Within the framework of Jackendoff’s conceptual semantics, this study investigates the semantic properties that govern the distribution of object control (such as John persuaded Mary to help Sally) and exceptional case marking (such as John wanted Mary to help Sally) in English. In contrast to Jackendoff’s approach to control, one central idea here is that the to-infinitive complements under discussion should receive a uniform semantic analysis, and thus that control behaviour cannot be explained in terms of semantic argument type of the complement clause. In order to arrive at such an analysis of these to-infinitival complements, they are taken to constitute Situations in conceptual structure, and clauses (TPs) in syntax. It is argued here that it is indeed possible to establish the character of the semantic properties that govern the two constructions OC and ECM. Not only does the semantic type of the governing predicate play a role—attitude predicates, as opposed to force dynamic predicates, are exclusively coded as ECM in syntax—but also the realisation of the semantic argument position that corresponds to the Patient/Beneficiary role in conceptual structure. With force dynamic predicates, OC will arise when this argument position is filled with an explicit argument. When it is empty, or left implicit, however, the result will be ECM in syntactic structure.

This thesis is an investigation of case morphology in a mixed language, Gurindji Kriol. Gurindji Kriol is spoken by the Gurindji people in northern Australia. It fuses Gurindji, which is a member of the Ngumpin-Yapa subgroup of the Pama-Nyungan family, with Kriol, which is an English-lexifier creole spoken across the north of Australia. Gurindji Kriol exhibits a structural split between the NP and VP systems, but is lexically quite mixed. Kriol provides much of the verbal grammar including tense and mood auxiliaries, and transitive, aspect and derivational morphology. Most of the NP structure is of Gurindji origin including case and derivational morphology. Lexically, nominals and verbs are derived from both source languages. In form, the various sub-systems of Gurindji Kriol bear a close resemblance to their source languages. However contact and competition between Gurindji and Kriol in the process of the formation of the mixed language has altered the function and distribution of these systems, including the Gurindji-derived case morphology. The aim of this thesis is three-fold: (i) to provide the first detailed socio-historical and grammatical description of Gurindji Kriol (§2 and §A1), (ii) to propose a path by which Gurindji case morphology was incorporated into the Gurindji Kriol clause (§3-§5), and (iii) to demonstrate changes in the use of four case markers quantitatively (§6-§9).

This thesis presents a description and analysis of non-canonical case-marking of core arguments in Lithuanian. It consists of an introduction and six articles, providing historical and/or contrastive perspective to this issue. More specifically, using data from Lithuanian dialects, Old Lithuanian and other languages such as Icelandic, Latin and Finnic for comparison, the thesis examines the development and current state of non-canonical case-marking of core arguments in Lithuanian The present work draws on empirical findings and theoretical considerations to investigate non-canonical case-marking, language variation and historical linguistics. Special attention is paid to the variation in the case-marking of body parts in pain verb constructions, where an accusative-marked body part is used in Standard Lithuanian, and alongside, a nominative-marked body part in Lithuanian dialects. A common objective of the first three articles is to clarify and to seek a better understanding for the reasons for this case variation. The research provides evidence that nominative is the original case-marking of body parts in pain specific construction, i.e. with verbs, with the original meaning of pain, like skaudėti and sopėti ‘hurt, feel pain’. On the contrary, in derived pain constructions, i.e. with verbs like gelti with the original meaning of ‘sting, bite’ and diegti with the original meaning ‘plant’, accusative is the original case-marking of body parts. This accusative is explained by means of an oblique anticausative and it is argued furthermore that it is extended into the pain specific construction. The three last articles focus on the comparative and contrastive perspective. Their main results include the following: Lithuanian and Icelandic differ considerably in the frequency of using accusative vs. dative marking on the highest ranked argument. Accusative is more frequently used in Lithuanian while dative is dominant in Icelandic. The semantic fields of the dative subject construction have remained very stable, suggesting that the dative subject construction is inherited. It has, however, become productive in the history of Germanic, Baltic and Slavic. The similarities in Finnic and Baltic partiality-based object and subject-marking systems are due to Baltic influence. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: In press. Paper 2: In press. Paper 3: In press.</p>

