This dissertation investigates the semantics of universal Free Choice (FC) items i.e., items like FC any or Spanish cualquiera. This study is relevant for the theory of quantification. One of the core questions of this research is: what is the range of quantificational constructions used in natural language? Investigating the behavior of FC items will be instrumental in answering this question. While FC items seem to express quantification, they do not behave like 'textbook' quantifiers: They have a restricted distribution, and they seem to have a special relationship with modality. In Chapter 2, I explore a compositional account in the spirit of Dayal (1998), according to which FC items are modal universal quantifiers, and conclude that this account can only derive the distribution of FC items by making assumptions that are not empirically justified. My analysis of universal FC items is developed in Chapter 3, which constitutes the core of the dissertation. The crucial observation presented in this chapter is that analyzing universal FC items as wide-scope universals does not capture their FC component. In Chapter 3, I present an analysis that captures the FC effect and derives the ungrammaticality of FC items in episodic sentences like *John took any of these cards and necessity sentences like *John must take any of these cards. The key component of the proposal is the idea that all these sentences involve an exclusiveness requirement. Chapter 4 deals with the licensing of FC items in generic sentences like this printer prints any document. I argue that these examples contain a covert possibility modal and thus that they fall under the general explanation given in Chapter 3 for possibility sentences. The discussion in this chapter sheds light on the semantics of generic sentences. Chapter 5 discusses two further environments in which the interaction with genericity will turn out to be relevant: (i) necessity sentences like Any student must work hard and (ii) sentences like John talked to any woman that came up to him. The discussion in this chapter will lead to a better understanding of the interaction of FC items with genericity.

This study provides a description of connectives in Igbo, focusing on the Standard Igbo and Nsukka dialect varieties. These connectives in Igbo are realised mainly through conjunctions and a few adverbials and previous works on connectives in Igbo have hugely focused on connectives in the Standard Igbo variety (Emenanjo 2015). And so, the main aim of this work was to identify the connectives in both varieties and conduct a syntactic comparative analysis, thereby adding to the existing connectives in the literature. This work explores connectives in the Standard Igbo and the Nsukka Dialect and their similarities. It also highlights the difference between connectives in both varieties. Data for this work was gotten through the researcher's intuitive knowledge and by conducting unstructured interviews with native speakers. The major finding is that there are a limited number of connectives in the Standard Igbo and even a fewer number in the Nsukka Dialect and these connectives are more similar than different syntactically. One of the questions addressed by the study is the role of English in the Igbo language in general, and how this specifically affects connectives in Igbo. It does so by thoroughly reviewing code-switching and related concepts. This work concludes that the differences in connectives in both varieties are merely morphological.

Indefinites are well-known for their versatile behavior. A natural question that such versatility raises is whether one approach can account for each of the different guises the indefinites may take on, while also allowing for the fact that such versatility exists. This dissertation analyzes Chinese wh-items and argues that the Hamblin 1973 proposal for wh-expressions is such an approach—its modest assumptions about the meaning of wh-items allows one to maintain that these items have one and the same semantics, uniform through the various guises that they take on, while providing an adequate account of their behavior in the individual guises. Chapter II extends Lin's (1996) proposal for wh-items in the scope of the distribution operator dou. I propose a full-blown Hamblin take on Lin 1996 that does away with construction-specific interpretation rules. Chapter III discusses scope and pseudo-scope as they pertain to two classes of indefinites and shows that the kind of scope properties that the two classes exhibit are clearly distinct from those of quantifiers, and furthermore from each other. This split necessitates for each class of indefinites a separate approach, one of which is the Hamblin approach. Chapter IV discusses wh-items which always need to be in the scope of some operator, and shows that these items' polarity sensitivity follows from their Hamblin semantics. Chapter V examines wh-items in their interrogative construal. It has been proposed that these items need to move like their overtly moved counterparts, and that their scope is determined by the position they move into. It is shown that given the Hamblin semantics, wh-items need not wh-move, and that in fact, exhibit quite different properties from wh-moved items. Mandarin wh-items as analyzed here are thus characterized as indefinites in the sense of Heim 1982 in that they lack quantificational force of their own, and are completely at the mercy of their operators. The Hamblin approach we adopt thus allows us to preserve insights from Cheng 1991, which observes that these items' behavior is but the reflection of their operators' effect, while taking into account examples that sometimes led other authors such as Lin 1996 to abandon a uniform approach throughout the various guises of these very versatile items.

