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Object functions and the syntax of double object constructions in lexical functional grammarLam, Shi-Ching Olivia January 2008 (has links)
It has long been observed that, in a double object constructions (DOC), the two objects exhibit different syntactic behaviour. In Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), these two objects are characterized as two distinct grammatical functions. The object that syntactically patterns with the monotransitive object is the unrestricted object OBJ. The one that does not is the restricted object OBJθ. The goals of this dissertation are to investigate the syntax of DOCs, and to explore the two object functions in LFG. When thinking about DOCs, the verb that almost invariably comes to mind is GIVE. This verb, however, may not be as prototypical as is commonly assumed. In Cantonese, it is the only verb whose objects are in an anomalous order, with the object that bears the theme role preceding the object which expresses the recipient role. Cantonese as a language does not uniformly have the direct (theme) object preceding the indirect (recipient) object. Other than the difference in their linear order, the objects in the GIVE-construction pattern with those in all other DOCs in the language. In some languages, there is a possibility of having more objects than is required by the underived form of a verb. An additional object can be licensed by the affixation of an applicative morpheme to the verb root. The syntax of the objects in an applicative construction is directly related to the type of semantic role that is applied. This has posed challenges for previous accounts of applicative constructions, as a change in the morphological structure of a verb is accompanied by a change in its argument structure. A new proposal is offered to account for this. A study of the syntax of DOCs involves much more than merely acknowledging the presence of two object functions in the construction. The morphology of the verb, the semantic roles that are required by the verb and the linear order of the arguments that express these roles are all relevant. Assuming various parallel but inter-related levels of representation, the theory of LFG has the suitable tools to take all these into consideration. Reference can be made straight-forwardly to the information at the different levels of representation, including the a-structure, the c-structure, the f-structure and the m-structure.
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The selective properties of verbs in reflexive constructionsPark, Karen Elizabeth January 2012 (has links)
This dissertation investigates the relationship between verbs and reflexive markers within reflexive constructions, setting forth the hypothesis that the verb plays a determining role in anaphoric binding. The work builds upon Dalrymple’s (1993) argument that binding constraints are lexically specified by anaphoric elements and demonstrates that reflexive requirements can be lexically specified for distinct groups of verbs, an approach which offers another level of descriptive clarity to theories of anaphoric binding and introduces a means of predicting reflexive selection in domains where syntactic constraints do not readily apply. This is shown to be particularly pertinent in languages with more than one reflexive type that have overlapping syntactic binding domains. The hypothesis is substantiated by data from five typologically distinct languages: English, Dutch, French, Russian, and Fijian. Contributing to this data set, new empirical evidence in favour of previously unrecognized reflexive forms in the Fijian language is introduced in this work. Following Sells et al. (1987), it is demonstrated that reflexive constructions are definable over four different components of linguistic representation and a quadripartite linguistic analysis is, therefore, adopted that incorporates c-structure, f-structure, lexical structure, and semantic structure within a Lexical Functional Grammar theoretical framework. The level of semantic structure is found to be particularly interesting since the realization of a reflexive construction is shown to be influenced by differing semantic requirements between verbs and reflexives. On the basis of several semantic tests, verbs in reflexive constructions are shown to have two different predicate structure types, ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’, and reflexive markers are shown to have three different internal semantic structures, ‘strict’ (x,x), ‘close’ (x,f(x)), and ‘near’ (x,y). The syntactic, semantic, and lexical characteristics of the reflexives and verbs analyzed over the data set presented in this work result in the identification of eight different reflexive/verb types and the establishment of two implicational relationships: <ol><li>Reflexive markers in lexically intransitive reflexive constructions have no semantic content.</li><li>Verbs that take a reflexive argument with a strict (x,x) or close (x,f(x)) internal structure must be intransitive at the semantic component of linguistic structure.</li></ol> These results contribute to our understanding of anaphoric binding theory, directed verb categories, the syntax-semantics interface, and the licensing of multiple reflexive types within a given language.
