Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Supervisors: Brian M. Stross and Nikolai K Grube. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Abstract GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS OF VARIOUS BIBLICAL HEBREW TEXTS ACCORDING TO A TRADITIONAL SEMITIC GRAMMAR Richard Charles McDonald, Ph.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014 Chair: Dr. Russell T. Fuller Although linguistic Hebraists are dissatisfied with traditional grammatical analysis, this dissertation demonstrates that traditional Semitic grammar--primarily based on Arabic grammar and grammarians--still provides the most simple, clear, and accurate description of biblical Hebrew grammar. Chapter 1 illustrates the role of Arabic grammar in the study of Biblical Hebrew grammar. From the inception of biblical Hebrew grammatical studies, Jewish scholars drew from the insights of Arabic grammar. For centuries afterwards, Jewish and Christian Hebrew grammarians followed this method. In recent decades, grammarians have turned to modern linguistic principles, leading to a misunderstanding of various points of Biblical Hebrew syntax. Chapters 2 and 3 analyze the syntax of select verses in Genesis 2 and 3, respectively. Barry Bandstra's Genesis commentary in the Baylor Press series serves as the main point of comparison between the traditional Semitic approach and the modern linguistic approach. Each chapter introduces typical categories and definitions of traditional Semitic grammar, and critiques Bandstra's analysis when it contradicts Semitic grammar. Both chapters discuss a few main grammatical issues; in these discussions, other linguistic Hebraists are taken into consideration. For example, chapter 2 argues that the terms `nominative,' `genitive,' and `accusative,' are still valid grammatical categories in biblical Hebrew syntax, contra Jan Kroeze. Chapter 2 also contends that the pronoun הוּא is not a copula. Chapter 3 demonstrates that the Hebrew verb היה is not a copula but a real verb showing action, and that the energic suffixes on the imperfect do, in fact, have semantic value and do show emphasis. In chapter 4, the analysis shifts to Ruth 1. Robert Holmstedt's commentary on Ruth from the Baylor Press series serves as the point of reference. There are three main discussions in the chapter. First, the chapter outlines biblical Hebrew word order in opposition to Holmstedt's claim that the typical word order is Subject-Verb. Second, the chapter demonstrates that the masoretic accents are crucial for biblical Hebrew syntax. Third, the chapter critiques Holmstedt's theory that the particle ⚀הַ marks headless relative clauses. The remainder of the verses are utilized to highlight traditional analysis or to contradict Holmstedt. Appendix 1 outlines Geoffrey Khan's use of comparative Semitics to defend his copula pronoun theory. The excursus contends that Khan reinterprets Semitic grammar through discourse analysis, and that his copula pronoun theory cannot be substantiated. Appendix 2 differentiates between the participle as a verbal adjective (the traditional Semitic definition), and John A. Cook's placement of the participle in the class of `adjective.' This appendix maintains that the participle cannot be included in the biblical Hebrew verbal system. Appendix 3 responds to the external reader's critiques regarding the author's Arabic descriptions, the analysis of the reflexive Niphal, the use of the masoretic accents, and casus pendens.

Thesis (M.A. (Linguistics))--Mahidol University, 1982.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Virginia F. Allen. Dissertation Committee: Harold C. Conklin. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-73).

Previous research has shown some significant differences in the way speech acts are made and responded to in different cultures and languages. This study investigates two speech acts in particular, compliments and refusals, in two specific cultures, England and Poland. The project investigates the role of emotions in communication and social interaction with reference to these speech acts, which are particularly interesting due to their opposite emotional valence: compliments are perceived as positive and refusals are negative. English and Polish compliments and refusals are investigated as the two cultures are often perceived as proximate, which suggests that the observed differences will be particularly interesting as they have the potential to shed light on important and yet intractable distinguishing features of the two cultures. The research has two lines of investigation: theoretical and empirical. The theoretical aspect of research aims to bring together insights on the role of emotions in communication and a cognitive perspective on communication to explain the functions of compliments and refusals in social interaction and the relation between the cognitive and affective aspects of the production and reception of these speech acts. The empirical part of the research is based on an original study that presents new insights into complimenting and refusing behaviour in English and Polish culture. The comparison of English and Polish findings reveals many similarities in complimenting behaviour and some striking differences in refusing behaviour (most notably, Polish speakers tend to be less congruent than English speakers when making refusals and their refusals tend to be more detailed and more elaborate). The pragmatic analysis of the data has some interesting implications for the classification of compliment responses, suggesting that the classification should be based on appreciation, rather than on acceptance or rejection.

