This work presents a preliminary analysis of the phonology of Kakua, an endangered language of the Kakua-Nukak family (formerly classified as Makú). Kakua is spoken by approximately 300 people living in the Vaupés region of the Amazon rain forest, in northwest Amazonia, Eastern Colombia. This analysis is based on data collected with Kakua speakers from the village of Wacará, a settlement of approximately 120 people, living along the basin of Caño Wacará, located between the Querarí and the Vaupés Rivers, to the east of Mitú, close to the Colombia-Brazil borders. The phonological inventory of Kakua includes five vowels and seventeen consonants. Kakua also presents contrastive prosodic features of nasalization and an inventory of three contrastive tones. Kakua phonology presents various interesting typological features from both areal and cross-linguistic perspective. The work presented here is a first attempt to provide a better illustration of a little-known endangered language of Amazonia. / text

The present study aims to address the question of how vowel quality varies between rural and town-dwelling male speakers of Irish-English in South Roscommon, Ireland. Previous studies have identified four distinct varieties of Irish-English in Ireland: the Eastern, South &Western, Midland, and Northern varieties, loosely based on the political provinces of Munster, Connaught, Leinster, and Ulster. County Roscommon straddles the provinces of Connaught and Leinster, complicating the presence of phonological features associated with one of two different ‘accent regions’. The last phonological study carried out in Roscommon was by Patrick Leo Henry in 1957. While this was a promising start in assessing regional distinctions, rural ones in particular, the lack of recent studies leaves a sizeable gap that does not address modern changes in the linguistic landscape of Ireland, nor the availability of modern methods of acoustic analysis. In particular, the present study investigates the pre-nasal merging of front unrounded vowels /ɛ/ and /ɪ/, vowel centralization, and a lower /æ/, associated with the Western variety of Irish English. Factors such as supraregionalization lead to my hypothesis that rural speakers will demonstrate higher frequency of the vowel features associated with the Western variety. To assess the frequency of certain vowel sounds, twenty participants were recorded and formant data was extracted for F1 and F2 values of the tokens. It was found that the rural speakers in Roscommon demonstrated a more prominent merger between /ɛ/ and /ɪ/, a lower [æ], and the rural speakers demonstrated an overall trend toward centralization.

This study investigates sociophonetic stress variation in the Onondaga County area of Upstate New York. I argue that five variations of stress correlate to factors of age, education level, place of residence, frequency, and analogical change. Dinkin and Evanini (2010) have examined and discovered similar outcomes of stress variation in his work with dialectal features across the state of New York. Rather than analyze the state and its borders in their entirety, I focus on morpheme-specific analogical change of stress in specific social categories within the Syracuse, New York region. In terms of lexical items, I analyze stress placement within four-, five-, and six-syllable words containing the -mentary affix and explore how stress shifts in these words depending on those social and linguistic factors. Data were collected through formal and informal sociolinguistic interviews in which each instance of the target words were analyzed as belonging to one of five types of stress. Results indicate that Syracuse is one of the locations in the state that see all five stress patterns. To further investigate, I take the provided evidence of stress variation and filter for sociological relevance for factors of age, gender, and residence.

Esta tese, organizada em três partes, objetiva recuperar o Ensaio de Semântica de Michel Bréal evidenciando a importância de suas idéias para a Lingüística Moderna, para a Semântica e para a Pragmática, e a aplicabilidade da sua teoria na descrição da Língua Portuguesa, em sua modalidade escrita. Na primeira parte deste trabalho, apresenta-se o teor do ensaio, conforme a terceira edição publicada em 1904. Para tanto, parte-se de uma interpretação que relaciona as propostas brealinas àquelas elaboradas pelas disciplinas lingüísticas mais vulgarizadas no Brasil, de modo a comprovar a atualidade e a importância das propostas do ES. Em seguida, a reflexão volta-se para as questões do significado, a fim de demonstrar como semanticistas e pragmatistas têm entendido e interpretado as propostas do fundador da semântica. Esta análise, apresentada na segunda parte da tese, evidencia, de um lado, a importância de suas idéias para os estudos da significação e, de outro, a ausência de trabalhos nos quais haja aplicação prática de seus postulados. Ilustrando como suas propostas podem contribuir para a descrição de determinados fenômenos semânticos da Língua Portuguesa, na terceira parte da tese, sua teoria é empregada na análise de dois textos jornalísticos: um escrito em português brasileiro e outro em português europeu. / This thesis tries to revive Michel Bréal´s Essay of Semantics supporting the importance of it´s ideas for Modern Linguistics in general, and, specially, for Semantics and Pragmatics and the applicability of Bréal\'s postulates to language description. Due to that, contributions for semantics sciences and it´s applicability for written Portuguese language description are shown. The thesis is organized in three parts. In the first, the content of the third edition of the essay (1904) is connected to best known branches of Modern Linguistics in Brazil, connections that serves as evidence for the importance of Bréal`s ideas. In the second part - which deals especifically whit semantic´s issues - there is a critical view of semantician´s and pragmatician´s reviews of the essay. This part reveals the relevance of Breal´s postulates for Semantics (Pragmatics included), but, on the other hand, points out that his ideias have hardly been applied. In the last part, as evidence that to apply his theories is not only possible but desirable, they are used in the analysis of two journalistic papers: one in Brazilian Portuguese and other in European Portuguese.

