abstract: In this thesis, I explore Cognate Object Constructions COCs (e.g. The clown "laughed" a creepy "laugh") through three research questions: (1) What verbs can accept Cognate Objects COs? (2) Why can these verbs accept COs and other verbs cannot? and (3) How are COCs derived? I demonstrate that Sorace's Hierarchy sheds light on which verbs can accept COs and which cannot by explaining the discrepancies in grammaticality judgments that exist in the literature. I then argue that Hale and Keyser's Conflation account of COCs is not minimalist because it relies on a phenomenon that can be reduced to Merge. After commenting and repairing their account, I provide an outline for a more minimalist framework, which I refer to as "Problems of Projection Extensions" PoP+, that focuses on MERGE, workspaces, labeling theory, phases, and determinacy. Inside this framework, I then develop my own account that depends on only Internal Merge and the constraint in English against stranded articles. With my account situated in this PoP+ framework, I am able to approach the research questions from a syntactic perspective, arguing that the Unergative Restriction on COCs is a result of a determinacy violation in the derivation of Unaccusative COCs. Finally, I point out that, being situated in the PoP+ framework, my account opens COCs up to further investigation not possible before. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Linguistics and Applied Linguistics 2019

A significant number of known human genetic diseases is associated with nonsense mutations leading to the introduction of a premature termination codon into the coding sequence. A termination codon can be read through by its near-cognate tRNA (tRNA with two anticodon nucleotides base-pairing with a stop codon); potentially generating C-terminally extended protein variants. In yeast, UGA stop codon was described to be read through by tRNA-Trp and tRNA-Cys. Similar was observed for tRNA-Trp in human HEK293T cell line. The aim of this thesis was to investigate if human tRNA-Cys can act as a near-cognate tRNA in human HEK293T cell line. There are two isoacceptors which constitute the tRNA-Cys family, with ACA and GCA anticodon. There are 1 and 23 isodecoders to the ACA and GCA anticodons, respectively. Here, altogether as many as nine tRNA-Cys isodecoders (distinct in their sequence and with varying levels of expression) were tested for their ability to increase UGA readthrough in HEK293T using p2luci and pSGDluc dual-luciferase reporter vectors. In both p2luci and pSGDluc, we observed that at least one tRNA-Cys isodecoder, tRNA-Cys-GCA-4-1, is capable of significantly elevating the UGA readthrough levels when overexpressed in HEK293T. This indicates that similarly to yeast, tRNA-Cys is capable of...

Entender como os indivíduos que falam mais de uma língua reconhecem e processam palavras de diferentes idiomas tem sido questão central nas pesquisas em multilinguismo. Nas últimas décadas, um grande número de estudos coletou evidências de que o reconhecimento de palavras em uma língua pode ser influenciado pelo conhecimento de palavras de outra língua, ou seja, o acesso lexical dos multilíngues seria não-seletivo, em que ambas as línguas estão ativas, independentemente da língua-alvo do contexto. Assim, o presente estudo buscou investigar a influência de L1 e L2 sobre a L3 em uma população trilíngue. Contou-se com uma amostra de 26 brasileiros trilíngues de português (L1), inglês (L2) e francês (L3) de proficiência diversa. Os sujeitos realizaram dois experimentos de decisão lexical em francês, o primeiro composto por estímulos em francês que eram cognatos com português, inglês ou ambas as línguas, e o segundo composto por homógrafos interlinguísticos nas mesmas condições. Os resultados nos levam a conclusões semelhantes aos estudos anteriores, dando suporte à hipótese de acesso lexical não-seletivo, demonstrando a existência de um efeito cognato na análise de percentual de erro no caso dos cognatos e dos falsos cognatos. Contudo, não foi possível encontrar um efeito cognato trilíngue como o esperado e tampouco verificar o efeito cognato nos tempos de reação. Esses resultados são discutidos, refletindo-se sobre a influência da proficiência, do tempo e da frequência de uso das línguas e do número de participantes do estudo. / Understanding how individuals who speak more than one language recognize and process words in different languages has been a central issue in multilingualism research. In recent decades, a great number of studies has gathered evidence demonstrating that the recognition of words in a language can be influenced by the knowledge of words in another language, that is, lexical access of multilingual individuals would be non-selective, meaning that both languages are active regardless of the target language. Thus, this study aimed at investigating the influence of the L1 and the L2 on the L3 in a group of trilinguals. The sample consisted of 26 Portuguese (L1), English (L2) and French (L3) Brazilian trilinguals with varied proficiency levels. Participants took part in two lexical decision tasks in French. The first was composed of French words that were cognates with Portuguese, English or both, while the second comprised interlinguistic homographs in the same conditions. The results indicate similar results to those from previous studies, which gives support to the non-selective lexical access hypothesis and demonstrates the existence of a cognate effect in the analysis of error percentage in the case of cognates and false cognates. However, it was not possible to find a trilingual cognate effect, as expected, and to verify the cognate effect in reaction times. Such results are discussed in light of proficiency, how long these languages have been used, how often they are used, and the number of participants in the study.

