Dissertations / Theses: 'Syntax of Shilha language'

1

Gabsi, Zouhir, University of Western Sydney, of Arts Education and Social Sciences College, and School of Languages and Linguistics. "An outline of the Shilha (Berber) vernacular of Douiret (Southern Tunisia)." THESIS_CAESS_LLI_Gabsi_Z.xml, 2003. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/573.

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The Tunisian Berber (or Shilha) vernaculars are among the least described Afroasiatic (Hamito-Semitic) languages to this day. Although they have been provisionally assigned to the North-Berber group within the Berber branch of Afroasiatic, their immediate affiliation remains an open question. The principal task of this present work is to describe the phonology, morphology and syntax of Douiret. Less central to the aims of the study is the analysis of the basic wordstores of the three surviving Shilha varieties which include Douiret, Chninni (or Chenini) and Ouirsighen (Jerba). The Shilha variety of Douiret is chosen for this study because it still retains some fundamental elements of Berber structure which are not very dissimilar to other Berber languages such as Kabyle and Tamazight. The research shows that Tunisian Berber still survives today, but its future remains uncertain in the face of the forces of urbanisation, economic migration and lack of government support all of which may contribute hypothetically to its likely death. This study will be pursued with reference to the social and cultural context of the Tunisian Berber vernaculars. Research on the nature of language contact bewtween Tunisian Arabic and Shilha is practically non-existent and in this study, is a secondary concern. The strong influence of the local Arabic superstratum on Shilha in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexis is also investigated, as well as the presence of Berber elements in the distinctive Arabic dialect of Tunisia. As the thesis title suggests, this study should not be taken as the last word on Berber in Tunisia. The little available data on Berber in Tunisia makes the task harder in establishing a clear picture of its structure and relationship with other Berber languages such as Kabyle and Tamazight.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) (Education)

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Gabsi, Zouhir. "An outline of the Shilha (Berber) vernacular of Douiret (Southern Tunisia)." Thesis, View thesis, 2003. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/573.

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The Tunisian Berber (or Shilha) vernaculars are among the least described Afroasiatic (Hamito-Semitic) languages to this day. Although they have been provisionally assigned to the North-Berber group within the Berber branch of Afroasiatic, their immediate affiliation remains an open question. The principal task of this present work is to describe the phonology, morphology and syntax of Douiret. Less central to the aims of the study is the analysis of the basic wordstores of the three surviving Shilha varieties which include Douiret, Chninni (or Chenini) and Ouirsighen (Jerba). The Shilha variety of Douiret is chosen for this study because it still retains some fundamental elements of Berber structure which are not very dissimilar to other Berber languages such as Kabyle and Tamazight. The research shows that Tunisian Berber still survives today, but its future remains uncertain in the face of the forces of urbanisation, economic migration and lack of government support all of which may contribute hypothetically to its likely death. This study will be pursued with reference to the social and cultural context of the Tunisian Berber vernaculars. Research on the nature of language contact bewtween Tunisian Arabic and Shilha is practically non-existent and in this study, is a secondary concern. The strong influence of the local Arabic superstratum on Shilha in phonology, morphology, syntax and lexis is also investigated, as well as the presence of Berber elements in the distinctive Arabic dialect of Tunisia. As the thesis title suggests, this study should not be taken as the last word on Berber in Tunisia. The little available data on Berber in Tunisia makes the task harder in establishing a clear picture of its structure and relationship with other Berber languages such as Kabyle and Tamazight.

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Gabsi, Zouhir. "An outline of the Shilha (Berber) vernacular of Douiret (Southern Tunisia) /." View thesis, 2003. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20040707.092709/index.html.

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Liljegren, Henrik. "Towards a grammatical description of Palula : An Indo-Aryan language of the Hindu Kush." Doctoral thesis, kostenfrei, 2008. http://www.diva-portal.org/su/abstract.xsql?dbid=7511.

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Blaszczak, Joanna, Stefanie Dipper, Gisbert Fanselow, Shinishiro Ishihara, Svetlana Petrova, Stavros Skopeteas, Thomas Weskott, and Malte Zimmermann. "Syntax." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/2225/.

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The guidelines for syntactic annotation contain the layers that are especially relevant for queries related to the interaction of information structure with syntax. The layers of this level are constituent structure, grammatical functions, and semantic roles.

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Watkinson, Stephen. "Learning natural language syntax." Thesis, University of York, 2002. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9849/.

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Ollomo, Ella Régis. "Description linguistique du shiwa, langue bantu du Gabon. : phonologie, morphologie, syntaxe, lexique." Thesis, Paris 3, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013PA030129/document.

