Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Morphosyntax'
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Mofu, Suriel Semuel. "Biak morphosyntax." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2008. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0a3f5fc2-2222-4583-9f91-e142e7ba6a63.
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This thesis is a general description of the morphology and syntax of the Biak language. The Biak language belongs to the West New Guinea subgroup of the Austronesian language family and is spoken by around 50,000 to 70,000 speakers in West Papua in the northern part of the Geelvink Bay. The thesis consists of 7 main chapters that cover demographic and ethnographic information of the language, morphology, grammatical categories, basic constituent order, noun compounding and denominalization, relative clauses, and predicate nominal constructions. The main findings of the thesis are: • The Biak language is predominantly a head-initial language. • The Biak language has morphological variation from monomorphemic to polymorphemic with the polymorphemic being the dominant pattern in the language. • Inflectional patterns on verbal and prepositional predicates, demonstratives, and possessive pronouns are divided into two patterns: the consonantal pattern and the vocal pattern. • Biak has alienable and inalienable nouns. Alienability in Biak is a syntactic distinction, not exactly corresponding to the semantic distinction. • The basic constituent order is SVO or AVP. Variations occur with predicate nominal (OV) and internally headed relative clause which uses SOV pattern. • Three types of relative clauses were identified: (i) Post nominal relative clause; (ii) Headless relative clause; and, (iii) Internally headed relative clause. The Biak language allows stacked and nested relative clauses. Two kinds of predicate nominal constructions were identified: (i) copular clitics (clitic –ri, -s-, and free pronoun clitics) and (ii) copular verbs –iri and iso. The two kinds of predicate nominal constructions can be distinguished syntactically.
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Moradi, Sedigheh. "LAKI VERBAL MORPHOSYNTAX." UKnowledge, 2015. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/ltt_etds/9.
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Most western Iranian languages, despite their broad differences, show a common quality when it comes to the verbal agreement of past transitive verbs. Dabir-moghaddam (2013) and Haig (2008) discuss it as a grammaticalized split-agreement to encode S, A, and P, which is sensitive to tense and transitivity, and uses split-ergative constructions for its past transitive verbs. Laki shows vestiges of the same kind of verb-agreement ergativity (Comrie 1978) by using a mixture of affixes and clitics for subject and object marking.
In this thesis, I investigate how the different classes of verbs show agreement using four distinct property classes. Considering the special case of the {3 sg} and using Hopper and Traugott's pattern for the cline of grammaticality (2003), I argue that although Laki has already lost the main part of its ergative constructions, the case of the {3 sg} marking is yet another sign that this language is in the process of absolute de-ergativization and its hybrid alignment system is moving toward morphosyntactic unity. As a formal representation of the Laki data, the final part of the thesis provides a morphosyntactic HPSG analysis of the agreement patterns in Laki, using the grammar of cliticized verb-forms (Miller and Sag 1997).
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Koroma, Regine. "Die morphosyntax des Gola /." Köln : Institut für Afrikanistik. Universität zu Köln, 1994. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb399385692.
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Courtney, Ellen Hazlehurst. "Child acquisition of Quechua morphosyntax." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/288857.
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The goal of this study is to inform child language acquisition theory by accomplishing a description of morphosyntactic development in Quechua speakers between the approximate ages of two and four years. The data analysis yields a description of language acquisition in two major areas: (1) overall development of syntax and of morphology directly relevant to the syntax; (2) development of verb morphology. No attempt is made to support any particular theory of language development. Instead, a number of theoretical perspectives are considered. Fieldwork was carried out in the community of Chalhuanca in the department of Arequipa, Peru, in 1996. The study relies largely on the naturalistic production of six Chalhuancan children between the ages of 2;0 years and 3;9 years. Five children were recorded for five to six hours over a period of four months; the sixth child was recorded for eleven hours over a period of six months. The child corpora, as well as child-directed adult speech, were transcribed by native speakers of Quechua. Also presented is the outcome of an elicitation procedure undertaken with few subjects. The description of overall syntactic development focuses on four topics: (1) the representation of arguments, both analytic and morphological; (2) case- and object-marking; (3) reduplication, ellipsis, and evidential focus; and (4) coordination and subordination. The analysis of the development of verb morphology considers the role of several factors in the acquisition of the verb suffixes: meaning, homophony, phonological aspects, frequency of occurrence, and processing constraints. This description also sheds light on the acquisition of causatives, especially change-of-state verbs, with data presented from naturalistic corpora and the experimental procedure. The analysis favors Strong Continuity: functional projections are available to children before they acquire full productivity of the corresponding morphology. Meaning is foremost in the development of verb morphology, with children seeking unique form-function correspondences. As children begin producing complex verbs, they tend initially to attach a small set of suffixes and their combinations to a wide variety of roots. Finally, the data suggest that children may initially assume that change-of-state verbs are basically transitive.
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Ngonyani, Deo. "The morphosyntax of negation in Kiswahili." Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, 2012. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-91528.
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This paper presents a description of sentential negation in Kiswahili and attempts a partial analysis of sentential negation in Kiswahili within the Principles and Parameters framework, in particular, following Pollock\'s (1989) proposal to split IP into several functional categories including NegP. The main claim is that negation mruking in Kiswahili is an instance of negation projection, NegP. The main evidence for this is found in relative clauses and conditional clauses where negation blocks I -to-C movement. The paper is organized into 5 sections. Basic theoretical assumptions are outlined in Section 1. Section 2 presents a description of the basic facts about four strategies of expressing sentential negation in Kiswahili and highlights problems that the data raise. Section 3 discusses the interaction between negation and relative marker. In Section 4, the location of NegP in IP is proposed. Section 5 presents some general conclusions and summarizes questions for further research.
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Akbar, Farah. "Malay morphosyntax : the role of meN-." Thesis, University of Essex, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.616990.
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The issue of Malay clause structure and the possible mappings from argument structure to surface grammatical functions is surprisingly vague and there is not a complete consensus in the literature despite the attention it has received. The literature has somewhat neglected the active bare verb clause or the "meN-less" clause. In this thesis we aim to make a contribution to the analysis of Malay clause structure by (i) providing more adequate discussion of the neglected active bare verb clause and (ii) providing a more comprehensive approach to and treatment of the contribution of meN-. Previous treatments of the active bare verb clause have been quite partial and often passed as informal register. In the first part of the thesis we review previous account of the clause structures in Malay by comparing the works of Alsagoff (H)SJ2), Arka and Manning (1998) and Musgrave (2001) in the Lexical Functional Grammar framework and evaluate the adequacy of these approaches, particularly on the data which has not been accounted for. We suggest that Arka and Manning (1998) and Musgrave (2001) are accurate in the possible mappings from argument structure to surface grammatical functions and propose that their approach can be extended to also take into account the structures that they do not deal with, namely the active bare verb clause. In the second part of the thesis we provide the analysis and formalization of the role of meN- in the Generative Lexicon framework as a novel contribution to Malay linguistics while adopting the Single Active hypothesis (Nomoto, 2010a). We propose that meN- is polysemous and its predicative meaning can be attained through the process of coercion and co-composition. We also suggest that meN- opts for a [+stage] reading interpretation when prefixed to adjective and verb bases.
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Bobaljik, Jonathan David. "Morphosyntax : the syntax of verbal inflection." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/11351.
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Moracchini, Sophie Ph D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Morphosyntax and semantics of degree constructions." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124094.
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Thesis: Ph. D. in Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2019Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-188).
