No description available.

This dissertation is a cross-sectional study of the acquisition of tense and aspect by 45 Persian speakers as the experimental group and 15 native English speaking children as the control group. This study specifically investigates the hypothesis of Primacy of Aspect (POA) that claims there is; (1) a strong association of past/perfective morpheme with achievement and accomplishment verbs, (2) a strong association of progressive morpheme with activity verbs, (3) no overextension of progressive inflection to stative verbs, and (4) strong association of the present morpheme '-s' with stative verbs. The study also argues for the semantic implications of the present data for the Distributional Bias Hypothesis (Andersen 1990), that the distinction of verb type in the input is skewed so as to create the acquisitional pattern found in studies of the POA in language acquisition, and for the Language Bioprogram (Bickerton 1981), that aspectual values are the knowledge a child is born with as the sources of the POA in SLA. The study also examines the syntactic implications of the data for the 'initial state' hypotheses in SLA: The Minimal Trees Hypothesis (Vainikka & Young-Scholten 1994, 1996a, 1996b), The Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse 1996) and The Weak Parametric Transfer (Valueless Features) Hypothesis (Eubank 1993/94, 1996). The results supported the findings of the POA and the Minimal Trees Hypothesis.

No description available.

In this thesis, the author considers the nature of the relativity thesis of language and some of the philosophical problems that arise from it. The thesis has probably become best known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of the relativity of language, after two scholars of American Indian languages who supported various forms of the hypothesis. Views similar to theirs have been expressed by a number of different authors both before and after the writings of Sapir and Whorf. The introduction is devoted to a discussion of some of the variety of the formulations of the thesis. There is mention of a few of the many authors who have been thought to be "relativists". Some attempt has been made by others to systematise the various possible theses, and a couple of these attempts are also discussed. It is suggested that the thesis can be best discussed in terms of the very general statement of it as a thesis about a relation between linguistic and non-linguistic factors. The views of particular authors can then be discussed in respect to (1) the linguistic factors, (2) the non-linguistic factors, and (3) the nature of the relation between the factors. The rest of the first part is then devoted to an interpretive and philosophical study of four authors who have supported a relativity thesis in some form or another. It begins with a discussion of the philosophy of language of Giambattista Vico, and Italian philosopher, who was one of the first to suggest a relativity thesis of language. His main interest was in the origin and development of speech and language. He postulated three eras, those of the gods, of the heroes, and of men, to which correspond three different languages. The languages are said to develop parallel to the institutions of the eras. The nature of the language is discussed. The chapter ends with a discussion of Vico's notion of an incomplete language and the need for words. The third chapter is a detailed study of the views of Benjamin Lee Whorf, who has probably been the most prominent in the promotion of the relativity thesis. It is pointed out that there is a great variation of the theses he presents and some of them are quire wild. Linguistic factors, non-linguistic factors, and relations are discussed in turn, giving those aspects of the thesis considered most important by Whorf. It is pointed out that Whorf thought there could be no simple correlations, but there is also discussion of his view about a language embodying and foreing on its speakers a science and metaphysics. In the fourth chapter an investigation of the views of Edward Sapir is taken up. Sapir, who was an influential American linguist, formulated his views before Whorf, but without the vigour and interest that Whorf had had in the thesis. It is pointed out that there was a radical change in Sapir's views that has gone unexplained. In this chapter, an attempt is made to give at least a partial explanation for this change. Sapir distinguished between the form and the content of the language, and in his earlier writings he maintained that all languages were equal in content (what could be said in them) but different in form. At that time Sapir considered the difference of form irrelevant, and he rejected the relativity thesis without qualification. It is then pointed out that he later accepted a relativity thesis because of a change in his distinction between form and content. The distinction is questioned and is discussed later in chapter 11. The fifth chapter is a discussion of some of the views and experiments of a contemporary psychologist, Erie Lenneberg. Lenneberg argues that previous formulations of the thesis have been useless because of a lack of precision and the impossibility of experimental confirmation. The various causes of failure and its remedies, according to Lenneberg, are discussed. Lenneberg's criteria for the formulation of a relativity thesis and some possible theses are considered. Finally, there is a discussion of some of the experiments to test a relativity thesis. The experiments have been mainly considered with the relation between colour terminology and the memory of colour samples. The chapter ends with an indication of how little has actually been shown about relativity between linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Part II is concerned with some of the philosophical problems that arise from the thesis and are connected with it. The distinction between language and speech is considered both historically and linguistically in chapter six. It is argued that sentences are not parts of a language and that consequently beliefs and confusions cannot be contained in a language. The identity of a language is then discussed partly in connection with the number of words that can be added to a language without changing its identity. The relation between language and speech is shown to be close, but confusions about the nature of speech are revealed. A resulting indeterminacy of the word 'speech' is discussed, and a distinction between utterances and sentences is shown. Chapter seven is devoted to some problems connected with non-linguistic factors and thoughts in particular. It is pointed out that there is a sense of the word 'thought' according to which there are "propositional" thoughts, which appear to be independent from language in a way specified. It is then considered whether one might have a thought which one discovered to be inexpressable in one's language. There are various attempts to make sense of this question, discussing how the having of a thought is related to the specification of the thought. It is then argued that any thought must have a complete specification and that if everything else fails this can always be achieved by using a predicate language. [Continued in text]