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Le présent travail est une description linguistique du shiwa, une langue bantu du Nord-Est du Gabon.La thèse comporte trois parties précédées d’une introduction générale qui situe le shiwa et les Shiwa dans leur environnement géographique, sociolinguistique et socioculturel. Cette introduction présente également les données exploitées et les conditions de leur collecte.La partie phonétique et phonologie (phonématique et analyse tonale) est traitée dans l’optique fonctionnaliste. Le shiwa présente un grand nombre de réalisations phonétiques et un système phonologique complexe, six tons se réalisant sur plusieurs registres. La complexité phonétique est liée à la monosyllabisation. Elle engendre des consonnes complexes, palatalisées, labialisées, affriquées, des voyelles centralisées et nasalisées. Le système phonologique présente de multiples mécanismes de variations libres, combinatoires et contextuelles.La morphologie inspirée des méthodes de l’Ecole de Londres montre un système d’accord bantu classique avec, cependant, un nombre restreint de schèmes d’accord et de classes. La langue fait usage au singulier des mêmes préfixes pour l’ensemble des classes.Le lexique exploité compte 1104 termes, transcrits, segmentés, rangés selon la classe avec une référence les liant à l’annexe audio.Outre les éléments de description linguistique, la thèse comprend des fichiers sons. Ces fichiers sons comportent une partie des données collectées sur le terrain soit une dizaine d’heures d’enregistrements sur des lexiques spécialisés, des questionnaires et des récits
The present work is a linguistic description of the Shiwa, a Bantu language of northeastern Gabon. The thesis has three parts preceded by a general introduction. It places the Shiwa and Shiwa in their geographical, sociolinguistic and sociocultural environment. The introduction also presents the data used and the conditions of their collection.Phonetics and phonology part use the functionalist perspective. Shiwa has many phonetic realisations, a complex phonological system and six tones. Phonetic complexity is related to the monosyllabisation. It generates complex consonants, palatalized, labialized, affricates, centralized and nasalized vowels. The phonological system has multiple mechanisms of free, combinatorial and contextual variations.The morphology is based on the London School methods. It brings to light a system with classical Bantu agreements system. However, the language has few classes and agreements marks. It uses the same singular prefixes for all classes.The lexicon contain 1104 words, transcribed, segmented, classified by class and linking to the audio Annex.In addition to the elements of linguistic description, the thesis includes a sound data. This contain a part of data collected during our investigations: ten hours of recordings on specialized lexicons, questionnaires and stories

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Davies, Herbert John. "Kobon syntax." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.329116.

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Kathol, Andreas. "Linearization-Based German Syntax /." The Ohio State University, 1995. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487867541733891.

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Kato, Kumiko. "Japanese gapping in minimalist syntax /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/8434.

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Underriner, Janne Lynne. "Intonation and syntax in Klamath /." view abstract or download file of text, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3055718.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-280). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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Te, Velde John R. "Coordination and German syntax /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9935.

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Rebuschat, Patrick. "Implicit learning of natural language syntax." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2009. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/237038.

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The findings reported in this dissertation have several implications for our understanding of language acquisition and for future research. Firstly, while the precise form of the knowledge acquired in these experiments is unclear, the findings provided no evidence for rule learning in the vast majority of subjects. It suggests that subjects in these types of experiments (and perhaps in natural language acquisition) do not acquire linguistic rules. The results support Shanks (1995; Johnstone & Shanks, 2001), who argues against the possibility of implicit rule learning. Secondly, while adults can acquire knowledge implicitly, the work reported in this dissertation also demonstrates that adult syntactic learning results predominantly in a conscious (but largely unverbalizable) knowledge base. Finally, from a methodological perspective, the results of the experiments confirm that relying on verbal reports as a measure of awareness is not sufficient. The verbal reports collected at the end of the experiment were helpful in determining what aspects of the semi-artificial grammar subjects had consciously noticed. At the same time, verbal reports were clearly not sensitive enough to assess whether subjects were aware of the knowledge they had acquired. Confidence ratings and source attributions provided a very useful method for capturing low levels of awareness and to observe the conscious status of both structural and judgment knowledge. Future experiments on language acquisition would benefit from the introduction of this relatively simple, but effective way of assessing awareness. The results of the experiments indicate that adult learners are able to acquire syntactic structures of a novel language under both incidental and intentional learning conditions, while processing sentences for meaning, without the benefit of corrective feedback and after shortviexposure periods. That is, the findings demonstrate that the implicit learning of natural language is not restricted to infants and child learners. In addition, the experiments also show that subjects are able to transfer their knowledge to stimuli with the same underlying structure but new surface features. The measures of awareness further suggest that, in experiments 3 to 6 at least, learning resulted in both conscious and unconscious knowledge. While subjects did not become aware of all the information they have acquired, it was clear that higher levels of awareness were associated with improved performance. Participants in experiments 1-5 were exposed to the semi-artificial system under incidental learning conditions by means of different training tasks. In experiments 1 and 2, an auditory plausibility judgment task was used to expose participants to the stimulus sentences. In experiment 3, elicited imitations were used in addition to the plausibility judgment task. The training phase in experiment 4 consisted solely of elicited imitations, while training in experiment 5 consisted of a classification task which required participants to identify the syntactic structure of each stimulus item, followed by plausibility judgments. Participants in experiment 6, on the other hand, were exposed to the semi-artificial grammar under intentional learning conditions. These participants were told that the word order of the stimulus sentences was governed by a complex rule-system and instructed to discover syntactic rules. After training, participants in all six experiments took part in a testing phase which assessed whether learning took place and to what extent they became aware of the knowledge they had acquired. Grammaticality judgments were used as a measure of learning. Awareness was assessed by means of verbal reports, accuracy estimates, confidence ratings and source attributions. Control participants did not take part in the training phase. The present dissertation focuses on the question of how humans acquire syntactic knowledge without intending to and without awareness of what they have learned. The aim is to apply the theoretical concepts and the methodological framework provided by implicit learning research to the investigation of language acquisition. The results of six experiments are reported. In terms of design, all experiments consisted of (i) a training phase, during which subjects were trained on a miniature linguistic system by means of different exposure conditions, (ii) an unexpected testing phase, during which learning and awareness were assessed, and (iii) a debriefing session. A semi-artificial grammar, which consisted of English words and German syntax, was employed to generate the stimulus material for experiments 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6; in the case of experiment 4, nonsense syllables were used instead of English words. The linguistic focus was on verb placement rules. Native speakers of English with no background in German (or any other V2 language) were recruited to take part in the experiments.