This thesis investigates the morphosyntax and the semantics of comparatives and related degree constructions through the prism of a phenomenon called evaluativity, a type of inference whereby gradable adjectives receive a context-dependent interpretation. Pursuing the view that evaluativity is contributed by an optional null operator (EVAL, Rett 2008), this dissertation achieves the following results. First, it integrates a compositional analysis of evaluativity within a non-lexical view of antonymy. Second, it argues that the observed restrictions on the distribution of these inferences follow from independently motivated conditions that regulate the presence of the EVAL operator at the interfaces. In particular, three interface conditions are identified and discussed in detail: ++ At Logical Form (LF), derivations are subject to a structural economy condition, Minimize APs!, which executes transderivational comparisons over semantically equivalent Adjectival Phrases (APs).
The inclusion of EVAL in a parse licenses derivations that would otherwise be deemed deviant by this economy condition. ++ At Phonological Form (PF), the EVAL morpheme morphophonologically interacts with its surrounding environment. Specifically, EVAL is claimed to be a zero-morpheme subject to Myers Generalization, a PF-filter on syntactic derivations which prevents further morphological operations from applying to a zeroderived form. A consequence of this claim is that EVAL is licensed in derivations only where it does not disrupt post-syntactic operations that apply within the AP. ++ The distribution of EVAL is conditioned by aspects of Information Structure. In particular, in degree constructions that license contrastive adjectives, the distribution of focus is governed by (AvoIDF) which, in turn, interacts with conditions on deletion. Ultimately, the presence of EVAL can license a surface form which would otherwise get eliminated by PF-deletion.
In essence, the grammatical account of evaluativity developed in this thesis offers a window into the word-internal structure of complex degree expressions and presents new insights into the semantic and morphosyntactic primitives of the degree domain.
by Sophie Moracchini.
Ph. D. in Linguistics
Ph.D.inLinguistics Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
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van, Egmond Marie-Elaine. "Enindhilyakwa phonology, morphosyntax and genetic position." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8747.
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This thesis is a grammatical description of Enindhilyakwa, a non-Pama-Nyungan language spoken by over 1200 people living in the Groote Eylandt archipelago in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Territory, Australia. The language is classified as an isolate in O’Grady et al. (1966), and as “perhaps the most difficult of all Australian languages, with a very complex grammar” (Dixon 1980: 84; Capell 1942: 376). The aim of this thesis is to unravel this complex grammar, morphosyntax and phonology, and to place the language in the context of the neighbouring Arnhem Land languages. I propose that, although highly intricate, Enindhilyakwa morphology is also fairly regular and transparent, and, in fact, patterns much like the Gunwinyguan family of languages to its west. The areas of grammar covered in this thesis are: phonology (Chapter 2), nouns and adjectives (Chapter 3), verbal prefixes (Chapter 4), verb stem structures (Chapter 5), tense, aspect and mood marking on the verb (Chapter 6), the incorporation of body part and generic nominals into verbs and adjectives (Chapter 7), case marking (Chapter 8), and the genetic affiliation (Chapter 9). Enindhilyakwa phonology displays some radical departures from the typical Australian pattern, as well as from the typical Gunwinyguan pattern. However, the innovations can be traced back to an original proto-Gunwinyguan stock. Other grammatical features of this language are: (i) an elaborate noun classification system, involving noun classes, gender and generics incorporated into verbs and adjectives; (ii) an extensive degree of nominal derivation, including inalienable possession, alienable possession and deverbalising prefixes; (iii) four distinct pronominal prefix series on the verb to mark an equal number of moods; (iv) the possibility of most nominal case markers to be used as complementising cases on verbs; and (v) the pervasive use of body parts, which play a major role in naming and classifying inanimate objects.
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Haugen, Jason D. "Issues in comparative Uto-Aztecan morphosyntax." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/290110.
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This dissertation seeks to test recent important theoretical ideas in the Principles and Parameters and Distributed Morphology frameworks against data from the relatively under-studied Uto-Aztecan languages. In this work I focus on the morphology of reduplication, noun incorporation and related derivational morphology, and the diachronic development of the polysynthetic morphological type in one sub-branch of the family (Corachol-Aztecan). With respect to prosodic morphology, I argue that the comparative Uto-Aztecan evidence suggests that reduplicants should be viewed as morphological pieces, and I analyze them as Vocabulary Items inserted into syntactic slots at Morphological Structure. I also argue that the evidence of cognate reduplication patterns across Uto-Aztecan supports a prosodic view of morphology, as well as the constraint-ranking approach to morphophonology. With respect to noun incorporation and derivational morphology, I argue that the comparative Uto-Aztecan evidence supports the view that denominal verbs are a sub-class of noun-incorporating verbs. I survey the noun incorporation types in Uto-Aztecan and classify NI in these languages into four types: N-V compounding, syntactic NI, classificatory NI, and "object polysynthesis". I offer a unified syntactic account of these types, maintaining that each is formed via head-movement in syntax. I provide a novel approach to hyponomous objects, suggesting that these are in argument positions, and that they are derived via the Late Insertion of material that is not cognate to the incorporated noun, but which is inserted into the lower copy of a movement chain. Non-theme "nominal" roots incorporated into verbs, such as instrumental prefixes, are analyzed as adverbial elements Merged directly into the verbal position. Finally, I argue that this theoretical analysis of NI leads naturally to a diachronic account of the development of polysynthesis in Nahuatl. I show that the crucial aspects of polysynthesis, subject and object pronominal marking on the verb as well as syntactic noun incorporation, have analogues elsewhere in Uto-Aztecan, and I offer a reconstruction of the likely stages of the development of polysynthesis in Nahuatl, each of which have attestation elsewhere in the family.
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Hargreaves, Katharine Margaret. "A computational implementation of Somali morphosyntax." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2006. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.511254.
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Pucilowski, Anna. "Topics in Ho Morphophonology and Morphosyntax." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/13241.
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Ho, an under-documented North Munda language of India, is known for its complex verb forms. This dissertation focuses on analysis of several features of those complex verbs, using data from original fieldwork undertaken by the author.
By way of background, an analysis of the phonetics, phonology and morphophonology of Ho is first presented. Ho has vowel harmony based on height, and like other Munda languages, the phonological word is restricted to two moras.
There has been a long-standing debate over whether Ho and the other North Munda languages have word classes, including verbs as distinct from nouns. Looking at the distribution of object, property and action concepts, this study argues that Ho does, in fact, have word classes, including a small class of adjectives.
Several new morphological analyses are given; for example, what has previously been called 'passive' is here analyzed as 'middle'. The uses of the middle -oʔ in Ho overlap with uses documented for other middle-marking languages, suggesting that this is a better label than 'passive'.
Ho traditionally marks aspect in the verb rather than tense, especially for transitive verb constructions. Several aspect suffixes follow the verb root. Ho is developing a periphrastic past tense construction with the past tense copula form taikena. Also, the combination of perfect(ive) aspect suffixes and the transitivity suffix -ɖ always gives a past tense interpretation, to the extent that -ɖ may be re- grammaticalizing to past tense.
Three types of complex clauses are discussed in the dissertation: complement clauses; relative clauses and serial verb constructions. Like many South Asian languages, Ho has productive serial verbs and several serialized verbs are grammaticalizing to become more like auxiliary verb constructions.
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Weiss, Doris. "Phonologie et morphosyntaxe du Maba." Thesis, Lyon 2, 2009. http://www.theses.fr/2009LYO20012/document.
