Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Split languages'

According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter 1978), intransitive verbs fall in two distinct classes: the unaccusatives (whose subjects originate as direct objects) and the unergatives (whose subjects originate as subjects). Although there are studies of split intransitivity in Modern Japanese and European languages, very few exist for earlier stages of Japanese. To fill in part of this gap, this thesis presents a comprehensive investigation of split intransitivity in Old Japanese (largely, 8th century Japanese). The descriptive and analytic work of this research is based on the newly developed ‘Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese’ (OCOJ). It consists of original and romanized Old Japanese texts, with a wide range of information including the original orthography, part-of-speech, morphology and syntactic constituency in the form of XML tags following TEI conventions. It is part of a larger collaborative research project: ‘Verb semantics and argument realization in pre-modern Japanese: A comprehensive study of the basic syntax of pre-modern Japanese’, in which my DPhil project is situated. As part of my DPhil project, I took part in the analysis and tagging of the OCOJ, in addition to contributing to translation. My original contribution to knowledge is a comprehensive investigation and in-depth analysis of the lexical-semantic aspects of split intransitivity in relation to its morpho-syntactic expressions in Old Japanese. This includes: exploring to what extent intransitive verbs could be classified as unaccusative and unergative, what factors are involved in the classification, how they interact, what are the possible ways of representation, and the theoretical implications it brings to linguistic theory in general. Syntactically, I looked into manifestations specific to Old Japanese (e.g. perfective auxiliary selection), and also examined to what extent diagnostics – which show split intransitivity in English, Italian and Modern Japanese (e.g. N+V compounding and resultative construction) – could be applied to Old Japanese. Semantically, I investigated various semantic factors and proposed basic and complex models of the interaction between intentionality and affectedness in Old Japanese. I also proposed a ‘complex format for representing simple event structures’ which enhances the understanding of semantic aspects of split intransitivity. As such, the results of my research not only contribute to a detailed understanding of Old Japanese verbs, but also have implications for linguistic theory in general.

Includes bibliographical references.
Set in the seventies and eighties of Apartheid South Africa, Split tells the story of a middleclass Afrikaans family who –driven by disillusionment and unrealised personal ideals - frequently move house to start afresh somewhere else. In the process, both the family’s mother and father end up with a new spouse or partner. Not only does this result in physical excursions to new places, it invariably leads to a journey fraught with disappointment and unrequited dreams. All while the seething political realities of their country, itself struggling for emancipation, are safely tucked away in the shadows. The main focus of the story, divided into two parts, is the separate efforts of Vera and her daughter, Lien, to uproot entrenched traditions and forge fresh paths for themselves in a patriarchal society. The first part tells Vera’s story; a young wife and mother of three who, due to her husband’s numerous love affairs, has become distrustful of men, emotionally guarded, and disinterested in her environment. She finds short 5In the seventies and eighties, due to sanctions and stringent laws, South Africans got their cultural fix in small and censored jabs. Throughout the novel, selective examples of musical influences are used to illustrate division: between a country and the rest of the world, the difference between local and foreign contemporary music in the seventies, which made way, in the eighties, for a blossoming, not only in Afrikaans music, through the Voëlvry phenomenon but also in the written word, like the Vrye Weekblad newspaper. The raw and charged lyrics of the angry musicians taking part in Voëlvry, became the anthems of a youth culture lost in transition, waiting for their captain, hungry for emancipation. So the beginning of a new wave in Afrikaans music was initiated. While the country slowly dragged its heels towards democracy, its people, like the family in the novel, are forever trying to find a new place to call home.-lived solace in the arms of her neighbour, but this leaves her guilt-ridden and she blames her sexual wrongdoing on the infiltration of the very foreign literature she found liberating at first. And so, Vera runs back into the arms of the devil she knows. Part two shows Lien’s struggle to break free from her apparent imminent destiny: her fight against perpetuating her family’s female legacy of jumping into a shot-gun marriage at 18, and her wish to study art. Searching for identity and acceptance in a new world, the city of Johannesburg, Lien becomes her own worst enemy when she falls into promiscuity and eventually looks to be saved. She learns though, that she has to free herself. The decisions confronting her to win that freedom, and the split she has to enforce, proves to be the most difficult in her life.