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Rouzer, John Harvey. "Ontological metaphor in Chinese syntax /." The Ohio State University, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487945320758437.

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15

Preslar, Raymond Mark. "The syntax of Russian impersonal sentences /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/7170.

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Dai, Xiang-ling. "Chinese morphology and its interface with syntax." Connect to resource, 1992. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1218131835.

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17

Kentner, Gerrit. "Rhythmus-Syntax-Interaktion beim Lesen." Universität Potsdam, 2011. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2011/5423/.

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Subramanian, Uma Maheswari. "On internal and external syntax mismatches /." The Ohio State University, 1992. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487760357821743.

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19

Escribano-Diaz, Rafael. "Spanish morpho-syntax : a lexical categorical approach /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/8287.

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20

Piau, Julie Anne. "The verbal syntax of Kuman." Thesis, Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/132712.

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Kuman is a Non-Austronesian or Papuan language of the Central Family of the East New Guinea Highlands Stock (Wurm 1978). There are over 66,000 speakers of Kuman, who live mainly in the northern part of Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea. Languages which belong to this family include Mid-Wahgi, Chuave, Salt-Yui, Sinasina and Golin. Previous work on Kuman has been carried out to my knowledge by Capell (1948-1949), Bergmann (1953), Nilles (1969), Trefry (1967, 1969) Lynch (in press) and Piau (1981). The aim of this subthesis is to describe the predicate and the constructions it enters into. In chapter one, I attempt to describe the morphophonemic processes, and formulate some general rules for the verbs. The more specific rules, that is, where only one phoneme of a particular morpheme is affected is given in the respective morpheme is discussed. The rules discussed here should not be considered as conclusive, as further research may show exceptions, or better rules may be written. The rules presented in this chapter only affect verbal morphology. In chapter two, I will describe briefly nominals and adjectives. The main focus of the chapter , however is a description of the final verb suffixes. In chapter three I will discuss the non-final or dependent verbs, which includes a discussion on serial verb constructions, the notion of controlled and uncontrolled events and the semantic relations that are encoded in these verbs. In chapter four, I will discuss clause linkage using Olson's (1981) and Foley and Van Valins' (1984) theory of interclausal relations. This involves a discussion on how clauses can be linked at different levels, and how Kuman does this. This discussion, of course, does not cover all the different suffixes that occur on the verb. Only the suffixes that are relevant to the subthesis are discussed here. Similarly, further research may show different methods of separating the different layers and the syntactic relationships between clauses.

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Kim, Anthony Hahn 1980. "Building a trajectory syntax through language evolution." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28433.

