This thesis is an interlinearization of seven Kalispel texts originally published in 1940 by Hans Vogt. The texts were published with sentence-by-sentence English translations but were not further analyzed by Vogt. Here, they are analyzed at the morpheme level, providing data for further research on the language and for language documentation and preservation purposes. The thesis includes an introductory section with background and methodology, the interlinearized texts, and a list of stems, affixes, and roots occurring in the texts.

The phenomena of verb contraction in the West Saxon dialect of Old English has been described in many grammars of the language. However, most of these use a traditional rule-based analysis of the sound changes which occur. This thesis re-analyzes the data in terms of Optimality Theory (OT), which uses a system of constraint ranking to account for sound changes. The advantage of using OT is that it offers a single ranking to explain sound changes that would require separate rules and ordering in a more traditional analysis. Section 1 introduces the motivation for approaching this data from OT. Section 2 outlines relevant grammatical features of Old English, and the West Saxon dialect in particular. Section 3 applies OT to the data itself. The data is organized according to the final consonant of the verb stem in order to allow a process of analysis that builds a constraint ranking able to account for the changes in all the verbs under consideration, including vowel deletion, assimilation, dissimilation, and simplification of consonant clusters. Section 4 discusses the theoretical contribution of this study and suggests related areas in which the analysis could be further applied.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 407-425). Also available in electronic format on the World Wide Web. Access restricted to users affiliated with the licensed institutions.

Claims of a shift in attitudes toward indigenous, national and European languages in Africa have raised concerns of drastic language shift and consequent language death. In addition to these languages, certain African urban centers in recent decades have seen the birth of youth hybrid languages, which function as in-group markers, as well as tools for negotiating between the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity. In Nairobi Kenya, the youth language is known as Sheng. Attitudes toward Sheng as well as toward the indigenous, national and European language in Kenya are studied through survey research, examining difference between age groups, genders and socioeconomic classes. The data confirms claims of attitude shift. While English is the language gaining the strongest allegiance among the youth, Kenyans of all ages recognize the growing importance of Sheng. In the light of the history of similar languages, the positive attitudes of the youth toward Sheng can be considered a symptom of the gradual death of the indigenous languages.

AN INVESTIGATED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ASPECTUAL PREFIXES AND VERBAL SEMANTICS IN RUSSIAN Wendy M. W. Martelle, M.A. University of Pittsburgh, 2005 As many students studying Russian as a second language learn, the imperfective-perfective opposition is commonly realized through prefixation. This study attempts to show a semantic relationship between Russian aspectual prefixes and the verbs that they attach to in order to become perfective. The system of verbal aspect in Russian is outlined, as well as the concept of pure aspectual verbal pairs. The semantic categories used in determining a relationship in this study were based on Talmys (1985) categories of Purpose, Cause/Manner, Causativity and Path. Over 900 verbs that are aspectually differentiated by prefix were analyzed according to prefix and semantic category. We then utilized descriptive statistics to determine tendencies or patterns between aspectual prefixes and verbal semantics. The results of the descriptive analysis showed that there appear to be some tendencies for certain prefixes to attach to particular semantic qualities. A chi-square analysis was next carried out to establish whether there is a statistically significant relationship between aspectual prefixes and verbal semantics, and the results of this test illustrated that the association is statistically significant, but not very strong. Based on these results, this study concludes with a discussion of implications for further research into this area.

This dissertation provides a linguistic description of Tapiete, a Tupi-Guarani (TG) language spoken in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. Fieldwork has been conducted in Argentina, where about 80 Tapiete families are settled in Misión Los Tapietes, Tartagal, province of Salta, northern Argentina. Thus, the linguistic data and the results of this study reflect the variety spoken by the Tapietes living in Argentina. The main features of Tapiete phonology, the nominal and the verbal morphology, as well as the syntactic structure are investigated. At the lexical level, a vocabulary of 2049 entries and 400 subentries is provided based on the information gathered through the elicitation of lexical questionnaires and texts. Specifically, this dissertation investigates the expression of possession in Tapiete, as its default marker of possession has developed from a functional extension of the default marker of possession, t-, of Class II nouns in TG languages. In addition, a further formalization of the alienable/inalienable opposition occurs, expressed through the existence of different sets of third person markers. In addition, this work discusses the restructuring of the cross-reference system in Tapiete. Specially, it describes the lack of an overt marker of third person for verbs that belong to Jensens Set 1, with the exception of monosyllabic roots, and the encoding of the first person active and inactive plural exclusive through the verbal root marked for third person, together with the affixation of the TG nominalizing morpheme -ha. In addition, the Tapiete version of Jensens Set 4 person markers differs from that of TG languages: while in TG languages these forms are portmanteau morphemes that encode a first person singular or plural acting on a second person singular (e.g. TG oro-) or a first person singular or plural acting on a second person plural (e.g TG opo-), in Tapiete, both forms encode a first person singular, with no possibility of their being interpreted as plural. Finally, Tapiete has developed a paradigm of reflexive person markers that comes from a reinterpretation of the prefixation of the a- and i- person markers which encode the agent and the patient, respectively.

Complement clauses in Hindi and Gujarati

Nonverbal communication

Gramayama

Telugu speaking adults