<p> The goal of this dissertation is to address the question of the Verb Second status of Old French as well as its decline by examining the interaction of syntax and Information Structure (IS) in the Left Periphery from the 13th century through the 16th century. Old French (OFr) has long been considered to be a Verb Second (V2) language, due to the overwhelming tendency for the finite verb to occur as the second constituent in matrix clauses, the hallmark of V2. Recently, the V2 analysis OFr has been called into question, due to the relatively high rate of clauses with more than one preverbal constituent (V>2). During this same period, our understanding of what V2 is has evolved in such a way as to place less emphasis on the number of preverbal constituents, and more on the theoretical underpinnings of the clause structure. </p><p> The results, obtained using a methodology for the annotation of IS in a corpus created for this project, support the V2 analysis of 13th century French, both in terms of its syntax and its IS. From a descriptively syntactic stance much of decline of V2 occurs between the 13th and 14th centuries (e.g. the rise in V>2 clauses, the decline in postverbal subjects). However, in examining the IS changes, we find that key aspects of the V2 grammar (e.g. V to C movement, EPP) are robust into the 15th century. </p><p> Ultimately, we find that examining Old French syntax through the lens of IS provides new insight into the interaction between IS and syntax in language change, especially with respect to both the manner and the timeline of the decline of V2 in the history of French.</p>

<p> This thesis focuses on the infinitive among Puerto Rican, Dominican and Cuban speakers, in contrast with Mexicans. Most grammars describe as ungrammatical some types of optative clauses in Caribbean Spanish (Bosque &amp; Guti&eacute;rrez-Rexach, 2009): (4) a. *Nosotros estamos buscando otras alternativas, pero el director dice &eacute;l tener ya todo seteao. We are looking for other alternatives, but the director says he to-have [inf] already everything checked. We are looking for other alternatives, but the director says he has already checked everything. (5) a. *Eso te pasa por t&uacute; ir demasiado r&aacute;pido. That you [acus] happens because [-Q] you [nom] to-go [inf] too fast. That happens to you because of your going too fast. </p><p> Therefore, a variation phenomenon is produced (Silva-Corval&aacute;n, 2001): (4) b. Nosotros estamos buscando otras alternativas, pero el director dice que tiene ya todo seteao. We are looking for other alternatives, but the director says he has already everything checked. </p><p> We are looking for other alternatives, but the director says he has already checked everything (5) b. Eso te pasa porque vas demasiado r&aacute;pido. That you [acus] happens because you [nom] go [ind] too fast That happens to you because you go too fast This project sharpens a specific look to clauses such as (4) and (5) on the basis of mood microvariation concerning the infinitive/indicative optionality, related to linguistic variables: subject type, person features, prepositions, subject specificity, subject co-references, topic-actor subject, and declaration features; and sociolinguistic variables: Caribbean sub-variety, age, and education level. Debates have arisen when studying subjunctive/infinitive optionality (Aponte, 2008; Kempchinsky, 2007; Morales, 1986, 1999). Less attention has been given to indicative/infinitive variation. This work proposes the application of procedural meaning hypothesis (Terkourafi, 2011) to explain that Caribbean speakers choose infinitive clauses because their grammar has a syntax-pragmatics micro-parameter. Using GoldVarb2001, phenomena such as (4) and (5) are analyzed from a query answered by 72 Carribeans, and 24 Mexicans; and 125 interviews. Caribbeans prefer the infinitive with first person singular, non-specific, and topic-actor subjects. This hierarchy demonstrates that Caribbean Spanish has its own structural configurations which privilege the syntactic-pragmatic interface.</p>