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Cette thèse porte sur le maba, une langue nilo-saharienne du groupe maban, parlée à l’Est du Tchad par quelques 300.000 locuteurs. Cette langue est très peu décrite, et nous avons tenté de faire ressortir les caractéristiques phonologiques et morphosyntaxiques de la langue.Dans un premier temps, nous avons décrit l’inventaire des phonèmes ainsi que la formation des mots. Puis nous avons abordé le système nominal, c’est-à-dire le nom, les déterminants du nom ainsi que le constituant nominal. L’une des particularités du maba sont les coverbes, lexèmes actualisés soit à l’aide d’un morphème nominal ou d’un verbe support. Nous avons traité le système verbal, décrivant la morphologie du verbe ainsi que les TAM et les opérations de modifications de la valence. Nous nous sommes attachée à décrire les propositions complexes, qu’elles soient complétives ou adverbiales, subordonnées, coordonnées ou juxtaposées. L’un des points saillants du système est la fréquence de l’emploi des converbes, formes verbales non finies, dans le discours. Pour terminer la description, nous nous sommes attardée sur le discours, mettant en évidence quelques mécanismes de focalisation et de topicalisation, et revenant sur le discours rapporté.L’une des traits caractéristiques de la langue est la complexité du nombre, tant nominal que ver-bal, ceci étant une particularité des langues nilo-sahariennes de façon générale. Le marquage du nom-bre est morphologique – suffixation, ou syntaxique – indiqué par l’accord entre le nom et ses dépen-dants, le nom et le verbe ou le verbe et l’objetThis thesis concerns Maba, a Nilo-Saharan language from the Maban group, spoken by some 300,000 speakers in Eastern Chad. The language has been very little studied up to now, and my aim in this thesis has been to research and describe its phonological and morphological characteristics.I begin by describing the phoneme inventory and the rules governing word formation. This is followed by a consideration of the nominal system, including sections on the noun, the noun determi-nants and the noun phrase. One of the points of special interest in the language is the use of co-verbs. Co-verbs are lexemes which are accompanied either by a nominal morpheme or by a support verb. The thesis continues with a description of the verbal system, including the verb morphology, the TAM sys-tem and modifications in valency. This is followed by a discussion of complex clauses, including com-pletive and adverbial clauses, subordinate clauses, and coordinate and juxtaposed clauses. Then the discussion returns to the co-verbs, examining the frequency of use of the ‘non-finished’ verb form in the discourse. To close the description, we look at other aspects of discourse, showing some topicalisa-tion and focalisation mechanisms, and finishing with reported speech.One of the characteristics of the language which is featured in this thesis is the complexity of number, be it nominal or verbal number. This complexity is a particularity of Nilo-Saharan languages as a whole. Number is marked morphologically, by suffixation, or syntactically, by concord between the noun and its dependants, the noun and the verb or the verb and the object
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Watson, Rachel. "Kujireray : morphosyntax, noun classification and verbal nouns." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2015. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/22829/.
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The thesis constitutes a first description of the Joola language Kujireray. In addition to a grammatical sketch, it comprises an analysis of the noun classification system in Kujireray, including a detailed treatment of verbal nouns and their interaction with this system. The analysis takes place within a Cognitive Linguistics framework. The noun classification system is shown to be semantically motivated along such parameters as number and physical configuration. The semantic analysis is carried out at the level of the noun class paradigm, which approach is able to draw a more fine-grained picture of the structure/organization of the system. However, it is recognized that noun classification operates on three distinct but interdependent levels - the paradigm, the noun class prefix, and the agreement pattern - all of which contribute meaning. The analysis also encompasses a detailed treatment of verbal nouns, as they interact within the noun classification system. It is shown that the formation of verbal nouns in various noun class prefixes is semantically motivated just as in the nominal domain, and furthermore that analogies can be drawn between the semantic domains in the nominal domain and the verbal one. The analysis is situated within a Cognitive Linguistics framework, whereby notions of embodied experience, encyclopaedic knowledge and metaphorical thought are invoked to account for the semantic organization of noun classification system. It is shown that noun formation in Kujireray is constructional, with individual components possessing underspecified semantics which are elaborated in combination with each other. Furthermore, it is the property of underspecification which accounts for the parallels between the nominal and verbal domains.
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Hantgan, Abbie. "Aspects of Bangime Phonology, Morphology, and Morphosyntax." Thesis, Indiana University, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3601801.
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This dissertation provides a description of aspects of the phonology, morphology, and morphosyntax of Bangime. Bangime is a language isolate spoken in the Dogon language speaking area of Central Eastern Mali. Although the Bangande, the speakers of Bangime, self-identify with the Dogon, their language bears practically no resemblance to the surrounding Dogon languages. Bangime has limited productive morphological processes whereas Dogon languages are agglutinating, with productive morphemes to indicate inflectional and derivational verbal and nominal processes.
Bangime has a complex tonal system. General tendencies of the tonal patterns are described, with the many exceptions which frequently occur also outlined. Nominal tonal melodies are apparent in plural forms. Objects in verb phrases receive tonal agreement with tones on the verb in accordance with the subject of the sentence.
The tense, aspect, and mood system of the language is also complicated. Inflectional marking on the verb, auxiliaries, and the word order all contribute to the indication of the tense, aspect or mood of the sentence. An overview of these multifaceted phonological and morphological processes is provided in this dissertation with hypotheses as to how the language might have evolved.
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Bjorkman, Bronwyn Alma Moore. "BE-ing default : the morphosyntax of auxiliaries." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/68911.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-256).
This dissertation is concerned with the broad question of why auxiliary verbs occur in natural language. Much previous work has assumed that the occurrence of auxiliary verbs is morphologically or syntactically arbitrary. I argue instead that auxiliary verbs, particularly BE, arise as a result of general properties morphological and syntactic systems of verbal inflection. More specifically, I propose that the existence of auxiliary BE reflects the fact that the inflectional system can fail to unite inflectional material with a main verb. I argue the reasons for this failure are structural: inflectional information combines with the main verb via Agree (Chomsky, 1998), a process constrained by relativized locality. Certain inflectional contexts isolate inflectional features from the verb because other targets for inflectional Agree intervene between them, resulting in these features being stranded. Stranded features are morphologically realized separately from the main verb; if they are affixal, this triggers the insertion of a totally default verb (BE) within the morphological component. Framing this approach to inflection in terms of Agree, however, requires modification of Chomsky's original formulation, so that inflectional feature values can be passed downward (or fail to be passed downward) from functional heads onto the main verb. I argue for a "reverse" formulation of Agree similar to that adopted in a number of recent papers (Baker 2008, Zeijlstra 2010, Wurmbrand 2011, a.o.) The resulting framework for verbal inflection predicts that different patterns of auxiliary use arise cross-linguistically due to differences in which inflectional features are able to Agree locally with the main verb. I argue that this variation can be traced two factors independently known to differ cross-linguistically: inflectional feature markedness, determining which features are visible to Agree, and the distribution of head movement, able to move the verb into local relationships with higher functional heads. Subsequent chapters extend this general approach into a variety of related domains: the alternation between HAVE and BE in auxiliary selection, the conflict between this analysis of BE and the traditional analysis of DO-support as a process that rescues stranded inflection, and the interaction of verbal inflection and auxiliaries with counterfactual inflection marking.
by Bronwyn Alma Moore Bjorkman.
Ph.D.
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Galani, Alexandra. "The morphosyntax of verbs in modern Greek." Thesis, University of York, 2005. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14189/.
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Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. "Morphosyntax und Morphologie : die Ausrichtungsaffixe im Tagalog /." München : W. Fink, 1987. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb355680243.
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Key, Gregory. "The Morphosyntax of the Turkish Causative Construction." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/306362.
