An intriguing aspect of the French language is its complex system of interrogative structures; there exist many question variants to express the same content. For example, Où est-ce que tu vas? Où tu vas? C'est où que tu vas? Où c'est que tu vas? and Tu vas où? are potentially all ways of expressing "Where are you going?" In this dissertation, I examine the use of WH-questions from the Barnes-Blyth Corpus (1984) of Spoken French. Coveney (2002) contributed one of the first truly comprehensive studies on variation of interrogatives in Spoken French. This dissertation builds upon his work by contributing more in depth pragmatic analyses plus a more complete investigation of the system at play. My study begins with a WH-question inventory, categorization and description of structures found in the corpus and elsewhere when appropriate. In contrast to studies attributing variation to socio-stylistic choices, according to the data in this study, there is structural diversity of French interrogative structures within a single socio-stylistic context explainable by pragmatic differences. Therefore, Lambrecht's (1994) information structure framework is applied to the interrogatives in the corpus. Interrogatives prove to be a complicated case for information structure analysis; only the activation of the open proposition serves as a useful indicator of question structure choice. Highly active open propositions are often realized with in situ structures whereas inactive open propositions are often realized with fronted structures. These findings are consistent with initial observations by Coveney. Further, I examine the system involved in interrogative choice, which incorporates many areas of grammar including pragmatics, socio-stylistics, syntax and semantics. I propose the concept of answerability as an umbrella term to explain several seemingly diverse factors affecting WH-questions use. I explore the application of Optimality Theory to contextualized interrogative choices since it permits a complete analysis by allowing a combination of constraints from the various pertinent components of grammar. In conclusion, by implementing this combination of analyses, I not only contribute to the long-standing discussion regarding interrogative structure usage in French, but I also clarify the explanatory power of pragmatics and Optimality Theory for this particularly complex system. / text

This dissertation investigates three interrogative sentence types that are each associated with a particular speaker bias. In asking one of these questions, the speaker invariably conveys a prior expectation, or belief, that a specific answer to the question is the true one. These sentence types include reversed-polarity tag questions, negative polar questions, and questions containing a strong negative polarity item or a constituent that is emphatically focused. For each of these three question types, I address the two questions: (1) What kind of meaning is bias; and (2) what grammatical feature, if any, is the bias linked to? In answer to the first question, I argue that bias is an assertion (rather than, for example, a conversational implicature). As a result, biased questions can be thought of as a type of indirect speech act (Searle 1975). Following Asher and Lascarides (2001), I model biased questions as instances of a complex speech act type Assertion · Question. On this analysis, biased questions are simultaneously assertions and questions. I provide evidence, for this claim, showing these question types share distributional properties of both assertions and questions. With regard to the second question, I argue that intonation, in addition to syntax and compositional and lexical semantics, plays a key role in linking the use of the kind of interrogative sentence described above to an assertion. Indeed, one of the benefits to studying biased questions is that they provide a case study of the interaction of intonation and discourse function. I begin to develop an analysis of intonation within the theory of discourse provided by Asher and Lascarides (2003) which builds on the work of Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990) and Steedman (2000, 2003), amongst others. Specifically, I argue that intonation provides information about the speakers cognitive state, i.e. about his or her beliefs and intentions. Thus intonation contributes information that can be used to compute the rhetorical contribution of an utterance to a discourse or dialogue. On this model, intonation indirectly contributes to the determination of the discourse function of an utterance. / text

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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by Ling Ling Peng. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-112). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / Acknowledgement --- p.iv / Contents --- p.v / Tables and charts --- p.vii / Abbreviation --- p.viii / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction and theoretical considerations --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- One unitary language system、or two separate language systems? --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- The autonomous development hypothesis vs. the interdependent development hypothesis --- p.6 / Chapter 1.3 --- Language dominance --- p.12 / Chapter 1.4 --- The research goal and outline of the thesis --- p.15 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- The development of wh-questions in monolingual English and Cantonese Children --- p.19 / Chapter 2.1 --- The syntax of English wh-questions --- p.19 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- The landing site of wh-expressions --- p.19 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Types of wh-questions --- p.22 / Chapter 2.2 --- The acquisition of wh-questions by monolingual English-speaking children --- p.23 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- The acquisition order of wh-questions --- p.24 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Development of wh-questions in monolingual English-speaking children --- p.26 / Chapter 2.2.2.1 --- Developmental stages --- p.26 / Chapter 2.2.2.2 --- Overall course of development --- p.27 / Chapter 2.2.2.2.1 --- UG and language acquisition --- p.27 / Chapter 2.2.2.2.2 --- General patterns of development of wh-questionsin monolingual English-speaking children --- p.32 / Chapter 2.3 --- The syntax of interrogative wh-questions in Cantonese --- p.39 / Chapter 2.4 --- The acquisition of wh-questions by monolingual Cantonese children --- p.43 / Chapter 2.5 --- Summary --- p.45 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Methodology / Chapter 3.1 --- Subject --- p.47 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Family background --- p.47 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Input for both languages --- p.47 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- Bilingual development in the bilingual child --- p.49 / Chapter 3.2 --- Taping --- p.55 / Chapter 3.3 --- Transcription --- p.56 / Chapter 3.4 --- Sampling and data analysis --- p.56 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- The acquisition of wh-questions by one Cantonese-English bilingual child --- p.58 / Chapter 4.1 --- UG and bilingual acquisition --- p.58 / Chapter 4.2 --- The acquisition of wh-questions in Cantonese by the bilingual child --- p.59 / Chapter 4.3 --- The acquisition of wh-questions in English by the bilingual child --- p.66 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- The acquisition order --- p.66 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Position of wh-expressions --- p.68 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Subject-auxiliary inversion in wh-questions --- p.77 / Chapter 4.4 --- Summary --- p.81 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Discussion and conclusion --- p.82 / Chapter 5.1 --- The acquisition order of wh-questions in the bilingual child's English --- p.82 / Chapter 5.2 --- Placement of wh-expressions in the bilingual child's English --- p.86 / Chapter 5.3 --- Subject 一 auxiliary inversion in wh-questions in the bilingual child's English --- p.93 / Chapter 5.4 --- Overall course of development of what-questions in the bilingual child --- p.94 / Chapter 5.5 --- Conclusion --- p.100 / Chapter 5.5.1 --- Summary of findings --- p.100 / Chapter 5.5.2 --- Suggestions for further studies --- p.102 / References --- p.107 / Appendix --- p.113

