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abstract: The historical study of sentence adverbs has, before now, been based mostly on models that emphasize the pragmatic and discourse-based motivations of processes of grammaticalization. This dissertation breaks from such tradition by exploring diachronic adverb development through syntactic and morphological lenses. A generative, feature-based approach is used that incorporates the cartographic architecture developed by Cinque and combines it with a more phenomenological approach to both grammaticalization and lexicalization. Cinque's hierarchy of speech-act, evaluative, evidential, and epistemic adverbs is analyzed. It is determined (through corpus data) that these subcategories have grown in use primarily during the Modern English era, and particularly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These four subcategories can be divided into two groups that are more general: speech-act adverbs, which arise from a (conditional) speech-act clause that undergoes ellipsis, and the other three types, which all arise from copula clauses. Each of these two groups is considered, and different methods of reanalysis by speakers are proposed for each. In addition, a revised model for categorizing adverbs is proposed. This model is based on morphological lexicalization (or univerbation) processes, thus accounting for the wide variety of adverbial source materials. Such lexicalization offers a pattern for sentence adverbial formation. Finally, Standard Chinese adverbials are briefly examined, with results indicating that they show very similar signs of lexicalization (within the limits of the writing system). / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2011

Narratives are there in everyone's lives. They are made up of stories that interest us, stories that we want to share with others. However, narrative is not only limited to the written or spoken word. It is made up of a complex system of units and devices which can be explored in many different genres and media. One such medium is Architecture. This thesis is an investigation in decoding the elements that are essential for a narrative. Comparing and analyzing the concept using other medium especially the cinematic medium as a point of reference to understand how it can be applied to architecture. Testing out these discoveries to create a visual arts school in Lugano. / Master of Architecture

O objetivo desta dissertação é apontar e descrever problemas de Terminologia referentes à variação diacrônica de uma terminologia, a partir da análise conceitual de duas estruturas referentes a dois modelos de processo (engenho e usina) de uma mesma área técnica - produção de açúcar -, separadas por um espaço determinado de tempo e submetidas a constantes revoluções lingüísticas e culturais. Para tanto, descrevemos quais fatores interferem nessas transformações; em que medida o grau de consolidação de um domínio representa sua sistematicidade; e procuramos comprovar, a partir de pesquisa diacrônica, que a dinâmica dos subsistemas de especialidades renova-se sob as mesmas regras de criação da língua geral. / The aim of this work is to point out and describe Terminology problems related to the diachronic variation of a terminology based on the conceptual analysis of two structures, concerning two process models (sugar plantation and factory) of a same technical area - sugar production, separated by a certain period of time and submitted to constant technological, linguistic and cultural revolutions. For this reason, we described the factors which interfere in those transformations; the manner that the consolidation level of a social sphere represents its systemic regularity; and we tried to prove, based on a diachronic research, that the dynamics of the speciality subsystems has the same functioning of the one that rules the general language.

O objetivo desta dissertação é apontar e descrever problemas de Terminologia referentes à variação diacrônica de uma terminologia, a partir da análise conceitual de duas estruturas referentes a dois modelos de processo (engenho e usina) de uma mesma área técnica - produção de açúcar -, separadas por um espaço determinado de tempo e submetidas a constantes revoluções lingüísticas e culturais. Para tanto, descrevemos quais fatores interferem nessas transformações; em que medida o grau de consolidação de um domínio representa sua sistematicidade; e procuramos comprovar, a partir de pesquisa diacrônica, que a dinâmica dos subsistemas de especialidades renova-se sob as mesmas regras de criação da língua geral. / The aim of this work is to point out and describe Terminology problems related to the diachronic variation of a terminology based on the conceptual analysis of two structures, concerning two process models (sugar plantation and factory) of a same technical area - sugar production, separated by a certain period of time and submitted to constant technological, linguistic and cultural revolutions. For this reason, we described the factors which interfere in those transformations; the manner that the consolidation level of a social sphere represents its systemic regularity; and we tried to prove, based on a diachronic research, that the dynamics of the speciality subsystems has the same functioning of the one that rules the general language.