<p>This dissertation is a variationist sociolinguistic analysis of the variable word order and prosody of copular constructions (<i>Nicol&aacute;s es </i> <i><b>feliz</b></i> versus <i><b>Feliz</b></i> <i> es Nicol&aacute;s</i>, <i>Es Nicol&aacute;s</i> <i><b> feliz</b></i>, <i>Es</i> <i><b>feliz</b></i> <i> Nicol&aacute;s</i>, &lsquo;Nicolas is <b>happy</b>&rsquo;) in the Spanish of first- and second-generation Spanish-English bilinguals in New York City (henceforth NYC). The data used for the study come from a spoken corpus of Spanish in NYC based on 140 sociolinguistic interviews (details of the corpus will be presented in Chapter Three). This dissertation addresses the question of whether second-generation bilinguals have a less flexible word order in Spanish as a result of their increased use of, and contact with, English, where a more fixed order prevails. </p><p> We will show that the informants in the present study, like their peers in Los Angeles and other parts of the US, exhibit a more rigid word order compared to their first-generation peers. We have established that this increase in rigidity of word order among the second-generation can be attributed in large part to their increased use of and contact with English. The studies mentioned above have interpreted their results to mean that these speakers are losing or have lost the discourse pragmatic constraints that govern word order. However, the data here show that the first- and second-generation speakers in the present study share many of the same conditioning variables and constraints for word order, although these variables appear to account for a smaller amount of variance among the second-generation. In this way, we have established that the second-generation is not losing the discourse pragmatic constraints that govern word order, but that they are differently sensitive to these constraints. In fact, we show that second-generation speakers are very capable of communicating the pragmatic functions that the first-generation speakers do using word order because they maintain the prosodic details of their first-generation counterparts. In other words, the second-generation communicates these functions in ways that are slightly different from the first-generation, relying more on prosodic resources than syntactic ones. Furthermore, the data indicate that their prosodic patterns are not modeled after the prosody of English. In general terms we show that the second-generation does not have a different grammar from their first-generation counterparts, as is claimed by other researchers. Instead we show that these speakers favor certain first-generation strategies over others. </p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-274) Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of French and Italian, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3825. Advisers: Barbara Vance; Julie Auger. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 7, 2008).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Waikato, 2008. / Title from PDF cover (viewed March 31, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-114)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-06, Section: A, page: 2002. Adviser: Richard Bauman. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Nov. 27, 2006)."

Education plays a vital role in shaping social structures and influencing social mobility in a society, and thus educational equality is a concern for many societies. Considering the compulsory status of English from basic to higher education in China and its symbolic meaning in Chinese society, this study regards it as a window to explore educational inequality and its association with social structures. This study investigates the roles played by family, geographic divide, and institution, and the way in which the three interplay in structuring the educational pathways of individuals and shaping educational inequality. This study describes a qualitative case study of 36 students of different social milieus in an elite university. Data from the case interviews is complemented by classroom observation of three secondary schools within the educational system hierarchy, classroom observation of the elite university, teacher interviews from the four educational institutions, and collected documents. I draw on Bourdieu's conceptual tools of different types of capital, field, and habitus in order to understand the complexity of educational inequality in China. The data present striking differences in the educational trajectories between social groups. The success of higher-SES students is partly ascribed to the richer volume and types of their families' cultural capital, and the inclination for their families to transfer abundant economic capital to their children's embodied cultural capital. The interview data suggest that disadvantaged students rely heavily on formal education and are inscribed with institutional habitus due to the scarcity of educational resources obtained from family. More importantly, for advantaged students, their family, secondary schools (previous field) and the elite university (current field) work together in a consistent way, resulting in a positive momentum that contributes to a sense of belonging and fitting-in to the elite university. On the contrary, for marginalised students, contradictions and disconnections are found between secondary schools and the current elite field in terms of institutional habitus and practices, which to a large extent can be ascribed to the stratified school system and geographic divides. This situation leads to a negative momentum for them, which causes feelings of alienation and a sense of disorientation when encountering the elite field. This academic disorientation is evident in their transitional period. Their habitus is identified by a transformative tendency with easier access to dominant cultural capital and habitus. However, the transformation is circumscribed by their huge efforts made in overcoming the initial difficulties and their families' lack of capital. Some special cases in my study suggest a more equal admission policy and the critical role that institutions play in compensating for a family's lack of capital. This thesis concludes with suggestions for more inclusive practices for institutions and policy makers in China to achieve a more equal educational context.

Despite the vast amount of work and the huge database for Roman Britain, the people of the province remain very difficult to discern. There are many reasons for this, but one is that we have not yet learned to look behind the disjecta membra of archaeology in order to understand the structure and nature of society, and how the Roman Conquest may have impacted upon it. The language of sociology offers scope for thought, especially when combined with examples drawn from historically documented societies in later periods. Whilst models drawn from the classical world are important, attention also needs to be focused on the local, and on the factors that determined the shape of people's lives and influenced their daily activities. Not all these are archaeologically detectable; nevertheless an appreciation of their existence is an important pre-requisite in attempting explanations of patterns in the data.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of French & Italian, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0592. Adviser: Albert Valdman.