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Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-82).
If we are to understand the innately human ability to solve complex problems, we must first understand the cognitive processes that allow us to combine different kinds of knowledge, to learn new things and to communicate with other people. I have built a computer simulation, based on the work of Simon Kirby, in which I show that a population of induction agents, capable of perceiving their environment and producing utterances, can develop a compositional grammar to describe the world they observe with no prior linguistic knowledge. This system expands the semantic domain proposed by Kirby which expressed meanings such as "John knows Pete" to a physical world of trajectories such as "The boy ran from the tree to the pole". In this new simulation, I demonstrate that a compositional syntax still develops if the level of semantic complexity increases over time. I then argue that using multiple representations decreases the time necessary for a compositional grammar to emerge.
by Anthony Hahn Kim.
M.Eng.

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22

Koppel, James (James Brandon). "Incremental parametric syntax for multi-language transformation." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/108842.

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Thesis: S.M. in Computer Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2017.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 53-57).
We present a new system for building source-to-source transformations that can run on multiple programming languages, based on a new way of representing programs called incremental parametric syntax. We construct incremental parametric syntaxes for C, Java, JavaScript, Lua, and Python, and demonstrate two multi-language program transformations that can run on all of them. Our evaluation shows that (1) once a transformation is written, relatively little work is required to configure it for a new language (2) transformations built this way output readable code which preserve the structure of the original, according to participants in our human study, and (3) despite dealing with many languages, our transformations can still handle language corner-cases, and pass 90% of compiler test suites. Incremental parametric syntax is based on the datatypes a la carte approach for constructing modular syntax, but extends it with the notion of a sort injection, which allows intermixing language-specific and generic components in a type-safe and modular fashion. Instead of translating each language to a common representation, this allows having a family of representations, each specific to a language, but sharing common components. Our system can construct an incremental parametric syntax semi-automatically from a third-party library for that language, with the user only writing code for the portions they wish to translate into generic components. The resulting incremental parametric syntax is isomorphic to the original representation, allowing transformations to be fully information-preserving. The user can begin by only translating a small fragment of a language into generic components, enough to support a few transformations, and incrementally add more. Our experience shows that constructing an incremental parametric syntax for a new language is easy, typically taking less than a day of work, and that multi-language transformations built against incremental parametric syntaxes can be configured for a large number of languages, with only a small amount of work per language.
by James Koppel.
S.M. in Computer Science and Engineering

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23

Matthews, Kenneth. "The syntax of object shift in Icelandic." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ55523.pdf.

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24

Manga, Louise. "The syntax of adverbs in English." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/7948.

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In this thesis I use the Principles and Parameters model of generative grammar to explain the surface distribution of adverbs in English. Using the current parameters and principals assumed for UG plus the rule of move $\alpha,$ I explain the distribution of both sentential and VP-adverbs. I propose that adverbs are predicates subcategorizing for their arguments at D-S. Like other predicates in English, adverbs are generated on the right of their subjects. Certain adverbs subcategorize for two arguments while other adverbs subcategorize for one argument. The selectional restrictions of the adverb are satisfied at S-S. Like other predicates, it is the maximal projection (AdvP) that governs its subject(s). Government is an m-command relationship. The AdvP can move to the left, either through substitution to an empty X$\sp\prime$ adjunction site or through adjunction to an XP. The maximal projection of the subject forms a barrier out of which the AdvP can not move. Maximal projections, except AgrP, are barriers. In English, the AdvP can not move if the adverb is subcategorized for by the verb. This thesis also compares the explanatory powers of my approach to recent syntactic approaches by Iatridou, Travis and Zagona. I also relate my findings to the semantic approaches by Jackendoff, Bellert and Rochette.

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25

Camporese, Nadia. "The syntax of adverbials in Chinese and Italian." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/206650.

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This study is a comparative analysis of the syntax of adverbials in Chinese and Italian in the context of an anti-symmetric view of clause structure. Through a detailed investigation of selected sentence adverbs, aspect adverbs and manner adverbs, various similarities and differences between Italian and Chinese are identified. Chinese adverbials are mostly pre-verbal (with a few exceptions) while in Italian they can also appear after the verb. Such differences are plausibly accounted for through the verb-movement analysis: the Italian verb raises, overtly, to the left of adverbs, probably as a consequence of the rich inflectional morphology, while in Chinese the verb cannot overtly raise out of VP, due to the scarce inflectional morphology of the language. The traditional analysis of adverbs as adjuncts, coupled with directionality parameters, is not needed in order to explain the facts. The study shows that when adverbs such as the Italian adverb presto and the corresponding Chinese adverb kuai (‘quickly’) appear in different syntactic positions, they may receive different interpretations. This fact cannot be properly captured by the adjunct analysis, but it is predicted by the F-Spec hypothesis, according to which each class of adverbs occupies a specific syntactic position within the functional projections above VP. The double analysis of Italian bene (‘well’), which can be an adverb but can also (in specific cases) be interpreted as a predicate, is a clear example in support of the functional vs. predicational nature of adverbs, a fact also noted in the predicational analysis of the Chinese post-verbal V-deconstructions. Finally, Italian adverbs like stranamente (‘oddly’) are ambiguous between a clausal and a manner reading when appearing in post-verbal / pre-object position, while in Chinese the corresponding adverb qiguai shows the same ambiguity in the pre-verbal position. This, again, is associated with the possibility in Italian, but not in Chinese, for the verb to raise to the left of adverbs. Overall, the study supports the view that several word order and interpretative properties which differ between languages can be reduced to a few abstract syntactic principles.
published_or_final_version
Linguistics
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy

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26

Ridgeway, Thomas Bruce. "The syntax of case in medieval Western Hindi /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/11135.