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The syntax and semantics of tense-aspect stem participles in early Ṛgvedic SanskritLowe, John J. January 2012 (has links)
In this thesis I investigate the syntax and semantics of tense-aspect stem participles in the Ṛgveda, focusing primarily on the data from the earlier books II–VII and IX, seeking to establish a comprehensive and coherent analysis of this category within the linguistic system of Ṛgvedic Sanskrit. In recent literature tense-aspect stem participles are usually treated as semantically equivalent to finite verbs wherever possible, but contradictorily where they differ from finite verbs their adjectival nature is emphasized. I argue that tense-aspect stem participles are a fundamentally verbal formation and can be treated as inflectional verb forms: they are adjectival verbs rather than verbal adjectives. At the same time, however, they constitute an independent sub-category of verb form which is not necessarily semantically dependent on corresponding finite stems. I examine the syntactic and semantic properties of tense-aspect stem participles both in relation to finite verbal forms and their wider syntactic context, formalizing the evidence in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar. Consequently I am able to categorize the syntactic and semantic deviations which many participles exhibit in comparison to finite verbal forms. I contend that many such forms cannot be treated synchronically (and sometimes diachronically) as participles, but form distinct synchronic categories. My analysis permits a considerably more refined definition of the category of tense-aspect stem participles, dependent on clear morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria, as opposed to the usual, purely morphological, definition. From a diachronic perspective I argue that the category of tense-aspect stem participles as found in the Ṛgveda more closely reflects an inherited Proto-Indo-European category of tense-aspect stem participles than is usually assumed. I also reconsider theoretical treatments of participial syntax and semantics, and develop a more precise typology of non-finite verb systems which adequately accounts for Sanskrit participles.
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THE SHAWNEE ALIGNMENT SYSTEM: APPLYING PARADIGM FUNCTION MORPHOLOGY TO LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR'S M-STRUCTUREHardymon, Nathan 01 January 2015 (has links)
Shawnee is a language whose alignment system is of the type first proposed by Nichols (1992) and Siewierska (1998): hierarchical alignment. This alignment system was proposed to account for languages where distinctions between agent (A) and object (O) are not formally manifested. Such is the case in Shawnee; there are person-marking inflections on the verb for both A and O, but there is not set order. Instead, Shawnee makes reference to an animacy hierarchy and is an inverse system. This thesis explores how hierarchical alignment is accounted for by Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), and also applies Paradigm Function Morphology to LFG’s m(orphological)-structure as most of the alignment system in Shawnee is realized in the inflectional morphology.
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Expletives and clause structure : syntactic change in IcelandicBooth, Hannah January 2018 (has links)
This thesis examines the historical development of the expletive það in Icelandic, from the earliest texts to the present day. This development is set against the backdrop of Icelandic clause structure, with particular attention to verb-second, information structure and the left periphery. The study combines corpus linguistic data and quantitative techniques with theoretical analysis, conducted within Lexical Functional Grammar. I show that Icelandic underwent three syntactic developments in the period 1750-present and argue that these all reflect one overall change: the establishment of það as a structural placeholder for the topic position (the clause-initial prefinite position). I claim that það functions as a topic position placeholder in the earliest attested stage of Icelandic (1150-1350), but is restricted to a specific context: topicless subjectless constructions with a clausal object, where það has cataphoric reference. The three changes in the period 1750-present represent the establishment of this topic position placeholder in new contexts: (1) það generalises to all types of topicless subjectless construction, beyond those with a clausal object; (2) það emerges in presentational constructions (which inherently lack a topic), out-competing the earlier expletive form þar; (3) in cataphoric contexts with a clausal subject, það begins to transition from subject to topic position placeholder. The majority of these contexts exhibit at least a short period in which það - or alternatively þar - behaves like a subject. Icelandic thus exhibits the emergence of a topic position placeholder expletive from an earlier subject-like element. This shift towards prefinite expletives, which sets Icelandic apart from e.g. Mainland Scandinavian, happens relatively late in the diachrony (1750-present). Moreover, the Icelandic development challenges the standard claim in the literature on Germanic expletives, which assumes that subject expletives emerge from prefinite expletives.
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Spoken word recognition as a function of lexical knowledge and language proficiency level in adult ESL learnersBarbour, Ross Patrick 05 1900 (has links)
This study assesses the usefulness of Marsien-Wilson’s (1989, 1987; Marsien
Wilson & Welsh, 1978) cohort model of spoken (first language) word recognition as a
method of explaining the high-speed, on-line processes involved in recognizing spoken
words while listening to a second language. Two important assumptions of the model
are: 1) syntactic and semantic properties of mental lexical entries can function to-facilitate
spoken word recognition and 2) spoken word recognition is a function of the
frequency of exposure to words in the general language environment. These
assumptions were tested in three functionally defined levels of language proficiency:
Native Speakers of English, Fluent Users of ESL, and Advanced learners of ESL. Their
performance was compared on a reading cloze test and a spoken-word recognition task
in which there were five different levels of contextual richness prior to a target word,
and two levels of word frequency.
