In this thesis I investigate the syntax and semantics of tense-aspect stem participles in the Ṛgveda, focusing primarily on the data from the earlier books II–VII and IX, seeking to establish a comprehensive and coherent analysis of this category within the linguistic system of Ṛgvedic Sanskrit. In recent literature tense-aspect stem participles are usually treated as semantically equivalent to finite verbs wherever possible, but contradictorily where they differ from finite verbs their adjectival nature is emphasized. I argue that tense-aspect stem participles are a fundamentally verbal formation and can be treated as inflectional verb forms: they are adjectival verbs rather than verbal adjectives. At the same time, however, they constitute an independent sub-category of verb form which is not necessarily semantically dependent on corresponding finite stems. I examine the syntactic and semantic properties of tense-aspect stem participles both in relation to finite verbal forms and their wider syntactic context, formalizing the evidence in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar. Consequently I am able to categorize the syntactic and semantic deviations which many participles exhibit in comparison to finite verbal forms. I contend that many such forms cannot be treated synchronically (and sometimes diachronically) as participles, but form distinct synchronic categories. My analysis permits a considerably more refined definition of the category of tense-aspect stem participles, dependent on clear morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria, as opposed to the usual, purely morphological, definition. From a diachronic perspective I argue that the category of tense-aspect stem participles as found in the Ṛgveda more closely reflects an inherited Proto-Indo-European category of tense-aspect stem participles than is usually assumed. I also reconsider theoretical treatments of participial syntax and semantics, and develop a more precise typology of non-finite verb systems which adequately accounts for Sanskrit participles.

Shawnee is a language whose alignment system is of the type first proposed by Nichols (1992) and Siewierska (1998): hierarchical alignment. This alignment system was proposed to account for languages where distinctions between agent (A) and object (O) are not formally manifested. Such is the case in Shawnee; there are person-marking inflections on the verb for both A and O, but there is not set order. Instead, Shawnee makes reference to an animacy hierarchy and is an inverse system. This thesis explores how hierarchical alignment is accounted for by Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), and also applies Paradigm Function Morphology to LFG’s m(orphological)-structure as most of the alignment system in Shawnee is realized in the inflectional morphology.