This paper considers the problem of language change. Linguists must explain not only how languages are learned but also how and why they have evolved along certain trajectories and not others. While the language learning problem has focused on the behavior of individuals and how they acquire a particular grammar from a class of grammars ${cal G}$, here we consider a population of such learners and investigate the emergent, global population characteristics of linguistic communities over several generations. We argue that language change follows logically from specific assumptions about grammatical theories and learning paradigms. In particular, we are able to transform parameterized theories and memoryless acquisition algorithms into grammatical dynamical systems, whose evolution depicts a population's evolving linguistic composition. We investigate the linguistic and computational consequences of this model, showing that the formalization allows one to ask questions about diachronic that one otherwise could not ask, such as the effect of varying initial conditions on the resulting diachronic trajectories. From a more programmatic perspective, we give an example of how the dynamical system model for language change can serve as a way to distinguish among alternative grammatical theories, introducing a formal diachronic adequacy criterion for linguistic theories.

This dissertation provides an account of an often-noted change in the history of French: the shift in the expression of the internal argument of a small class of dynamic two-place verbs best represented by aider ‘to help’ from “dative”, i.e., as an indirect object with the preposition à, to “accusative”, i.e., as a direct object with no preposition. The change does not appear to be correlated with a change in the meaning of the verbs. Traditional commentators have viewed it as random, affecting only a few lexical items, rather than systematic. One of the central results of this thesis is that the valency change affects a class of some twenty verbs at approximately the same period and it follows the same time course. Moreover, three properties distinguish this class of verbs from all others taking indirect objects in French: following current ideas about the syntactic manifestation of verbs and their arguments, they have a non relational argument structure, they do not possess lexical directionality, and they select for first or third order entities. These facts suggest that a structural change underlies the change in the realization of the internal argument. Adopting Lightfoot’s (1999, 2006) “cue-based” approach to language change, it is proposed that the valency change is a result of the loss of a functional item encoding directionality. Directionality is a derived property in Medieval French, available in particular to prepositions. It is demonstrated that when à was able to encode direction, it was also able to license first and third order complements in a broader range of contexts, namely, with aider-type verbs. The loss of this functional item is also correlated with several other structural changes that occurred in the 16th and 17th century.

This dissertation provides an account of an often-noted change in the history of French: the shift in the expression of the internal argument of a small class of dynamic two-place verbs best represented by aider ‘to help’ from “dative”, i.e., as an indirect object with the preposition à, to “accusative”, i.e., as a direct object with no preposition. The change does not appear to be correlated with a change in the meaning of the verbs. Traditional commentators have viewed it as random, affecting only a few lexical items, rather than systematic. One of the central results of this thesis is that the valency change affects a class of some twenty verbs at approximately the same period and it follows the same time course. Moreover, three properties distinguish this class of verbs from all others taking indirect objects in French: following current ideas about the syntactic manifestation of verbs and their arguments, they have a non relational argument structure, they do not possess lexical directionality, and they select for first or third order entities. These facts suggest that a structural change underlies the change in the realization of the internal argument. Adopting Lightfoot’s (1999, 2006) “cue-based” approach to language change, it is proposed that the valency change is a result of the loss of a functional item encoding directionality. Directionality is a derived property in Medieval French, available in particular to prepositions. It is demonstrated that when à was able to encode direction, it was also able to license first and third order complements in a broader range of contexts, namely, with aider-type verbs. The loss of this functional item is also correlated with several other structural changes that occurred in the 16th and 17th century.

The aim of this study is to semantically analyze the use of marked and unmarked adjunct clauses in Middle Egyptian documentary texts in order to investigate the limits of choosing an unmarked form in more informal language use. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used in the analysis. The results show that marked adjunct clauses are more frequent than unmarked, and the choice between these two is to a great extent based on the semantic role of the clause. Additionally, unmarked forms can often be regarded as marked, e.g. by tense or mood, and the overall co(n)text, which indicates that markedness should be seen as a continuum, instead of two polar opposites marked and unmarked. Consequently, the results indicate that markedness – although in different forms – is the norm in non-literary Middle Egyptian texts, thus differing from the official language that is used in literary, royal, and religious texts. Furthermore, the present study has a diachronic dimension. The comparison between texts from the earlier and later Middle Kingdom clearly show the development in the use of adjunct clauses that took place between Old and Late Egyptian, when marked forms eventually became the norm in all language use. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att semantiskt analysera markerade och icke-markerade bisatser i mellanegyptiska dokumentära texter för att klargöra gränserna för användningen av icke-markerade former i ledigare språkbruk. För denna studie tillämpades både en kvalitativ och en kvantitativ metod. Resultaten visar att markerade bisatser är mer frekventa än icke-markerade, och att valet mellan dessa två former i stort sett beror på bisatsens semantiska roll. I många fall kan icke-markerade bisatser dessutom vara mer eller mindre markerade, bl.a. med hjälp av tempus och modus. Därför bör fenomenet markerad och icke-markerad betraktas som ett kontinuum istället för två motpoler. Resultaten tyder med andra ord på att markering – om än på olika sätt – är norm i det mindre formella mellanegyptiska språkbruket. Denna norm skiljer sig i detta avseende från det officiella språkbruket, som är typiskt i bl.a. litterära och religiösa texter. Denna studie innefattar dessutom en diakronisk del. Jämförelsen mellan tidigare och senare texter från Mellersta riket visar tydligt den utveckling i användningen av bisatser som skedde mellan gammalegyptiska och senegyptiska, då markerade bisatser till slut blev norm i allt språkbruk.