Four type II toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems were previously identified in Burkholderia pseudomallei K96243. Type II TA toxins are able to induce cell growth arrest or death by interfering with key processes within the organism. BPSS0390-0391 is one of the TA systems previously identified and has homology to hicBA system in Acinetobacter baumannii. B. pseudomallei HicA is able to cause a reduction in the number of culturable cells after expression in E. coli. This study aimed to characterise B. pseudomallei HicA in three ways: by inducing expression of HicA in bacterial species other than E. coli, by identifying amino acids in HicA involved in toxicity and neutralisation by the antitoxin HicB and by examining the interaction of HicA with other TA antitoxins identified within B. pseudomallei genome. A broad host range plasmid encoding BPSS0390 was transformed into a range of Gram negative bacteria including Yersinia pseudotuberculosis IP32953, Vibrio vulnificus E64MW, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium SL1344 and Burkholderia thailandensis E264. Expression of BPSS0390 was toxic in all bacterial species tested, despite the presence of antitoxin BPSS0391 homologues in some species. Unregulated expression in E. coli resulted in the appearance of escape mutants encoding non-toxic variants of HicA. An alanine scanning mutagenesis study of HicA identified 20 mutants where toxicity was abolished despite high levels of expression, but identified no mutants that affected TA complex formation. Finally an existing co-expression assay was modified to examine interactions between HicA and other type II TA antitoxins in B. pseudomallei. The assay revealed no interaction between HicA and non-cognate antitoxins and clarified the role of IPTG as an inhibitor of PBAD promoter on the arabinose operon.

Entender como os indivíduos que falam mais de uma língua reconhecem e processam palavras de diferentes idiomas tem sido questão central nas pesquisas em multilinguismo. Nas últimas décadas, um grande número de estudos coletou evidências de que o reconhecimento de palavras em uma língua pode ser influenciado pelo conhecimento de palavras de outra língua, ou seja, o acesso lexical dos multilíngues seria não-seletivo, em que ambas as línguas estão ativas, independentemente da língua-alvo do contexto. Assim, o presente estudo buscou investigar a influência de L1 e L2 sobre a L3 em uma população trilíngue. Contou-se com uma amostra de 26 brasileiros trilíngues de português (L1), inglês (L2) e francês (L3) de proficiência diversa. Os sujeitos realizaram dois experimentos de decisão lexical em francês, o primeiro composto por estímulos em francês que eram cognatos com português, inglês ou ambas as línguas, e o segundo composto por homógrafos interlinguísticos nas mesmas condições. Os resultados nos levam a conclusões semelhantes aos estudos anteriores, dando suporte à hipótese de acesso lexical não-seletivo, demonstrando a existência de um efeito cognato na análise de percentual de erro no caso dos cognatos e dos falsos cognatos. Contudo, não foi possível encontrar um efeito cognato trilíngue como o esperado e tampouco verificar o efeito cognato nos tempos de reação. Esses resultados são discutidos, refletindo-se sobre a influência da proficiência, do tempo e da frequência de uso das línguas e do número de participantes do estudo. / Understanding how individuals who speak more than one language recognize and process words in different languages has been a central issue in multilingualism research. In recent decades, a great number of studies has gathered evidence demonstrating that the recognition of words in a language can be influenced by the knowledge of words in another language, that is, lexical access of multilingual individuals would be non-selective, meaning that both languages are active regardless of the target language. Thus, this study aimed at investigating the influence of the L1 and the L2 on the L3 in a group of trilinguals. The sample consisted of 26 Portuguese (L1), English (L2) and French (L3) Brazilian trilinguals with varied proficiency levels. Participants took part in two lexical decision tasks in French. The first was composed of French words that were cognates with Portuguese, English or both, while the second comprised interlinguistic homographs in the same conditions. The results indicate similar results to those from previous studies, which gives support to the non-selective lexical access hypothesis and demonstrates the existence of a cognate effect in the analysis of error percentage in the case of cognates and false cognates. However, it was not possible to find a trilingual cognate effect, as expected, and to verify the cognate effect in reaction times. Such results are discussed in light of proficiency, how long these languages have been used, how often they are used, and the number of participants in the study.

