The processing of relative clauses has been a subject of recurrent interest in psycholinguistics. While a consistent processing preference for subject relative clauses has been found in English (e.g. Just & Carpenter, 1992; King & Just, 1991; King & Kutas, 1995; Traxler, Morris, & Seely, 2002), studies in Mandarin Chinese have not yielded consistent results in the processing asymmetry between subject and object relative clauses (e.g. Hsiao & Gibson, 2003; Lin, 2006). On the other hand, human cognitive preferences have been found to play a role in parsing (Gibson & Pearlmutter, 1998; Tanenhaus & Trueswell, 1995). This dissertation is interested in relating memory with syntactic structures in the course of syntactic parsing, in the hope that it could resolve the conflicting findings in Chinese. We address this by studying Cantonese relative clauses from a processing and working memory perspective. Two experiments were carried out. Experiment 1 involved a self-paced reading task together with an n-back memory task. We found some evidence, although not very conclusive, that object relative clauses were more difficult to comprehend, as reflected in poor comprehension accuracy and response latency. There was significant memory intervention in reading times, though its role in syntactic processing was not clear. Experiment 2 reported a maze task together with an n-back memory task. A processing disadvantage for object relative clauses was evident from a significantly longer reading time on a whole and in the post-relative clause region. A memory effect was found only at the post-relative clause region, possibly indicating that memory capacity as measure by n-back was not influencing the syntactic processing of relative clauses. This dissertation addresses a heavy task effect between Experiment 1 and 2, and the possible discrepancy between processing performance and production preferences. Processing models emphasizing the role of memory and syntactic structures as well as the “cooperation” of the two models were also discussed. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

Zulu is a language of the Nguni group of the South-Eastern Zone of Bantu languages and is spoken by approximately 5 400 000 people. As far back as 1848, the Zulu language was investigated by a missionary of the American Board in Natal, James C. Bryant. In that year his ideas on the language were put on paper under the title, The Zulu Language, and this valuable contribution of some 13 pages was published in the following year in the Journal of the Oriental Society . Bryant's work heralded the beginning of a tradition of analysis in Zulu that was to capture the interest of a number of investigators over a period stretching up until the present day.

This thesis discusses Internally Headed Constructions in Japanese, specifically, the "Counter-Equi NP" (CENP) construction and the "Internally Headed Relative Clause" (MC) construction. In both of these constructions, an NP within the embedded clause is interpreted as an argument of the matrix clause. / There are two major goals in this thesis. The first goal is to provide a unified syntactic and semantic analysis of the CENP and IHRC constructions. I argue that the CENP construction is basically the same as the IHRC construction, even though some previous researchers have assumed the contrary (Kuroda 1992, 1999, Ohara 1996, Shimoyama 1999, among others). Furthermore, I argue that both the CENP NP and the MC NP are arguments of the matrix verbs. / The second goal is to closely examine the syntactic and semantic properties of the CENP construction and the IHRC construction. As discussed by Hoshi (1995) and Shimoyama (1999), the interpretation of the argument which is "modified by the IHRC" in these constructions is quite similar to that of E-type pronouns (Evans 1977a,b; 1980). In addition, there are some facts that show that the event of the embedded clause is linguistically connected to the event of the matrix clause. Regarding all these properties, the CENP construction behaves in the same manner as the IHRC construction. In this thesis, adapting the E-type pronoun analyses of the IHRC (Hoshi 1995 and Shimoyama 1999), I propose an alternative analysis of the CENP construction and the IHRC construction to capture those properties. / Moreover, even though the CENP construction and the IHRC construction share many properties with each other, there are some differences between them (Shimoyama 1999, among others). In particular, the CENP cannot appear as the subject of the matrix clause, whereas the IHRC can. However, we observe restrictions on possible internal heads with regard to the subject IHRC, in contrast to the CENP. This thesis tries to account for those differences under a unified analysis of the CENP construction and the IHRC construction, together with an analysis of the subject MC, which adapts Shimoyama's (1999) analysis of the IHRC.

Recently, researchers have begun to use syntactic priming to investigate the mental representation of the two languages of bilinguals and their accessibility during comprehension and production (e.g. Bernolet, et al, 2007). In the syntactic priming technique, a priming sentence is presented to elicit a structurally similar target response, when an alternative structure is also available. Previous studies, which focused mainly on the L2 syntactic priming effects of dative structures, found priming effects when the target L2 structure is similar to the L1 but not when they are dissimilar (e.g. Branigan, 2007). The present study investigated priming effects on the English L2 production of relative clauses by 18 Advanced adult Japanese-English bilingual speakers, using a modified version of Bock's (1986) sentence-repetition and picture-description task. It was predicted that the cross-linguistic differences between Japanese and English could potentially influence their L2 production. Experiment 1 comprised three prime-types (Full-relatives, Reduced-relatives, and simple actives) in English. Experiment 2 contained two Prime-types (Full-relatives and simple actives) in Japanese. In both experiments, the target responses were in English. Repeated-measures two-factor ANOVAs was used to test for Main and Interaction effects of Prime Type and Response Type on the mean proportion of responses in each Response Type category. The results of both Experiment 1 (L2-to-L2) and Experiment 2 (L1-to-L2) indicated a significant main effect of Response Type; in both experiments, the participants preferred Simple Actives for picture-description regardless of Prime type. As for the interaction between Prime Type and Response Type, significant results were obtained only in the case of Experiment 1, where the directionality was from L2 prime to L2 response, but not in the case of Experiment 2 (Japanese-to-English). Specifically, in Experiment 1, the participants used Reduced-Relatives more often in the Reduced-Relative clause priming conditions than in the Full-Relatives and the Simple Active condition. The findings bolster the position that the L1 mental representation and the L2 mental representation of complex structures are separate, particularly when a bilingual speaker's two languages are typologically different, as in the case of Japanese and English. The findings also indicate that the L1 mental representation is not accessed during L2 production.