This thesis examines the historical development of the expletive það in Icelandic, from the earliest texts to the present day. This development is set against the backdrop of Icelandic clause structure, with particular attention to verb-second, information structure and the left periphery. The study combines corpus linguistic data and quantitative techniques with theoretical analysis, conducted within Lexical Functional Grammar. I show that Icelandic underwent three syntactic developments in the period 1750-present and argue that these all reflect one overall change: the establishment of það as a structural placeholder for the topic position (the clause-initial prefinite position). I claim that það functions as a topic position placeholder in the earliest attested stage of Icelandic (1150-1350), but is restricted to a specific context: topicless subjectless constructions with a clausal object, where það has cataphoric reference. The three changes in the period 1750-present represent the establishment of this topic position placeholder in new contexts: (1) það generalises to all types of topicless subjectless construction, beyond those with a clausal object; (2) það emerges in presentational constructions (which inherently lack a topic), out-competing the earlier expletive form þar; (3) in cataphoric contexts with a clausal subject, það begins to transition from subject to topic position placeholder. The majority of these contexts exhibit at least a short period in which það - or alternatively þar - behaves like a subject. Icelandic thus exhibits the emergence of a topic position placeholder expletive from an earlier subject-like element. This shift towards prefinite expletives, which sets Icelandic apart from e.g. Mainland Scandinavian, happens relatively late in the diachrony (1750-present). Moreover, the Icelandic development challenges the standard claim in the literature on Germanic expletives, which assumes that subject expletives emerge from prefinite expletives.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:22:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-08-25Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:27:29Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 nagamura_gh_me_sjrp.pdf: 270601 bytes, checksum: 84fd31cd99d962fe4a2f91092ea6b1d0 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar o funcionamento dos evidenciais e modalizadores no discurso da autoajuda, comparando o uso dessas categorias em dois tipos temáticos desse discurso. O primeiro tipo, o qual denominamos autoajuda genérica, refere a obras em que não há uma especificação dos tipos de objetivos que se pretende alcançar com a aplicação dos métodos propostos pela autoajuda. O segundo tipo, denominado autoajuda da saúde, se refere a obras em que o objetivo é a cura e prevenção de doenças. A hipótese de que partimos é a de que a escolha temática irá influenciar na manifestação da modalidade e da evidencialidade, uma vez que essa escolha implica em relações interdiscursivas específicas. Para a análise dessas categorias, utilizamos a abordagem da Gramática Discursivo-Funcional (HENGEVELD; MACKENZIE, 2008), por se tratar de uma abordagem estratificada do enunciado, possibilitando, dessa forma, melhor compreensão dos diversos efeitos de sentido gerados por cada tipo de modalizador e evidencial. Como resultado de nossa análise, vimos que a relação interdiscursiva da autoajuda da saúde com o discurso médico influenciou a escolha dos modalizadores epistêmicos, com a preferência do enunciador da autoajuda da saúde por modalizadores objetivos, manifestando baixo comprometimento com relação à avaliação realizada. A relação com o discurso médico, influenciou também a escolha dos evidenciais, havendo a preferência do enunciador da autoajuda da saúde por evidenciais reportativos, buscando, assim, aparentar maior cientificidade do que o enunciador da autoajuda genérica. Outra diferença no comportamento dos modalizadores se deu nos domínios deôntico e dinâmico, para os quais constatamos uma maior imposição por parte do enunciador da autoajuda genérica / The objective of the present work is to analyze the functioning of evidentials and modalizers in the discourse of Self-help, comparing how these categories are used in two different theme-specified types of the afore mentioned discourse. The first type, denominated Generic Self-help, refers to books in which the type of goals to be attained through self-help is not specified, ranging from financial success to happiness, love, or any other type of goal. The second type, denominated Health Self-help, refers to books in which the sole objective is to cure and prevent diseases. The working hypothesis is that by choosing a certain theme, the interdiscoursive relationships will also be different, resulting in different choices in the use of evidentials and modalizers. In order to analyze these categories, we have adopted the approach of Discoursive Funcional Grammar (HENGEVELD; MACKENZIE, 2008), for its stratified view of the utterance allows to capture effectively the various effect senses produced by the different types of modalizers and evidentials. As a result of the analysis, we observed that the relationship with the medical discourse in the Health Self-Help discourse influenced in the use of epistemic modality, with the preference for objective modalizers. Moreover, the medical discourse influenced in the use of evidentials, noticed by the preference in the Health Self-help discourse for reportative evidentials. Also it was noticed the difference in the use of deontic and dynamic modalities, with the preference for more imposing forms in the Generic Self-help. Since the two theme-specified types are from the same discourse, we found also similarities in the use of evidentials and modalizers, the most important one being the compromise with certainty evaluations in opposition to the lack of commitment to uncertainty evaluations

The aim of this study is to investigate what interpersonal relationships are constructedwhen a teacher comments on students’ texts. The investigation is based on 201 comments from one teacher and are analysed with a qualitative and a quantitative method. The theoretical frame of the investigation is founded on functional grammar and interpersonal perspectives, using the categories address, directions, praise, caution, and additions. The results show that directions are the most common feature of interpersonal perspectives found in the teacher’s comments. The second most common category is additions, constituting of confirmations, corrections and help in the teacher’s comments. Furthermore, two equally detected categories in the investigation are address and praise that are detected 53 times each. The least detected category is caution.

