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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.

The grammar of modification is highly complex and raises numerous questions about the relation between meaning and form. This dissertation provides a study of how modified noun phrases are interpreted and examines the consequences of these results for the syntax of the nominal domain. The discussion centers on two types of modification: superlatives and stacked modification. The data comes primarily from English, but other languages are also discussed. There is initial evidence that the main claims hold across a wide range of languages. The common view on superlatives is that they have two types of interpretations which are the result of a scope ambiguity and that the contrast between them needs to be captured by means of syntactic devices. Contra this standard approach I propose a saliency theory of superlatives which claims that there is no categorical difference between these two interpretations and where the variation in the meaning of superlatives is purely pragmatic in nature. Under this view the meaning of superlatives is a function of the properties of the surrounding discourse and the context-sensitivity of superlatives is subsumed to the more general phenomenon of context-dependency in the interpretation of natural language quantifiers. The saliency theory differs from other analyses that have adopted a discourse approach in that the so-called comparative reading does not depend on the presence or interpretation of focus. Previous approaches to multiple adjectives analyzed their order in terms of the semantics of individual adjectives. I present a new set of data which shows that this is insufficient and propose an explanation that takes into account the meaning of the whole nominal phrase. This result has consequences for how the architecture of grammar should be conceived. In particular, it shows that principles of syntactic well-formedness can sometimes be sensitive to compositional semantic interpretation, as well as pragmatic information. This is in contradiction to many contemporary approaches to grammar where the semantic component has no influence on the syntactic one. / text

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De uma maneira geral, este trabalho tem como objetivos descrever e analisar alguns aspectos dos Sintagmas Nominais em Karitiana. Primeiramente, retomamos as discussões de Müller, Storto e Coutinho-Silva (2006a,b) e Sanchez-Mendes (2007) acerca da quantificação em Karitiana e descrevemos o comportamento do suposto quantificador Universal: akatyym, propondo que em Karitiana exista um processo específico de \'quantificação\' que não pode ser tratado como quantificação nominal ou adverbial conforme descrito em Bach et al (1995), pois o que nossa análise tanto do ponto de vista morfossintático, quanto do ponto de vista semântico aponta é que NP+akatyym é uma sentença relativa com núcleo interno, e sua suposta força quantificacional de Universal pode ser justificada como uma característica das relativas livre de núcleo interno que ao interpretar semanticamente seus núcleos nominais internamente ao CP, gera uma operação que tem como resultado semântico uma denotação de entidade plural máxima ou completa (cf. Grosu & Landman, 1998). Além disso, este trabalho analisa alguns fatos inter-relacionados dentro do Sintagma Nominal: analisamos as estruturas demonstrativas, mostrando que elas também são melhor analisadas como sentenças relativas e propomos uma descrição e análise dos pronominais em Karitiana tanto do ponto de vista da Morfologia Distribuída, seguindo os trabalhos de Ritter e Harley (1998), Hanson, Harley e Ritter (2000) e Harley e Ritter (2002) para a composição da geometria de traços no paradigma dos pronomes pessoais na língua, quanto dos recursos envolvidos na ligação e co-denotação (Büring, 2005). Por fim, apontamos que a não existência de um item lexical específico para a Quantificação Universal Nominal, de pronomes demonstrativos e de uma efetiva morfologia de número nos pronomes pessoais corroboram a hipótese de não existência da categorial funcional DP nos nominais em Karitiana proposta por Müller, Storto & Coutinho-Silva (2006a,b). / In a general aspect, this work has as its goals to describe and analyze some aspects of the Karitiana Noun Phrases. First, we take up again the discussions from Müller, Storto & Coutinho-Silva (2006a,b) and Sanchez-Mendes (2007), on Karitianas quantification, and we describe the behaviour of the alleged universal quantifier: akatyym, proposing that, in Karitiana, there is a specific quantificational process that cannot be treated as noun ou adverbial quantification as described in Bach et al (1995), since what our analysis shows from the morphossyntactic, as well as the semantic point of view, is that NP +akatyym is a internalheaded relative clause, and its alleged Universal quantificational force can be justified as a characteristic of the internal-headed free relatives, that, as it interprets its nominal heads semantically DP-internally, generates an operation which has as its semantic result a denotation of plural maximum or complete entity (cf. Grosu & Landman, 1998). Besides, this work analyzes a few interesting facts correlated within the Noun Phrase: we analysed the demonstrative structures, showing that they are best analyzed as relative clauses, and we propose a description and an analysis of the Karitiana pronouns from both the Distributed Morphology point of view, following the works of Ritter & Harley (2002), for the feature geometry composition for the person pronouns paradigm, and also of the resources involved in binding and co-denotation (Büring, 2005). At last, we point that the non-existance of a specific lexical item for universal quantification of nominals, of demonstrative pronouns and of an effective number morphology in the personal pronouns corroborate the hypothesis of non-existance of the functional category DP in the Karitiana nouns, as proposed by Müller, Storto & Coutinho- Silva (2006a,b).

