Typescript (photocopy) / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1980. / Bibliography: leaves 263-269. / Microfiche. / xvi, 269 leaves, bound ill. 28 cm

Universiẗat, Diss., 2005--Paderborn.

Humboldt-Univ., Habil.-Schr.--Berlin, 2007. Leicht überarb. Fssg der Habil.-Schr. / Literaturverz. S. 205 - 216.

Verb-particle constructions are one of the most complex components of the English language. Understanding and producing such difficult constructs in a second language (L2) is a challenge for L2 learners of English. This research was based on the study by Blais and Gonnerman (2013). The purpose of the current study was to measure American and Saudi participants' sensitivity to the degree of semantic similarity between verb/verb-particle constructions. The survey of similarity ratings was administered to 107 American native English speakers and 67 Saudi English learners. The participants were asked to rate 78 items based on their knowledge of the semantic similarity between verb/verb-particle pairs. Results revealed two major findings; American native speakers and Saudi English learners did not behave consistently with the similarity rating task, and the results did not support the previous categorizations of 78 items that established by Blais and Gonnerman. Extrapolating from these findings, it appears that similarity judgments of verb/verb-particle pairs may be sample-specific, even among native speakers. Therefore, it is questionable whether Blais and Gonnerman's instrument can be used to reliably compare the judgments of different samples of native and non-native speakers.

This thesis investigates the origins and behaviour of the non-canonical morphological phenomenon of heteroclisis in the verb paradigms of Latin and the Romance languages. Heteroclisis is the coexistence, within a single paradigm, of forms which pattern according to different inflectional classes existing otherwise in the language: a heteroclite lexeme can thus be seen as 'mixed' or 'undecided' as to its inflectional identity. I begin by examining the development of the theoretical concept of heteroclisis and approaches to the idea of inflectional class in general, before situating heteroclisis in typological space in comparison with better-known instances of non-canonical morphology such as deponency and suppletion; heteroclisis exists at a different level of generalization from these, because its identification presupposes the existence of inflectional classes, themselves generalizations over the behaviour of individual lexemes. I also consider two recent theoretical treatments of the phenomenon and survey recent linguistic studies making use of the notion. I then look at the synchronic and diachronic behaviour of heteroclisis in Latin and Romance verbs: the great time depth of our attestations of these languages gives us the chance to witness the development of successive examples of heteroclisis, and their subsequent treatment within the morphological system, in the history of a single family. Focusing chiefly on data from Latin, Romanian and Romansh, I find that the principal (though not the only) source for new instances of heteroclisis in Latin/Romance lies in regular sound change, and find that speakers can treat these synchronically anomalous patterns as robust models of inflectional behaviour to be extended over the lexicon or brought into line with pre-existing types of paradigm-internal alternation. These findings concur with previous demonstrations that speakers make use of non-canonical phenomena as markers of the internal structure of inflectional paradigms.