In the era of globalization, growing numbers of children are living in situations where the language of their formal schooling is different from that of the everyday communication in their family. In such a bilingual context, this study documents biliteracy development of two Korean background children growing up in Australia. The children?s written texts (both in English and Korean) were collected over the period of 5 years 8 months (from preschool through primary school) both in home and school contexts, and analyzed using the Systemic Functional Grammar as well as genre and register theory. Throughout the researcher?s regular classroom observation and participation in their school?s literacy activities as well as in the home context, a detailed documentation of the children?s socio-linguistic environment is also provided as an important part of this longitudinal case study?s data collection and analysis. Over the period, the children?s writing in both English and Korean developed quite significantly in terms of their control of the register in text. With the introduction of Genre-based Approach in their school, they had opportunities in learning to write a range of genres such as Narrative, Report, Explanation, Argument and Procedure in English to meet the expectations of the mainstream curriculum. The children?s writing in Korean was mainly developing to satisfy their personal and interpersonal communication needs, largely through diary writing, E-mails and personal letters to extended family. Their developmental patterns of writing different genres as well as their control of written language have been examined largely through the analysis of the system of Transitivity, the use of nominal groups, Theme choice and Mood system. The similarity and difference in literacy practices between the two children (the brother and the sister) are also discussed. As the key to the two ESL background children?s successful biliteracy development throughout their primary schooling period, this case study emphasizes the importance of the supportive parents? role through mother tongue maintenance and an effective literacy program, such as Genre-based Approach, which provides practical guidance for developing written language through learning a range of genres with different social functions and purposes. The literacies in English and Korean have been found to be mutually supportive and thus it is argued that the whole biliteracy development in this case study has an enhancing effect on the children?s academic achievement in their Australian schooling. Simultaneously, with their continuous biliteracy development, the children were able to enjoy being part of a caring Korean-speaking family and community. Moreover, this whole process of biliteracy development certainly provided the two ESL children with a positive self-concept and socio-cultural identity as a balanced proud bilingual. In this regard, it is argued that the successful outcome of this case study of the ESL children?s bilieracy development can be identified as a case of an ?empowering? additive bilingualism.

This research traces the trajectory of those methods of teaching grammar that five different teachers in Swedish from Stockholm municipality use in their practice. Their both constructive and negative attitudes towards grammar were in fokus when looking after the connection between their own experience of learning/teaching native language grammar and the methods that they are actually using in their own classes. I was trying to gain knowledge and achieve the purpose of this research by means of a qualitativ method. My empirical data consists of five interviews with the pedagogues who are teaching Swedish. I was also reviewing the scientific research related to the topic. This study has scratched the surface of the systemic funktional grammar (SFG) pedagogy. SFG is a model of grammar developed by the British linguist Michael Halliday. The meta-language informed by SFG seems to be the keyword of the model because of its implicit meaning. Only one of five teachers has been incorporating SFG into the teaching of history. When working with the third grade pupils the teacher has been using the modeling and deconstruktion of the kids own texts. the other four teachers have never heard about SFG before. The methods they are using are not updated that much, it is also easy to notice that they stich to the teaching of grammar as a separate part of language.