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This dissertation is an analysis of the morphosyntax of the Turkish causative construction within the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). It is an attempt to capture a range of different phenomena in a principled way within this framework. Important aspects of DM for the analysis herein include the syntactic derivation of words; the existence of an acategorial Root from which all words are syntactically derived; and the late (post-syntactic) insertion of Vocabulary Items (VIs) into terminal syntactic nodes. A distinction is made between two different levels of causative: Root (or inner) causatives, and productive (or outer) causatives. Root causatives are minimal structures in which a Root phrase (comprising a Root and its nominal complement) is merged with a verbalizing head, little-v (Harley 1995; Chomsky 1995, 2001; Marantz 1997). This domain is the locus of idiosyncratic allomorphy, and it is where the traditionally recognized ‘irregular’ causatives suffixes are found. In addition, another type of idiosyncratic Root-adjacent phenomenon is identified in this study: independent exponence of the verbalizing feature and of the causative feature (CAUS). This is analyzed as CAUS fission: the result of a post-syntactic operation that splits the terminal node [v, CAUS] into two positions of exponence. Productive causatives are larger structures in which a vP is merged with a CAUS head. The identification of the Root causative head as v.CAUS but the productive causative head as simply CAUS is a departure from Harley's (2008) analysis of Japanese causatives, and is a new proposal in this work. Following Pylkkänen (2002, 2008), the external argument is not introduced by either v.CAUS or CAUS, but by a higher projection, Voice. This innovation makes it possible to model syntactic differences between Japanese and Turkish productive causatives. Japanese causatives embed Voice (i.e., they are ‘phase-selecting,’ in Pylkkänen's terminology) while Turkish causatives embed little-v (i.e., they are ‘verb-selecting’). Hence, the former behave as two clauses with regard to a range of diagnostics, while the latter behave as a single clause. Furthermore, it is proposed that productive causatives do not exhibit syntactic recursion, and that cases of causative iteration are actually morphological reduplication.
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Schwarz, Anne. "Aspekte der Morphosyntax und Tonologie im Buli." Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Philosophische Fakultät III, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/15715.
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Gegenstand der Arbeit sind verschiedene Aspekte der Morphosyntax und Tonologie im Buli, einer in Ghana (Upper East Region nahe der Grenze zu Burkina Faso) gesprochenen Gursprache des Niger-Kongo-Phylums, die bisher nur unzureichend beschrieben wurde. Die grammatische Beschreibung gibt einen umfangreichen Einblick in das sprachliche System des Buli und umfasst Kapitel zu den folgenden Themen: Phonologie, Nominalklassensystem, Pronominalsystem, Komplexe Nominalphrasen und nominale Syntagmen, Verbsystem. Dies geschieht in erster Linie anhand des in Wiaga gesprochenen Buli, wird aber durch die Bezugnahme auf andere Dialekte sowie auf verwandte Gursprachen ergänzt, beispielsweise hinsichtlich der Bewertung tonaler Divergenzen in Nominalklassensuffixen oder in Assoziativkonstruktionen. Die autosegmental angelegte Tonstudie verfolgt keine theoretischen Ziele, sondern hat sich unmittelbar aus dem Bedarf einer adäquaten Beschreibung der synchronen Sprache ergeben, in der Ton sowohl in lexikalischer als auch in grammatischer Hinsicht ganz zentrale Aufgaben übernimmt. Dabei wurden neben regelmäßigen Ton–Sandhi-Erscheinungen (Tieftonausbreitung) auch interessante Phänomene an den Schnittstellen der Phonologie zur Syntax und zur Semantik-Pragmatik vorgefunden, z.B. die tonale Kongruenz bestimmter Verbformen mit der Diskursrolle des Subjekts (+/- Diskurspartizipant, d.h. 1./2. Person vs. 3. Person) oder das Vorkommen eines Grenztons an äußerungsfinalen Morphemen, zu denen auch die Klassensuffixe indefiniter Substantive und enklitische Objektpronomen am Verb gehören. Im Rahmen der morphosyntaktischen Analysen wurde unter anderem ein aus typologischer Sicht spannender nominaler Kompositionstyp identifiziert, der sich neben seinen strukturellen Eigenschaften auch durch eine spezifische possessive Semantik auszeichnet und vermutlich an der Entwicklung von attributiven (qualifizierenden) Adjektiven und eines von zwei Zahlwörtern für ‘eins’ beteiligt war.This work deals with different aspects of the morphosyntax and tonology in Buli, a Gur language of the Niger-Congo-Phylum, which is spoken in Ghana (Upper East Region near the border to Burkina Faso) and has so far been described insufficiently. The grammatical description provides an extensive insight into the linguistic system of Buli and contains chapters concerning the following topics: phonology, noun class system, pronominal system, complex noun phrases and nominal syntagmata, and verb system. It is primarily based on the Buli variant spoken in Wiaga and supplemented by reference to other dialects as well as to related Gur languages, for instance with regard to tonal divergencies in noun class suffixes and in associative constructions. Following an autosegmental model, the tonal study does not aim at theoretic enhancement, but results directly from the need of an adequate description of the synchronic language in which tone plays an important role in lexicon and grammar. Besides regular Tone-Sandhi (Low tone spreading), interesting phenomena at the phonology/syntax interface as well as at the phonology/semantics-pragmatics interface were observed – e.g. some verb forms displaying tonal agreement with the discourse role of the subject (+/- discourse participant, i.e. 1st / 2nd vs. 3rd person) or the appearance of a boundary tone on utterance-final morphemes, including the noun class suffixes of indefinite nouns and the enclitic object pronouns at the verb. In the course of the morphosyntactic analysis, a typologically remarkable nominal compound type was identified that is distinguished by structural features as well as by specific possessive semantics and can be assumed to be involved in the development of attributive (qualifying) adjectives and one of two numerals with the meaning ‘one’.
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Swenson, Amanda Ph D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The morphosemantics and morphosyntax of the Malayalam verb." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113774.
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Thesis: Ph. D. in Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2017.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-256).
The questions posed and addressed in this dissertation are broadly questions regarding the nature cross-linguistic variation and why languages differ from one another in these particular ways. This thesis focuses on four known points of cross-linguistic variation in the verbal domain: tense, aspect, finiteness and the perfect. It uses data primarily from the Dravidian language Malayalam to explore these questions. Past work on tense and aspect in Dravidian languages (Amritavalli & Jayaseelan 2005) has claimed that Malayalam, along with the other Dravidian languages, is tenseless. This dissertation, however, shows that Malayalam is empirically different from other tenseless languages and that it does have morphology that encodes tense semantics and a TP. It further examines what have previously been called the two 'imperfectives' and argues that the first one is a type of progressive. The second form, is shown to be something between an interative and an imperfective. While the dissertation argues that Malayalam, has tense morphology and a TP, it argues that Malayalam lacks perfect morphology and a PerfP in, minimally, Universal perfects. The investigation of finiteness focuses on the empirical facts regarding the different non-finite forms in Malayalam and the theoretical implications of these facts. It points out a problem for classifying negation as 'finite' versus 'non-finite', as has frequently been done (Amritavalli & Jayaseelan 2005, a.o.) and argues that nonfinite uses of the -uka marker are progressive participles, that Conjunctive Participles are best analyzed as Stump (1985)-style absolutives and that -athu gerunds involve nominalization above the TP-level (cf. Borsley & Kornfilt 2000, Baker 2011).
by Amanda Swenson.
Ph. D. in Linguistics
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Züwerink, Tim. "Possessivadjektive in slavischen Sprachen Morphosyntax und pragmatische Empirie." München Sagner, 2008. http://d-nb.info/990376435/04.
