Recent discussions on African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) have focused on the linguistic divergence and convergence hypotheses. Some linguists (Ash and Myhill 1986; Bailey and Maynor 1987, 1989; Graff, Labov, and Harris 1986; Labov 1983, 1987; Labov and Harris 1986; Luthin 1987; Myhill and Harris 1986; Thomas 1989) claim that AAVE is diverging from White Vernacular English (WVE) on a national level. However, other linguists (Butters 1987, 1988, 1989; Vaughn-Cooke 1986, 1987; Wolfram 1987) have challenged the divergence hypothesis, and have argued that AAVE is actually converging with WVE. They point out that the data in most of the studies supporting the divergence hypothesis were incomparable and manifested age-grading. In addition, these studies investigated only a few linguistic features. Most importantly, most of these studies lack the time-depth data which are essential to investigate language change.This study analyzed the time-depth data of speech samples from thirty-two African-American subjects, sixteen from 1980 and sixteen from 1993, in Muncie, Indiana. The subjects were both males and females, equally divided into young adult and elderly speakers. The analysis of the study focused on twenty-three syntactic and five phonological features.The results from the study have found no innovative features, either syntactic or phonological, in the speech of Muncie AAVE subjects. More importantly, the findings of the study, based on the time-depth data, have shown that Muncie AAVE was not divergent with WVE, but convergent with it, at least from 1980 to 1993. Thus, the findings of the study do not support the divergence hypothesis. / Department of English

This creative project has presented a computer-aided instruction game which teaches English past tense and past participle verb forms to students of English as a Second Language (ESL). The game portrays a graphics display of the learner facing a green, sharp-toothed creature.learner cannot accurately and consistently produce past and participle forms of randomly selected verbs, the display of the creature devours the learner's display. If the learner cannot accurately and consistently produce past tense of the creature devours the learner’s display. If the learner successfully produces such forms, the opposite happens; the learner’s display swallows the green monster. The game is entitled Monster.Programmed in Applesoft Basic, Monster includes review sections on English verbs. It also includes an auxiliary program to read student scores.

The aim of this dissertation was to examine how Japanese learners of English in the United States developed their interpretation of antecedents of reflexive pronouns and their understanding of the direction of verb gapping in English over time. The two properties in question operate differently in English and Japanese, and neither property is normally taught. Therefore, the acquisition of these properties of English by Japanese learners sheds light on the role of Universal Grammar (UG) in second language acquisition (SLA).Fourteen Japanese learners answered three questionnaires, each containing a test assessing reflexives (the Binding Test) and a test assessing verb gapping (the Gapping Test) at three different times, approximately 12 weeks apart from each other. In addition, three groups of 20 native speakers of English provided their results on the same questionnaires.The overall performance of the learners on the Binding Test started out significantly inferior to that of native speakers, and it did not reach the level of native speakers in later sessions. In contrast, the overall performance of the learners on the Gapping Test started out as good as that of native speakers, and it maintained the same level relative to the native performance in later sessions. Furthermore, the overall performance of the learners in later sessions was not significantly better than that in earlier sessions. These findings seem to suggest that increased time spent in an English-speaking environment did not have any effects on the learners' acquisition of the two properties. However, when performance by subset was considered, significant improvement was observed.Examination of individual patterns of responses revealed that the learners showed the patterns consistent to English, Japanese, and even other languages and that some of the learners who previously showed a pattern other than the English pattern successfully demonstrated the English pattern in later sessions. These findings constitute evidence for the view that parameter-resetting is possible in SLA.The dissertation also includes discussion of the test instrument and explanation of the data in the light of recent theoretical predictions. The concluding chapter offers pedagogical implications as well as suggestions for future UG-based SLA research. / Department of English