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27

Pereltsvaig, Asya. "On the nature of intra-clausal relations : a study of copular sentences in Russian and Italian." Thesis, McGill University, 2001. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=38256.

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This dissertation investigates intra-clausal relations, namely, the relations that obtain between the elements in a clause. This investigation is based on a detailed study of copular sentences in Russian and Italian. In particular, three types of intra-clausal relations are investigated here: phrase-structural relations, thematic relations, and case relations.
With respect to phrase-structural relations, it is argued that not all syntactic structures are asymmetrical. Rather, it is proposed that under certain conditions---when the two input phrases have the same features---Merge will result in a symmetrical structure. This requirement for matching features leads to a more parsimonious analysis of equative sentences where the interpretation derives directly from the syntactic structure, without postulating a special "identity copula".
As for thematic relations, it is claimed that there is no one-to-one correspondence between thematic positions and structural positions (contra the strong version of UTAH, Baker 1988). Instead, a more flexible theory of thematic relations is proposed. It is also proposed that theta-assignment is not a necessary condition for DP interpretation. Rather, a DP can be interpreted if it establishes a certain relationship with another theta-marked DP. This analysis extends to Left Dislocation, Pronoun Doubling and sound like -construction.
Finally, case relations are said to be tied to thematic relations. A version of the Visibility Condition is thus argued for. It is maintained that non-argument DPs---namely, those that are merged as neither complements nor specifiers of a lexical head---need not be case-marked in syntax at all and appear with the morphological default (i.e., nominative) marking. The alternative "agreement in case" analysis of NOM-NOM sentences is argued against; various conceptual and empirical problems for this analysis are identified and discussed.
The analysis developed in this dissertation accounts for a number of properties of copular sentences, including their interpretation, case-marking patterns, and such syntactic properties as extraction, inversion, binding possibilities and unaccusativity diagnostics.

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28

Marfo, Charles Ofosu. "Aspects of Akan grammar and the phonology-syntax interface." Thesis, Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2005. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B32053563.

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29

Silla, Klaus. "Tmesis als Phänomen der französischen Syntax." Hamburg Kovač, 2006. http://www.verlagdrkovac.de/3-8300-2557-2.htm.

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30

Kelly, Justin Robert. "The syntax-semantics interface in distributed morphology." Thesis, Georgetown University, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3559577.

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Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle & Marantz 1993; Marantz 1997) is founded on the premise that the syntax is the only computational component of the grammar. Much research focuses on how this premise is relevant to the syntax-morphology interface in DM. In this dissertation, I examine theory-internal issues related to the syntax-semantics interface in DM. I also I propose an account of the Encyclopedia, where meaning is stored in the semantic component of the grammar, since a clear model is generally absent from DM literature.

Much of this dissertation is based on the Strong DM Hypothesis (SDMH; Embick & Noyer 2007), the idea that roots lack syntactico-semantic features. However, a corollary of the SDMH is necessary but generally ignored: a root cannot take an argument directly. The SDMH has repercussions for the syntax and compositional semantics in DM, so I propose models for both that are compatible with the SDMH. By defining the syntax of lexical categories, based on Hale & Keyser (2002) and Baker (2003), I extend the syntax to present an inventory of functional heads in DM. Utilizing a semantics based on Kratzer (1996), I define a formal semantic model for DM, and show how it interprets the syntax. I then present an approach to causation based on Kratzer (2004) and Pylkkänen (2008), providing an overt syntax and semantics for a variety of causative structures in English; zero and analytic causatives, and prepositional and adjectival resultatives. This approach to causation is applied to an analysis of other argument-structure phenomena in English, as well as in Italian and Japanese, showing how these phenomena are accounted for within this model of DM. However, cases remain where argument-structure phenomena cannot be resolved in the syntax alone, so I present an approach to the Encyclopedia with Hopper & Thompson's (1980) typology of transitivity as a starting point, and show how it can account for such cases.

By further specifying the nature of the syntax in DM and integrating this with a broader semantic model encompassing both compositional semantics and the Encyclopedia, this dissertation contributes to our overall understanding of the DM framework.