This study is a detailed investigation of a number of issues in colloquial Sinhala morphosyntax. These issues primarily concern grammatical relations, argument structure, phrase structure and focus constructions. The theoretical framework of this study is Lexical Functional Grammar.¶Chapter 1 introduces the issues to be discussed, followed by a brief introduction of some essential aspects of colloquial Sinhala as background for the discussion in the following chapters. In Chapter 2 we present basic concepts of the theoretical framework of Lexical Functional Grammar.¶ The next three chapters mainly concern grammatical relations, argument structure and clause structure in colloquial Sinhala. Chapter 3 examines grammatical relations. The main focus lies in establishing the subject grammatical relation in terms of various subjecthood diagnostics. We show that only a very small number of diagnostics are reliable, and that the evidence for subject is weaker than assumed previously. All the subjecthood diagnostics that were examined select the most prominent argument in the argument structure as the subject, i.e. 'logical subject'. However, there appear to be no processes in the language that are sensitive to the subject in the grammatical relations structure, i.e. 'gr-subject'. Further, there is no evidence for other grammatical relations like objects. In Chapter 4 we discuss the agentless construction and related valency alternation phenomena. It was previously assumed that the agentless construction, valency alternation phenomena and the involitive construction are all related. We argue that the agentless construction should be treated as a different construction from the involitive construction. We also show that the agentless construction and the involitive construction have contrasting characteristics, and that treatment of them as separate constructions can account for some phenomena which did not receive an explanation previously. The valency alternation phenomena are related to the agentless construction, therefore there is no valency alternation in involitive constructions. It will be shown that verbs undergoing the valency alternation can be distinguished from the other verbs in terms of the lexical semantic properties of individual verbs. Chapter 5 examines the structure of non-verbal sentences in terms of a number of morphosyntactic phenomena. It was previously argued that verbal sentences and non-verbal sentences in colloquial Sinhala differ in terms of clause structure. However, the present study shows evidence to the contrary.¶ The next two chapters deal with modelling contrastive focus and the phrase structure of the language. Chapter 6 is a detailed analysis of the contrastive focus (cleft) construction in various clause types in the language, and proposes a unified syntactic treatment of contrastive focus. Contrastive focus is in some constructions morphologically encoded, while in others it involves both morphological and configurational assignment of focus. The complex interaction between focus markers and verb morphology in various focus constructions is accounted for by general well-formedness conditions applying to the f-structure, and the principles of Functional Uncertainty and Morphological Blocking. In Chapter 7, we discuss the phrase structure of the language, in particular such issues as its non-configurational nature and the lack of evidence for VP. We propose non-configurational S and some functional projections to account for word order freedom under S and to explain certain morphosyntactic phenomena, such as configurational focus assignment. Finally, Chapter 8 summarises the conclusions made in previous chapters.

This thesis deals with direct object nouns case-marked differentially. According to the commonly assumed generalization nouns marked with ACC case are prototypical objects representing high transitivity, whereas nouns marked with non-accusative cases are not. However, such a view ignores the possibility of a much finer distinction and fails to account for empirical data from languages with rich case morphology, such as Ukrainian. Given the complexity of the phenomenon under study the main objective of our investigation is to account exhaustively for all possible instances of non-accusative case marking and case alternations on direct objects in Ukrainian trying to classify and analyze the data by specifying the factors that condition the distinction ‘accusative versus non-accusative case marking’ and by integrating the phenomenon of differential object marking (DOM) into a formal model. We present DOM as a phenomenon that, together with the phenomenon of unaccusativity, can be subsumed under a broader concept of non-accusativity (defined as inability of verbs to assign ACC case). In this context we show that in Ukrainian and French morphosyntactic case realization has semantic underpinnings and that issues related to case valuation emanate from the intersection of different phenomena – DOM and nominal incorporation, DOM and verb typology, DOM and the process of (de)transitivization, and so on. However, the (morphosyntactic) visibility of those points of intersection varies from one language to another. Generativist distinction between syntactic (abstract) and morphological cases as well as the functionalist idea that case markings can be characterized as morphemes having different functional applications constitute the basis of our analysis of data. Using the typological views of these two approaches on the category of case as guidelines in our classification of collected data, we resort to minimalist formalism. Case is treated as an uninterpretable feature and a clear distinction is drawn between two types of case valuation – case checking and case assignment. Structural cases are checked during verb-raising and inherent (lexical) cases (among which we find predicate and default cases) are assigned either by a weak (or defective) v or by (an overt or null) preposition (P) in situ.

