Laurel Smith Stvan. Ph.D.
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Laurel Smith Stvan has graduate and undergraduate teaching expertise at US and Chinese universities. Her administrative experience includes two years as curriculum coordinator and nine years as departmental graduate adviser. She currently serves as department chair. Dr. Stvan’s research strengths are in pragmatics, semantics, and the structure of bare singular count nouns; corpus-based work on lexical semantics, especially the interpretation of polysemy in health discourse, brand name morphology, and discourse markers; digital humanities and digital pedagogies for linguistics, and TESOL. Two current projects unite these themes: a) the compilation of a corpus of vernacular health discussions: CADOH (Corpus of American Discourses on Health) and b) a project analyzing data from students on British and American campuses to explore how second language learners might more easily master the English article system.
- 1998 - PhD in Linguistics, Northwestern University
- 1988 - MA in English (Program for Writers), University of Illinois, Chicago
- 1986 - BA in English, University of Illinois, Chicago
Link to Research Profile
Office: 125 Hammond Hall stvan@uta.edu
Collections in this community
Recent Submissions
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Who builds it, who benefits? Deepening student and faculty knowledge about wikipedia’s scholarly value
(Springer Nature, 2023-02)**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: Students and faculty can jointly play a role in how Open Educational Resources are created and deployed by assigning students to expand Wikipedia pages. By producing ... -
The functional range of bare singular count nouns in English
(John Benjamins, 2007)**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: One overlooked and highly polysemous English noun phrase form is the bare singular, i.e. a null determiner with a singular count noun complement. Occurring in all ... -
Semantic incorporation as an account for some bare singular count noun uses in English
(2009)**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: This work investigates inter-related syntactic and semantic issues concerning bare singular count nouns (BSCNs) in English. I explore differences in interpretation, ... -
Inferring New Vocabulary Using Online Texts
(Routledge, 2005)**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: Through small-scale sampling of relevant specialized texts to craft hands-on inferential vocabulary tasks, both students and teachers can benefit from corpus ... -
Deliberations before running another Wikipedia editing assignment
(2022-09-23)**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: In assessing a popular Open Educational Resource that instructs and is shaped by students, I weigh the costs for both instructors and students in using classroom ... -
The Contingent Meaning of -ex Brand Names in English
(Edinburgh University Press, 2006)**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: The –ex string found in English product and company names (e.g., Kleenex, Timex and Virex), is investigated to discover whether this ending has consistent meaning ... -
Diachronic Change in The Discourse Markers "Why" and "Say" in American English
(Peter Lang Verlag, 2006)**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: Generational variation and contrasts in speech vs. writing are shown in usage of the discourse markers why and say across 20th century American English. Collocating ... -
Truth Is, Sentence-Initial Shell Nouns Are Showing Up Bare
(Palacký University, 2014)**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: In one subtype of English shell noun construction, the noun serves as the subject in a pre-clausal unit, e.g., “The thing is.” Shell noun NPs have mainly been ... -
Stress management: Corpus-based insights into vernacular interpretations of "stress"
(Equinox, 2013)**Please note that the full text is embargoed** ABSTRACT: Examination of the term stress in naturally occurring vernacular prose provides evidence of three separate senses being conflated. A corpus analysis of 818 instances ... -
Sugar Makes You Sweet: Polysemy and Cultural Beliefs about Causation
(Department of Linguistics & TESOL, University of Texas at Arlington, July 20-22)Earlier studies showed some word pairs in health discourse being conflated. If some polysemes are not recognized as fully separate senses, is there a pattern of use showing if speakers feel that experiencing one sense ... -
Vernacular Explanations of Causation in Lay Health Discourse
(Department of Linguistics & TESOL, University of Texas at Arlington, 2013-06-07)Few linguistic works exam vernacular terms for health concepts rather than technical medical terms (cf. Rueda-Baclig & Florencio 2003). The prevalence of conversations on food, sleep, exercise, and illness – and the ... -
Corpus linguistics of the vernacular: “catching a cold” in text types that complement Google Books data
(Department of Linguistics & TESOL, University of Texas at Arlington, 2014-04-11) -
How About It? The Role of Accent and Context in Determining Discourse Function
(MIT Working Papers in Linguistics (MITWPL)Linguistics Department, Northwestern University, 2000) -
Activity Implicatures and Possessor Implicatures: What Are Locations When There Is No Article?.
(Chicago Linguistic SocietyLinguistics Department, 1993) -
Health Literacy: A Single Meaning or Three Senses Conflated?
(Instituto Interuniversitario de Lenguas Modernas Aplicadas de la Comunidad Valenciana (IULMA), 2008) -
Pragmatics: A multidisciplinary perspective
(International Cognitive Linguistics AssociationDepartment of Linguistics & TESOL, The University of Texas at Arlington, 2009) -
Review of The Language of Speech and Writing
(Linguist List, 2001-12-01) -
Lexical Conflation and Edible Iconicity: Two Sources of Ambiguity in American Vernacular Health Terminology
(Walter de Gruyter, 2007) -
Advice online: Advice-giving in an American Internet health column
(Cambridge, 2008) -
Corpora for University Language Teachers
(Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, 2009-09)