本論文藉由動補語後方名詞，依理論架構重新分類趨向動補語Ｖ上，並探討其前後的搭配詞在分類底下與「上」之間的互動情形。首先，根據Talmy (2000) 所提出的動態事件理論區辨後方名詞，其乃是具有傳達出動態語意的名詞特徵。其次，並以V上的論旨角色作為分類，因而總共得出三種型態的V上：[ V上Ground]，[ V上Patient]，[ V上Extent]，藉此看到前方動詞和後方名詞與V上之間的緊密關係。除外並以認知語意學角度呈現其三種類型之間具有語意關連，表現出多義詞的演變型態，且符合語法化的過程。 / When the morpheme shang4 ‘up’ 上 is attached to a verb, it composes a V-shang constituent, which is a member of the group of ‘verb-complement’ marking directional motion of the action (Liu, 1983/1998). V-shang signifies the movement of an object through an action from a low position to a higher position within an upward orientation; for instance, a person moves from the ground to the top of a mountain. The previous studies have listed several extended meanings, besides the basic meaning of motion (Liu, 1998, Jiang, 2003; Pan, 2005; Yu, 2010). Most studies categorize V-shang by mixed criteria of semantic meanings and syntactic functions. Noting the lack of a theoretical basis in the classification of V-shang, this thesis depends on motion-event theory, in which an event is composed of Figure, Motion and Ground, to examine the motion event conducted by V-shang (Talmy, 2000) and Lexical Functional Grammar (Kaplan and Bresnan, 1982; Dowty, 1988; Bresnan and Zaenen, 1990; Bresnan, 2001; Her, 2009) to analyze the syntactic structures of the first verbs and shang4 in V-shang. By analyzing the noun phrases following V-shang, the study divides [V-shang NP] into three categories: [V-shang Ground], [V-shang Patient], [V-shang Extent] and observes the verb types in each pattern. There are the changes of semantic meanings from directional motion into resultative state and of orientation from vertical path into horizontal path. Within Lexical Functional Grammar, the verb types of the first verbs in V-shang change from the physical motion verbs which require thematic roles of Theme and Location to the transitive verbs which require thematic roles of Agent and Patient. [V-shang Extent] is the most abstract category of its semantic meaning, and the verb types of the first verbs are less restricted than the verb types in other two categories. The cognitive approach also explains the relationship of the extended meanings in V-shang and shang4 (Lu, 2011). Shang4 presents the features of polysemy.

The aim of this study is to analyse the variation between infinitive and finite verb adverbial clauses in European Portuguese. In order to understand this variation, three central questions are raised: (1) What determines the use of the uninflected vs. the inflected infinitive in same-subject adverbial clauses? (2) What does the pronoun SE signal in these adverbial clauses? (3) What difference is there between the use of the inflected infinitives vs. finite verbs in different subject adverbial clauses? Earlier investigations about these three questions are discussed. One conclusion of this review is that former research almost exclusively has been conducted from a traditional or formalistic point of view that has given priority to structural descriptions instead of semantic or conceptual explanations. In contrast to this, the present study endeavours to examine these issues from a cognitive linguistic perspective. It is claimed that the use of the inflected infinitive in adverbial same-subject clauses may be explained by contextual factors which create a cognitive need to highlight the subject of the adverbial clause. Further, an analysis about how the grammatical micro-context can determine the interpretation of the clitic pronoun SE as a marker for a generic trajector is conducted. It is also argued that the difference between infinitive and finite adverbial clauses can bee explained by means of theories of subjectification and mental spaces. The conclusion is drawn that a cognitive approach to grammar can, indeed, shed light on the issues considered. In particular, it is shown that different adverbial constructions can express different conceptual meaning. In the light of this fact, other issues concerned with finite and infinite verb forms are raised.