This dissertation brings novel data from Ranmo, an endangered Papuan language, to bear on the phenomenon of split intransitivity, the comparatively understudied type of split ergativity (cf. aspectual and person-based splits). Ranmo is spoken by approximately 300 people in Western Province, Papua New Guinea and belongs to the Morehead-Upper Maro River family. The point of departure for this dissertation is the observation that there are two classes of semantically one-place verbs, unaccusatives and middles, which show distinct patterns of agreement|an apparent case of split intransitivity. I demonstrate, however, that this "split" is only an illusion: middles, which show a non-ergative pattern of agreement (i.e., S=A), are in fact syntactically transitive, having an NP (as opposed to phiP) object that is coindexed with and bound by the phiP external argument. This NP object requires a corresponding functional projection on the clausal spine, XP, which is sandwiched between VP and vP; this is essentially a new proposal for pseudo-noun incorporation (PNI) (cf. Massam 2001). Under this analysis, middle verbs--a semantically heterogeneous class encompassing reflexives/reciprocals, anticausatives, and agentives--are subsumed under PNI. When v probes, it cannot agree with the NP object (since it lacks phi-features), resulting in the default spell out of object agreement, which is referred to as the 'middle' morpheme; this is an instance of agreement failure in the sense of Preminger (2009, 2011, 2014). No special rules of agreement are required to capture the non-ergative pattern of agreement in Ranmo; therefore, it is entirely ergative rather than split-ergative. This is a significant conclusion especially in light of recent findings showing that aspectual and NP-based splits, too, are epiphenomenal, involving additional clausal structure in the non-ergative portions (Coon 2010, Coon & Preminger 2012). I further propose that applicative constructions form the "other side of the PNI coin," i.e., their direct object is also an NP, which requires the presence of a clausal correspondent, XP. I argue that the Person-Case Constraint (Bonet 1991, 1994) is evidence for the PNI analysis of applicatives, i.e., only 3rd-person arguments, which are structurally reduced compared to 1st/2nd-person arguments, are licensed in the NP direct object position of applicatives. It is simply that in applicatives, X has the additional function of introducing an applied argument in its specifier and assigning it a theta-role and inherent case. Another major contribution of this dissertation is that it presents new evidence for the dependent theory of case assignment (Bittner & Hale 1996, Marantz 1991). On this view, case is assigned configurationally on the basis of the c-command relationships between noun phrases themselves; it is an alternative to the standard Chomskyan view that case is assigned as a reflex of agreement/Agree (Chomsky 2000, 2001). From both middle clauses and unaccusative applicative constructions in Ranmo, we have evidence of dependent case assignment: an argument receives ergative case only if it c-commands another noun phrase in the same domain. This also argues against the analysis of Ranmo ergative as inherent case assigned to agents by transitive v/Voice. New data like those of Ranmo urge us to adopt a more nuanced, perhaps parameterized, view of case/agreement relationship, i.e., whether case is assigned as a reflex of agreement/Agree is a point of cross-linguistic variation, not a universal absolute.
Linguistics

There are many real models in which unbounded solution to conservation law system occur. Most often we have some kind of delta function in the solution as a result of the accumulation of mass or some other variable. There is no general method of approachingsuch problems with nonlinearities. This dissertation provides solutions to conservation law systems that contain division by a dependent variable, which is a problematic part when working with measures. For example, a basic model of chromatography and similar chemical processes has a division with a variable that is unbounded in some cases. The denition of the split delta shock and the general method of using it in such systems is given. Finally, the solution for the singular chromatography model is given. 
Postoji mnogo realnih modela u kojima se javljaju neoranicena resenja zakona odrzanja. Najcesce imamo neku vrstu delta funkcije u resenju kao posledicu nagomilavanja mase ili neke druge velicine. Ne postoji opsti metod prilaza takvim problemima sa nelinearnostima. U ovoj disertaciji su data resenja problema zakona odrzanja koja sadrze delenje zavisnom promenljivom, sto je problematican deo kod rada sa merama. Na primer, osnovni model hromatograje i slicnih hemijskih procesa ima delenje promenljivom koja je neogranicena u nekim slucajevima. Data je denicija inverza delenjog delta udarnog talasa i opsti metod primene u takvim sistemima. Na kraju je dato resenje kod modela singularne hromatograje. 

