University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

The first part of this thesis addresses the following questions: where in the syntactic tree, and at what representational level is an NP Case-checked. To this end, it presents converging data from French, Welsh and Irish, which suggest (i) that Case-checking may be accomplished under a variety of functional projections (subject to parametric variation); and (ii) that Case positions are--at least partially--independent of the A/A$ sp prime$-distinction. It furthermore presents evidence from Irish and Welsh--VSO languages in which NPs typically raise to their Case position only at LF--that NPs are, under certain conditions, Case-checked at S-structure. / Chapter 2 investigates word order and cliticisation in Standard French and Quebec French interrogatives and proposes a typology of interrogatives. Chapter 3 and 4 account for complementizer variation, pre-verbal particles and agreement patterns in Welsh and Irish under a Case-theoretic approach. / The second part of this thesis concerns the conditions on the availability of structural accusative Case. A theory of structural Case is proposed according to which accusativity is a configurational rather than a lexical property--i.e., resulting from syntactic geometry and not from lexical feature specifications on verbs. To this end, a comparison between the syntactic mapping of stative and perfective predicates in Irish and English is undertaken.

This thesis provides and discusses a comprehensive collection of empirical data that show that many languages of the world manifest long A-movement of the subjects of embedded finite clauses to the subject position (Hyperraising) or object position (Hyper-ECM) of the main clause. The main theoretical claim of the thesis is that all these instances of long A-movement leave behind resumptive pronouns and should therefore be analysed on a par with related Copy Raising and Copy ECM constructions. My thesis therefore demonstrates that resumption is not restricted to Abar movement contexts, but is also attested in A-movement constructions. Instead of the various language-particular analyses previously proposed in the literature, the thesis focuses on those aspects of long A-movement that all respective constructions in the different languages have in common and therefore provides a unified crosslinguisic analysis of long A-movement constructions. An important empirical generalisation, first noted by Ura (1994), which is empirically supported by the data discussed in this thesis, is that if a language has Hyperraising or Hyper-ECM, it is also a pro-drop language. On the basis of this generalisation, it is argued that Hyperraising and Hyper-ECM constructions involve the use of resumptive pro in the embedded subject position, while languages with Copy Raising and Copy ECM use overt pronouns. Apart from this difference, it is argued that these Amovement constructions are identical in all crucial respects. Furthermore, it is claimed that agreement inside the embedded finite clauses from which long A-movement takes place is indicative of the ability of embedded T to license nominative case on the embedded subject. Hence, no deviation from standard Minimalist assumptions is required. It is suggested that the role of the resumptive subject pronoun is to receive the case assigned by the probing T-head inside the embedded clause. It is also argued that it is the existence of a resumptive pronoun which causes the coreferential subject DP to be without case, which in turn creates a context in which long A-movement of this DP becomes both necessary and possible. This analysis is based on the idea that at first merge, the raised subject is merged with the null/overt resumptive pronoun in the embedded subject position to form one vii complex constituent (which is known in the literature as a „big? DP). While the pronoun remains in the embedded subject position to absorb the case in the embedded finite clause, the raised subject is attracted into the matrix subject position to absorb the case in the matrix clause. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011

This thesis presents an analysis of the structure and function of cleft constructions in discourse. Drawing on a corpus of naturally-occurring spoken and written data, we present a multi-layered explanation of how it-clefts, wh-clefts, and reverse wh-clefts are different from non-clefts, and from one another. After a review of previous research on clefts in discourse, we explore the aspects of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics relevant to the structure and function of all three types of cleft. The discussion falls into three main parts: An analysis of the three cleft types, within the framework of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (cf. Gazdar et al. [1985]), in which particular attention is paid to the variety of constituents that can appear in particular positions in each type. The output of the grammar rules is compared to the examples that occur in the corpus of data. A treatment of cleft presupposition in terms of an analogy (suggested by van der Sandt [1988]) between presupposition and the treatment of pronominal anaphora in Kamp's [1981] Discourse Representation Theory An examination of the range of accentual patterns, presuppositional relations, and information structures typically appearing in clefts of all three kinds. We show that marked distinctions exist between the three cleft types in terms of all these factors, and suggest ways in which this helps to differentiate the range of discourse contexts in which clefts in general, and each cleft type in particular, are appropriate. At the end of the thesis we point to an analogy between the formal model for clefts presented and a psychological model of sentence processing We also suggest how the conclusions regarding both the structure and function of clefts as a class of construction and the distinction between the three types of cleft could be synthesised in a decision procedure for syntactic choice. Finally, we suggest some related areas for further research.

This thesis contains a critical review of the most important approaches to reported speech or those pertinent to it in the linguistic literature. Several problems concerning quotation parentheticals and presuppositions have been discussed and some solutions are proposed. The main issue, referred to as "the point of view", is worked out as an extension of the classical notion of transparency and opacity applied to NP, to several other elements of sentence structures. As a result, a set of interpretive rules are formulated which specify whether certain linguistic configurations promote a transparent or opaque interpretation of the sentence or part of it. Also, rules of correspondence are given which stipulate the conditions for semantic well formedness, in the case of omission of information.

The central issue in this thesis is configurationality, which has broadly been defined in terms of a division of the world's languages based on their core syntactic structure. Specifically, languages are traditionally divided into so-called configurational and non-configurational languages. Configurational languages are assumed to be languages with many restrictions on word order, and non-configurational languages are assumed to be languages with very few or no word order restrictions. Many linguists posit a strict division between the two different types of languages. In this thesis I propose a non-derivational approach to configurationality, and I discuss in detail three posited characteristics of non-configurational languages (in comparison to configurational languages): free word order, discontinuous expressions and subject-object asymmetries in binding. I propose a four-way classification of languages instead of a two-way one, based on constraints on annotations on phrase structure nodes, both for argument functions and for information structural roles (such as topic and focus). I propose that this four-way distinction is what underlies configurationality. I show that discontinuous expressions and potentially subject-object symmetries follow from the nature of languages that have traditionally been classified as non-configurational. For my analysis I employ Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), a non-derivational framework which is particularly well-suited to account for languages in which grammatical functions are not tied to specific phrase structural positions, due to its parallel architecture. This characteristic of LFG enables me to provide a straightforward classification of languages, by the ability to separate the influence of grammatical functions and information structural roles on word order and phrase structural configuration.

To define a language completely, it is necessary to define both its syntax and semantics. If these definitions are in a suitable form, the parser and code-generator of a compiler, respectively, can be generated from them. This thesis addresses the problem of syntax definition and automatic parser generation.

Thesis. 1976. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Humanities. / Bibliography: leaves 213-217. / by Tanya Reinhart. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND HUMANITIES. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 195-202. / by Yukio Otsu. / Ph.D.

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