This thesis deals with direct object nouns case-marked differentially. According to the commonly assumed generalization nouns marked with ACC case are prototypical objects representing high transitivity, whereas nouns marked with non-accusative cases are not. However, such a view ignores the possibility of a much finer distinction and fails to account for empirical data from languages with rich case morphology, such as Ukrainian. Given the complexity of the phenomenon under study the main objective of our investigation is to account exhaustively for all possible instances of non-accusative case marking and case alternations on direct objects in Ukrainian trying to classify and analyze the data by specifying the factors that condition the distinction ‘accusative versus non-accusative case marking’ and by integrating the phenomenon of differential object marking (DOM) into a formal model. We present DOM as a phenomenon that, together with the phenomenon of unaccusativity, can be subsumed under a broader concept of non-accusativity (defined as inability of verbs to assign ACC case). In this context we show that in Ukrainian and French morphosyntactic case realization has semantic underpinnings and that issues related to case valuation emanate from the intersection of different phenomena – DOM and nominal incorporation, DOM and verb typology, DOM and the process of (de)transitivization, and so on. However, the (morphosyntactic) visibility of those points of intersection varies from one language to another. Generativist distinction between syntactic (abstract) and morphological cases as well as the functionalist idea that case markings can be characterized as morphemes having different functional applications constitute the basis of our analysis of data. Using the typological views of these two approaches on the category of case as guidelines in our classification of collected data, we resort to minimalist formalism. Case is treated as an uninterpretable feature and a clear distinction is drawn between two types of case valuation – case checking and case assignment. Structural cases are checked during verb-raising and inherent (lexical) cases (among which we find predicate and default cases) are assigned either by a weak (or defective) v or by (an overt or null) preposition (P) in situ.

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Bei der Verarbeitung transitiver Sätze verwendet der Parser verschiedene Informationen, wie die Wortstellung, die Belebtheit und die Kasusmarkierung der Argumente, um eine Repräsentation der im Satz beschriebenen Situation aufzubauen. Frühere psycholinguistische Arbeiten zeigen, dass zwei belebte Argumente in einem Satz zusätzliche Verarbeitungskosten verursachen, außer wenn andere Informationen die Zuweisung der grammatischen und thematischen Rollen an die Argumente erlauben. In kasusmarkierenden Sprachen wie Deutsch ist einer dieser Hinweise die morphologische Kasusmarkierung. Die meisten zweistelligen deutschen Verben weisen ihren Argumenten das kanonische Nominativ-Akkusativ-Kasusmuster zu. Eine kleine Gruppe von zweistelligen Verben weist jedoch das nichtkanonische Nominativ-Dativ-Muster zu. Diese Verben unterschieden sich in ihrer Syntax und Semantik von kanonisch transitiven Verben und verursachen beim Satzverstehen höhere Verarbeitungskosten. In dieser Dissertation wird untersucht, wie die Verarbeitung von Argumentbelebtheitskontrasten während der Satzverarbeitung vom verbalen Kasuszuweisungsmuster moduliert wird. Ich stelle die Ergebnisse vier verschiedener Experimente vor (selbstgetaktetes Lesen, Blickbewegungsmessungen und EKP-Messungen). Alle experimentellen Methoden zeigen, dass der Effekt der Argumentbelebtheitskonstraste mit dem Effekt des verbalen Kasuszuweisungsmusters interagiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen ein detaillierteres Bild der Satzverarbeitung und tragen zur Vereinigung der Transitivätsbegriffe in theoretischer Linguistik und Psycholinguistik bei. / During the comprehension of transitive sentences, the parser uses different kinds of information like word order, the arguments'' animacy status and case marking to build a representation of the situation the sentence describes. Previous research in psycholinguistics has shown that two animate arguments in a sentence cause additional processing costs, unless other cues allow the assignment of grammatical and thematic roles to the arguments. In case-marking languages like German, one of these cues is morphological case marking. While most German verbs assign the canonical nominative-accusative case pattern to their arguments, a small group of verbs assign noncanonical nominative-dative. These verbs differ from standard transitive verbs both in their syntax and their semantics, and are known to cause higher processing cost during comprehension. This dissertation examines how the processing of argument animacy contrasts during sentence comprehension is modulated by the verbal case marking pattern. I report the results of four different experiments, using self-paced reading time measurements, eyetracking and ERP measurements. All experimental methods show that the effect of argument animacy contrasts interacts with the effects of the verbal case marking pattern. The findings add further details to the existing knowledge about sentence comprehension, and combine perspectives on transitivity from theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics.

<p>The aim of this degree project has been to examine, analyze and describe which intra-linguistic factors influence how relative clauses are formed in Old English.</p><p>The key to successfully performing the task of identifying which factors influences the relative causes is to examine how these factors are distributed among the relative clauses in the text. The main focus of this investigation thus was to investigate how the grammatical features of the antecedents of the relative clauses in Old English were distributed. By analyzing a text sample of the work of the Old English writer Ælfric, taken from the Dictionary of Old English Corpus at the University of Toronto, also known as the Toronto Corpus, several features of the antecedent will ideally become evident as influencing factors.</p><p>The relative clauses that are found to be relevant for this investigation in the Ælfric text sample have been categorized and analyzed in order to identify any grammatical pattern that could indicate which factors influence how relative clauses in Old English are formed. The findings have been analyzed according to quantitative and statistical principles, and the chi-square test has been employed to verify the statistical significance of these findings. By doing this some linguistic factors have been verified as influencing factors.</p>