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Thiele, Petra. "Kabuverdianu : Elementaria seiner TMA-Morphosyntax im lusokreolischen Vergleich /." Bochum : N. Brockmeyer, 1991. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb35522177p.
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Lomashvili, Leila. "Morphosyntax of complex predicates in South Caucasian languages." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193878.
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The dissertation explores the morphosyntax of complex predicate constructions (causatives and applicatives) in polysynthetic languages of South Caucasus Georgian, Mingrelian and Svan appealing to the tenets of Distributed Morphology within the Minimalist Program. It shows that the interface between syntax-semantics and morphology of these constructions is not always transparent and mismatches between these components are accounted for by post-syntactic processes, which often result from language-specific constraints on the realization of morphemes per word.
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Trionfera, Cristiana <1992>. "the morphosyntax of kinship terms in Italian dialects." Master's Degree Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10579/12765.
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This thesis is going to be an extension of the paper 'kinship Nouns in italian dialects - variation in the use of Articles and Possessives', an abstract of Comparative Syntax. The analysis of Kinship Terms will be extended to other varieties of Italian and it will focus on the differences between standard italian and dialects.
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Cerruti, Massimo. "Strutture dell'italiano regionale morfosintassi di una varietà diatopica in prospettiva sociolinguistica." Frankfurt, M. Berlin Bern Bruxelles New York, NY Oxford Wien Lang, 2008. http://d-nb.info/996660615/04.
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Chen, Weirong, and 陈伟蓉. "The Southern Min dialect of Hui'an: morphosyntax and grammaticalization." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2011. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B46421427.
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Yusuf, Mukhtar Abdulkadir. "Aspects of the morphosyntax of functional categories in Hausa." Thesis, University of Essex, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.280705.
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Otoguro, Ryo. "Morphosyntax of case : a theoretical investigation of the concept." Thesis, University of Essex, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.423520.
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Sharma, Narayan Prasad. "Morphosyntax of Puma, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2014. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/18554/.
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Puma is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of the Kiranti subgroup spoken by approximately 4,000 people in eastern Nepal. This dissertation investigates the phonology and morphosyntax of Puma. Data are presented and analysed from a crosslinguistic typological perspective where possible. The analysis is based mainly on annotated texts from a substantial corpus of spoken Puma, and from informally collected data and direct elicitation to supplement the corpus. Puma is a polysynthetic and complex pronominalised language where words can consist of a series of morphemes. Verbal agreement, where verbs agree with subjects and objects, is very complex, and differs strikingly from the case-marking system used with independent noun phrases. Case-marking of nouns and pronouns is split between nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive-dative. Intransitive subjects also exhibit characteristics of a split-S pattern: some intransitive subjects display grammatical properties similar to those of transitive objects, while others do not. In contrast to Dryer's (1986, 2007) typology of primary object type and direct object type languages, Puma is neither a fully primary object nor a fully direct object language. Transitive verbs can be detransitivised with a kha- prefix or with zero, which is typologically more common (Bickel et al. 2007). For kha-detransitivisation the affected entity must be human; this is typologically unusual, but characteristic of the Kiranti subgroup. The syntactic pivot for both inter-clausal and intra-clausal syntax is 'subject', comprising the single argument of intransitive verbs and the agent-like argument of transitive verbs. Interestingly, the morphology does not treat these in a consistent way but the syntax does. Verbs fall into classes that show distinct syntactic behaviours in different constructions. Compound verbs, which are an areal feature of South Asian languages (Masica 1976), comprise verbal, nominal and lexical types. Different nominalisation and relativisation strategies exist for S human and non-human, A and P arguments. The dissertation aims to provide a comprehensive description of Puma and includes hundreds of examples drawn from the corpus, plus Appendices of sample verb paradigms and texts, and names of contributors.
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Turner, Darryl John. "The morphosyntax of Katcha nominals : a Dynamic Syntax account." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/21003.
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This thesis presents a new description and theoretical analysis of the nominal system of Katcha (Nilo-Saharan, Kadu), spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. The description and analysis are based on a synthesis of data from several sources, including unpublished archive material and original fieldwork. The study is placed in context with a discussion of the demographic, cultural and political background affecting the Katcha linguistic community, a review of the current state of linguistic research on Katcha and a discussion of the ongoing controversy over the place of the Kadu languages within the language phyla of Africa. The morphosyntactic descriptions first focus on the role of nominals as heads, considering phenomena such as classification, agreement and modification. It is shown that Katcha has a unusual system of gender agreement with three agreement classes based on the concepts of Masculine, Feminine and Plural and that the gender of a noun may change between its singular and plural forms. Surprisingly, these phenomena are both most commonly found in Afro-Asiatic, which is not a phylum to which Kadu has previously been ascribed. The gender changes are shown to be predictable, determined by number-marking affixes. The study then gives a unified analysis of various types of nominal modifiers; relative clauses, possessives, demonstratives and adjectives all display similar morphological properties and this is accounted for by analysing all modfiers as appositional, headed by a demonstrative pronoun. This analysis of modifiers shows them to be related to, though not the same as, the notions of relative markers and construct state found widely in African languages. The role of nominals within sentential argument structure is then considered, with discussion of phenomena such as prepositional phrases, case and verbal valency. From the interaction of prepositions and pronouns, it is tentatively concluded that Katcha has three cases: Nominative, Accusative and Oblique. From the interaction of verbs and nouns, it is demonstrated that the verbal suffixes known as ‘verb extensions’ primarily serve to license the absence of otherwise mandatory core arguments. The second part of the thesis provides a theoretical analysis of the nominal system within the framework of Dynamic Syntax (DS). Two key features of the DS formalism come into play. Firstly, DS construes semantic individuals as terms of the epsilon calculus. Verb extensions are analysed as projecting context-dependent epsilon terms, providing a value for the ‘missing’ argument. Secondly, DS allows information sharing between propositions by means of a ‘LINK’ relation. Prepositional phrases are analysed as projecting a subordinate proposition which shares an argument with the matrix tree. These two formal tools come together in the analysis of nominal modifiers, which are construed as projecting an arbitrarily complex epsilon term LINKed to some term in the matrix tree, directly reflecting their descriptive analysis as appositional nominals. In presenting new data for a little studied language, this thesis adds to our knowledge and understanding of Nuba Mountain languages. In describing and analysing some of the typologically unsual features of Katcha’s nominal system, it challenges some standard assumptions about these constructions and about the genetic affiliation of the Kadu family. And in the theoretical analysis it demonstrates the suitability of Dynamic Syntax to model some of the key insights of the descriptive analysis.
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Serratos, Angelina Eduardovna. "Topics in Chemehuevi Morphosyntax: Lexical Categories, Predication and Causation." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194704.