Generating computer animation from natural language instructions is a complex task that encompasses several key aspects of artificial intelligence including natural language understanding, computer graphics and knowledge representation. Traditionally, this task has been approached using rule based systems which were highly successful on their respective domains, but were difficult to generalise to other domains. In this thesis, I describe the key theories and principles behind a domain-independent machine learning framework for constructing natural language based animation systems, and show how this framework can be more flexible and more powerful than the prevalent rule based approach. / I begin this thesis with a thorough introduction to the goals of the research. I then review the most relevant literature to put this research into perspective. After the literature review, I provide brief descriptions to the most relevant technologies in both natural language processing and computer graphics. I then report original research in semantic role labelling and verb sense disambiguation, followed by a detailed description and analysis of the machine learning framework for natural language based animation generation. / The key contributions of this thesis are: a novel method for performing semantic role labelling of prepositional phrases, a novel method for performing verb sense disambiguation, and a novel machine learning framework for grounding linguistic information in virtual worlds and converting verb-semantic information to computer graphics commands to create computer animation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brandeis University, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-247).

Revised version of the author's dissertation (Tübingen, 1995). / Includes bibliographical references (p. [251]-256) and index.

Dans le cadre des approches constructionistes, cette thèse étudie les verbes labiles de l’anglais, qui peuvent manifester des configurations syntaxiques variées sans changer de forme. L’étude de la complémentation de ces verbes montre que leur catégorisation en familles sémantiques est pertinente mais pas suffisante pour expliquer leur comportement. La thèse défend une approche syncrétique de la complémentation du verbe qui rend compte de son importante productivité et de ses limites parfois arbitraires. Une analyse montre que les verbes ont tous une configuration syntaxique par défaut, qui n’est pas signifiante et qui permet simplement au verbe d’exprimer ses arguments de façon non marquée, en accord avec certains principes de cohérence conceptuelle. À l’inverse, lorsque la complémentation du verbe a un apport sémantique identifiable, l’existence de schémas de complémentation pleinement signifiants est postulée. Il s’agit d’ensembles de compléments dont le sens est distinct de celui du verbe auquel ils sont associés et se retrouve de façon régulière avec des verbes de catégories diverses. Il est démontré que les schémas de complémentation doivent être considérés comme des unités linguistiques de plein droit de l’anglais. Cela implique qu’en synchronie, ces schémas sont emmagasinés par les locuteurs plutôt que le résultat d’un processus d’analogie avec des constructions existantes. Leur statut d’unité linguistique permet d’étudier leur sémantisme de la même façon que des unités lexicales plus classiques. S’ils sont en majorité polysémiques, certains schémas ont des emplois difficiles à relier sémantiquement et doivent donc être considérés comme des homonymes. / Within a constructionist framework, this thesis studies English labile verbs, which can enter into various syntactic configurations without changing form. A study of their complementation shows that categorizing them into semantic families is relevant but not sufficient to explain their behavior. The thesis defends a syncretic approach to verb complementation to that accounts for its important productivity and its sometimes arbitrary limits. It is shown that all verbs have a default syntactic configuration, which is not meaningful and which simply allows the verb to express its arguments in an unmarked way, in accordance with certain principles of conceptual coherence. Conversely, when the complementation of the verb has an identifiable semantic contribution, the existence of fully meaningful patterns of complementation is posited. These are defined as sets of complements, whose meaning is distinct from that of the verb with which they are associated and is found regularly with verbs of diverse categories. It is shown that patterns of complementation should be considered fully-fledged English linguistic units. This implies that synchronically, these patterns are mentally stored by speakers rather than the result of a process of analogy with existing constructions. Their status as linguistic units makes it possible to study their meaning in the same way as more classical lexical units. Although most of them are polysemic, some patterns of complementation exhibit uses that are difficult to link semantically and must therefore be viewed as homonyms.

Nominalisation is being considered as one of the tendencies of the contemporary German. The diploma thesis focuses not only on noun derivatives. This diploma thesis deals with the nominal style in general, which is rich on the derivative nouns and different kinds of noun-verb combinations. In contrary to verbal style, the nominal style occurs primarily in the written and professional language. However, some features are to be found even on level A1 and A2 and are used in everyday spoken language. The goal of this thesis is to analyse the textbooks for children and young adults and to find in what level occur the features of the nominal style in textbooks for secondary schools.