Capes, Capes-Cofecub / Esta tese investiga a contribuição semântica dos verbos aspectuais acabar, começar, continuar, deixar, parar, passar, voltar e terminar em português brasileiro. O objetivo geral é contribuir para a análise sobre aspecto e sobre verbos aspectuais em PB e nas línguas naturais em geral, utilizando a Semântica Formal como modelo de análise. Este trabalho defende que os verbos aspectuais são modificadores de eventualidades e por isso contribuem para a expressão do aspecto lexical (Aktionsart), seguindo trabalhos anteriores, como os de Oliveira et al. (2001) e de Laca (2002; 2004; 2005). Ele assume que os verbos aqui estudados se comportam de forma diferente dos verbos de aspecto gramatical como estar e ir, tendo inclusive uma posição diferente na estrutura sintática. Como os verbos aspectuais se relacionam com o aspecto lexical, este trabalho também investiga as propriedades do aspecto lexical presentes no predicado selecionado por um verbo aspectual. Para a seleção dos verbos aspectuais, as propriedades relevantes se encontram no nível do sintagma verbal (VP) e são dadas composicionalmente. Por isso, constituintes como o objeto direto podem alterá-las, permitindo (ou restringindo) a seleção do VP em questão por parte do verbo aspectual. A tese aqui defendida é a de que cada verbo aspectual seleciona seus complementos a partir de propriedades específicas presentes no VP e que estão ligadas à semântica do verbo aspectual em questão. Dessa forma, esta pesquisa defende que as restrições de seleção de cada verbo aspectual podem ser acessadas na entrada lexical do verbo aspectual, sendo possível explicar a seleção de complementos feita por esses verbos. Além disso, defendemos a tese de que a entrada lexical pode apresentar a diferença entre verbos como começar e passar, nas perífrases começar a+infinitivo e passar a +infinitivo, por exemplo. / This thesis investigates the semantic contribution of the following aspectual verbs: começar ‘begin’, continuar ‘continue’, deixar ‘quit’, parar ‘stop’, passar ‘pass’, voltar ‘resume’, and acabar/terminar ‘finish’, in Brazilian Portuguese (BrP). The main goal is to contribute to the discussion about aspect and aspectual verbs in BrP and in natural languages in general, within a Formal Semantics approach. This work treats aspectual verbs as eventuality modifiers, and, consequently, it defends that they contribute to express lexical aspect (Aktionsart) – or situation aspect (Smith 1997) – in accordance with previous works such as Oliveira et al. (2001) and Laca (2002; 2004; 2005). This thesis also proposes that the verbs under discussion behave differently from verbs which contribute to express grammatical aspect – or viewpoint aspect (Smith 1997) – such as estar ‘be’, in the progressive aspect, and ir ‘go’, in the prospective aspect, also assuming that they have different positions in the syntactic structure. Since aspectual verbs are related to lexical aspect, the present research also analyzes lexical aspect features in the predicate which is selected for these verbs. Relevant features for this selection are located in the verbal phrase level (VP) and are given compositionally. Thus, phrases such as the direct object are able to change them, allowing (or not) that an aspectual verb select this VP. This work defends the hypothesis that each aspectual verb selects their complements based on specific features found in the VP, and that these features are linked to the semantics of this aspectual verb. Then, this research defends the idea that the selection constraints of each aspectual verb can be observed in its lexical entry, which explains the selection made by these verbs. Furthermore, we defend the idea that we can verify differences between semantically similar verbs like começar and passar, in their periphrastic construction, from differences found in their lexical entries.