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This dissertation is an application of the framework of Distributed Morphology to the morphosyntax of Chemehuevi, an endangered Southern Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. Following one of the central claims of DM, I argue that word formation in Chemehuevi happens in the syntax and provide evidence for this claim from the formation of lexical categories, as well as from the morphosyntax of the Chemehuevi causative verbs. I frame my discussion of lexical categories around the Root Hypothesis (Marantz 1997, Arad 2005), a notion that there are no underived nouns, verbs, or adjectives in the grammar, but roots that receive interpretation and assignment to a `part of speech' depending on their functional environment. I show that Chemehuevi nouns and verbs are formed when roots are incorporated into nominal or verbal functional heads, many of which are overtly represented in the language. I also demonstrate that there is no distinct class of adjectives in Chemehuevi, and that roots with adjectival meanings are derived into stative verbs or nominalizations, depending on their function.My discussion of predication in Chemehuevi centers around the previously unexplained distribution of the enclitic copula -uk, which under my analysis is viewed as an overt realization of a functional head Pred (based on Baker 2003), which is obligatory in the formation of nominal and adjectival, but not verbal predicates.Another major theme of the dissertation is the notion that word-formation from roots differs from word-formation from derived words, known as the Low vs. High Attachment Hypothesis (Marantz 2000, Travis 2000, etc.). This approach explains the differences between compositional and non-compositional word formation by the distance between the root and functional head(s) attached to it. On the basis of Chemehuevi causatives, I show that causative heads attached directly to the root derive words that exhibit morphophonological and semantic idiosyncrasies, such as allomorphy and availability of idiomatic meanings, while high attachment heads derive words that are fully compositional. This locality constraint on interpretation of roots is explained in terms of phase theory, and I present evidence from Chemehuevi showing that what constitutes a phase may be subject to parametric variation.Each chapter of the dissertation contains a section for non-linguistic audience where I provide a summary of the main points in non-theoretical terms and connect them to practical applications for the purposes of language learning and revitalization.
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Ivani, Jessica Katiuscia. "The morphosyntax of number systems: a cross-linguistic study." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Bergamo, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10446/77295.
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This dissertation investigates the number systems and the constructions used to express number in a sample of about 200 languages worldwide. For the purpose of this research linguistic data has been coded and systematize in a structural model, which has its main result in a typological database of number marking constructions.
The dissertation is organised around three main research foci, that correspond to the three level of analysis on which this analysis is performed.
First, this work provides for a systematic overview of the types of markers used to signal number distinctions on the nominal elements. The aim of this preliminary survey is the identification of (i) the constructions types that recurr more frequently to express the number values (ii) recurrent association between constructions and nominal types and (iii) any relevant features associated to the interaction of a construction form with a number value.
The second main goal is the systematic overview of the constructions used to mark plural distinctions at the language specific level and their internal distribution, with a particular attention to the plurality splits and the internal groupings of noun types sharing the same construction form.
The third main research question focusses on the presence and distribution of the number systems in the languages of the world. Describing these systems construction wise may help in the understanding of the processes behind the origin of these systems.
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Abdalla, Fauzia Ahmed. "Specific language impairment in Arabic-speaking children : deficits in morphosyntax." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=82810.
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Four areas of morphosyntax in Arabic-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) were investigated: tense, subject-verb agreement, determiners, and prepositions. Spontaneous production data were analyzed for accuracy and error types in using these morphemes. Two groups of typically-developing Arabic-speaking children served as Mean Length Utterance (MLU)-matched and chronological age-matched controls. The results indicate that Arabic-speaking children with SLI were significantly different from the two control groups of children on percentage correct use of tense and subject-verb agreement. Furthermore, when an error in verbal inflection occurred, the substitute form was usually an underspecified/default form, namely the imperative.The findings of the study are discussed in light of existing theoretical accounts of SLI. Three positions are examined: (a) tense marking constitutes the locus of SLI grammatical difficulties (Extended Optional Infinitive hypothesis, Rice & Wexler, 1996); (b) morphosyntactic problems stem from deficits in agreement relations (Grammatical Agreement Deficit account, Clahsen, 1989; Clahsen, Bartke, & Gollner, 1997); and (c) trouble with inflectional morphology is less pronounced in children with SLI acquiring richly inflected languages (Sparse Morphology account, Leonard, Bortolini, Caselli, McGregor, & Sabbadim, 1992). Special characteristics of Arabic such as its intricate morphological system and null subject properties make it particularly valuable in determining universal versus language-specific aspects of SLI. Clinical implications for SLI in Arabic and directions for future research are also explored.
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Lockhart, Jennifer Lynn. "The type and frequency of morphosyntax errors in children's narratives." [Johnson City, Tenn. : East Tennessee State University], 2004. http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-0326104-115425/unrestricted/LockhartJ041604f.pdf.
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Thesis (M.S.)--East Tennessee State University, 2004.Title from electronic submission form. ETSU ETD database URN: etd-0326104-115425. Includes bibliographical references. Also available via Internet at the UMI web site.
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Butler, Lindsay Kay. "The Morphosyntax and Processing of Number Marking in Yucatec Maya." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/217050.
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This dissertation is a theoretical and experimental investigation of number marking in Yucatec Maya, a language in which number marking has different properties than better known Indo-European languages with inflectional plural marking and obligatory number agreement. The primary goal of this thesis is to propose a formal syntactic analysis of plural marking in Yucatec Maya in the nominal and verbal domains. I do this by examining the distribution and interpretation of the plural morpheme and by proposing an analysis within a Minimalist framework. The secondary goal is to investigate how the formal representation of plural marking interacts with real-time sentence processing mechanisms. I do this through timed translation experiments (and a picture description experiment) with bilingual speakers of Yucatec Maya and Spanish, two languages in which the formal representation of number marking and agreement differs. These experiments are tests of the formal syntactic analyses proposed in this thesis, and they examine the effect of language-particular syntax on sentence processing mechanisms. In the nominal domain, I argue that the plural marker is adjoined to the Determiner Phrase, rather than heading a Number Phrase, following the syntax of plural marking proposed by Wiltschko (2008). It merges as an adjunct to the DP, lacking the ability to change the label of the element with which it merges. This analysis explains the distributional and interpretational properties of plural marking as well as the otherwise peculiar lack of morphosyntactic persistence in certain conditions in an experimental translation task. I also propose an analysis of plural marking in the verbal domain and its relationship to word order. In verb-initial clauses, the aspect-mood particle is the main predicate in T⁰ which is φ-deficient. There is no Agree for number between the plural-marked full DP and verb due to the absence of C⁰ (Chomsky 2008). For DP-initial clauses, a DP bearing plural morphology moves to the CP domain, triggered by a topic or focus feature. The uninterpretable number feature on C⁰ probes via T⁰ for an interpretable valued feature in its domain (Chomsky 2001). This analysis predicts asymmetric number agreement in Yucatec Maya, which is tested experimentally.
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Rabanus, Stefan. "Morphologisches Minimum : Distinktionen und Synkretismen im Minimalsatz hochdeutscher Dialekte /." Stuttgart : Steiner, 2008. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=016739239&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.
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Labuda, Olga. "Russlanddeutsche Sprachvarietäten des Mittleren Ural : morphosyntaktische Phänomene /." Mannheim : Institut für Deutsche Sprache, 2009. http://www.ids-mannheim.de/pub/laufend/amades/ama34.html.
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Larrew, Olha. "Norm, Normen, Normabweichungen : eine historische und empirische Untersuchung zur wissenschaftlichen Bewertung morphosyntaktischer Konstruktionen im Deutschen /." Hamburg : Kovač, 2005. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=014174991&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.
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Proctor-Williams, Kerry. "Dosage and Distribution in Morphosyntax Intervention: Current Evidence and Future Needs." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2009. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/1773.