Esta tese, organizada em três partes, objetiva recuperar o Ensaio de Semântica de Michel Bréal evidenciando a importância de suas idéias para a Lingüística Moderna, para a Semântica e para a Pragmática, e a aplicabilidade da sua teoria na descrição da Língua Portuguesa, em sua modalidade escrita. Na primeira parte deste trabalho, apresenta-se o teor do ensaio, conforme a terceira edição publicada em 1904. Para tanto, parte-se de uma interpretação que relaciona as propostas brealinas àquelas elaboradas pelas disciplinas lingüísticas mais vulgarizadas no Brasil, de modo a comprovar a atualidade e a importância das propostas do ES. Em seguida, a reflexão volta-se para as questões do significado, a fim de demonstrar como semanticistas e pragmatistas têm entendido e interpretado as propostas do fundador da semântica. Esta análise, apresentada na segunda parte da tese, evidencia, de um lado, a importância de suas idéias para os estudos da significação e, de outro, a ausência de trabalhos nos quais haja aplicação prática de seus postulados. Ilustrando como suas propostas podem contribuir para a descrição de determinados fenômenos semânticos da Língua Portuguesa, na terceira parte da tese, sua teoria é empregada na análise de dois textos jornalísticos: um escrito em português brasileiro e outro em português europeu. / This thesis tries to revive Michel Bréal´s Essay of Semantics supporting the importance of it´s ideas for Modern Linguistics in general, and, specially, for Semantics and Pragmatics and the applicability of Bréal\'s postulates to language description. Due to that, contributions for semantics sciences and it´s applicability for written Portuguese language description are shown. The thesis is organized in three parts. In the first, the content of the third edition of the essay (1904) is connected to best known branches of Modern Linguistics in Brazil, connections that serves as evidence for the importance of Bréal`s ideas. In the second part - which deals especifically whit semantic´s issues - there is a critical view of semantician´s and pragmatician´s reviews of the essay. This part reveals the relevance of Breal´s postulates for Semantics (Pragmatics included), but, on the other hand, points out that his ideias have hardly been applied. In the last part, as evidence that to apply his theories is not only possible but desirable, they are used in the analysis of two journalistic papers: one in Brazilian Portuguese and other in European Portuguese.

This thesis examines the variety of English spoken in East Dorm at Harvey Mudd College. It describes aspects of the syntax and phonology of Eastspeak, focusing in particular on how Eastspeak has been influenced by the language of the internet. This includes tendencies toward brevity and language play, as well as the use of specific constructions used on the internet, and playful pronunciations that are influenced by creative misspellings used online. Specific Eastspeak phenomena discussed include conversion, deletion, and unusual determiner and quantifier use.

Hakhun Tangsa is one of around eighty ethnic and linguistic communities called Tangsa or Tangshang. Hakhuns live mostly in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and in Sagaing Division, Myanmar. The number of speakers is estimated at around ten thousand. Hakhun is a Tibeto-Burman language, and it forms a subgroup with Nocte, Wancho, Phom, Konyak, Chang, and Khiamngan called Konyak or Northern Naga. Hakhun is a tonal language with twenty-two consonants, six vowels, and a simple syllable structure. Open word classes include Nouns and Verbs; property concept terms form a subclass of verbs. Noun roots are mostly monosyllabic, and most multisyllabic nouns are compounds. Nominal morphology includes prossessive prefixes and a set of semantically specific suffixes. Case is coded by postpositions. Verb roots are also mostly monosyllabic. A few verbs have suppletive stems. Verb serialization is common, and expresses complex events like resultative and sequential. A few grammaticalized verbs/elements contribute abstract meanings like phase, associated motion, causative, benefactive, etc. Typical verbal categories are expressed by independent particles. The most extensive and grammatically obligatory set consists of single syllable particles called operators, which express verbal categories like tense, mood, deixis, negation, inverse, and argument indexation. The typical argument indexation pattern is hierarchical. Deviations from this pattern is used to express certain pragmatic effects like affectedness and politeness. Non-verbal clauses may take overt copulas depending on tense and polarity. Most semantic distinctions, such as equation, property-concepts, quantification, simulation, and location are expressed by the nominal strategy. Existential and possession are expressed by a distinct strategy. Typical verbal clauses include intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive; less typical ones include weather condition, sensation-emotion, reflexive, reciprocal, and ‘need’ constructions. Person-based split-ergativity is seen in case marking, where first and second person singular arguments follow accusative, and the rest ergative alignment. Accusative alignment is also found in argument indexation in non-final clauses. The object alignment is indirective in case marking. Complement clauses include sentence-like, non-finite, and infinitive complement clauses. Adverbial clauses include various kinds of temporal clauses, temporal/conditional clauses, counterfactual, concessive, purpose, and substitutive clauses. Clause chaining (medial-final) is prevalent. Independent sentences are linked through tail-head linking and through connectives.