No description available.

No description available.

Orientador: Mary Aizawa Kato / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-26T09:52:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MedeirosJunior_Paulo_D.pdf: 1794629 bytes, checksum: f52cea3c69b8c0f5d4faa3e344140a04 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Esta tese analisa o fenômeno das orações relativas livres em português do Brasil, debatendo, à luz da teoria de Princípios e Parâmetros, em sua versão conhecida como Programa Minimalista, (tal como proposto em Chomsky (1995) e trabalhos subsequentes), questões referentes à sintaxe, semântica e à evolução da estrutura desse tipo de sentença na história do PB. A análise dos dados mostrou que relativas livres em PB são construções do tipo DP em posição argumental e PP em posição não-argumental, derivadas via movimento de sintagma-Wh e são, nessa língua, sujeitas 100% ao chamado efeito de compatibilidade (Matching effect). Entende-se que a derivação de relativas livres envolva uma operação complexa de incorporação de núcleos funcionais (C0 e D0 diretamente implicados no processo de relativização) ¿ tal como proposto em Medeiros Junior 2005 ¿, a qual se reflete na morfologia do sintagma-Wh que integra esse tipo de construção. Tal operação de confluência de núcleos funcionais está, nos termos do que aqui se propõe, diretamente relacionada à presença de um sufixo -ever nulo que, adentrando a numeração da sentença, não pode ficar "desgarrado" (cf. Lasnik 1995). Com base em análise translinguística quanto ao comportamento das relativas livres com -ever em línguas como o inglês, o basco, o persa, o norueguês e o árabe moderno, e considerando que algumas restrições sintáticas encontradas nessas línguas são também verificados no PB, o que se propõe-se aqui é que toda relativa livre do português seja um relativa livre do tipo wh-ever, com um sufixo nulo. Entende-se que esse fato esteja diretamente ligado à interpretação essencialmente maximalizante/universal para relativas livres do PB, considerando a possibilidade de se associar o composto quer que ao wh dessas estruturas. Toma-se como análise alternativa a esta a hipótese aventada em Ott (2011), constituída com base no panorama de Fases do Programa Minimalista, segundo a qual o fato de relativas livres em sua derivação apresentarem, em dado momento, a estrutura de um CP e a forma final DP se deve ao fato de que o DP wh adjungido a CP se projete na estrutura, resultando na constituição final dessas sentenças. A análise histórica, baseada na teoria de pistas sintáticas de David Lightfoot, revelou que, no português clássico, relativas livres apresentam-se com duas estruturas básicas, uma que chamamos relativa semilivre, com uma preposição intervindo entre o determinante "o" e o relativizador "que", e outra em que o que e quem alternam-se livremente. Em face da redução da ocorrência da preposição interveniente, um processo de reanálise faz novas gerações de falantes convergirem massivamente para a segunda estrutura em detrimento da primeira, o que também se propõe alternativamente, pelas características da mudança, se tratar de um processo de gramaticalização nos termos de Roberts e Roussou (2003) / Abstract: This thesis concerns the phenomenon of the Free Relatives (FR) in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), discussing ¿ throughout the Principles and Parameters theory in its version known as the Minimalist Program (as set by Chomsky (1995) and following works) ¿ issues on the derivation of the syntactic structure, the semantics and historical evolution of this kind of sentence in BP. Analyzed data revealed that Brazilian Portuguese FR must be understood as DP structures in argument position and PPs in A' positions, derived via Wh-movement along with the fact that in BP those sentences are a hundred percent subject to the so called matching effect, supposed to affect FRs in general. The derivation of a FR is supposed to involve a complex head incorporation process (just as proposed by Medeiros Junior2005) throughout which the C0 and the D0 heads strictly implicated in relativization constitute one single head, as a reflex of the morphology of the wh-expression integrating these structures. This head incorporation process is said to be straightly related to the presence of a null suffix of the type -ever, which ¿ entering the derivation ¿ could not be unconnected (stray in Lasnik¿s (1995) terms). Based on a cross linguistic analysis of the behavior of FRs with -ever in languages as Basque, English, Norwegian, and Modern Arabic, and considering the fact that some of the syntactic restrictions observed in those languages are also found in Brazilian Portuguese, I propose here that every FR in BP is understood as a WH-ever FR with a null suffix. This is supposed to be directly connected to the necessity of interpreting the wh-phrase in a FR as a maximalizing element (with a preferential universal reading). An alternative analysis for the present one is found out in Ott (2011), which ¿ based on the Phase Program in Minimalist perspectives ¿ proposes that throughout its derivation, a FR show up in some moment a CP structure and reach the final form of a DP, and this is due to the fact that the adjoined wh-DP projects itself in the structure (instead of the host). The diachronic analysis, based on David Lightfoot¿s syntactic cues theory, showed that in Classic Portuguese FRs exhibited two basic structures: one called Semi-free Relative, containing mostly an intervening preposition between the determiner "o" and the relativizer "que", and another one in which o que and quem alternate freely. In face of the reduction of the intervening preposition, a reanalysis process conducted new generations to converge massively to the second structure, despite the first. Considering the characteristics of the syntactic change, one could also propose a process of grammaticalization in the terms of Roberts & Roussou (2003) / Doutorado / Linguistica / Doutor em Linguística

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-190). / xvi, 190 leaves, bound 29 cm