This dissertation investigates how syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors interact to produce the internally-headed relative clause (IHRC) construction in Korean and Japanese. The IHRC construction differs from the more familiar externally-headed relative clause (EHRC) construction in several ways. First, unlike an EHRC, an IHRC's content restricts the content of the matrix clause rather than that of the semantic head. Second, its interpretation is heavily influenced by the discourse context in ways not seen with the EHRC. Third, unlike the head of an EHRC, the head of an IHRC does not correspond to any overt syntactic phrase and hence needs to be determined by language users based on the relative clause's content, the matrix predicate's semantics, and the discourse context. The literature offers an abundance of sensitive analyses of the IHRC construction, but it leaves two central questions unanswered: what determines the interpretation of the construction? And, if pragmatic principles play a role, how do they interact with the morphosyntax and the semantics? I answer these questions with an event-based semantic analysis. I show that the construction's interpretation is determined partly by grammatical factors (e.g., the embedded clause's aspect and the matrix predicate's semantics) and partly by pragmatic factors (the discourse context and the discourse participants' world knowledge). In particular, I isolate two sources of the semantic variability of the construction. First, the matrix clause contains a pronominal definite description, whose denotation contains a free relation variable. The value of this variable is determined by the embedded clause's event structure, the matrix predicate's semantics, and the discourse context. Second, the relative operator that occurs in this construction connects the content of the embedded clause with that of the matrix clause, establishing either a temporal or a causal relation between them, depending on whether the embedded clause describes a temporary state or a permanent state. This study establishes important connections between the semantics of a definite description and event structure, thereby solving a particularly challenging formal-linking problem, one that afflicts existing E-type pronoun analyses of the IHRC construction. In addition, it provides a constrained but flexible interpretive mechanism for the construction, eliminating the need for many of the extra-grammatical constraints that characterize existing treatments.

A central goal of generative linguistics is to determine what constitutes a possible grammar of a natural language. This thesis works toward that goal in positing a constraint on the possible semantic types of variables in natural language. Specifically, I argue here that the logical forms (LFs) of natural languages do not contain higher-type variables, i.e., variables of a type higher than that of an individual, type e (see Chierchia (1984) and Baker (2003) for similar proposals). I refer to this constraint as the No Higher-Type Variables constraint (NHTV). Assuming that the domain of individuals, D, includes at least objects, kinds, events, event-kinds, degrees, situations, worlds, times, and locations, all of which have been independently argued to be necessary members of D, what NHTV predicts not to occur are object language expressions that vary over, e.g., generalized quantifiers, relations, or properties. While NHTV thus predicts a very restricted inventory of variable denoting expressions, I argue that it accounts for a surprisingly wide range of data in characterizing which variable-denoting expressions do and do not occur. I motivate NHTV based primarily on data from English, and to a lesser extent, German and Polish. I focus empirically on two types of expressions that are commonly analyzed as involving variables: (i) (overt) pro-forms, and (ii) A'-movement gaps. In particular, I look closely at pro-forms and gaps that have the syntactic distribution of items that are commonly taken to be of a higher-type, namely, APs, AdvPs, VPs, and NPs. While all of these expressions are commonly taken to denote properties of individuals, I argue that pro-forms and gaps that have the distribution of these categories should not be analyzed as property variables, but instead either (i) vary over individuals, or (ii) do not involve variables at all. The bulk of the thesis is devoted to backing up NHTV by (i) showing that hypothetical higher-type variables are systematically missing, and (ii) looking closely at potential counterexamples on a case-by-case basis.

This dissertation presents a study on the acquisition of telicity by Spanish and English native speakers. In addition to the study of acquisition, it investigates the syntactic and semantic properties of locatum constructions (e.g., the water filled the bucket), which are sentences that contain two internal arguments and whose subject is non-agentive. This dissertation explores the syntactic and semantic properties of elements of the verb phrase that had not been previously considered in the interpretation of telicity, such as the role of non-agentive subjects and the type of movement that takes place in the checking of the verb's telic features. Contrary to the assumption that only the direct internal argument of the verb can delimit an event, I argue that objects generated in the lower verb phrase, by virtue of being an internal argument of the verb can delimit an event. An object delimits an event by checking the verb's telic features in spec-AspP, either by covert or overt movement. If a predicate contains one internal argument (e.g., the boy filled the bucket) the checking of the verb's telic features takes place via covert movement. That is, only the NPs specific quantification features move covertly to check the verb's telic features in spec-AspP. However, if the predicate contains two internal arguments (e.g., fill the bucket with water), the surfaced subject (e.g., the water filled the bucket) by virtue of being an internal argument of the verb, checks the verb's telic features as the category and its features move overtly to subject position. The study shows that young children understand telicity when the verb's telic features are checked via overt movement, but have difficulties understanding telicity when the verb's telic features are checked via covert movement. I propose that predicates whose telicity involves overt movement should be acquired earlier than predicates whose telicity involves covert movement because overt movement is an operation that happens between D-structure and S-structure before the sentence is pronounced. Predicates whose telicity involves covert movement might be acquired at a later age of development because covert movement happens between S-structure and LF after the sentence is pronounced.

The research carried out in this dissertation is based upon the well-documented connection between crosslinguistic phonology and phonological acquisition. It takes as a starting point several syllable-based (universal) constraints and formulates predictions regarding intermediate stages of consonant cluster acquisition. These stages are characterized by asymmetries of both segmental and contextual natures. Not only do such constraints allow us to predict developmental orders (e.g. a cluster of a certain type or in a certain position is predicted to emerge prior to another), but they should also have an effect on which repairs are chosen (i.e. which consonant is retained and which is deleted). The experimental design utilized here includes manipulations of word position, cluster type, stress, and vowel quality. Results provide evidence for sonority constraints, constraints regarding the interaction between stress and syllable weight, and positional faithfulness constraints in intermediate stages of consonant cluster acquisition.