Karbi is a Tibeto-Burman (TB) language spoken by half a million people in the Karbi Anglong district in Assam, Northeast India, and surrounding areas in the extended Brahmaputra Valley area. It is an agglutinating, verb-final language. This dissertation offers a description of the dialect spoken in the hills of the Karbi Anglong district. It is primarily based on a corpus that was created during a total of fifteen months of original fieldwork, while building on and expanding on research reported by Grüßner in 1978. While the exact phylogenetic status of Karbi inside TB has remained controversial, this dissertation points out various putative links to other TB languages. The most intriguing aspect of Karbi phonology is the tone system, which carries a low functional load. While three tones can be contrasted on monosyllabic roots, the rich agglutinating morphology of Karbi allows the formation of polysyllabic words, at which level tones lose most of their phonemicity, while still leaving systematic phonetic traces. Nouns and verbs represent the two major word classes of Karbi at the root level; property-concept terms represent a subclass of verbs. At the heart of Karbi morphosyntax, there are two prefixes of Proto-TB provenance that have diachronically shaped the grammar of the language: the possessive prefix a- and the nominalizer ke-. Possessive a- attaches to nouns that are modified by preposed elements and represents the most frequent morpheme in the corpus. Nominalization involving ke- forms the basis for a variety of predicate constructions, including most of Karbi subordination as well as a number of main clause constructions. In addition to nominalization, subordination commonly involves clause chaining. Noun phrases may be marked for their clausal role via -phān `non-subject' or -lòng `locative' but frequently remain unmarked for role. Their pragmatic status can be indicated with information structure markers for topic, focus, and additivity. Commonly used discourse constructions include elaborate expressions and parallelism more generally, general extenders, copy verb constructions, as well as a number of final particles. Audio files are available of the texts given in the appendices, particular examples illustrating phonological issues, and phonetic recordings of tone minimal sets. Supplemental files are located at: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/13657

The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which the typological differences between Vietnamese and English influence the process of translating authentic Vietnamese sentences into English through an error analysis of the Vietnamese-English translations by Vietnamese EFL students. It starts with the assumption that Vietnamese is a topic-prominent language and the basic structure of Vietnamese manifests a topic-comment relation, rather than a subject-predicate relation (Thompson, 1987; Dyvik, 1984; Hao, 1991; Rosén, 1998), and tries to find out whether the students are more likely to make more errors when the topic of the sentence is not identical with the grammatical subject. This study also investigates the most common types of errors Vietnamese students make when translating topic-comment structures from Vietnamese into English. The analysis focuses on the errors made when translating the dropped subject and empty elements of Vietnamese. This is important, given the fact that the grammatical subject is always required in English, but not in Vietnamese. The data was collected from 95 students of English translation classes in their first, second, third, and fourth years in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Using an error analysis technique often adopted in studying the deviated forms produced by second language learners (James, 1998; Richards, 1974; Corder, 1974), the study constructs an error corpus in the form of a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet and classifies all the errors based on the categories they belong to (linguistic, comprehension or translational) and the kind of deviation they are (addition, omission, misordering or misselection, etc). The study establishes a taxonomy of errors, which includes three main categories: linguistic errors, comprehension errors and translation errors. The results of the study suggest a number of potential errors students are prone to making when translating the topic-comment structure of Vietnamese into English, and provides some practical guidelines for teachers, so that they can help students deal with these types of errors in Vietnamese-English translations. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2005. / "A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences, School of Languages and Linguistics, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2005." Includes bibliographical references and appendices.