The purpose of this study is to present a contrastive analysis of the different types of interrogative sentences in English and Vietnamese including their structures and meanings. It is also hoped that the result of this study will be of some use to English teachers in Vietnam in their classroom teaching and in their preparation of teaching materials. It may also be useful to Vietnamese students who are learning English, especially when learning the English interrogative mood. Hitherto, there have been different models of description of language, but the systemic model is considered to be one of the most comprehensive, since it is able to bring out the functional uses of language and can be used to describe any language. For this reason, the systemic model is adopted in this paper to describe the two systems of the English and Vietnamese interrogative mood. The varieties of the two languages, English and Vietnamese, from which examples are taken for analysis in this paper, are Southern British Standard and Standard Vietnamese ranging from colloquial to literary. Throughout each chapter, the examples are numbered in consecutive order. Examples in Vietnamese are presented with a slash mark ( / ) placed between lexical items to facilitate the matching of Vietnamese with the literal English translation which follows. The literal translation is followed by a freer English translation enclosed in quotation marks. The study consists of five chapters. In the first chapter, the author begins by summarizing different views on the nature of language and their applications in language teaching and learning, and then presents a short introduction to systemic linguistics and a brief sketch of systemic grammar. The second chapter is about the English interrogative mood. This description of the English interrogative mood is largely based on the ideas on Mood presented by D. J. Young, lecturer in English in the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology in Britain. In the third chapter, an attempt is made to provide a detailed description of the different types of interrogative sentences in Vietnamese. Chapter four moves to a contrastive analysis which consists of a textual and then a systemic comparison and contrast of the two interrogative mood systems in English and Vietnamese. A recapitulation of what has been done in the previous chapters and some suggestions for the preparation of teaching material and the teaching of English interrogative sentences to Vietnamese students are presented in chapter five, which is the last chapter of the study.

Note: / This dissertation investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of Japanese wh-constructions by Chinese- and English-speaking learners. The focus of this study is twofold; first, it examines whether parameter resetting is possible in L2 acquisition, as both Chinese and English wh-constructions are parametrically different from Japanese wh-constructions. Second, it examines whether parameter resetting is affected by the learners' first language (Ll). Not only do Chinese and English wh-constructions differ from Japanese wh-constructions, but they also differ from each other. Chinese is, like Japanese, a wh-in-situ language, while English is a wh-movement language. Chinese wh-constructions, therefore, can be said to be more similar to Japanese wh-constructions than English wh-constructions. It is investigated whether the similarity between Chinese and Japanese and dissimilarity between English and Japanese affect the course and/or the ultimate attainment in the acquisition ofwh-constructions in Japanese.[...] / Cette dissertation enquete sur l’acquisition des constructions wh du japonais appris comme langue seconde (L2) par les anglophones et les sinophones. Le point de mire de cette etude est double. Dans un premier temps, elle cherche a savoir si le changement parametrique est possible en acquisition L2, puisque les constructions wh de l’anglais et du chinois sont parametriquement opposees a celles du japonais. Deuxiemement, elle cherche a savoir si le changement parametrique est affecte par 1a langue matemelle de l’apprenant. Non seulement les constructions wh de l’anglais et du chinois sont differentes de celles du japonais, elles different egalement l’une de l’autre. Le chinois, comme le japonais, est une langue wh-in-situ, alors que l’anglais est une langue a movement wh. Les constructions wh du chinois peuvent done etre decrites comme etant plus semblables a celles du japonais qu’a celles de l’anglais. Ce travail cherche a sa voir si la similarite entre le chino is et le japonais et la dissimilarite entre l’anglais et le japonais ont un effet sur le processus et/ou le resultat final de 1’acquisition de ces constructions en japonais.[...]

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-256). / Microfiche. / xvii, 256 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

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