Although the syntax of the left periphery of the Irish clausal architecture has been the subject of considerable research within the generative paradigm, many questions remain unresolved. The general goal of this thesis is to explore some of these understudied territories. Specifically, I consider two distinct, but ultimately related phenomena: headless relative clauses and dependent verbal morphology. I will make four major claims: The first two concern the syntax (and semantics) of the headless relative clause. First, despite the fact that the particles that appear in resumptive relative clauses and in headless relative clauses are morpho-phonologically identical as aN, headless relative clauses are derived by movement, not by means of resumption, and thus the particles in these two constructions are not the same. Second, headless relative clauses are amount relative clauses, in the sense of Carlson (1977); and thus I claim, adopting Grosu and Landman's (1998) notion of complex degree, that the element that undergoes A$'$-movement in a headless relative clause is a complex degree, causing degree-abstraction in the semantics. The maximalization operator then applies to the degree-abstracted relative CP. I argue that it is this operator that triggers the appearance of the particle aN in the headless relative construction. The latter two claims concern the morphosyntax of the left periphery of Irish syntax: First, I claim that there are two tense features in a single finite clause domain of Irish, and that the so-called dependent forms of irregular verbs are the surface realization of the two tense features. This account provides a stepping stone to my final claim that a feature agreeing with the maximalization operator, but not the operator itself, is realized in the headless relative particle aN and that the particles found in resumptive relative clauses and in headless relative clauses are in fact distinct Vocabulary Items and thus they are homophonous. This thesis thus fills a gap in the descriptive account of Irish syntax, and provides new insights to the theory of relativization.

Submitted by Gabriela Maria de Oliveira null (gabrielaolvr@gmail.com) on 2016-07-25T15:51:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Gabriela Oliveira-Codinhoto TESE FINAL Biblioteca.pdf: 1741339 bytes, checksum: 559d704ad34b55f6fc6941bcddc433fd (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Felipe Augusto Arakaki (arakaki@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-07-28T12:17:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 codinhoto_gmo_dr_sjrp.pdf: 1741339 bytes, checksum: 559d704ad34b55f6fc6941bcddc433fd (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-28T12:17:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 codinhoto_gmo_dr_sjrp.pdf: 1741339 bytes, checksum: 559d704ad34b55f6fc6941bcddc433fd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-07-14 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / O principal objetivo deste trabalho foi o estudo das restrições à acessibilidade das construções relativas no processo de aquisição de escrita a partir de uma perspectiva funcionalista de base holandesa. Partindo da proposta de Keenan e Comrie (1977), que prevê restrições de ordem (morfos)sintática para a relativização, propusemos um novo olhar para acessibilidade das OR, não mais baseado unicamente na morfossintaxe, mas também, e principalmente, nos processos de natureza pragmática, semântica e cognitiva, como os propostos por Dik (1997) e O’Grady (2011). A hipótese fundamental do trabalho é comprovar a proeminência não da relação gramatical de sujeito, como postulam Keenan e Comrie (1977), mas de uma escala de topicidade e animacidade e de uma escala de distância entre a lacuna e o material de preenchimento na oração relativa, de natureza cognitiva e referencial. Entre os processos de codificação morfossintática envolvidos na construção relativa, nos interessou examinar a hipótese de que a estratégia de pronome relativo não está presente na gramática dos alunos em processo de letramento formal, tese já sustentada por Kenedy (2007) em estudo de aquisição de linguagem de base gerativista; e defender a hipótese de que, na realidade, as crianças, que já dominam especialmente a estratégia de lacuna, a mais disseminada também na fala do adulto (cf. CAMACHO, 2012; 2014; 2016; inédito), a estendem, da posição de sujeito e de objeto direto, para todas as demais funções passíveis de serem relativizadas no português. Para confirmar ou refutar as hipóteses apresentadas, utilizamos como córpus de análise textos produzidos por alunos do Ensino Fundamental I de duas escolas públicas de São José do Rio Preto, pertencentes ao banco de dados de textos escritos compilado por Capristano (2001-2004), no âmbito dos estudos produzidos pelo Grupo de Pesquisa Estudos sobre a Linguagem. A análise dos resultados permitiu a conclusão de que, além de propiciar aos alunos o conhecimento de traços e propriedades morfossintáticos das relativas, o desenvolvimento do processo de escolarização ativa um domínio maior das variáveis contextuais de uso, o que gera, consequentemente, um acréscimo não só de frequência, mas também de qualidade da informação construída. Já em relação aos critérios semânticos e cognitivos que atuam na relativização, foi possível confirmar a hipótese de O’Grady (2011) de que não há, em línguas de relativas pós-nominais como o português, uma supremacia de acessibilidade do sujeito em detrimento do objeto, como prevê a Hierarquia de Acessibilidade (HA), uma vez que ambos dispõem do mesmo estatuto cognitivo e funcional. Na realidade, a principal diferença entre as duas funções sintáticas mais básicas da hierarquia de Keenam e Comrie (1977) é motivada por diferenças semânticas, como o traço de animacidade das entidades participantes da relativização de objeto. Os dados mostraram, enfim, que a escala de animacidade é mais relevante para a relativização do que as funções sintáticas, corroborando a hipótese inicial deste trabalho. / The main objective of this research was the study of restrictions on the accessibility of relative constructions in the writing acquisition process from a Dutch functionalist perspective. Starting from the model proposed by Keenan and Comrie (1977), which predicts (morpho)syntactic restrictions to relativization, we proposed a new look at the accessibility in relative clauses, no longer based solely on morphosyntax, but also and especially on pragmatic, semantic and cognitive processes, as the ones proposed by Dik (1997) and O'Grady (2011). The fundamental hypothesis of this work is to prove the prominence not of the grammatical relation of the subject, as postulated by Keenan and Comrie (1977), but of a scale of topicity and animacy and a scale of the distance between filler and gap in relative clauses, both cognitively and referentially. Among the morphosyntactic coding processes involved in the relative construction, we were interested in examining the hypothesis that the relative pronoum strategy is not present in the grammar of students during the formal literacy process, which was already sustained by Kenedy (2007) in a generative-based study on language acquisition, and also in defending the hypothesis that, in fact, children who already master the gapping strategy, which is the most frequent in adult speech (cf. CAMACHO, 2012; 2014; 2016; unpublished), also extend it from the position of subject and direct object to all other functions that can be relativized in Portuguese. In order to confirm or refute the presented hypotheses, we used as our analysis corpus some texts produced by elementary school students in two public schools in São José do Rio Preto, which belong to the database of written texts compiled by Capristano (2001-2004), in the scope of the studies produced by the Estudos sobre a Linguagem Research Group. The analysis of the results allowed us to conclude that, besides providing students with the knowledge on morphosyntactic features and properties of relatives, the development of the learning process also activates a greater understanding of contextual variables of use, which consequently generates an increase not only in the frequency but also in the quality of constructed information. In relation to the semantic and cognitive criteria that work in relativization, it was possible to confirm the hypothesis by O'Grady (2011) that in languages with post-nominal relatives such as Portuguese there is a supremacy of accessibility of the subject at the expense of the object, as predicted by the Accessibility Hierarchy (AH), since both have the same cognitive and functional status. In fact, the main difference between the two most basic syntactic functions in Keenam and Comrie hierarchy (1977) is motivated by semantic differences, as animacy feature of the participating entities in the relativization of the object. The data showed, therefore, that the animacy scale is more relevant to the relativization than the syntactic functions, corroborating the initial hypothesis of this work. / FAPESP: 2013/00065-5

