Ali Alzayid

This thesis considers three intertwined research questions that are relevant to the phenomenology of dislocation in Modern Standard Arabic, henceforth MSA. The first of these research questions concerns the possible types of dislocation constructions. The second question concerns the interpretation of dislocation constructions. The last question takes on the syntactic make-up of dislocation constructions. As far as the first question is concerned, I argue that left-peripheral elements in MSA are not uniform and thus they are best analyzed as comprising two different types: Clitic Left Dislocation I and Clitic Left Dislocation II. I further argue that the same constructions which appear in the left periphery have a presence in the right periphery, namely Clitic Right Dislocation I and Clitic Right Dislocation II. I further show that the determining factor underlying the partitioning of clitic resumption in MSA is morphological case (mis)- matching. Concerning the second question, I m...

OF THE THESIS OF Ali Ahmed Alzayid, for the Master of Arts degree in Linguistics, presented on September 20, 2012 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: THE ROLE OF MOTIVATION IN THE L2 ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH BY SAUDI STUDENTS: A DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Usha Lakshmanan Since the work of Gardener and his associates in the 1950s, the role of motivation in learning a second language has continued to interest researchers. Previous studies on L2 motivation, were largely based on product oriented models of motivation, which tends to view motivation as a static phenomenon. Recently, however, there has been a shift in emphasis from a study of L2 motivation as a product to its study as a process. The methodological framework of this study was based on Dornyei and Otto's (1998) Process Model of L2 Motivation. This model proposed that the construct of motivation is not static and changing in nature and influenced by many internal and external factors during learning process. The previous studies that analyzed the motivational variables in the Saudi EFL settings have not investigated the temporal nature of motivation in L2 learning. Using qualitative methodology, the current study aimed to investigate how motivation in English L2 learning changed over time for Saudi students. The participants were seven Saudi students at a mid-western University in the U.S. They had all first begun learning English in Saudi Arabia and had later come to the U.S to pursue their undergraduate or graduate studies. The participants were interviewed on an individual basis using a semistructured interview format. They also completed a language history questionnaire. The transcripts of the audio-recorded interviews were analyzed using the tools of thematic analysis. Specifically, the participants’ oral narratives were analyzed for emerging themes and patterns relating to the development of their motivation for English language learning. The results of this