This thesis examines the Lithuanian translations of English noun phrases in the popular journalism magazine ''Business & Exhibitions''. The corpus of data of noun phrases was collected from the articles found in seven issues of the magazine published in 2006 and 2007. The analysis is based on the definitions of translation strategies put forward by by Eirlys E. Davies. The aim of the study is to find the most common noun phrase types and translation strategies used for their rendering into Lithuanian in order to test the hypothesis that noun phrases can be used as a device to manipulate the audience that reads articles in magazines of popular journalism. Tables and figures presented in the thesis show the frequency of noun phrases and the employed translation strategies in percent. The interpretation of the statistics allows us to test the validity of the hypothesis. / Šis darbas nagrinėja angliškų daiktavardžių grupių vertimą į lietuvių kalbą populiariosios spaudos žurnale „Verslas ir parodos“. Daiktavardžių grupėms surinkti iš verslo žurnalo straipsnių buvo išanalizuoti septyni žurnalo numeriai, publikuoti 2006 - 2007 metais. Vertimo strategijų analizė pagrįsta Eirlys E. Davies pasiūlytų apibrėžimų pagrindu. Šios analizės tikslas – surasti labiausiai paplitusias tam tikros sintaksinės struktūros daiktavardžių grupes ir joms versti naudojamas vertimo strategijas, kad būtų patikrinta hipotezė, jog tam tikra daiktavardžių grupės struktūra gali būti naudojama kaip populiariosios spaudos skaitytojų manipuliacinė priemonė. Lentelės bei grafikai, vaizduojantys daiktavardžių grupių ir vertimo strategijų vartosenos dažnumą procentais, parodo tikrinamos hipotezės rezultatus.

This dissertation examines genericity from a textual perspective. The material consists of popular science texts about species of animals. The investigation concerns both the distribution of different forms of generic noun phrases and the boundary between generic and non-generic noun phrases. The analytical tools are taken from Accessibility Theory and Blending Theory. Two separate studies have been undertaken. The results of the first study indicate that generic reference on the whole follows the same principles of accessibility as non-generic reference, although there are some differences that can be attributed to the distinction between generic and non-generic reference. Some results suggest that our mental representations of generic referents are generally less accessible than those of non-generic referents. Factors other than accessibility influencing the choice of generic noun phrases are also identified. While genericity is generally treated as an all-or-nothing phenomenon, an important experience of this first study concerns the difficulties facing anyone who tries to distinguish between generic and non-generic noun phrases in authentic texts. These difficulties are the centre of attention in the second study, which shows that genericity is an extremely context-dependent phenomenon. The sentence context may clearly indicate a particular, non-generic reference, while the wider context of the text reveals that the noun phrase in question is in fact generic. Not infrequently, chains of reference involve a great deal of shifting and slithering between a generic and a non-generic meaning, although the references are seemingly coreferential. It is sometimes difficult to decide on the real referents intended. At times there are also clear cases where the noun phrase must be analysed as referring to both generic and non-generic entities at the same time. This implies that it is unlikely that we actually decide for every reference if it is generic or non-generic.

The main aim of the thesis is to investigate how discourse entities are linked with topic chaining and discourse coherence by showing that the choice and the distribution of referring expressions is correlated with the center transition patterns in the centering framework. The thesis provides an integrated interpretation in understanding the behaviour of referring expressions in discourse by considering the relation between referential choice and the local and global coherence of discourse. The thesis has three stages: (1) to provide a semantic and pragmatic perspective in a contrastive study of referring expressions in English and Japanese spontaneous dialogues, (2) to analyse the way anaphoric and deictic expressions can contribute to discourse organisation in structuring and focusing the specific discourse segment, and (3) to investigate the choice and the distribution of referring expressions in the Map Task Corpus and to clarify the way the participants collaborate to judge the most salient entity in the current discourse against their common ground. Significantly, despite the grammatical differences in the form of reference between the two languages, the ways of discourse development in both data sets show distinctive similarities in the process by which the topic entities are introduced, established, and shifted away to the subsequent topic entities. Comparing and contrasting the choice and the distribution of referring expressions of the four different transition patterns of centers, the crucial factors of their correspondent relations between English and Japanese referring expressions are shown in the findings that the topic chains of noun phrases are constructed and are treated like proper names in discourse. This can suggest that full noun phrases play a major role when the topic entity is established in the course of discourse. Since the existing centering model cannot handle the topic chain of noun phrases in the anaphoric relations in terms of the local focus of discourse, centering must be integrated with a model of global focus to account for both pronouns and full noun phrases that can be used for continuations across segment boundaries. Based on Walker’s cache model, I argue that the forms of anaphors are not always shorter, and the focus of attention is maintained by the chain of noun phrases rather than by (zero) pronouns both within a discourse segment and over discourse segment boundaries. These processes are predicted and likely to underlie other uses of language as well. The result can modify the existing perspectives that the focus of attention is normally represented by attenuated forms of reference, and full noun phrases always show focus-shift. In addition, necessary extension to the global coherence of discourse can link these anaphoric relations with the deictic expressions over discourse segment boundaries. Finally, I argue that the choice and the distribution of referring expressions in the Map Task Corpus depends on the way the participants collaborate to judge the most salient entity in the current discourse against their common ground.