Cette étude est la toute première tentative de description complète de la grammaire du hamar, une langue parlée par environ 46.500 personnes dans le sud-ouest de l'Ethiopie (Lewis 2009). L'étude est basée sur des données collectées pendant 9 mois de travail sur le terrain entre 2013 et 2014 dans les territoires des Hamar. Les données sur la langue ont été recueillies auprès de 14 locuteurs natifs dans les villages hamar, et sont composées de 50 textes de longueurs et de genres différents. Cette grammaire décrit la phonologie, la morphologie, la syntaxe et certains aspects de la pragmatique et du discours du hamar et est organisée en 13 chapitres suivis par trois annexes : l'annexe A et B se composent d'un lexique sélectionné d’environ 1 400 entrées, l’annexe C contient trois textes hamar annotés. L'analyse qui sous-tend cette monographie grammaticale suit le cadre théorique Basic Linguistic Theory (la théorie linguistique de base - Dixon 1997, 2010, 2012). / This study is the first-ever attempt at a comprehensive grammatical description of Hamar, a language spoken in South West Ethiopia by approximately 46.500 people (Lewis 2009). The study is based on 9 months of fieldwork carried out between 2013and 2014 in Hamar territories. Language data was gathered from 14 native speakers in Hamar villages, and it amounts to 50 texts of varying lengths and genres. The grammar investigates the phonology, the morphology, the syntax and somepragmatic and discourse-related features of Hamar and it is organized in 13 chapters followed by three appendices: appendix A and B consist of a selected lexicon of circa 1400 entries, appendix C includes three annotated Hamar texts.The analysis underlying this monograph grammar follows the theoretical framework of Basic Linguistic Theory (Dixon 1997, 2010, 2012).

With the growing popularity of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) as a logic-based ontology language, as well as advancements in the language itself, the need for more sophisticated and up-to-date ontology engineering services increases as well. While, for instance, there is active focus on new reasoners and optimisations, other services fall short of advancing at the same rate (it suffices to compare the number of freely-available reasoners with ontology editors). In particular, very little is understood about how ontologies evolve over time, and how reasoners’ performance varies as the input changes. Given the evolving nature of ontologies, detecting and presenting changes (via a so-called diff) between them is an essential engineering service, especially for version control systems or to support change analysis. In this thesis we address the diff problem for description logic (DL) based ontologies, specifically OWL 2 DL ontologies based on the SROIQ DL. The outcomes are novel algorithms employing both syntactic and semantic techniques to, firstly, detect axiom changes, and what terms had their meaning affected between ontologies, secondly, categorise their impact (for example, determining that an axiom is a stronger version of another), and finally, align changes appropriately, i.e., align source and target of axiom changes (so the stronger axiom with the weaker one, from our example), and axioms with the terms they affect. Subsequently, we present a theory of reasoner performance heterogeneity, based on field observations related to reasoner performance variability phenomena. Our hypothesis is that there exist two kinds of performance behaviour: an ontology/reasoner combination can be performance-homogeneous or performance-heterogeneous. Finally, we verify that performance-heterogeneous reasoner/ontology combinations contain small, performance-degrading sets of axioms, which we call hot spots. We devise a performance hot spot finding technique, and show that hot spots provide a promising basis for engineering efficient reasoners.

Golog is a powerful programming language for logic-based agents. The primitives of the language are actions whose preconditions and effects are defined in a Situation Calculus action theory using first-order logic. To describe possible courses of actions the programmer can freely combine imperative control structures with constructs for non-deterministic choice, leaving it to the system to resolve the non-determinism in a suitable manner. Golog has been successfully used for high-level decision making in the area of cognitive robotics. Obviously, it is important to verify certain properties of a Golog program before executing it on a physical robot. However, due to the high expressiveness of the language the verification problem is in general undecidable. In this thesis, we study the verification problem for Golog programs over actions defined in action languages based on Description Logics and explore the boundary between decidable and undecidable fragments.