This essay aims to shed light on the prevalence of the to + adverb + verb and to not + verb split infinitives in American English, both in a historical perspective and in present day usage, and how it varies in different contexts where different levels of formality are expected. Although students are taught to avoid splitting constructions, numerous grammarians and linguists question this prescriptive viewpoint. Two extensive corpora, the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), were used to gather data. The results revealed how the frequency of the split infinitive was, and still is, rising rapidly, and becoming more and more a standard and accepted feature in American English. The most common context in which to find a split infinitive was that of informal spoken language. However, it was in the most formal of settings, that of academic texts, where the largest increase in prevalence of the split infinitive was seen.

Recent research on the role, the development, and the effectiveness of reading comprehension instructions has provided substantial results concerning the methodology of teaching foreign languages. Cognitive load theory has assisted researchers to recognize cognitive effects in reading comprehensions that can lead to improvements in reading skill. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the split-attention effect in reading comprehension instructions to assist teachers of English to facilitate learning. Three experiments were designed to investigate whether the split attention effect applied to reading comprehension in EFL/ESL by comparing two instructional formats: split-attention and integrated formats. Participants were randomly allocated to one of the two groups and received one of the two instructional formats. The integrated format included a reading text and IO questions integrating physically into the text. The split-attention format consisted of the same reading text and the same questions at the end of the text. Results indicated that the split attention format increased extraneous cognitive load and interfered with the reading comprehension process compared to the integrated format.

Aspect splits can affect agreement, Case, and even preposition insertion. This paper discusses the functional ‘why’ and the theoretical ‘how’ of aspect splits. Aspect splits are an economical way to mark aspect by preserving or suppressing some independent element in one aspect. In formal terms, they are produced in the same way as coda conditions in phonology, with positional/contextual faithfulness.This approach captures the additive effects of cross-cutting splits. Aspect splits are analyzed here from Hindi, Nepali, Yucatec Maya, Chontal, and Palauan.

There have always been rogues who dared to go against the traditional "intellectual" writing style of science and academia, a style that seems bent on transcending the "merely personal." Those who take this risk are embracing the rhetorical tradition of pathos, one that goes as far back as Aristotle. Current academic trends support a genre devoid of pathos and lacking true ethos—a deviation from classic rhetoric, and one that supports the Cartesian split of mind-body dualism. Neurological studies done by Antonio Damasio and others suggest that a holistic view is a more accurate picture of how a human soul functions. Philosophy and psychology support this same perspective, proving that the opposite of logic is not emotion: the opposite of logic is illogic. By the same token, there are two types of emotion: reasonable emotion and unreasonable emotion, one good, the other bad. There are dangers when emotion is left on its own, but there are equal dangers when logic is left on its own; so it is crucial that the two be united. Changing the academic super-genre and inviting pathos back will require writers to pursue, to an extent, divergent thinking.

This dissertation is an analysis, assuming the framework of Government and Binding Theory, of the syntactic derivation of comparative correlative constructions (hereafter CCs for short) in Mandarin Chinese. It attempts to evaluate the theoretical adequacy of extant treatments of CCs and propose an alternative analysis to the prevailing adjunct approach.