In the past few decades, the investigation of grammatical change using electronic corpora has made headway internationally. Although linguists previously believed that grammatical changes progress too slowly to observe, this method enables linguists to investigate even recent, or ongoing, changes. However, no comprehensive study of recent and ongoing grammatical changes in Afrikaans has appeared yet. Also, when comments about ongoing changes are made, it is usually based on anecdotal evidence, with a focus on English influence. In this study, the method of short-term diachronic comparable corpus linguistics is used to investigate grammatical changes in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010. Four corpora were collected to this end, representing language use from 1911-1920, 1941-1950, 1971-1980 and 2001-2010. Additionally, quantitative grammaticography is used to take into account possible effects of prescriptive sources. Two research questions are adressed in this study: the first inquires into the nature and extent of grammatical changes in selected grammatical categories in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010; the second wants to clarify the differences and similarities between internal and external language change, and in the light thereof establish to which extent external change, and specifically English influence, is relevant for grammatical changes in Standard Afrikaans during the past century. The theoretical framework within which language use and change is investigated in this study is cognitive linguistics, specifically emergent grammar and the exemplar model. Changes that become apparent from the data are described and explained in terms of processes of change and forces of change, and linked to the principles of cognitive linguistics. Three broad grammatical categories are investigated: temporal reference, pronouns and the genitive. Even though there is an extent of stability in each of the categories, there are also several bigger and smaller changes that give an overview of the nature of grammatical change in written Standard Afrikaans in the past century. These changes can be divided into different categories. The first type of change has to do with formalisation and colloquialisation – in broad strokes, there are signs of formalisation between the first two periods, during which the standard variety was being established, causing some features associated with formality to increase (e.g. passive constructions). However, at the end of the century there are signs of colloquialisation between the last two periods, where some formal features decrease (e.g. the formal second person pronoun u "you"), and some informal features increase (e.g. nou "now" as discourse marker). The second type of change is analogy, causing greater regularity and/or uniformity in a paradigm. For instance, obsolescent preterite forms (had "had", wis "knew") were replaced by regular forms (het/het gehad, het geweet). The last of the Dutch genitive was also replaced by the Afrikaans genitive with se "'s" and van "of". The third type of change is driven by speakers' desire to be expressive. Some of the pronouns specialise increasingly, meaning that they are used less and less for functions other than their main function, and other options are used less and less for that function. Examples of this is the third person pronoun dit "it", the shortened forms jul "you/your" and hul "they/their", and the indefinite pronouns almal "everybody", alles "everything" and elkeen "each one". A next type of change is actually a combination of different processes and forces: grammaticalisation. There are several instances of grammaticalisation: the use of gaan "go" for future reference, the use of dis "it's" rather than dit is "it is", the use of mens "human" rather than 'n mens "a human" as generic pronoun, the use of indefinite pronouns with enig- "any" like enigiets "anything", enigiemand "anybody", enigeen "anyone", and the use of the genitive particle se "'s". The last type of change is externally motivated change. Contrary to the view the Afrikaans literature in general promotes, there is only one instance of confirmed English influence in the data of this study: the increasing use of -self with reflexive pronouns, rather than the bare object form. However, there are instances of extra-linguistic influence, like standardisation that caused large scale variation reduction between the first and the second period, and the influence of feminism that can be seen in decreasing linguistic sexism, particularly with regard to generic pronouns. The conclusion in the end is that the process of internally motivated change and contact-induced change is not different – an innovation can originate from another language (overt transfer), or an internal innovation can be promoted through bi- or multilingualism (covert transfer); however, the same principles, processes and forces of change are at play, irrespective of how many languages are involved.