Recent Masters Theses

Since 2009, most theses submitted by M.A. and M.S. recipients at the university are published online at the OhioLINK Electronic Theses & Dissertations Center (EDT). This page lists theses submitted by recipients of the M.A. in Linguistics, beginning with the more recent theses which are avalable through EDT. We are currently in the process of extending the list back to the first OSU M.A. in Linguistics (Thomas Scovel's thesis on A distinctive feature analysis of the phonemic segments of Mandarin in 1964), and intend to provide a link to a pdf file or other publication information where available and otherwise a link to the OSU Library Catalog listing.

2019

Riley Wagner

The Perception of Loan Verb Integration Strategies in Romanian
Committee: Brian Joseph (advisor) and Andrea Sims

Giorgio Sbardolini

Conventions and Change in Semantics
Committee: Craige Roberts (advisor)


2017

Zachary De

Race, Gender, and /u/: Social Perceptions of a Non-Stereotype Feature
Committee: Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (advisor) and Donald Winford


2016

Ajda Zeynep Gokcen

A Matter of Debate: Using Dialogue Relation Labels to Augment (Dis)agreement Analysis of Debate Data
Committee: Marie-Catherine de Marneffe (advisor) and Brian Joseph

Eric Snyder

Generalizing Individuating/Measure-Ambiguities
Committee: Craige Roberts and Shapiro Stewart (co-advisors)

Jennifer Qian Zhang

Nonsibilant Fricative Acquisition by Bilingual Guoyu-Taiwanese Southern Min Children
Committee: Mary Beckman (advisor) and Micha Elsner

Yourdanis Sedarous

Studies in Nominal Modification in Bohairic Coptic
Committee: Peter Culicover and Brian Joseph (co-advisors)


2015

Lara Downing

Dutchified English in an Ohio Mennonite Community
Committee: Brian Joseph and Donald Winford

Gregory Kierstead

Projectivity and the Tagalog Reportative Evidential
Committee: Craige Roberts and Judith Tonhauser (co-advisors)


2013

Robert Brice Russ

Examining Regional Variation Through Online Geotagged Corpora
Committee: Kathryn Campbell-Kibler and Brian Joseph
Since receiving his MA in Linguistics, Brice Russ has worked as a social media / policy consultant, including serving a three-year term as the first Director of Communications for the LSA.

Jeffrey Parker

Palatalization and Utilization of Contrast: An Information-theoretic Investigation of Palatalization in Russian
Committee: Brian Joseph and Andrea Sims
After receiving his MA in Linguistics, Jeffrey Parker transferred back to the Slavic Linguistics program, where he is currently finishing his dissertation before taking up a faculty position in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Brigham Young University.

Eric Ruppe

"Y'all Done Up and Done It": The Semantics of a Perfect Construction in an Upstate South Carolina Dialect
Committee: Donald Winford and Judith Tonhauser
After receiving his MA, Eric Ruppe accepted the position of French immersion teacher at Meadow Glen Middle School in Lexington, SC.


2012

Michelle Dionisio

The Syntax and Semantics of the Tagalog Plural Marker Mga
Committee: Judith Tonhauser and Craige Roberts

Sara Phillips-Bourass

Implicit Imitation of Regional Dialects in Typically Developing Adults and Adults with High-Functioning Autism
Committee: Cynthia Clopper and Shari Speer

Michael Collins

Cognitive Perspectives On English Word Order
Committee: William Schuler and Peter Culicover

Hartman Brawley

What Informs Event Descriptions: Language, Salience, and Discourse in English and Japanese
Committee: Laura Wagner, Shari Speer, and Kiwako Ito


2010

Lia Mansfield

A CVG Approach to Verp-Particle Constructions in English
Committee: Carl Pollard and Robert Levine

Youn Kyung Shin

Variability in the Use of Infinitival to in Present Day American English
Committee: Brian Joseph, Robert Levine, and Donald Winford

Oxana Skorniakova

Sensitivity to Sub-Phonemic Variation: Evidence from a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) Goodness-Rating Task
Committee: Mary Beckman and Shari Speer

Sarah Bibyk

The Development of Children’s Processing of English Pitch Accents in a Visual Search Task
Committee: Shari Speer, Laura Wagner, Cynthia Clopper, and Kiwako Ito
After receiving her MA, Sarah Bibyk was accepted into the doctoral program at the University of Rochester.


2009

John Pate

Parsing with Local Content
Committee: Chris Brew, Laura Wagner, and Shari Speer
After receiving his MA, John Pate went on to earn a PhD at the University of Edinburgh and was a post-doctoral research fellow in Machine Learning and Computational Linguistics at Macquarie University before taking up his current position on the faculty in Linguistics at the University of Buffalo.

Cory Shain

Differential Object Marking in Paraguayan Guaraní
Committee: Judith Tonhauser and Peter Culicover
After receiving his MA, Cory Shain worked for several years as a linguist at SIL International before returning to Ohio State University and entering the doctoral program in Linguistics.

Rachel Shain

The Preverb Eis- and Koine Greek Aktionsart
Committee: Judith Tonhauser, Brian Joseph, and Craige Roberts


2008

Ross Metusalem

Evoking Upcoming Contrast through Accentual Prominence: The Effect of Producing L+H* on Discourse Entities and Discourse Markers
Committee: Kiwako Ito and Shari Speer
After receiving his MA, Ross Metusalem went on to earn a PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, where he is now teaching in the Department of Psychology.

Jon Stevens

The Old English Demonstrative: A Synchronic and Diachronic Investigation
Committee: Brian Joseph and Judith Tonhauser
After receiving his MA, Jon Stevens went on to earn a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania before taking up his current position on a postdoctoral researcher on the PRAGSales project in computational pragmatics at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin.

Sharon Ross

Interpretation by Adults and Children of Implicatures Generated through Contrastive Stress: Evidence that Prosodic Contrastive Stress has a Predominantly Presuppositional Character
Committee: Peter Culicover and Laura Wagner
After receiving her MA, Sharon Ross become a Fulbright Scholar doing research on The Semantics of Focus Marking and Contrastive Stress in Israeli Sign Language at the University of Haifa.