CC constructions exist crosslinguistically. An English example is The more chocolate I eat, the happier I feel. In Chinese, a simplex CC sentence consists of two non-coordinated clauses; the lexical word yue, which indicates degree, is obligatory in both clauses, as illustrated in (1): (1) tianqi yue₁ re, dian-fei yue ₂ gao. weather [ YUE₁ hot], electricity-fee [YUE ₂ high] 'The hotter the weather is, the higher the electricity fee is.'

Unlike the English comparative phrase, which has been shown to undergo A-bar movement in earlier studies, the yue-constituent remains in situ. I argue that yue is generated in [Spec, DegP] and behaves as an indefinite in-situ degree element on a par with an in-situ wh-element (Li 1992; Tsai 1994; Cheng and Rooryck 2000; Cheng 2003a, 2003b). The yue-variable in each clause is unselectively bound (Lewis 1975, Heim 1982, Cheng and Huang 1996) by an implicit CORRELATIVITY OPERATOR and does not undergo A-bar movement.

In addition to the idiosyncratic in-situ yue-phrase, another property of CCs is the syntactic interdependency between the constitutive clauses. Earlier studies (Dikken 2005, Taylor 2006, 2009, Tsao and Hsiao 2002) treat the preceding clause as an adjunct. However, an adjunct approach cannot account for the property of syntactic interdependency. As an alternative, I assume Rizzi's (1997) work on the Split CP Hypothesis, arguing that Chinese CCs implicate the information structure in the left periphery and that they are a type of Focus construction. A Chinese CC sentence like (1) is projected by a null functional head Foc⁰. The first clause is focused and base-generated in [Spec, FocP] and the second clause is the complement of the null Foc⁰. The [+focus] feature in Foc ⁰ licenses the co-occurrence of yue₁ and yue₂. This alternative analysis can capture not only crosslinguistic commonalities but also the language-internal property of topic-prominence in Chinese.

Research into codeswitching, generally defined as alternating between two (or more) different languages in the same conversation, has been flourishing over the last few decades. Yet, especially in the field of social, political and collective identity, much is still open for investigation. Although codeswitching research has benefited from the development of models and theories, there is a certain gap in the scholarly literature when it comes to a model that further illustrates the link between codeswitching and sociopolitical identity. Moreover, research into Palestinian Arabic¹ and the dominance of Israeli Hebrew² in Israel and its effect on the Arab and Druze sectors and their language is still in its infancy. Consequently, the present thesis by publication has developed a new model of codeswitching and sociopolitical identity, while examining the various aspects of codeswitching behaviour among the Israeli Arab Muslim, Christian and Druze sectors. The findings show clear different codeswitching behaviours across the different sectors, and that such variance has a link to sociopolitical identity, which subsequently has brought about the introduction of the new model. The present thesis by publication consists of four articles. The first has been published, the second has been revised for publication and the third and fourth have been submitted for publication and are currently being considered. In the first article, I have examined the language of the Druze community in Israel as going through the process of convergence and a composite Matrix Language formation, resulting in a mixed or split language, based on Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Turnover Hypothesis (2002). Longitudinal data of Palestinian Arabic/Israeli Hebrew codeswitching from the Israeli Druze community, collected in 2000 and 2017, indicate that there is a composite Matrix Language formation resulting in a mixed language. The second article presents the new mixed language and its special features upon application of Auer (1999) and Myers-Scotton’s (2003) theoretical models pertaining to mixed languages arising out of codeswitching. The third article examines the relationship between codeswitching and sociopolitical identity, while testing the various aspects of codeswitching among the Israeli Arab Muslim, Christian and Druze sectors. Drawing insights from intersubjective contact linguistics and indexicality, the paper attempts to offer a model that would facilitate the analyses of codeswitching as an index and construct of sociopolitical identity. Finally, the fourth article examines and compares language and identity among the Druze of the Golan Heights, who were moved from Syrian to Israeli control following the Six-Day War in 1967, and the Israeli Druze. In light of the notion of the interrelatedness of language, social-political situations and identity; this article examines the relationship between codeswitching, mixed varieties of language, sociopolitical situations related to the case study and identity, reporting on a comparative study of the Druze in the Golan Heights and the Druze in Israel. After the application of various theories and concepts from intersubjective contact linguistics, the paper shows how ‘sandwiched’ communities create new quasi-national identities and language varieties. ¹Palestinian Arabic, Palestinian Vernacular Arabic and Arabic will be used interchangeably to refer to the same variety. ²Israeli Hebrew, Israeli and Hebrew will be used interchangeably to refer to the same variety.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humaninties, 2020