This study assesses the usefulness of Marsien-Wilson’s (1989, 1987; Marsien Wilson & Welsh, 1978) cohort model of spoken (first language) word recognition as a method of explaining the high-speed, on-line processes involved in recognizing spoken words while listening to a second language. Two important assumptions of the model are: 1) syntactic and semantic properties of mental lexical entries can function to-facilitate spoken word recognition and 2) spoken word recognition is a function of the frequency of exposure to words in the general language environment. These assumptions were tested in three functionally defined levels of language proficiency: Native Speakers of English, Fluent Users of ESL, and Advanced learners of ESL. Their performance was compared on a reading cloze test and a spoken-word recognition task in which there were five different levels of contextual richness prior to a target word, and two levels of word frequency. The cloze results indicated that the three groups differed in their general English proficiency. Congruent with the cohort model, there was a significant overall effect of sentence context and word frequency on recognition latency. Despite the difference in cloze scores and immersion experience between the two ESL groups, there were no reliable differences in their recognition latencies or latency profiles across sentence contexts or across word frequency. There was an interaction of ESL group, word frequency, and sentence context. This may be due to a reorganization of rules used during processing or a restructuring of lexical knowledge. There was also an interesting non-linear relationship between recognition latency and language immersion time. Spoken word recognition speed decreased in the early immersion experience, and then increased with further exposure. There was a significant difference in overall mean recognition latency between the Native and the ESL speakers, with the ESL subjects responding on average 98 msec slower than the Native Speakers. However, there were no significant differences in the way Native Speakers and the ESL subjects used sentence context. In contrast with the comparison across the sentential contexts, there was a significant difference in the recognition profiles of the Native English speakers and the ESL subjects across word frequency.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att ta reda på hur gymnasieskolors webbtexter kan förstås i förhållande till diskurs. För att undersöka detta utgår jag från Norman Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys och den systemisk-funktionella grammatiken (SFG). Jag undersöker fyra webbtexter som beskriver fyra olika gymnasieskolor – två privata och två kommunala skolor. Uppsatsens ansats är språkvetenskaplig. Stor vikt läggs därför vid den systemisk-funktionella grammatiken. Jag utgår från den interpersonella analysens språkhandlingar, modusmetaforer och modalitet. Texternas första- och andradeltagare analyseras även separat liksom texternas tilltal. Analysresultaten visar att alla fyra texter bär drag av marknadsföringsdiskurs. Detta realiseras bland annat av direkt du-tilltal och en rad erbjudanden till läsaren. Vissa erbjudanden uttrycks explicit i form av varor. Andra erbjudanden, som kunskap och utveckling, är mer abstrakta. Analysen visar också att texterna bär spår av bland annat elitistisk diskurs. Detta realiseras bland annat genom modalitetsmarkörer, modusmetaforer och placeringen av förstadeltagaren i olika satskomplex. Genom att använda diskurser utanför den traditionella utbildningsdiskursen visar skolornas webbtexter en förändring i samhället. Marknaden har flyttat in verksamheter som tidigare tillhört den offentliga sektorn. Detta skapar en ny relation mellan skolan och eleverna. Genom att element från marknadsföringsdiskursen har lånats in i skolans värld konstrueras eleven till en konsument av utbildning.

This research is a practical attempt to develop academic writing pedagogy at secondary level in New Zealand because from interviews with teachers, personal experience and literature in the professional journal for teachers of English in New Zealand, English in Aotearoa, it appears that this would be a useful enterprise. Literature relating to this, and extending to the related contexts of the UK and Australia has been reviewed. The approach taken is an investigation of top-rated senior secondary writing in subject English, using elements of Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). The concepts of SFG chiefly drawn upon, namely, Theme and linguistic metafunctions, and their application to the data are presented and explained. This grammatical model was chosen because it allows the interface of grammatical structure and linguistic function to be explored, which in turn permits insight into how the qualities of top-rated writing may be formulated grammatically. This insight may then become part of teaching resources in academic writing by way of both pre- and in-service training material for teachers. Over 100 top-rated English literature essays (graded by teachers) were collected from students, via their schools, so that the data obtained were authentic. Two samples were collected: timed and untimed writing. Each sentence of each essay was typed into one of nine Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, representing locations within the essay. The nine locations were: three introduction locations: initial sentence, medial sentences, terminal sentence; three paragraph locations (all paragraphs in the body of the essays, not introductions or conclusions): initial sentence, medial sentences, terminal sentence; and, three conclusion locations: initial sentence, medial sentences and terminal sentence. The initial grammatical elements and their metafunction(s) for each sentence were categorised. Percentages in each category for each location were calculated so that individual locations could be compared for grammatical and metafunctional characteristics. Grouped locations were also considered where this seemed felicitous; for instance, introductions were compared to conclusions or medial sentences compared to boundary sentences (initial and terminal). Comparisons were also made between the timed and untimed samples. The results showed that some grammatical structures could be associated with particular grouped locations and metafunctional characteristics were not independent of location. The research was also able to suggest grammatical means to achieve metafunctional effects that align with descriptors for writing given by examination boards. For example, clear, logical organisation of writing is highly valued by examination boards. This is achieved by means of elements that perform the textual linguistic metafunction. A variety of grammatical elements to perform this function and their most prominent locations were identified. It is intended that the findings may be a highly directed way to help teachers address some of the writing challenges faced by their students at secondary level.