[pt] Este trabalho analisa os critérios de caracterização de nomes compostos em Português, com o objetivo de obter informações que permitam o estabelecimento dos padrões gerais do processo de composição de palavras, de tal modo que se possa distinguir este tipo de entidade lingüística de outras combinatórias lexicais, como as locuções nominais e outros sintagmas freqüentes e estáveis no repertório da língua. De início, faz-se um exame das abordagens da composição por autores identificados com a tradição gramatical. Em seguida, feita a identificação dos aspectos deste processo de criação lexical que permanecem inexplicados pela gramática, e sempre com o objetivo de se definir e caracterizar a palavra composta, procede-se ao estudo das abordagens dos lingüistas estruturalistas e suas tentativas de conceituar a palavra enquanto unidade lingüística. Finalmente, analisam-se as visões dos pesquisadores pósestruturalistas e os critérios e testes diferenciadores por eles propostos. As conclusões das análises efetuadas revelam que, ao lado de algumas poucas formações, que se comportam como palavras compostas quando analisadas sob os quatro critérios - fonológico, morfológico, sintático e semântico - há outras que se diferenciam dos grupos sintáticos comuns quando investigadas por alguns ou apenas um destes parâmetros, em geral o semântico. A investigação também revela que há muitas seqüências que, consideradas rigorosamente sob as leis da morfologia, não configuram unidades morfológicas, embora, do ponto de vista lexical, estejam cristalizadas no idioma e sejam percebidas como unidades lexicais pelos falantes. / [en] This work analyzes different criteria normally used to characterize compounds in Portuguese, as opposed to clauses and other types of linguistic units such as idioms or collocations. Its main goal is to organize information in such a way as to establish general patterns for lexical compounding. Initially, an analysis of different approaches to compounding in Traditional Grammar literature is made. Then, as the unexplained aspects of compounding in those approaches are identified, the goal of defining compounds in Portuguese is pursued in the analysis of structuralist and posterior approaches and their attempts to define the word as a linguistic unit. The results of the research reveal that, even though a few formations do behave as compounds under all relevant - phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic - criteria, there are many others that differ from common syntactic sequences, only with respect to one of the mentioned parameters, more frequently the semantic one. We can also conclude from our analysis that many word sequences do not correspond to morphological units, in spite of the fact that they are lexicalized and thus perceived as lexical units by the speaker of Portuguese.

This thesis discusses four selected topics on Yoruba nominal expressions: the syntax of possessives, the construal of bare nouns, the marking of specificity and salience, and plural marking strategies. Regarding possessives, it is proposed that they have one base structure (a v P shell). The difference in surface linear order between verbal and nominal genitives is determined by which of the two arguments move. In nominal genitives, the possessum moves. In verbal genitives, it is the possessor that moves. Regarding the interpretation of Yoruba bare nouns, it is shown that they can be construed in one of three ways: as generics, as indefinites, or as definites. First, generics may be lexically conditioned (with permanent state predicates) or grammatically conditioned (with transitory predicates through the use of imperfective maa-n). Second, wherever a generic construal is illicit, an indefinite construal is licit. Third, definite construals are discourse-linked. Regarding specificity, it is shown that Yoruba overtly marks specificity on NPs with the element kan. Regarding salience, it is shown that definite DPs are morphologically marked as salient (by virtue of being unique, in an identity relation or additive) through the use of ndd. Finally, regarding plural marking, it is shown that Yoruba uses three different strategies: contextually, semantically, or morphologically determined plurality. It is proposed that the deployment of the PLURAL feature is determined by feature percolation or feature matching. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate