Language production involves two stages of lexical retrieval with a word’s lemma (meaning, syntax) accessed before its lexeme (form). Adult speakers of gendered languages are said to access gender via the lemma (Vigliocco, Antonini and Garrett, 1997). However, presenting gender incongruous distractors during picture naming does not produce interference for Spanish speakers (Costa, Sebastián-Gallés, Miozzo & Caramazza, 1999; O’Rourke, 2007). Spanish demonstrates predictability between determiner gender and noun form: 96.3% of nouns ending in /a/ are feminine, taking the definite determiner la, and 99.87% of nouns ending in /o/ are masculine, preceded by el (Teschner & Russell 1984). Morphophonological regularity might allow Spanish speakers to bypass lemma-level gender. This dissertation addressed the question of whether young children learning Spanish access gender with the lemma of individual words, utilize language-specific morphophonological regularities alone, or use a combination of lexical familiarity and morphophonological regularity. This was tested in an elicited imitation task manipulating lexical status, congruity and gender. Spanish-English bilingual children (2;0-4;0) and Spanish-speaking adults repeated Spanish words and non-words preceded by gender congruous and incongruous definite articles. If children access gender with lemmas, children should omit fewer articles for words vs. non-words in congruous (el libro-them bookm) versus incongruous conditions (la libro-thef bookm). If children use morphophonological patterns, words should show no advantage; however, children should omit fewer feminine than masculine 12 articles in congruous (la f fupa f) versus incongruous conditions (elm fupa f) since feminine is more regular than masculine. Alternately, if lexical familiarity and morphophonological regularity play a role, children should omit fewer articles for words than non-words and fewer feminine than masculine articles in congruous versus incongruous conditions. The results suggest that children, like adults, use both lexical familiarity and morphophonological regularity to produce determiner-stem sequences. Words exerted an influence, but only in processing efficiency while regularity affected patterns for both words and non-words. Unlike adults, for children regularity was preferred over distributional frequency and lexical familiarity was only advantageous if familiar words demonstrated regular feminine morphology. The data suggest that children use language specific input statistics from early in language production and, additionally, provide evidence for developmental processing strategies.

1. In the book by K. Aleknavičius „Pasakos pritikimaj weselos ir giesmes“, issued in Vilnius in 1861, a noun is used much more abundantly (~4119 forms) as is an adjective (~724 forms). 2. The book by K.Aleknavičius „Pasakos pritikimaj weselos ir giesmes“ is written using the Eastern version of the writings language. 3. There are plenty of slavisms in the poetry collection by K.Aleknavičius „Pasakos pritikimaj weselos ir giesmes“, as it is characteristic to the writings of that period. 4. The nouns and adjectives, found in the book, are compared to the dialect of the Eastern Highland Lithuanians, and nouns and adjectives of the modern common language, their paradigms are reconstructed. 5. The biography of K.Aleknavičius is reviewed and the section, named „The characteristics of the orthography“, is presented. 6. This morphological study reveals the situation of non-religious writings of the Eastern Highland Lithuanian dialect, there is also data provided on various old and till now unaltered forms of denominatives (nouns and adjectives) and their usage. 7. K.Aleknavičius’ work „Pasakos pritikimaj weselos ir giesmes“ is written using the dialect of the Eastern Highland Lithuanians, however the text of the book from the viewpoint of orthography, phonetics and morphology is not consistent. 8. There are types of masculine, feminine and composite declension found in the book. 9. There are plenty of personal names and place-names in the poetical texts of the book, for example:... [to full text]

Šiame darbe tirtos šešiažodės kolokacijos, kuriose yra bent vienas daiktavardis. Tyrimas atlikas laikantis nuomonės, kad kolokacija – dažnai kartu einančių žodžių junginys, sudarytas bent iš vieno kaitomo žodžio ir turintis bendrą reikšmę. Tirtos kolokacijos automatiškai buvo išrinktos iš Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstyno naudojant statistinį Gravity Count metodą. Šis darbas skirtas tam, kad būtų išsamiau išanalizuotos lietuvių kalbos kolokacijos, taigi darbo tikslas – nustatyti šešiažodžių daiktavardinių kolokacijų gramatinius ir semantinius modelius bei galimas jų sąsajas. Kolokacijos buvo atrinktos iš Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos tekstyno statistiniu būdu. Darbo šaltinį sudaro daugiau nei 100 mln. žodžių. Šešiažodės kolokacijos, lyginant su iš dviejų, trijų, keturių žodžių sudarytomis kolokacijomis, yra gana retos, nes minėtų tipų kolokacijos sudaro 85 proc. visų daiktavardinių kolokacijų. Nustatyta, kad kuo ilgesnė frazė, tuo ji rečiau vartojama tekstyne. Šiame darbe kolokacijos analizuotos gramatiniu ir semantiniu aspektais. Analizuojant gramatiškai, kolokacijos suskirstytos į šešis tipus, pagal tai, kiek jose vartojama daiktavardžių. Tuos tipus sudaro kolokacijos, kuriose pavartotas vienas, du, trys, keturi, penki arba šeši daiktavardžiai. Kiekvienas šis tipas buvo tirtas išsamiau. Kolokacijos buvo anotuotos su automatinės morfologinės analizės programa. Tokiu būdu buvo nustatyti visi galimi gramatiniai kolokacijų modeliai. Jų rasta 824. Daugiausiai gramatinių modelių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The main purpose of this research was to set grammatical and semantic typology of six-word – length Lithuanian collocations. Collocations were extracted automatically from the „Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian Language“ using statistical Gravity Counts method. The Source of this study concist of 100 million words. Six–words–length collocations are very rare, two, three, four–length-words collocations make 85% of all noun collocations. It was notified that as the phrase is longer, as more seldom it is used in Corpora. In this study collocations were researched grammatically and semantically. Grammatically researhed collocations were devided into six types, accourding to the number of nouns used in it. Those types are made of collocations which have one, two, three, four, five, six nouns. All those types were researched more deeply. Collocations were annotated using automatical marphology analysis program. In this way all possible grammatical collocation models concist of three nouns collocations – 255 models (31.33 %). Different collocations number is not equal to different grammatical models. 1560 different collocations were found. The most of different collocations have four nouns – 459 which makes 1/3 of all collocations. Despite the variaty of grammatical models, the models which are made of single collocations are the most frequent. The more noun collocation type has, the less single grammatical models can be made, for example, single one noun collocations make... [to full text]

This thesis outlines a syntactic analysis of Noun Incorporation in Cree. In this construction, certain morphemes, 'medials', that appear as the nominal root of an external NP can alternatively appear within a verb. This thesis extends previous analyses of Algonquian medials by utilizing the theory of Incorporation developed in Baker (1988b). Within this theory of grammar, medials are base-generated as nouns within an 'object' NP and then optionally adjoined to the verb stem as a result of head (X$ sp{ rm o}$) movement. Established restrictions on head movement can account for many properties of NI, including paraphrasing, doubling, bare modifiers, possible thematic relations, and differences between NI and compounds. The efficacy of the syntactic approach validates a modular account of polysynthetic word formation. In addition, the distribution of Cree NI validates several putatively universal principles of theta-role assignment.

This work is focused on a mediation of grammar in teaching of the German language in primary schools. The main attention is paid to the declension of nouns. I chose for the comparison two completely different outlined textbooks. In view of the fact, that still quite a large number of primary schools teaches according to the textbook "Heute haben wir Deutsch", I decided to confront this textbook with its more modern successor "Deutsch mit Max" and determine whether the conception of modern textbooks differ from those older ones only graphic, i. e. with illustration, and themes that correspond to the age of pupils, or with regard to grammar (the other choice, progression and quantity of grammar structures), and thus are these textbooks more suitable for the current teaching of the German language. Subsequently are the results of this work compared with the views of pupils who are taught according to these textbooks.

The subject of this thesis is the description of the noun-phrase in Persian on the basis of the transformational theory as described by Chomsky in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. The first chapter of the thesis is devoted to a description of the syntactic behaviour of the noun-phrase within simplex sentences - both those formed by the verbs budan or odan and those formed by other verbs. This involves description of the noun-phrase within simple interrogative sentences and, also, within sentences formed with passive verbs. The subject of the second chapter is a description of the syntactic behaviour of the noun-phrase within complex sentences. The differences between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses have been discussed. The syntactic behaviour of the noun-phrase within sentences formed by the verbs budan or odan has been described separately in this chapter. The last part of the second chapter is devoted to a description of complements. Pronouns and the process of pronominalization in Persian constitute the subject of Chapter Throe. The syntactic behaviour of the reflexive and the emphatic pronouns, as well as that of the personal pronouns, is (i)budan="to be", odan="to become" . illustrated and discussed in this chapter. Chapter Four has been devoted to adjectives. Different kinds of adjectival/nominal constructions are illustrated in this chapter. Chapter Five deals with the grammatical status of determiners in Persian. It also gives a definition and goes into a description and classification of different kinds of determiners in Persian. Finally, the three senses of the noun, the composition of the noun-phrase in the surface structure and the grammatical status of the infinitive in Persian are illustrated in Chapter Six.

M.A. (African Languages) / Zulu, like many other African languages, is characterized by a system of noun classes which is governed by a characteristic prefix with specific morphological and semantic features. Most classes are found in pairs of which one is singular and the other plural. The prefix is also employed in linking the noun to other words which are syntactically -related to it in the sentence by means of a concord which is derived from the prefix and which normally bears a close resemblance to it. The noun class prefixes have thus been subcategorized according to the following principles: (a) the morphological structure of the prefix; (b) the corresponding singular-plural form; (c) the semantic traits of the noun root; and (d) the agreement system generated by the prefix. Although nouns in Zulu are regular to a great extent, many morphological, syntactical and semantical irregularities are found in the class system. Some of these are: (i) the absence of an initial vowel with certain noun class prefixes; (ii) some nouns belonging to singular-plural pairs have singular prefixes but no plural form whilst some have plural prefixes but no corresponding singular form; (iii) similar singular prefixes take different plural prefixes whereas similar plural prefixes take different singular prefixes; (iv) some nouns belonging to a particular singular-plural pair use a particular prefix in the singular but a plural prefix of a different class; (v) two, and even three, prefixes are sometimes found before the noun root. Nouns in other Bantu languages sometimes lack prefixes; (vi) non-mother tongue speakers may easily confuse the initial part of some nouns with nouns of other classes; (vii) the morphologically determined agreement system is sometimes overruled by the semantic consideration animate versus inanimate. Nouns of class 1 (a) which have a prefix /u-/ and the semantic notion inanimate generate an agreement string similar to that of class 3. Nouns of class 1(a) with the prefix /u-/ and the semantic notion animate, non-human, occasionally use some of the agreement morphemes of class (viii) loan words in class 9 which have a prefix /i-/ sometimes take the agreement system of class 5 instead of class 9; (ix) nouns of classes other than 1, 2, 1 (a) and 2(a), denoting humans, sometimes use the agreement string of classes 1.and 2 in following sentences. The same applies to nouns indicating animals in classes other than 9 and 10, but which use the agreement string of the in-izin-classes in following sentences; (x) the meanings of a vast number of nouns do not fit in with the particular semantic characteristics given for each class; (xi) a large number of nouns with a singular form but plural meaning are found in the different classes; (xii) a number of nouns in plural classes indicate abstract or non-count matters or have singular meanings; (xiii) some mass or abstract nouns have singular prefixes but lack a plural form, whereas other mass or abstract nouns have plural prefixes but lack a singular form; and (xv) nouns with similar roots and corresponding meanings sometimes fall into two different classes.

Written broadly within a Lexical Functional Grammar Framework, this thesis provides a descriptive and theoretical account of definiteness in Insular Scandinavian from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Providing evidence from Ancient Germanic to Old Norse to Modern Faroese, it is argued that the weak feature on the adjective has an important part to play in the historical narrative of definiteness marking in Faroese, alongside more traditional elements like the bound and free definite articles and demonstratives. Each of the features is read within the context of its nominal syntax and it is observed that there are recurrent pathways of change which each time result in the growth of syntactic structure and the redistribution of features. One of my principal findings for the Old Norse period was that the noun phrase had developed a FOC slot to the left edge of phrase. It is this focus domain which helps to explain the distribution of definiteness markers and which provides an account for the grammaticalization of the free and bound marker hinn. It is also this focus domain which eventually leads to the development of dedicated definite slots in the prenominal space and eventually to functional DP projection in Modern Faroese. This thesis provides new and detailed descriptive data on the definite noun phrase in Modern Faroese, a lesser studied Insular Scandinavian language. Since Faroese is widely reported to have ‘lost’ the genitive case in recent times, the above changes are read against a background of morphosyntactic change. A key finding of the thesis for the Modern language is that Faroese is becoming increasingly reliant on analytic marking, despite the fact that is is still a highly inflected language. It is this reliance on syntax which has rendered the genitive redundant, not, as has been suggested, the ‘loss’ of case which has led to the development of periphrastic alternatives.

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