The present study investigates how information about contrasts is employed in the grammar. It is proposed that contrast preservation exists as an independent principle, which, within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993), is formalized as a family of rankable and violable constraints on preserving contrasts. Those constraints interact with one another and with conflicting markedness constraints resulting in preservation or neutralization of underlying distinctions in surface forms (cf. Trubetzkoy 1971, Martinet 1967, Kiparsky 1973). This work contributes to the growing body of research on the status of contrast in phonology (cf. Flemming 1995, Padgett 1997, 2000). In standard OT (Prince and Smolensky 1993) and derivational approaches to phonology (Chomsky and Halle 1968), contrast preservation follows from other components of the grammar and is not stated as an independent principle. By re-examining the role of contrast, this study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of a phonological system and the nature of a phonological mapping (cf. Kaye 1974, 1975, Kisseberth 1976). The proposal to treat contrast preservation as an independent principle has far-reaching consequences: (i) it provides new insights into possible interactions between phonological mappings, and in so doing gives a more accurate typology of chain shifts (see chapter 4); (ii) it provides a uniform analysis of opaque and transparent phonological processes (chapters 2, 3 and 5); (iii) it eliminates the need for constraint conjunctions and other mechanisms needed to account for opacity (chapter 4); and finally, (iv) it sheds new light on the role of faithfulness and markedness in the grammar (chapter 1). This dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 1 presents the proposal. Chapter 2 examines typological implications of the proposal. Chapter 3 provides empirical support based on the example of Finnish chain shifts. Chapter 4 examines the predictions of the proposal and compares them to previous approaches. Finally, chapter 5 applies the proposal to the study of stress-epenthesis interaction in dialects of Arabic.

This dissertation proposes that markedness constraints in Optimality Theory are lenient: a form can be marked with respect to a constraint only if there is another form that is unmarked. Thus, no constraint bans the least marked thing. The central consequence of this idea is that there are no economy constraints that penalize structure as such. Economy effects follow from the interaction of lenient markedness constraints. Economy constraints are shown to be not only unnecessary but actually harmful: their very presence in C ON predicts unattested patterns that remove structure regardless of markedness. Chapter 2 develops the theory of CON and argues that various structural economy effects (preferences for smaller structures over larger ones and for fewer structures over more) follow from constraint interaction. Also addressed are economy effects that involve the deletion of input structure, including foot-sized maximum effects in truncation and syllable-sized and segment-sized maximum effects in reduplication. OT's economy constraints of the *STRUC family are argued to produce unattested patterns under re-ranking and are excluded from CON as a matter of principle. Chapter 3 examines metrical syncope in Hopi, Tonkawa, and Southeastern Tepehuan. Different patterns fall out from the interaction of the same metrical markedness constraints in language-specific rankings. All of these constraints have other, non-economy effects—in principle, they can be satisfied by the addition of structure as well as by removal of structure. Metrical shortening and syncope remove marked structure, not all structure: the well-formedness of an output is determined by the distribution of weight in its feet and exhaustivity of footing, not by the number of syllables, moras, and feet. Chapter 4 examines differential syncope in Lillooet, Lushootseed, and the Lebanese and Mekkan dialects of Arabic. Under the leniency hypothesis, there are constraints against low-sonority syllable nuclei and foot peaks but not high-sonority ones; likewise, there are constraints against high-sonority foot margins but not high-sonority vowels in general. The interaction of lenient constraints cannot duplicate the effects of economy constraints. There are real crosslinguistic asymmetries in attested differential syncope patterns that can only be explained if we abandon the notion that “everything is marked.”

This dissertation investigates the role of Universal Grammar (UG) in the adult second language acquisition of phonological stress. Specifically, it examines whether universal linguistic phonological principles can be accessed by learners to aid them in acquiring the stress pattern of an artificial language. I address the question of adult accessibility to UG by investigating whether a specific phonological principle of UG that does not exist in the subjects' native language is accessible to adult learners. To do this, I compare the acquisition of a stress system that follows this phonological principle (a "natural" system) with one that does not (an "unnatural" system). If second language learners have access to innate universal linguistic principles they should be better able to learn the natural rule over the unnatural one. Using an artificial language learning methodology, two sets of natural/unnatural rule pairings were designed, one set based on vowel height and the other on syllable weight. The natural rule for the vowel height experiment was: Stress the leftmost low vowel, else stress the leftmost vowel; while the unnatural rule was the opposite: Stress the leftmost high vowel, else stress the leftmost vowel. The syllable weight experiments followed the natural/unnatural rules: Stress the leftmost heavy syllable, else leftmost, or, stress the leftmost light syllable, else leftmost. The same experiments were conducted with native speakers of American English and native speakers of Quebec French. The results show that in the case of the vowel height experiments, both English and French speakers learned the natural rule better than the unnatural one. The results were not as clear in the syllable weight experiments. An analysis is given within Optimality Theory of second language learning as the process of changing from the constraint ranking of the native language to that of the target language. Further, a comparison is made of the differences in learning a variable stress system by native speakers of a fixed stress language and native speakers of a variable stress language.