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The present study of the acquisition of be by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong investigates the relationship between knowledge, input and perfonnance. Be is an . .exponent of two fundamental properties of sentence structure in English: tense and. subject verb agreement. Neither of these properties is realised overtly in Cantonese and therefore Cantonese ESL learners have to establish these properties from scratch. Past research has reported different kinds of p~oblems in the acquisition of English be by learners of different L1 backgrounds, including omission, overgeneralization and substitution of be for have, but few attempts have been made to provide a comprehensive account of these interlanguage features and how the topic can facilitate our understanding of the key issues in SLA. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the data obtained from an English test which consisted of three parts: a grammaticality judgment task, a production task and an acceptability judgment task completed by 243 Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong (of primary two and five, secondary one, four and six, and undergraduates of year 1 and 2) and a control group of 12 native English speakers. The results shed light both on a number of theoretical and pedagogical issues: the role of the L1 in the constructions involving be, whether any properties associated with be remain persistently problematic for Cantonese speakers; what the developmental stages are in the acquisition of be; what the relationship between morphology and syntax is (i.e. between knowledge and perfonnance), and finally suggesting how teachers can make use of the findings in selecting appropriate teaching approaches, equipping themselves, and being aware of what is 'teachable'.

This thesis investigates the under-discussed question of why certain verbs are attested in impersonal constructions in the history of English while others are not, even though they look almost synonymous (e.g. LIKE and LOATHE: impersonal; LOVE and HATE: non-impersonal). By carefully studying the behaviour of impersonal verbs and near-synonymous non-impersonal verbs, this thesis attempts to identify factors that determined the presence, absence and spread of impersonal usage with Middle English verbs of emotion and demonstrates that we can make reasonable generalisations about when the usage was licensed. The first chapter provides an overview of previous studies, with special reference to different syntactic-semantic definitions and classifications of 'impersonals'. The next chapter considers possible methodological approaches for this thesis by reviewing several case studies of near-synonymous verbs in early English. It also discusses causation and aspect, two of the crucial concepts in the literature on psych-verbs in modern languages. The third chapter introduces the _Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary_, whose categorisations were adopted in this thesis. On the basis of the definitions provided in dictionaries of Old and Middle English, Chapter 4 examines how impersonal usage rose and spread in each of the seven _HTOED_ 'Emotion' categories which include impersonal verbs. Common semantic characteristics of these verbs are then established. Verbs of Fear and Anger turn out to have parallel histories in that they first developed impersonal usage in early Middle English and that the usage shifted around the fourteenth century from verbs with a certain sense of stimulus to those which expressed general fear and anger. No such systematic change is observed with the other categories, though some of them experienced minor development around the same time. Chapter 5 carefully analyses the data in the relevant entries of the _Middle English Dictionary_ according to five factors, namely causation, aspect, constructional patterns, animacy of the Target of Emotion and argument alternation. Each of these factors has an effect: most of the impersonal verbs of emotion are causative and stative, while some non-impersonal verbs are non-causative or non-stative. These two sets of verbs are also sometimes distinguished by the availability of Experiencer-subject passive constructions and apparent cases of the conative alternation. A number of impersonal verbs favour inanimate Targets, while some frequent non-impersonal verbs do not. The final chapter concludes that the use or non-use of Middle English verbs of emotion in impersonal constructions was affected by causation, transitivity and animacy of the Target of Emotion, the first two of which undergo diachronic transitions. The findings in this thesis are shown to receive support in the definitions and classifications of emotions in psychology.

This research is a sociolinguistic study that looks at the use of Luruuri, a minority language spoken in the Lake Kyoga basin and Luganda, a majority language spoken in central Uganda. It analyses the relationship between language management and maintenance, investigating both official and non-official language management. The main aim of the study was to question the role of language policy and planning in language maintenance, especially in maintaining languages in a stable multilingual setting. The study follows the formal/traditional language policy and planning frameworks and the theory of language management inspired by the work of Bernard Spolsky (2009). Data was obtained through field work in Uganda, where various sociolinguistic research methods including ethnographic, sociolinguistic and linguistic analytical methods were employed. Data was analysed qualitatively in order to ascertain their sociolinguistic position and use. Findings revealed increased prestige and status awarded to English, the language of all official communications, while local languages lack such functions. It also revealed increased dominance of majority languages over less used languages especially in the public domains which has impacted on the maintenance of such languages. Although local languages performed well in cultural-identity functions, they were affected by increased negative attitudes by especially the younger generation. All such cases as elaborated in the study indicated difficulty in maintaining languages and stable multilingualism. Strategies to restore the language situation, including macro-level planning strategies to supplement grassroots language planning and maintenance, a multilevel language planning and policy strategy to promote the multi-glossic language use structures that exist in the language communities and prestige planning in order to restore the prestige of African languages, de-cultivate the negative attitudes and ideologies while sensitising the masses on the importance of policy changes and the likely effects of the current status quo are recommended.

Thematic-conceptual structure is a representational type that cuts across syntax and psycholinguistics. It is grounded in our phylogenetic and ontogenetic history and therefore has biological validity. This thesis outlines how thematic-conceptual structure is motivated and represented. Syntactic and psycholinguistic phenomena are interpreted and explained in thematic-conceptual terms. Thematic-conceptual structure is also argued to be a much better predictor and representational basis of sentence-level priming than syntactic structure. This thesis outlines a representational theory of thematic roles that is relevant to both syntactic structure and sentence processing, whilst at the same time being compatible with our knowledge of the ontogeny and phylogeny of language. The thesis is multidisciplinary in its nature, and this is reflected in its structure. After the introductory chapter, the next two chapters (2 and 3) establish the status of thematic roles in current theory. Conflicts between the disciplines are indicated. There is also an exposition of empirical facts that have to be explained by any successful theory of thematic roles. The following two chapters (4 and 5) investigate the evolution of language and language acquisition, in order to find further indications as to the form the theory of thematic relations should take. The position taken is that any realistic theory of thematic roles that claim should necessarily reflect the ontogeny and phylogeny of the human linguistic capability. In chapter 6 I investigate proposals as to how linguistic parameters could be set and what form these parameters could take. This is a precursor to chapter 7 where the theory of thematic structure (or more accurately, thematic-conceptual structure) is set out. The theory consists of a series of representational levels. The levels reflect both the phylogenetic and ontogenic order of language development. The representation of each level is described, and the motivations for their form and content as based on the discussion of the earlier chapters is explained. The final two chapters reapply the theory of thematic-conceptual structure to the empirical date that had been described in the preliminary chapters.

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