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This article reviews the effectiveness of dose forms and the efficacy of dosage and distribution in morphosyntax intervention for children. Dose forms include the commonly used techniques, procedures, and intervention contexts that constitute teaching episodes; dosage includes the quantitative measures of dose, dose frequency, total intervention duration, and cumulative intervention intensity (S. F. Warren, M. E. Fey, & P. J. Yoder, 2007). Based on the literature, this article first outlines and evaluates the range of dose forms and intervention contexts that clinicians and researchers can employ to facilitate morphosyntactic acquisition. Then, it defines and evaluates research outcomes and provides examples of the dosage components. Current evidence, which focuses primarily on young children and early-developing morphology and sentence structures, suggests that some dose forms and dosage levels are more effective with some populations and some morphosyntactic forms than with others. Distributed practice within sessions and throughout the total period of treatment appears to be more facilitative than massed practice, at least for children with typical language development. The scant research concerning total intervention duration suggests that it affects children's developmental trajectory and that treatment attendance matters. What is missing from the research base is detailed information about the effectiveness and efficacy of intervention for the acquisition of particular morphosyntactic forms in specific populations. The article summarizes these gaps in 3 research goals that reflect the argument of S. F. Warren et al. that it is time to conduct systematic comparisons of specific dose forms while testing how each measure of dosage affects outcomes.
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Campos, Dintrans Gonzalo Santiago. "Acquisition of morphosyntax in the adult second language: the phonology factor." Diss., University of Iowa, 2011. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2677.
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The goal of this dissertation is to examine the ubiquitous challenge that adult second language speakers have in producing functional morphology, even at advanced stages of acquisition. Specifically, this study examines how native speakers of Spanish, Mandarin and Japanese use past tense and number morphology in English. To this aim, two current competing hypotheses are tested: the Interpretability Hypothesis, which states that certain aspects of syntactic knowledge (uninterpretable features) cannot be acquired after a critical period, resulting in target-deviant use of functional morphology, and the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis, which claims that all aspects of syntax can be acquired, but that phonological transfer effects from the first language might be at the source of target-deviant use of functional morphology. Participants were selected according to a pre-established set of criteria in order to obtain similar linguistic profiles. Native speakers of American English also participated as controls. The experiments included proficiency tests, sentence completion tests and picture description tests.
Group and individual results were analyzed in order to determine the extent to which the Interpretability Hypothesis and the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis could account for the observed patterns. The results of the experiments in this study strongly suggest that phonological factors can account for some of the observed target-deviant use of functional morphology, supporting the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis. The results also suggest that ultimate acquisition of new uninterpretable features is possible, supporting the Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis and not the Interpretability Hypothesis. The study also stresses the idea that although phonological transfer effects cannot account for all the problems observed in second language functional morphology, it is vital that phonological factors be taken into account.
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Lacroix, René. "Description du dialecte laze d’Arhavi (caucasique du sud, Turquie) : grammaire et textes." Thesis, Lyon 2, 2009. http://www.theses.fr/2009LYO20091/document.
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Ce travail est une description du dialecte laze d’Arhavi, suivie de textes. Le laze appartient à la famille des langues caucasiques du sud (ou « kartvèles »), comme le mingrélien, le géorgien et le svane. Il est parlé dans le nord-est de la Turquie. Dans le recensement turc de 1965, qui représente la dernière statistique officielle, 85.108 personnes déclaraient parler cette langue.Le laze est une langue non écrite et en danger. Tous les locuteurs sont bilingues laze-turc ; les jeunes comprennent encore la langue mais ne la parlent pas.Jusqu’à présent, le laze nous était connu principalement à travers des descriptions soit anciennes, soit incomplètes. Le présent travail est la première étude approfondie d’un dialecte laze qui ne se limite pas à un aspect particulier de la grammaire.Dans la première partie, les points suivants sont successivement développés : la phonologie, les processus phonologiques et morphophonologiques, le syntagme nominal, les pronoms interlocutifs, démonstratifs et emphatique-réfléchi, les interrogatifs et indéfinis, les postpositions, les adverbes, le verbe fini, le verbe non fini, la phrase simple et la phrase complexe (relatives, circonstancielles, complétives et conditionnelles). Dans le chapitre sur le verbe fini, j’étudie en particulier le système des indices pronominaux, les tiroirs verbaux, les préverbes spatiaux et affirmatifs, les opérations sur la valence (moyen, applicatif, potentiel-déagentif, causatif), les verbes irréguliers et la formation des lexèmes verbaux, et je présente une classification morphologique des verbes. Une hypothèse est proposée pour expliquer l’origine de certains indices pronominaux suffixés. Dans le chapitre sur la phrase simple sont observées les propriétés syntaxiques des arguments nucléaires, en particulier des sujets non canoniques.Dans la seconde partie, je présente dix textes récoltés lors de voyages de terrain.Je situe mon analyse dans le cadre des grammaires à orientation typologique. En conséquence, je m’écarte de la tradition de description des langues caucasiques du sud, calquée sur la grammaire du géorgien, lorsque cela permet de mieux comparer les faits du laze à ce qui a pu être observé dans d’autres languesThe present work is a grammatical description of the Arhavi dialect of Laz, together with texts. Laz belongs to the South Caucasian (or ‘Kartvelian’) language family, alongside Mingrelian, Georgian and Svan. It is spoken in north-east Turkey. In the 1965 Turkish census, the last official statistic, 85,108 persons identified themselves as speakers of Laz.Laz is an endangered and unwritten language. All speakers are bilingual in Turkish; young people still understand the language, but do not speak it.Up until now, the grammar of Laz has only been known from older or incomplete works. The present study is the first comprehensive description of a Laz dialect.In the first part of this study, the following topics are discussed: the phonology, the phonological and morphophonological processes, the noun phrase, the interlocutive (1st and 2nd person), demonstrative and emphatic-reflexive pronouns, the interrogative and indefinite pronouns, the postpositions, the adverbs, the finite verb, the non-finite verb, the simple sentence and the complex sentence (relative clauses, adverbial clauses, complement clauses and conditional clauses). In the chapter on finite verbs, particular attention is devoted to cross-referencing affixes, tenses, spatial and affirmative preverbs, valency-changing operations (middle, applicative, potential-deagentive, causative), irregular verbs and the formation of verbal lexemes, and a morphological classification of verbs is put forward. A hypothesis is proposed to explain the origin of some cross-referencing suffixes. In the chapter on simple sentences, I examine the syntactic characteristics of core arguments, in particular of non-canonical (dative) subjects.In the second part, I present ten texts which I collected during fieldwork.This study is typologically oriented. As a consequence, it sometimes departs from other works on South Caucasian languages, which are commonly based on traditional Georgian grammar, when it is helpful to compare Laz with what has been observed in other languages
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Köster, Dirk. "Morphology and spoken word comprehension : electrophysiological investigations of internal compound structure /." Leipzig ; München : MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 2004. http://bvbr.bib-bvb.de:8991/F?func=service&doc_library=BVB01&doc_number=013183589&line_number=0001&func_code=DB_RECORDS&service_type=MEDIA.
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Ott, Susan. "Feld - fällt - fehlt : Untersuchungen zur Phonologie-Morphosyntax-Schnittstelle bei Kindern und Erwachsenen." Phd thesis, Universität Potsdam, 2012. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2012/5779/.
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Neben der Frequenz eines cues ist es dessen Zuverlässigkeit, die Kindern hilft, die an sie gerichtete Sprache zu segmentieren, Worteinheiten zu erkennen sowie diese syntaktisch zu kategorisieren. Im Deutschen weist die Subsilbe „Langvokal+Konsonant+/t/“ (z.B. in fehlt, wohnt) zuverlässig auf eine -t-flektierte Verbform hin. Die in kindgerichteter Sprache höher frequente Subsilbe „Kurzvokal+Konsonant+/t/“ (z.B. in Feld, Hemd, fällt, rund) gibt hingegen keinen derartig eindeutigen Hinweis. Es wurde der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern diese unterschiedlichen Zuverlässigkeiten und Frequenzen der Subsilben auf die Nomen-, Verb- und Verbflexionsverarbeitung einwirken.