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31

Hickey, Raymond. "Syntax and prosody in language contact and shift." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1930/.

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Extract: [...]It is true that scholars concentrate on a certain linguistic level in order to reach the greatest depth in their research. But this general stance should not lead to a complete neglect of other levels. When considering a multi-level phenomenon such as language contact and shift, concentration on a single linguistic level can have the unintended and unfortunate consequence of missing linguistically significant generalisations. This is especially true of the main division of linguistic research into a phonological and a grammatical camp, where syntacticians miss phonological generalisations and phonologists syntactic ones. In the present paper the interrelationship of syntax and prosody is investigated with a view to explaining how and why certain transfer structures from Irish became established in Irish English. In this context, the consideration of prosody can be helpful in explaining the precise form of transfer structures in the target variety, here vernacular Irish English. The data for the investigation will consider well-known features of this variety, such as unbound reflexives, non-standard comparatives and tag questions. Furthermore, the paper points out that, taking prosodic patterns into account, can help in extrapolating from individual transfer to the community- wide establishment of transfer structures. In sum, prosody is an essential element in any holistic account of language contact and shift.[...]

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32

Charters, Areta Helen. "The second language acquisition of Mandarin nominal syntax." Thesis, University of Auckland, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2405.

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This thesis establishes a natural acquisition order for 18 nominal structures in Mandarin SLA, and assesses the extent to which that order can be explained as a consequence of cognitive processing demands. The natural acquisition order is based on a longitudinal study of three adults learning Mandarin in a classroom environment in Auckland, New Zealand. Two representatives of an average emergence order are derived from the three individual orders: a ranking of mean emergence times (RMT) and a ranking of mean emergence ranks (RMR). Processing demands are calculated in three different ways: once on the basis of six developmental stages identified in Pienemann’s Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998c), once on the basis of a detailed analysis of each nominal structure according to the generative grammar of LFG (Bresnan, 1982, 2001); and finally on the basis of the Minimalist Programme (Chomsky 1995; 1999; 2000). All rest upon a prior analysis of lexical feature structures and constituent structures evident in the learner’s output over the course of a year. The standard six-stage model of Processability Theory proves unable to differentiate between most nominal structures, because they fall within the single developmental category of so-called ‘phrasal’ structures. However, processing demands calculated on the basis either of LFG or of the MP prove to be highly correlated with both individual and average emergence orders. On the basis of these results, various generalisations are made about the relevance of different kinds of syntactic processes to the determination of emergence order. In particular, c-structural complexity and thematic structure are found to be factors most significantly associated with later emergence times. LFG and MP each provide interesting insights into different aspects of syntactic processing that impact on the acquisition of a second language; LFG throws light on the significance of the grammaticalisation of thematic structure; the MP throws light on the processes of lexical construction, and the interactions between this and constituent structure. Both indicate the significance of delays in feature valuation or unification as c-structural complexity increases.

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Ko, Bohye. "Syntax, interfaces and processing in native language attrition." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9743.

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The linguistic behaviour of bilingual speakers who have had prolonged exposure to a second language (L2) is different from that of monolinguals. This thesis investigates the extent and source of attrition effects by comparing language representation and processing in adult late bilinguals undergoing native language (L1) attrition and their monolingual counterparts. Based on the previous observation that structures that are sensitive to discourse-pragmatic conditions are vulnerable to attrition (Sorace 2011, Sorace & Filiaci 2006), the thesis examines: i) whether the difference between attrited and non-attrited speakers in L1 use is restricted to structures whose distribution is grammatically underspecified; ii) whether the difference is due more to underspecification of mental representation or to on-line processing difficulties; and iii) to what extent the difference is a consequence of transfer from L2. The case investigated in this study is L1 attrition by Korean immigrants who have lived in an L2 (English or Japanese) environment for a period of 6 to 25 years. Two L2 groups and one monolingual control group were tested on two different types of phenomena in Korean: core binding of the reflexive caki whose felicity is determined by grammar (Experiment 1), and the attachment of the plural suffix tul whose felicity is underspecified by grammar (Experiment 2). Experimental data were collected using an on-line methodology (a self-paced reading task) as well as an off-line one (acceptability judgement task) in order to identify the locus of any non-convergence between attrited and non-attrited speakers with respect to the investigated phenomena. Results from the experiments showed that attrition had an impact on both grammatically specified and underspecified structures, but to a different degree. With respect to core binding of caki, attrited Korean speakers diverged from the monolingual norm in the on-line reading task but not in the off-line judgement task, indicating that their representation of caki-binding was intact. With respect to tul-attachment, on the other hand, the attriters displayed divergence in both the off-line and on-line tasks, indicating that their representation of appropriate conditions for tul, as well as their real-time processing of the conditions was affected due to long-term exposure to L2. In both caki-binding and tul-attachment, the attriters’ non-native performance was largely attributable to influence from their L2. However, the attriters’ divergence also seemed to be attributable, at least in part, to inefficient executive control of two languages. Regarding tul-attachment, the results demonstrated that the distribution of tul in unattrited Korean is regulated by several factors, including animacy, number-specificity and distributivity, and thus the acceptability of tul is largely gradient, rather than categorical. The results also provided evidence for an ongoing change in the distribution of tul and suggested that the change is accelerated by attrited speakers living in an L2 English environment.