Entender como os indivíduos que falam mais de uma língua reconhecem e processam palavras de diferentes idiomas tem sido questão central nas pesquisas em multilinguismo. Nas últimas décadas, um grande número de estudos coletou evidências de que o reconhecimento de palavras em uma língua pode ser influenciado pelo conhecimento de palavras de outra língua, ou seja, o acesso lexical dos multilíngues seria não-seletivo, em que ambas as línguas estão ativas, independentemente da língua-alvo do contexto. Assim, o presente estudo buscou investigar a influência de L1 e L2 sobre a L3 em uma população trilíngue. Contou-se com uma amostra de 26 brasileiros trilíngues de português (L1), inglês (L2) e francês (L3) de proficiência diversa. Os sujeitos realizaram dois experimentos de decisão lexical em francês, o primeiro composto por estímulos em francês que eram cognatos com português, inglês ou ambas as línguas, e o segundo composto por homógrafos interlinguísticos nas mesmas condições. Os resultados nos levam a conclusões semelhantes aos estudos anteriores, dando suporte à hipótese de acesso lexical não-seletivo, demonstrando a existência de um efeito cognato na análise de percentual de erro no caso dos cognatos e dos falsos cognatos. Contudo, não foi possível encontrar um efeito cognato trilíngue como o esperado e tampouco verificar o efeito cognato nos tempos de reação. Esses resultados são discutidos, refletindo-se sobre a influência da proficiência, do tempo e da frequência de uso das línguas e do número de participantes do estudo. / Understanding how individuals who speak more than one language recognize and process words in different languages has been a central issue in multilingualism research. In recent decades, a great number of studies has gathered evidence demonstrating that the recognition of words in a language can be influenced by the knowledge of words in another language, that is, lexical access of multilingual individuals would be non-selective, meaning that both languages are active regardless of the target language. Thus, this study aimed at investigating the influence of the L1 and the L2 on the L3 in a group of trilinguals. The sample consisted of 26 Portuguese (L1), English (L2) and French (L3) Brazilian trilinguals with varied proficiency levels. Participants took part in two lexical decision tasks in French. The first was composed of French words that were cognates with Portuguese, English or both, while the second comprised interlinguistic homographs in the same conditions. The results indicate similar results to those from previous studies, which gives support to the non-selective lexical access hypothesis and demonstrates the existence of a cognate effect in the analysis of error percentage in the case of cognates and false cognates. However, it was not possible to find a trilingual cognate effect, as expected, and to verify the cognate effect in reaction times. Such results are discussed in light of proficiency, how long these languages have been used, how often they are used, and the number of participants in the study.

This dissertation is a nuanced study of ‘compassion’ in the context of the Pauline Letters. The Letters are considered within the socio/political context of imperial Rome. ‘Compassion’ is a complex emotion, therefore it has been necessary to include, in my analysis, cognate sentiments such as patience, kindness, gentleness, perseverance. As this is a semantic study the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains, compiled by Louw and Nida (L-N), is used extensively. A dictionary provides a potential meaning, but it is the context of the sentence, the sentence within a larger unit of the text as a whole, considered within the prevailing social conditions, that influence meaning. This method reveals that Paul envisages ‘compassion’ as the means to establish communities, not enslaved by the values of ‘the world’, nor grasping things for themselves at the expense of others. In Paul, ‘compassion’ is expansive and inclusive, where the good of the whole community is valued. His paradigm is the sacrifice of Christ. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M. A. (Ancient Languages and Cultures)

Research has shown that cognates between Japanese and English have the potential to be a valuable learning tool (Daulton, 2008). Yet little is known on how Japanese learners of English produce cognates in context. Recently, studies have argued that cognates can cause a surprisingly high number of syntactic errors in sentence writing activities with Japanese learners (Rogers, Webb, & Nakata, 2014; Masson, 2013). In the present study, I investigated how Japanese learners of English understood and used true cognates (words that have equivalent meanings in both languages) and non-true cognates (words where the Japanese meaning differs in various ways from their English source words). Via quasi-replication, I analyzed participants' sentences to determine the interaction of true and non-true cognates on semantics and syntax. In an experimental study, twenty Japanese exchange students filled out a word knowledge scale of thirty target words (half true cognates and half non-true cognates) and wrote sentences for the words they indicated they knew. These sentences were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively for both semantic and syntactic errors. Sentences with true cognates were semantically accurate 86% of the time, while those with non-true cognates were accurate only 62.3% of the time, which was a statistically significant difference. When the sentences were analyzed for syntax, there was no statistically significant difference in the number of errors between true and non-true cognates, which contrasts with previous research. Qualitative analysis revealed that the most problematic syntactic issue across both cognate types was using collocations correctly. Among those collocational issues, there were clear differences in the types of errors between true and non-true cognates. True cognate target words were more likely to lead to problems with prepositional collocations, while non-true cognate target words were more likely to lead to problems with verb collocations. These results suggest that for intermediate Japanese learners of English, semantics of non-true cognates should be prioritized in learning, followed by syntax of true and non-true cognates, which should be taught according to the most problematic error types per cognate status.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 258-273).

This dissertation is a nuanced study of ‘compassion’ in the context of the Pauline Letters. The Letters are considered within the socio/political context of imperial Rome. ‘Compassion’ is a complex emotion, therefore it has been necessary to include, in my analysis, cognate sentiments such as patience, kindness, gentleness, perseverance. As this is a semantic study the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains, compiled by Louw and Nida (L-N), is used extensively. A dictionary provides a potential meaning, but it is the context of the sentence, the sentence within a larger unit of the text as a whole, considered within the prevailing social conditions, that influence meaning. This method reveals that Paul envisages ‘compassion’ as the means to establish communities, not enslaved by the values of ‘the world’, nor grasping things for themselves at the expense of others. In Paul, ‘compassion’ is expansive and inclusive, where the good of the whole community is valued. His paradigm is the sacrifice of Christ. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M. A. (Ancient Languages and Cultures)