The cloze results indicated that the three groups differed in their general English
proficiency. Congruent with the cohort model, there was a significant overall effect of
sentence context and word frequency on recognition latency. Despite the difference in
cloze scores and immersion experience between the two ESL groups, there were no
reliable differences in their recognition latencies or latency profiles across sentence
contexts or across word frequency. There was an interaction of ESL group, word
frequency, and sentence context. This may be due to a reorganization of rules used
during processing or a restructuring of lexical knowledge. There was also an
interesting non-linear relationship between recognition latency and language immersion
time. Spoken word recognition speed decreased in the early immersion experience, and
then increased with further exposure.
There was a significant difference in overall mean recognition latency between
the Native and the ESL speakers, with the ESL subjects responding on average 98 msec
slower than the Native Speakers. However, there were no significant differences in the
way Native Speakers and the ESL subjects used sentence context. In contrast with the
comparison across the sentential contexts, there was a significant difference in the
recognition profiles of the Native English speakers and the ESL subjects across word
frequency.
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The nature of configurationality in LFGSnijders, Liselotte January 2015 (has links)
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.
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Spoken word recognition as a function of lexical knowledge and language proficiency level in adult ESL learnersBarbour, Ross Patrick 05 1900 (has links)
This study assesses the usefulness of Marsien-Wilson’s (1989, 1987; Marsien
Wilson & Welsh, 1978) cohort model of spoken (first language) word recognition as a
method of explaining the high-speed, on-line processes involved in recognizing spoken
words while listening to a second language. Two important assumptions of the model
are: 1) syntactic and semantic properties of mental lexical entries can function to-facilitate
spoken word recognition and 2) spoken word recognition is a function of the
frequency of exposure to words in the general language environment. These
assumptions were tested in three functionally defined levels of language proficiency:
Native Speakers of English, Fluent Users of ESL, and Advanced learners of ESL. Their
performance was compared on a reading cloze test and a spoken-word recognition task
in which there were five different levels of contextual richness prior to a target word,
and two levels of word frequency.
The cloze results indicated that the three groups differed in their general English
proficiency. Congruent with the cohort model, there was a significant overall effect of
sentence context and word frequency on recognition latency. Despite the difference in
cloze scores and immersion experience between the two ESL groups, there were no
reliable differences in their recognition latencies or latency profiles across sentence
contexts or across word frequency. There was an interaction of ESL group, word
frequency, and sentence context. This may be due to a reorganization of rules used
during processing or a restructuring of lexical knowledge. There was also an
interesting non-linear relationship between recognition latency and language immersion
time. Spoken word recognition speed decreased in the early immersion experience, and
then increased with further exposure.
There was a significant difference in overall mean recognition latency between
the Native and the ESL speakers, with the ESL subjects responding on average 98 msec
slower than the Native Speakers. However, there were no significant differences in the
way Native Speakers and the ESL subjects used sentence context. In contrast with the
comparison across the sentential contexts, there was a significant difference in the
recognition profiles of the Native English speakers and the ESL subjects across word
frequency. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate
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PromisDReuer, Veit 18 May 2005 (has links)
Gegenstand der Arbeit ist zunächst eine Analyse der didaktischen Anforderungen an Sprachlernsysteme, die sich zum Teil aus dem Fremdsprachenunterricht ergeben. Daraus ergibt sich ein Übungstyp, der vom Lerner eine frei gestaltete Eingabe erfordert und damit insbesondere die kommunikative Kompetenz fördert, der aber auch mit Hilfe computerlinguistischer Methoden realisiert werden kann. Anschließend wird zur Auswahl einer geeigneten Grammatiktheorie insbesondere die Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) näher betrachtet. Die Theorie muss sich aus computerlinguistischer Sicht für eine Implementierung im Rahmen eines Sprachlernprogramms eignen und es ist von zusätzlichem Vorteil, wenn die verwendeten Konzepte denen in Lernergrammatiken ähneln, um so die Generierung von Rückmeldungen zu vereinfachen. Im darauf folgenden Abschnitt wird kurz das eigentliche Programm PromisD (Projekt mediengestütztes interaktives Sprachenlernen - Deutsch) vorgestellt, wie es sich auch dem Nutzer präsentiert. Schließlich wird ein so genanntes antizipationsfreies Verfahren entwickelt, bei dem weder in der Grammatik noch im Lexikon Informationen zur Fehleridentifizierung enthalten sind. Die Fehlererkennung wird dabei auf die Bereiche eingeschränkt, in denen sich in einem Lernerkorpus häufig Fehler zeigen, um einerseits wesentliche Fehlertypen abzudecken und andererseits eine größere Effizienz bei der Analyse von realen Eingaben zu erreichen. Die Vorstellung des Verfahrens unterteilt sich entsprechend den grundlegenden Struktureinheiten der LFG in zwei Bereiche: die Konstituentenstruktur mit einer modifizierten Form des Earley-Algorithmus zur Integration von Fehlerhypothesen in