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Välimaa-Blum, Riitta. "Finnish existential clauses--their syntax, pragmatics and intonation /." The Ohio State University, 1988. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487598303838002.

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Al-Seghayar, Mohamed Saad. "On the syntax of small clauses in Arabic." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/5224.

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Balcom, Patricia Anne. "The emergence of syntax: The acquisition of transitivity." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/7626.

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This thesis examines the hypothesis that children attend to and encode events of cardinal transitivity in their early utterances. It is argued that Hopper and Thompson's 1980 parameters of cardinal transitivity can lead to a clear and concise description of what kinds of events allow children to "bootstrap" their way into syntax. A transitivity grid is developed, based on research in infant and child perception and cognition, by which utterances can be rated in terms of cardinal transitivity. This grid is applied to selected verbs in a corpus taken from a diary study. It is shown, based on the analysis of the data, that this hypothesis cannot be disproved. The knowledge the child can be assumed to have to generate the utterances he does is represented formally in terms of Conceptual Semantics, which is shown to be a promising theory in accounting for children's early acquisition of semantic and syntactic knowledge.

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Saah, Kofi Korankye. "Studies in Akan syntax, acquisition, and sentence processing." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/10234.

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This is a two-part study that combines the study of several construction types in Akan with a psycholinguistic study. Part I is a syntactic study clause structure in Akan, interrogative sentences, resumptive pronouns and the issue of whether there is syntactic Wh-Movement in Akan. I argue that Akan is basically an in-situ language with regards to the placement of wh-words in questions. Questions with their question-words in pre-IP position are not the result of syntactic wh-movement: they are the result of the general focus marking process in the language which can affect any constituent in a sentence by base-generating it in (Spec, CP) and base-generating a resumptive pronoun (null or overt) in the corresponding argument position in the complement or comment clause/sentence. This analysis is based on such factors such as the absence of gaps, the use of resumptive pronouns even in positions such as the direct object position where movement is allowed, and the possibility of linking a wh-element into a position inside syntactic islands such as relative clauses, VP-complements, and temporal clauses. Part II deals with the acquisition of some of the structures discussed in Part I (in-situ wh-questions, the use of resumptive pronouns, and the sensitivity to the dichotomy between overt (animate) and null (inanimate) resumptive pronouns in the language). It also deals with issues of the processing of sentences involving long-distance dependencies. I argue, based on studies involving Akan and English, that islands constraints may be mimicked by processing principles though island constraints cannot be reduced to principles of sentence processing. It is suggested that a distinction should be made between parsing islands and processing islands and that while the two are not coextensive, they may overlap to a large extent in languages like English where the constraints hold, but not in a language like Akan where the constraints can be violated.

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Sheu, Ying-yu. "Topics on a categorial theory of Chinese syntax." The Ohio State University, 1990. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392905045.

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Sakurai, Kazuhiro, and 櫻井和裕. "The syntax and semantics of focus : evidence from Dagaare." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/206422.

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Yoo, Eun Jung. "Quantifiers and wh-interrogatives in the syntax-semantics interface /." The Ohio State University, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu148794790840119.

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Tutar, Sercan. "A Programming Language For Beginners Based On Turkish Syntax." Master's thesis, METU, 2004. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12605308/index.pdf.

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Programming is a difficult activity because it requires thinking in a way that ordinary people are not familiar with. It becomes more complex considering the unusual and sometimes contradictory (with daily life usage) symbols when designing programming languages. This thesis introduces an experimental programming language called TPD, which is designed to reduce the syntax- and semantics-oriented difficulties to a minimum and provide a head start in programming to high school students and novice programmers who are native speakers of Turkish. TPD mimics Turkish syntax in order to obtain a better learning curve by making use of the user'
s native language competence in learning the essentials of programming. TPD supports both imperative (procedural) and functional paradigms. General lists are provided as a built-in data type. Given the educational concerns, the design of the programming language goes hand in hand with the design of the development environment. Diagnostic features of the compiler are emphasized. Generated target code is in Java. The development environment features a graphical interface and a language-based editor.