A major question in ecology is 'why are tropical forests so species diverse?' One hypothesis to explain tropical species diversity is the Janzen-Connell hypothesis. This model assumes high levels of host-specific seed and seedling predation and / or pathogen attack when seedlings occur at high density near to the parent tree; seedlings are more likey to survive and reach maturity the further they are away from parents / conspecific adults. Theoretically this should lead to a random distribution of each species in the forest, which in turn will lead to high species diversity. Here I test the Janzen-Connell hypothesis for the first time in a submontane dry forest in Nigeria, West Africa. Specifically I tested whether or not a) leaf herbivory decreases and b) seedling survival increases with distance from parent / conspecific adult trees. These two components were tested separately on naturally occurring seedlings and on experimentally planted seedlings. I also tested whether or not conspecific adult trees showed clumped distributions by testing if conspecific nearest neighbours were observed more often than would be expected by chance alone. Naturally occurring seedlings of three species, Pouteria altissima, Newtonia buchananii and Isolona pleurocarpa showed significantly greater survival at distances away from parent / conspecific adult trees. Two out of a total of three species (Entandrophragma angolense, Deinbollia pinnata and Sterculia pinnata) of experimentally planted seedlings showed increased survival at distances away from conspecific adult trees, but this trend was non-significant. Leaf herbivory decreased with distance from parent / conspecific adult trees for four out of a total of six study species, but all relationships of leaf herbivory with distance for these six species were non-significant. Of two individual species, Anthonotha noldeae and Carapa procera, and two species groups tested for clumping, all had a greater number of conspecific nearest neighbours than would be expected to occur by chance alone, and this was significant for the two species groups. The decreased survival of seedlings under parent / conspecific adult trees is likely to maintain tree species diversity in West African submontane forests as predicted by the Janzen-Connell model. The role of host specific seedling herbivores in reducing recruitment under parent / conspecific adult trees requires further investigation. Although conspecific adults showed some degree of clumping no conclusion was reached as to whether this was evidence for or against the Janzen-Connell model.

Inaug.-Diss.--Berlin. / Vita.

Thesis--Freiburg, 1918. / Lebenslauf. Includes bibliographical reference.

Inaug.-Diss.--Berlin. / Vita.

Thesis (M.Sc.). / Written for the Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2009/06/25). Includes bibliographical references.

D.Phil. (Statistics) / We often wish to determine whether observations occurring in a natural time sequence are from the same distribution or whether changes in distribution have taken place at certain points in time. These time points are called change points. We study tests of the null hypothesis of no change versus the alternative hypothesis of changes in parameter at unknown change points, as well as point- and interval estimation of the change points. For univariate observations we distinguish between two cases. In the one case we consider observations having known, but unequal, variances. In the second case each observation has a variance which is a function of the unknown mean. In the first case we develop graphical procedures which can be used for the detection, as well as for point- and interval estimation, of the change points. The method which we develop in the second case can be used for observations from any distribution, provided a suitable variance stabilizing transformation exists. Binomially distributed observations can be accommodated in both of these settings...