The present thesis investigates the syntactic interactions with information structure in Squliq Atayal, an Austronesian language in Taiwan. Information structure (i.e. i-structure) is a representation of discourse-pragmatic information at the sentence level in accordance with addressers’ mental states in given discourse-pragmatic contexts. By observing the interactions between syntax and information structure through both quantitative and qualitative evidence, the present thesis discovers that the syntactic structures of both unmarked and marked clauses in Squliq Atayal are formed not only for pure morphosyntactic motivations but also for discourse-pragmatic ones. The present thesis is composed of ten chapters. Chapter 1 is a brief introduction to the ethnic background of Squliq Atayal and the research questions of the present thesis. Chapter 2 reviews the research on information structure, topic, focus and topicality, as well as the studies on Squliq Atayal. In addition, this chapter elaborates the methodology of the present thesis, including data sources, the orthography and our theoretical framework, Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). Chapter 3 presents the basics of grammar of Squliq Atayal, which include the rigid word order Verb-Object/Oblique-Subject, case markers and multiple voices, with related theoretical discussion on the internal structure of c-structure and the lexically determined mapping between a-structure and f-structure. In Chapter 4, the theoretical model of feature-based discourse functions is proposed. There are four discourse features: givenness, aboutness, prominence and contrast, the values of which constitute twelve discourse functions in i-structure. In addition, the proposal of one-to-many mapping benefits the incorporation of gradience into LFG. Chapter 5 focuses on discourse evidence from topicality and information chaining. The former studies the topicality of subject, object, and oblique with the measurement proposed in Givón’s works. The latter looks into how a piece of information connects two adjacent sentences. It shows that new information is highly restricted by syntax. Chapter 6 identifies what discourse functions in i-structure the grammatical functions of subject, object and oblique correspond to. The conflict between quantitative discourse evidence from topicality and qualitative syntactic evidence from question-answer tests verifies the one-to-one general mapping between subject and continuing topic with the application of the conversion function, which further proves that Squliq Atayal is a quasi-f-structural language and that the multiple voice system in Squliq Atayal belongs to both the role-remapping voice system and the information-salience one in linguistic typology. Chapter 7 and 8 offer a general description of the properties of grammaticalized topics and grammaticalized foci respectively. Despite the complexity of the one-to-many mapping from grammatical functions to discourse functions, it is explained by the Informational Mapping Theory proposed in the present thesis, which directly establishes the mapping between f-structure and i-structure. Chapter 9 takes a diachronic perspective on the emergence of split-subjecthood in the Austronesian languages. By comparing Squliq Atayal and Tsou, it is hypothesized that split-subjecthood emerged from the shift of primary continuing topic from nominative subjects to oblique actors in NAV clauses. Chapter 10 summarizes the contributions of the present thesis and points out some issues for further research.

