Linguistics Programme
Linguistics at the University of Otago is part of the Department of English in the Division of Humanities.
The Linguistics Programme offers not only a full undergraduate programme, Honours, MA and PhD, but also a number of courses in second language acquisition, and teaching of English as a second language with a view to meeting the rapidly increasing demand for teachers of English here in New Zealand and overseas.
Recent Deposits
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The settler colonial family as a site of trauma for women in selected novels by New Zealand women writers
This thesis examines the depiction of the settler colonial family as a site of trauma from a female-gendered perspective in selected novels by New Zealand women writers. I argue that women are vulnerable to psychic trauma ... -
Causative alternation licensing in Urdu: An event structure account
Given the central role of the verb in clause structure, it is vital to understand the properties of the SEMANTIC ROOT and the EVENT SCHEMA, two constituent aspects of verb meaning, in order to understand how lexical semantic ... -
The colours of that place: setting and memory in Irish short fiction
This creative-practice thesis explores the interplay of memory and setting in the short fiction of Colum McCann, with a view to illuminating my own collection of short stories. In Chapter one I have chosen four fundamental ... -
Paradoxical paradises: The poetic and lived utopias of James K. Baxter and Gu Cheng
This thesis develops a framework for understanding modern utopianism as both a literary and life practice. The thesis advances and tests this framework through readings of the writings and lives of the New Zealand poet ... -
Mediation and Reciprocity: ESL Learner Writing Development through Error Correction
The provision of corrective feedback (CF) on errors in essay writing is a controversial topic. In second language acquisition (SLA), the controversy focuses whether CF contributes to the development of language systems, ... -
Being Polite in Conversation: Power, Distance, and Self-Esteem in Persian Requests
Polite linguistic behaviour is concerned with how society and individuals interact. Speakers modify their linguistic choices based on a sociocultural context. Most research on politeness examines social variables such as ... -
/Ju:z/ are in the paddock eating grass : a study of the acceptance of grammatical variants among adolescents from Southland and Otago
A field experiment was undertaken to determine the usage of various grammatical and morphological variants in the speech of adolescents in the provinces of Otago and Southland, New Zealand. Eleven schools throughout the ... -
God in the Machine: Depicting Religion in Video Games
This thesis shows that Dark Souls uses representations of fictive religion to comment on real religion. These representations are rooted in the affordances of the video game medium, meaning that even as Dark Souls comments ... -
‘Troy’ and ‘Trouthe’ in the Troilus and Criseyde stories of Chaucer, Henryson, and Shakespeare
The story of Troilus and Criseyde constitutes a metanarrative. This thesis is concerned with versions of the story written by Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Henryson, and William Shakespeare. In these three tellings, characters ... -
The Reception of Sean O'Casey's Early Works in New Zealand (1924–47): A Social, Cultural, and Political Reading of the Archive
This thesis recovers the New Zealand reception history of Sean O’Casey, the Irish working-class playwright who rose to prominence at the Dublin Abbey Theatre in the aftermath of the Irish revolutionary period. Until now, ... -
University Study Abroad in New Zealand: Identity, Ideology, and Investment in English Language Learning
Study abroad experiences are often seen as being good for, or even necessary for, attaining a high level of second language (L2) proficiency. However, not all students achieve the same level of L2 proficiency from their ... -
Pronunciation of L2 English in Afrikaans speakers who have relocated to Aotearoa-New Zealand
An ever greater number of South Africans are relocating to New Zealand and now comprise the fifth largest group of migrants in the country. Among this group, there are first language (L1) Afrikaans speakers who bring with ... -
Constructing Novel Iconic Signs Through Gesture
The origin of language has been a mystery for many years, with many possible theories offered as an explanation. One of the strongest theories states that human spoken language originated after the development of a gestural ... -
Sie or du? Developing Sociopragmatic Capacity in German through Concept-Based Pragmatics Instruction
The present study set out to investigate the extent of the development of sociopragmatic capacity at two different instructional levels of New Zealand university learners, as evident in learners’ understanding of German ... -
Motivation, Learner Attrition, and the L2 Motivational Self System: A New Zealand Study of Heritage and Non-Heritage University Language Learners
It has been said that, if sufficiently motivated, anyone can learn a second language (Corder, 1967). But it is also true that no one succeeds in learning a second language (L2) if they stop. This study investigated motivation ... -
Investigating and Enhancing Willingness to Communicate and Motivational Self-System of Yemeni Rural EFL Learners
A major problem in second language (L2) learning and teaching is learners’ low willingness to communicate (WTC). WTC refers to the extent to which an individual is ready to initiate communication with others. Some L2 ... -
Relativization in Korean: Formal Restrictions and Functional Solutions
This study is about how Korean deals with restrictions in relative clause (RC) formation by using constructions that are functionally similar to an RC. Korean is regarded as a language that uses the pronoun-retention ... -
Of Beauty and Its Other: Janet Frame's Ethical Aesthetics
In this thesis, I argue that Janet Frame's experimental aesthetics are the manifestation of an ethical impulse that runs throughout her oeuvre. In making such an argument, I contribute to the recent scholarship that places ... -
An exploration of ESL learners' emergent beliefs about academic group work and peer review at a New Zealand university
This qualitative study explored ESL learners’ emergent beliefs about academic group work and peer review at a New Zealand university. The thesis focuses on learners’ beliefs about the factors that are necessary for successful ... -
Samuel Beckett and the Emergence of the Nominalist Ethic
In this thesis, I argue that Samuel Beckett’s 1932 encounter with late-medieval Nominalism in Wilhelm Windelband’s History of Philosophy (1901) was a decisive factor in the emergence of his mature aesthetic. Beckett’s early ...