantics”, as part of “Logical Perspectives Open Lectures” organized by Lev Beklemishev, Steklov Mathematical Institute, Moscow, for Nov 17-18. Open to all; Registration required at http://lp2020.mi-ras.ru/open_lectures/ . I’d be delighted to have linguists there too to join in the discussion after the talk. The other two lectures in the series are on Nov 17 – one by Anil Nerode at 4pm Moscow and one by Yuri Gurevich at 6pm Moscow. I think the talks are all intended for students and younger scholars, so I expect the other two to be interesting and accessible as well.

Barbara at Penn Oct 18

Barbara will give a talk at the next  ILST Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday October 18th at 1:30pm in Room 401B of 3401 Walnut St. (ILST = the Integrated Language Science and Technology initiative). Anyone in the Philly area is welcome.

The talk is related to her history of formal semantics project. The title is “Psychologism and Anti-Psychologism in Semantics: Changing Notions of Semantic Competence”.

Barbara (and others) in Moscow

from Barbara Partee

I gave a series of five lectures in the 3 rd Annual Fall School for Formal Syntax and Formal Semantics at HSE (the Higher School for Economics) in Moscow, September 1-7. The series was “The History of Formal Semantics”. The five lectures were (1) The history of formal semantics: founding revolutions; (2) History of the syntax-semantics interface; (3) The starring role of quantification in the history of formal semantics; (4) History of the semantics of arguments and adjuncts; (5) Lexical Semantics in Formal Semantics: History and Challenges.

Day 2, including changing of the guard with David Pesetsky. 

Other lecturers in the Fall School were David Pesetsky, Tatiana Philippova, Pavel Caha, Natalia Slioussar, Yasutada Sudo, and Daniele Panizza. We all enjoyed going to some of each other’s lectures, too, and the students were very lively and engaged. It was a good week! Afterwards, Volodja and I spent several days visiting friends in Moscow, capping it off with dinner with Katia Vostrikova and Petr Kusliy and his family on our last evening – that was also great.

Katia, Petr, and Petr’s wife Anya.

Barbara in Israel and Moscow

Volodja and I have been in Israel and Russia the past 2 ½ weeks, mostly visiting friends and family, but with a couple of academic activities. On September 24, we participated in the 7 th Annual Bar-Ilan Semantics Workshop, organized by Susan Rothstein, where I gave a talk, “Lexical Semantics in Formal Semantics: History and Challenges”, a slightly edited version of my 2016 Bolzano ESSLLI workshop talk. Other participants were Keren Khrizman, Fred Landman and Aviv Schoenberg, Hana Filip, Maria Gepner, and Susan Rothstein.

Barbara at ESSLLI in August

ESSLLI was held in Bolzano this summer, August 15-26. Barbara was there for a workshop in the second week on “ Referential Semantics One Step Further: Incorporating Insights from Conceptual and Distributional Approaches to Meaning “, organized by Carla Umbach and Louise McNally. My talk was “ Lexical Semantics in Formal Semantics: History and Challenges “. The workshop was very stimulating; so was another one I attended on particles and modal adverbs, “ Formal, Probabilistic and Typological Approaches to Discourse Particles and Modal Adverbs “, organized by Zeevat, Hogeweg, and van Bergen. Saw lots of old friends and colleagues, and enjoyed exploring Bolzano.

Barbara and Volodja to Georgia, Israel, Russia

Barbara and Volodja will be in Tbilisi Sept 13-19 for a linguistics round table where Barbara will give a 3-lecture series on the history of formal semantics. Then they go to Israel Sept 19-29, partly to visit family and friends, but also to be in a workshop on Slavic Semantics that Susan Rothstein has organized at Bar-Ilan University. Then to Moscow and Kazan’ Sept 29-Oct 8 to visit family and friends, and Barbara will be an invited speaker at a workshop on semantics and pragmatics at the Higher School of Economics on Sept 30, with a talk on the history of formal pragmatics. Back home Oct 8, no more trips this fall.

Department picnic Sunday Sept 11

Department picnic for linguists and friends, family-friendly, potluck, at Barbara and Volodja’s (50 Hobart Ln) Sunday, Sept 11, at 3:30. Details in full invitation that went out to the whole ling-colloq mailing list. If you didn’t get it, write to Tom Maxfield ([email protected]) — he can get you onto the ling-colloq mailing list. And in the meantime, there’s a copy here . Hope to see everyone there who can get there! — Barbara and Volodja