Drei Altersgruppen wurden untersucht: achtzehn Monate alte Kinder, drei- bis fünfjährige sprachunauffällige und -auffällige Kinder sowie erwachsene Sprecher. Einflüsse der unterschiedlichen Zuverlässigkeiten und Frequenzen der ausgewählten Subsilben konnten für alle Probandengruppen gefunden werden. Die Subsilbe stellt damit eine linguistische Größe dar, die in der frühen Sprachwahrnehmung als cue dienen sowie die Sprachverarbeitung Erwachsener lenken kann und auch für die Sprachdiagnostik und -therapie sprachauffälliger Kinder berücksichtigt werden sollte.Frequency and reliability have an impact on children’s reliance on cues for the segmentation and syntactic categorization of words. In German, the subsyllable “long vowel+consonant+/t/” reliably indicates that a word containing this type of subsyllable is an inflected verb form, e.g. “fehlt” (to lack, 3rd pers. sing.) or “wohnt” (to live, 3rd pers. sing.) In contrast, the more frequent subsyllable “short vowel+consonant+/t/” is not a reliable cue to word class as it occurs not only in inflected verb forms but in monomorphemic nouns and adjectives as well, e.g. “fällt” (to fall, 3rd pers. sing.), “Hemd” (shirt), “Feld” (field) or “rund” (round). This study addresses the question to what extent the different cue properties of subsyllables (i.e. reliability and frequency) have an impact on the processing of nouns, verbs and verb inflection. Participants of three different age groups were recruited: eighteen-month-old children, three- to five-year-old children with typical and atypical language acquisition and adults. Impacts of the different subsyllabic reliabilities and frequencies were found for all groups. This indicates that the subsyllable is a linguistic unit that provides relevant cues for early language acquisition and for language processing in adults. Therefore, it should also be considered for assessment and treatment of children with atypical language acquisition.
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Ba´ra´ny, Andra´s. "Differential object marking in Hungarian and the morphosyntax of case and agreement." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2016. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.720365.
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Perevozčikova, Tatjana [Verfasser], and Juliane [Akademischer Betreuer] Besters-Dilger. "Age-related similarities and differences in ultimate attainment in second language morphosyntax." Freiburg : Universität, 2015. http://d-nb.info/1119327733/34.
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Arif, Muhammad Shahbaz. "The acquisition of the morphosyntax of the English verb by L2 children." Thesis, University of Essex, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.566843.
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Maylor, Roger. "The morphosyntax of the German inseparable prefixes in a figure/ground framework." Thesis, Durham University, 1998. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4912/.
Full textAbstract:
niis study attempts a comprehensive analysis of the German so-called inseparable prefixes be-, ge-. er-, ver-, ent-. The framework Is Talmy's (1978) Figure/Ground distinction, in which a Figure is perceived as located or moving with respect to a frame of reference, the Ground. The pre-syntactic templates of X categories [Figure V [[±LOC] Ground]] and [Agent V Figure [[+LOC] Ground]]derive Das Heu war auf dem Wagen "The hay was on the cart' and Er bid Heu avf den Wagen ‘He loaded hay onto the cart'. The be- prefix and its inverse the ent- prefix are prepositional allomorphs which alternatively realize the feature (+LOC]. Foregrounding of [[+LOC] Ground]] causes the feature [+LOC] to be adjoined to the verb as the prefix be-: Er belud den Wagen mitt Heu 'He be-loaded the cart with hay’. The Figure argument may also be incorporated by substitution into the verb forming a denominal be- or ent-verb (bewaffnen 'be-weapon, arm', entwaffnen 'ent-arm, disarm'. Adjunction of [+LOC] and substitution of the Figure are according to Van Riemsdijk's (1998) Head Adjacency Principle for syntactic head movement A set of verb Classes is established according to whether the Figure and Ground arguments are VP-internal, subjects, or incorporated, thus rendering the traditional notions of 0-roles (Patient, Experiencer, theme. etc.) superfluous. I propose a crucial development of Talmas Figure/Ground distinction, the hidden’ Ground, whereby the Ground is the prior location or state of the Figure, hi tills case the prefixes are allomorphs of the change of state' P that 1 denote as (-*). On simplex verbs this feature means simply 'forth, onward', as in geleiten 'ge-lead, escort', bestehen 'be-stand, continue to exist', verführen 'ver-lead, tempt". The Figure N can substitute into a null V : The template [[ env ] N [ → Film ]] gives Er machte Hamlet zu einem Film He made Hamlet into a film'. The Ground is the prior state of Hamlet (not a film). The same template permits adjunction of (→) and substitution of Film into the null verb slot: [[ver-(_i) Film(_j) –en(_v) ] [ t(_i) t(_j) ]]. Thus. we get Er verfilmte Hamlet He filmed Hamlet'. Deadjectival prefixed verbs are of two types. The prefix er- alternatively realizes (→) with positive degree adjectives ( from not-A → A), ver- alternatively realizes the (→) that is the feature [COMPARATIVE]. Thus, erblassen 'er-pale' (from not-pale to pale) means '(suddenly) become pale', whereas verblassen 'ver-pale' (from pale to more-pale) means (gradually) fade, lose colour". The feature (←) on ent- is the inverse of [→) and denotes 'return to prior state", as in entfalten "ent-fold, unfold", entwaffnen "ent-weapon. disarm'. Connotations such as inchoative, pejorative, concealment that are associated with certain prefixes are accounted for by the underlying change of state template. Key concepts: Figure/Ground, inseparable prefix, incorporation, abstract feature, alternative realization. Locative Alternation. Dative Alternation, diachronic. morphological cases, prepositions.
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Louwerse, John. "The morphosyntax of Una in relation to discourse structure : a descriptive analysis /." Canberra : Department of linguistics, Research school of Pacific studies, the Australian national university, 1988. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb370653896.
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Kennard, Holly Jane. "Breton morphosyntax in two generations of speakers : evidence from word order and mutation." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6ed27592-f318-44ea-9895-3bd9f8dba2c9.
Full textAbstract:
Following a decline over the twentieth century, Breton has seen an increase in revival efforts, including Breton-medium education. This study investigates the effect of the language transmission gap on the morphosyntax of verbs. Fieldwork was undertaken with three distinct age groups: older native speakers (aged over 65), and two groups which make up a younger generation of speakers: children in Breton-medium education, and young adults who have been schooled in Breton. The question of word order and the placement of verbs in Breton has been controversial, largely because it is complex and variable, making the identification of basic word order difficult. The data show that usage across the older generation is fairly consistent, with V2 word order in matrix clauses. Verbal mutation is also maintained. Despite the transmission gap, younger adults from French-speaking homes do not systematically replace Breton patterns with French SVO. Rather, they avoid SVO in some contexts, and indeed use it less than the senior adults. The amount of input speakers receive is crucial: children in bilingual schooling, with only half of their classes in Breton, tend to oversimplify word order patterns and show French influence. In contrast, those with additional Breton input from a family member are more proficient. Children have difficulty acquiring mutation rules, and do not seem to have grasped the system of verbal mutation, but young adults use mutation proficiently, like the older speakers. Consequently, despite strong French influence, Breton word order has remained consistent. The fact that verbal mutation is variable in children reflects late acquisition, since the young adults rarely diverge from the expected usage. Thus, the changes in Breton morphosyntax are subtler than expected in light of the unusual transmission pattern and close proximity to French. The crucial factor appears to be sustained input in the language.