Previous research about the acquisition of the case-marking systems of ergative languages suggests that children acquire ergative and accusative languages equally easily (Van Valin 1992), depending on the degree to which the case morphology is consistently ergative or accusative and the degree to which adults use the morphology (Pye 1990). However, split-ergative languages incorporate both accusative and ergative systems, some in the midst of a shift away from ergativity, thus providing variable and inconsistent input for children. Yet previous research suggests that children can acquire variable linguistic forms at early stages, reflecting frequencies in which the forms occur in caregiver input (Henry 1998, 2002, Miller 2006, 2007, Westergaard 2009). This study examines the acquisition of split-ergativity in Kurmanji Kurdish, where the direct case is used with both present-tense agents and past-tense patients and the oblique case is used with past-tense agents and present-tense patients. However, recent research suggests the weakening of ergativity in Kurmanji (Dorleijn 1996), resulting in variable use of case-marking. This study examines the acquisition of split-ergativity in Kurmanji when considering the split systems and inconsistent adult input. Data from children (n=12) and caretakers (n=24) include spontaneous speech samples and results from a modified Agent-Patient test (Slobin 1985). Four children from three age groups, 1;6, 2;6, and 3;6, were recorded interacting with caretakers every three months for one hour over a 12-month period. Statistical analyses were conducted focusing on adult patterns (input for children) and children’s production at different ages. Results suggest that Kurmanji may be shifting away from a split-ergative system, with the past tense extending to a double oblique pattern and nouns gradually losing oblique case-marking altogether, resulting in variable case-marking. Data show that children first use ergative case as early as 2;0 and show evidence of repeated use of split-ergative case-marking by 2;6. Even at these early ages, children use similar variability and frequency in case-marking as their caretakers, closer to usage of younger adults versus older adults. Thus children seem to use ergative case-marking early, and when faced with inconsistent input, they ultimately conform to the patterns modeled by the adult community.
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This thesis discusses topics in the grammar of Lelepa, an Oceanic language spoken by about 500 people on the islands of Lelepa and Efate in the centre of the Vanuatu archipelago. The areas of grammar covered in the thesis are phonology (chapter 2), morphology (chapter 3), word classes (chapter 4), noun phrases (chapter 5), possession (chapter 6), clause structure and grammatical relations (chapter 7), verb classes and valency changing devices (chapter 8), the verb complex (chapter 9), complex predicates (chapter 10), aspect and modality (chapter 11), coordination and subordination (chapter 12). The phonemic inventory is of medium to small size, with fourteen consonants and five vowels. It includes two typologically rare labial-velar consonants. Stress is not phonemic. Syllables can be complex and consonant clusters are allowed in onset and coda positions. The most important phonological process is vowel reduction, which represent a significant driver of language change. Clausal word order is SVO. Oblique arguments follow the object(s), and adjuncts occur in initial or final position in the clause. An exception is the benefactive phrase, an adjunct encoding beneficiaries which occurs between the subject proclitic and the verb, and makes the verb complex a discontinuous structure. The benefactive phrase is cross-linguistically unusual and makes central Vanuatu languages distinctive. Of typological interest is the split dividing objects along two classes of transitive verbs. It has its source in a semantic distinction between significantly affected Ps and less affected Ps. However, the split is lexical because borrowed transitive verbs are systematically classified with verbs taking less affected Ps regardless of the degree of affectedness of their P. Lelepa has serial verb constructions but has also developed other verbal constructions grouped in the class of complex predicates, which comprise auxiliary verbs, serial verbs, post-verbs and viii clause-final particles. These encode a broad range of semantic distinctions including aspectual, modal and directional values, manner, intensification, cause-effect and result. Lelepa distinguishes between inalienable and alienable possession, but the possessive constructions have diverged from the typical Oceanic model. In particular, relational classifiers are not found in the language, and a construction reflecting alienable relationships distinguishes between human and non-human possessors. An unusual feature is the marking of mood and transitivity on certain verbs with Stem Initial Mutation. In this process, verbs switch their initial consonant from /f/ to /p/ according to particular mood and transitivity values. This process is known in Vanuatu language but often limited to mood marking, whereas Lelepa and other central Vanuatu languages also mark transitivity. The morphological structure is agglutinative, but many grammatical features are encoded by particles, especially in the verb complex. In the nominal domain, inflectional affixes include possessor-indexing suffixes, a prefixed article and derivational affixes generating deverbal nouns. Compounding is a feature of both nouns and verbs. Word classes are clearly defined, and the main open classes are nouns and verbs. Nominals can be derived through nominalisation of verb roots or substantivisation, a process deriving referential items from all word classes except nouns and pronouns.