<p> This study aims to explore how English-speaking learners of Chinese acquire Resultative Verb Compounds (RVC). The specific research questions are: Do learners think that change of state is achieved by using an RVC? Do learners assign resultative meaning to V₁-<i>le</i> uniformly or only in certain types of situations depending on how result is expressed in their L1? Lastly, do learners realize that RVCs are a highly productive construction?</p><p> This thesis provides linguistic analysis that can account for differences in how change of state is expressed in Chinese and English. It also presents a second language acquisition study informed primarily by the sentence acceptability judgement task. In English, result is typically expressed by a monomorphemic verb or by a resultative construction. In Mandarin, the most typical way to convey result is to use RVCs. In addition to differences in such phenomena as event conflation, strength of implicature and the incompleteness effect also constitute key differences between English and Mandarin. It is claimed that the major factor in determining the effect of L1 transfer from English to Mandarin is how change-of-state situations are expressed in English.</p><p> In response, two experiments were conducted. The subjects were 47 learners and 26 native speakers of Chinese. Statistical analysis (ANOVA) was applied in evaluating outcomes of the experiments. The results show that learners understand that RVCs must be used to describe change-of-state situations. However, learners do not habitually take the aspect marker &ndash;<i> le</i> as a resultative marker. Instead, the outcomes of the data analysis are compatible with the interpretation of &ndash;<i>le</i> as a past tense marker. The analysis also shows that how change-of-state situations with respect to event conflation are expressed in English has some effect on their understanding of RVC-<i>le</i> vs. V₁-<i> le</i> combinations. Lastly, while learners do not reject the idea that more than one RVC can describe a change-of-state event, they do not have full understanding of this phenomenon.</p>

<p> In this thesis I argue that Hindu nationalist terminology, particularly the concepts of <i>Hindutva, Samyavada,</i> and national identity, modernized amid currents of globalization and neocolonialism in the early twentieth-century. In the theoretical section, I examine how systems of knowledge and power in India were directly and indirectly affected by the globalization of western modernity. In the primary source analysis section, I discuss three prominent Hindu nationalists and their ideas in support of the argument made in the theoretical section. Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), the philosopher of Hindutva, represented the ethno-nationalistic component to Hindu nationalism and looked to cultural motifs in order to unify the &ldquo;true&rdquo; people of India. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945), the militant hero who formed the Indian National Army and outright opposed the British, contributed the aggressive discourse of nationalist rhetoric. Sarsanghchalak Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (1906-1973), the supreme leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), utilized Hindu nationalist rhetoric in order to mesmerize post-independence Indians and lay the foundation for the future of the RSS. Although these individuals represented a current within Indian nationalist history, their lives and literature influenced the language of Hindu nationalism.</p>