O presente trabalho discute a concordância nas construções passivas do PB e sua relação com a ordem. No primeiro capítulo, evidenciamos que há três padrões possíveis de concordância nessas construções: concordância plena, em que particípio e auxiliar concordam plenamente com o DP; concordância parcial, em que particípio e DP concordam apenas em gênero e a concordância de número no auxiliar é opcional; e concordância default, em que particípio e auxiliar manifestam traços masculinos singulares independente da especificação do argumento. Além disso, mostramos que, à exceção do padrão de concordância default, os demais padrões são possíveis tanto com DPs pré-verbais quanto pós-verbais. Fechamos o capítulo propondo que as diferenças observadas quanto à concordância são devidas a uma reanálise do particípio devido ao enfraquecimento da concordância de número no PB, e passou a contar apenas com traço de gênero. No segundo capítulo, desenvolvemos uma detalhada discussão quanto aos modelos formais de estabelecimento da concordância sentencial e sua adequação aos dados em discussão, levando em conta a hipótese delineada no capítulo 1 quanto à especificação de traços do particípio. Concluímos que tanto as abordagens de Agree propostas por Bokovi (2007) e Nunes (2007) quanto a abordagem de movimento proposta por Hornstein (2009) dão conta dos dados, mediante alguma adaptação. Também nesse capítulo, levantamos a hipótese de que a ordem pré- ou pós-verbal dos DPs nos padrões de concordância plena e parcial são definidos em PF, mediante apagamento de cópias. O capítulo 3 é dedicado a demonstrar que a ordem V DP no PB, apesar de restrita, é possível justamente com predicados passivos e inacusativos e corresponde, nesses casos, a uma diferença na estrutura informacional em relação à ordem DP V. Além disso, discutimos alguns aspectos formais do tratamento da focalização e como seriam derivadas as ordens DP V e V DP nos dados sob análise. No quarto capítulo, discutimos o efeito de definitude no PB, as diferentes interpretações dos sintagmas nominais (fracos e fortes) e que posições podem ocupar na estrutura, relacionando-as à expressão dos juízos tético e categórico no PB (BRITTO, 1998). Também nesse capítulo, defendemos que a concordância default está relacionada à atribuição de um Caso fraco, seguindo De Hoop (1996). Mostramos ainda que um singular nu nunca dispara concordância de gênero nos particípios. Por fim, o quinto capítulo é dedicado a um exame detalhado da sintaxe e semântica dos singulares nus, a fim de explicar os efeitos encontrados ao final do capítulo 4. Nesse capítulo, defendemos que o singular nu do PB não é um DP; nossa hipótese é que esse elemento é incorporado ao verbo quando aparece em posição de objeto, e é um tópico quando em posição de sujeito, seguindo Müller (2004). / The present work discusses agreement in passive constructions in BP and its relation to the ordering of constituents. In chapter 1, we show that there are three possible patterns of agreement in these constructions: full agreement, in which both participle and auxiliary fully agree with the DP; partial agreement, in which gender agreement between participle and DP is mandatory, but number agreement with the auxiliary is optional; and default agreement, in which both participle and auxiliary surface with default values for number and gender. We also show that except for the default pattern, the other ones are possible both with pre- and postverbal DPs. Our proposal is that participle heads have been reanalized due to the loss of number agreement in BP and now host only a gender feature. Chapter 2 is devoted to a detailed discussion of Agree-based and Move-based approaches to agreement. We discuss whether each agreement system can account for the data presented in chapter 1 in light of the proposal made. We conclude that both Nunes (2007) and Bokovi (2007) approaches to Agree can deal satisfactory with the data at hand. We also raise the hypothesis that the constituent order in passive constructions is derived postsyntactically, through copy deletion at PF. In chapter 3, we show that V DP order in BP, though very restricted, is possible with passive and unaccusative predicates. In these cases, we show that such order corresponds to a difference in information structure, hence motivating copy deletion at PF. Chapter 4 is devoted to a discussion of definiteness effects in BP and the different interpretations for nominals, as well as the positions that can be occupied by weak and strong nominals in BP, and relating such matters to the expression of thetic and categoric judgements (BRITTO, 1998). We also support the conclusion that default agreement is generated by a weak Case (DE HOOP, 1996), and show that bare singulars systematically fail to trigger gender agreement on participles. Finally, chapter 5 bears on the issue of bare nominals, their use and intepretation. We claim that bare singulars are not DPs in BP and cannot freely occupy argument positions. We claim instead that bare singulars in object position are incorporated, and that bare singular generic subjects are topics (MÜLLER, 2004).

Verb classifications have attracted a great deal of interest in both linguistics and natural language processing (NLP). They have proved useful for important tasks and applications, including e.g. computational lexicography, parsing, word sense disambiguation, semantic role labelling, information extraction, question-answering, and machine translation (Swier and Stevenson, 2004; Dang, 2004; Shi and Mihalcea, 2005; Kipper et al., 2008; Zapirain et al., 2008; Rios et al., 2011). Particularly useful are classes which capture generalizations about a range of linguistic properties (e.g. lexical, (morpho-)syntactic, semantic), such as those proposed by Beth Levin (1993). However, full exploitation of such classes in real-world tasks has been limited because no comprehensive or domain-specific lexical classification is available. This thesis investigates how Levin-style lexical semantic classes could be learned automatically from corpus data. Automatic acquisition is cost-effective when it involves either no or minimal supervision and it can be applied to any domain of interest where adequate corpus data is available. We improve on earlier work on automatic verb clustering. We introduce new features and new clustering methods to improve the accuracy and coverage. We evaluate our methods and features on well-established cross-domain datasets in English, on a specific domain of English (the biomedical) and on another language (French), reporting promising results. Finally, our task-based evaluation demonstrates that the automatically acquired lexical classes enable new approaches to some NLP tasks (e.g. metaphor identification) and help to improve the accuracy of existing ones (e.g. argumentative zoning).