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Whong-Barr, Melinda. "Morphology, derivational syntax and second language acquisition of resultatives." Thesis, Durham University, 2005. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2783/.

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This thesis explores questions of functional morphology in morphosyntactic theory and in second language acquisition. The work develops Emonds' (2000) notion of a Syntacticon as the store of grammatical lexical items in the Lexicon and it explores the interaction between morphology and syntax in syntactic derivation. The focus of the work is the resultative construction (e.g. She painted the table red). As a resultative, the string conforms to a regular syntactic structure and gives rise to an interpretation in which there is an agent that acts upon some object so as to effect some change of state. In this work, resultative formation in English is contrasted with resultative formation in Korean because the latter, but not the former, includes an obligatory functional result morpheme, -key. The proposed analysis of the resultative accounts for both the morphological and syntactic facts in English and Korean. Additionally, traditional notions of subcategorization are developed, using a Feature-based approach in order to explain the lexical restrictions associated with resultatives. The thesis also includes an experimental study of the acquisition of English resultatives by native Korean and Mandarin Chinese speakers. These languages were chosen in order to highlight the mismatch between Korean and English resultative formation in terms of functional morphology. Accepting the Full Transfer/Full Access model of Schwartz and sprouse (1996), the whole of the native language is assumed to transfer to form the initial state of second language acquisition. The results of the experimental study provide support for the claim that functional morphology, like that implicated in Korean resultative formation, transfers from the native language to affect the development of the Interlanguage in second language acquisition.

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Bartlett, Mark. "Language as an exaptation : simulating the origin of syntax." Thesis, University of York, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.444663.

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Cummerow, Colby. "Developing Spanish child language the syntax of pronominal case /." Connect to resource, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1811/37254.

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Templin, Aaron. "The Structure and Syntax of Stravinsky's Neoclassical Cadential Language." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/312625.

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The neoclassical compositions of Igor Stravinsky have long provided scholars with a wealth of analytical possibilities. Many approaches to Stravinsky's neoclassical music have revolved around tonal implications therein. One tonal device, however, that has received little attention from the theory community is the common-practice cadence. This study seeks to present a theory of the manner in which Stravinsky's neoclassical compositional practice adheres to and varies from the well-formed standards of the common-practice era. Additional data is studied that shows trends throughout Stravinsky's neoclassical period. Finally, the research examines the future of neoclassical Stravinsky analysis and specifically addresses how this cadential study can contribute to the larger discussion of tonal implications in Stravinsky's neoclassical music.

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Birnstiel, Daniel. "Selected features of Arabic syntax in the Qurʼān." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609714.

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Bruhn, de Garavito Joyce L. S. "The syntax of Spanish multifunctional clitics and near-native competence." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/NQ64524.pdf.

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Jacob, Gunnar. "The role of the native language in second-language syntactic processing." Thesis, University of Dundee, 2009. https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/96e916bb-3158-4efa-805d-35aa8b123aad.

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The present thesis investigates in how properties of a reader’s first language (L1) have an influence on syntactic processing in a second language (L2). While the Competition Model (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982, 1987, 1989, MacWhinney, 1997) predicts that syntactic properties of the L1 can have an influence on L2 processing, the Shallow-Structure Account (Clahsen & Felser, 2006) suggests that an L2 speaker’s representation of an L2 sentence is shallower, lacks syntactic detail, and is therefore not detailed enough for properties of the L1 to have an influence on L2 processing (Papadopoulou & Clahsen, 2003). In two sets of studies, I investigate whether L2 speakers of English activate syntactic information from their L1 while processing English sentences. In Experiments 1-4, native speakers of German, and control groups of native speakers of French and English, are confronted with English sentences consisting of a word order which exists in both English and German, but which represents different underlying syntactic structures in both languages. Results suggest that native speakers of German activate syntactic information from their L1 while reading such sentences. Experiments 5-7 represent an attempt to address both the issue of L1 influence and the issue of shallow processing within the context of the same experimental design. Native speakers of German, and a control group of native English speakers, read grammatically incorrect English sentences with a word order which would either be grammatically correct in German, or grammatically incorrect in both English and German. In this set of experiments, we found evidence against an influence of syntactic properties of the L1. Results also suggest that contrary to the predictions of the shallow-structure account, L2 speakers fully parse the syntactic structure of an L2 sentence, and compute detailed syntactic representations.

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Sigurðsson, Halldór Ármann. "Verbal syntax and case in Icelandic in a comparative GB approach /." [Lund] : University of Lund, 1989. http://books.google.com/books?id=wDVcAAAAMAAJ.

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Becker, Thomas. "Contrastive analysis for teaching Koine Greek case syntax to Russian-speaking students." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2007. http://www.tren.com/search.cfm?p023-0209.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Syntax of Shilha language'

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