die Chart und die Feature-Struktur mit einer veränderten Unifikationstrategie zur Behandlung und Speicherung von sich widersprechenden Werten in F-Strukturen. Zum Abschluss erfolgt die Evaluation und es werden die Möglichkeiten zur Gestaltung einer Rückmeldung an den Lerner diskutiert. / The dissertation starts with an analysis of the requirements for Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning systems (ICALL), which partially depend on didactic aspects of foreign language teaching. Based on this a type of exercise can be identified, that on the one hand allows the learner to enter free formed input supporting the so called communicative competence as a major didactic goal and on the other hand may be realised with advanced computational linguistics'' methods. In the following chapter a look at grammar theories and especially Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is taken. The grammar theory needs to be tractable in an implementation and it is of a further advantage if the concepts of the theory are similar to the concepts in learner grammars in order to simplify the generation of feedback. Subsequently the user interface of the actual program is presented with a focus on error messages. The implementation is named PromisD, which stands for "Projekt mediengestütztes interaktives Sprachenlernen - Deutsch". Finally an anticipation-free parsing method is developed using neither information from the lexicon nor the grammar in order to identify grammar errors. The recognition is restricted to those areas where errors occur frequently in a learner corpus in order to allow for a greater efficiency parsing authentic data. Along the two structural levels in LFG the presentation of the algorithm follows: the constituent-structure with a modified Early-algorithm integrating error hypotheses into the chart and the feature-structure with a new unification-strategie storing information about clashing values in the f-structure. The dissertation closes with an evaluation and an outlook on the generation of error messages.
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Topics in Sinhala SyntaxHenadeerage, Kumara, kumara.henadeerage@anu.edu.au January 2002 (has links)
This study is a detailed investigation of a number of issues in colloquial
Sinhala morphosyntax. These issues primarily concern grammatical relations,
argument structure, phrase structure and focus constructions. The
theoretical framework of this study is Lexical Functional Grammar.¶Chapter
1 introduces the issues to be discussed, followed by a brief introduction
of some essential aspects of colloquial Sinhala as background for the
discussion in the following chapters. In Chapter 2 we present basic
concepts of the theoretical framework of Lexical Functional Grammar.¶ The
next three chapters mainly concern grammatical relations, argument
structure and clause structure in colloquial Sinhala. Chapter 3 examines
grammatical relations. The main focus lies in establishing the subject
grammatical relation in terms of various subjecthood diagnostics. We show
that only a very small number of diagnostics are reliable, and that the
evidence for subject is weaker than assumed previously. All the subjecthood
diagnostics that were examined select the most prominent argument in the
argument structure as the subject, i.e. 'logical subject'. However, there
appear to be no processes in the language that are sensitive to the subject
in the grammatical relations structure, i.e. 'gr-subject'. Further, there
is no evidence for other grammatical relations like objects. In Chapter 4
we discuss the agentless construction and related valency alternation
phenomena. It was previously assumed that the agentless construction,
valency alternation phenomena and the involitive construction are all
related. We argue that the agentless construction should be treated as a
different construction from the involitive construction. We also show that
the agentless construction and the involitive construction have contrasting
characteristics, and that treatment of them as separate constructions can
account for some phenomena which did not receive an explanation previously.
The valency alternation phenomena are related to the agentless
construction, therefore there is no valency alternation in involitive
constructions. It will be shown that verbs undergoing the valency
alternation can be distinguished from the other verbs in terms of the
lexical semantic properties of individual verbs. Chapter 5 examines the
structure of non-verbal sentences in terms of a number of morphosyntactic
phenomena. It was previously argued that verbal sentences and non-verbal
sentences in colloquial Sinhala differ in terms of clause structure.
However, the present study shows evidence to the contrary.¶ The next two
chapters deal with modelling contrastive focus and the phrase structure of
the language. Chapter 6 is a detailed analysis of the contrastive focus
(cleft) construction in various clause types in the language, and proposes
a unified syntactic treatment of contrastive focus. Contrastive focus is in
some constructions morphologically encoded, while in others it involves
both morphological and configurational assignment of focus. The complex
interaction between focus markers and verb morphology in various focus
constructions is accounted for by general well-formedness conditions
applying to the f-structure, and the principles of Functional Uncertainty
and Morphological Blocking. In Chapter 7, we discuss the phrase structure
of the language, in particular such issues as its non-configurational
nature and the lack of evidence for VP. We propose non-configurational S
and some functional projections to account for word order freedom under S
and to explain certain morphosyntactic phenomena, such as configurational
focus assignment. Finally, Chapter 8 summarises the conclusions made in
previous chapters.
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