The study of Spanish in contact with Wayuunaiki has received limited attention in generative and variationist analyses. In particular, the possible influence of this indigenous language on some parts of the Spanish language has not been investigated or has been only briefly addressed. This dissertation aims to fill this existing gap by studying two morpho-syntactic variables: (i) the distribution of null and overt subjects (NOS) as portrayed by the Null Subject Parameter and overt subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression as traditionally researched in variationist studies, and (ii) the issue of subject-verb agreement within the theory of features. To carry out these studies, we collected spontaneous data from 27 Wayuunaiki-Spanish bilinguals and five Spanish monolingual speakers. This Spanish monolingual group served as the vernacular benchmark. The NOS and SPP expression are among the most studied topics in Hispanic linguistics, but they have never been systematically researched in Guajiro Spanish. By analyzing these issues in our dissertation, we want to contribute new data to their study and to the properties and factors affecting them, in order to widen the knowledge of how they function in this Spanish language contact situation. In the generative analysis of the null/overt subjects we investigate whether the distinction that occurs in Wayuunaiki between stative and active verbs and the participants’ proficiency in Spanish have an impact on the distribution of NOS in Guajiro Spanish. In the variationist study, a number of independent variables widely believed to constrain variable SPP expression are factored into the investigation to find out how they behave in this particular language contact situation. These variables include person/number, TAM, switch reference, priming effects, etc. The second research topic is subject-verb agreement. This is only investigated from the generative grammar perspective, specifically by employing the concept of features to explain the nature of the subject-verb mismatches produced by the Wayuunaiki dominant Wayuunaiki-Spanish bilinguals. We specifically investigate whether the Spanish conjugation system poses a problem to the bilingual speakers’ ability to produce the native Spanish verb forms vis-à-vis the monolingual cohort and whether this ability is shaped by the participants’ proficiency in Spanish. The results of the three studies contribute to the field of Hispanic linguistics from three different perspectives. The study of NOS adds a new dimension to the pro-drop parameter: the possible role that Wayuunaiki’s double conjugation may play in the distribution of null and overt subject pronouns in Guajiro Spanish. The variationist study provides new data on the topic of SPP expression in a variety of Spanish which, in this specific case, has as contact language an understudied indigenous language. The analysis of the subject-verb mismatches that occur in Guajiro Spanish allows us to differentiate between the status of null and overt subjects with respect to subject-verb agreement and to differentiate between this contact variety and the Colombian vernacular benchmark.

Syftet med den här studien var å ena sidan att granska den grammatiska progressionen beträffande reflexiva verb i några utvalda spanska läroböcker för nybörjare i åk. 6-7, då det i dessa läroböcker förekommer ord och uttryck relaterade till reflexiva verb, vars grammatiska förklaring ligger i senare kurser. Å andra sidan var även syftet att undersöka lärares uppfattningar och arbetssätt utifrån de grammatiska instruktioner och utformningar dessa läroböcker innehåller för att förebygga felaktigheter i elevernas inlärning av verb. Metoden var dels att analysera de utvalda nybörjarläromedlen i spanska för att se hur grammatiken presenteras och dels att analysera svar från ett frågeformulär som skickades ut online till ett antal utvalda lärare, om hur deras uppfattning är kring den här problematiken och om de delar samma erfarenhet. Resultatet av undersökningen kring för tidig användning av reflexiva verb visade sig inte vara ett överhängande problem, utan det fanns snarare annan problematik då det kom till verbinlärning. Studien bidrog dock till ny och bredare kunskap beträffande vad lärare möter förproblematik hos nybörjarelever. Den gav också nya frågeställningar och nya idéer till att genomföra fler studier i ämnet med elevfokus istället.