Relative clauses are grammatical constructions that are of relevance in both typical and impaired language development. Thus, the accurate identification of these structures in child language samples is clinically important. In recent years, computer software has been used to assist in the automated analysis of clinical language samples. However, this software has had only limited success when attempting to identify relative clauses. The present study explores the development and clinical importance of relative clauses and investigates the accuracy of the software used for automated identification of these structures. Two separate collections of language samples were used. The first collection included 10 children with language impairment, ranging in age from 7;6 to 11;1 (years;months), 10 age-matched peers, and 10 language-matched peers. A second collection contained 30 children considered to have typical speech and language skills and who ranged in age from 2;6 to 7;11. Language samples were manually coded for the presence of relative clauses (including those containing a relative pronoun, those without a relative pronoun and reduced relative clauses). These samples were then tagged using computer software and finally tabulated and compared for accuracy. ANACOVA revealed a significant difference in the frequency of relative clauses containing a relative pronoun but not for those without a relative pronoun nor for reduce relative clauses. None of the structures were significantly correlated with age; however, frequencies of both relative clauses with and without relative pronouns were correlated with mean length of utterance. Kappa levels revealed that agreement between manual and automated coding was relatively high for each relative clause type and highest for relative clauses containing relative pronouns.

The goal of this thesis is to develop a grammar model of Japanese within the framework of Dynamic Syntax (Cann et al. 2005, Kempson et al. 2001), with special reference to constructions that involve the nominaliser no: clefts and certain kinds of relatives. The more general theoretical position which it aims to defend is that an account of these constructions in terms of ‘language dynamics’ is preferable to other ‘static’ approaches currently available. What is here meant by ‘language dynamics,’ in a nutshell, is the time-linear processing of a string and attendant growth of an interpretation. First, I shall motivate, and articulate, an integrated account of the two types of no- nominalisation. These two classes are uniformly modelled as an outcome of incremental semantic-tree growth. The analysis is corroborated by naturally-occurring data extracted from the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ). Moreover, novel data with regard to coordination are accounted for without losing uniformity. Second, the composite entry of no and the topic marker wa handles the two types of clefts uniformly. This account fits well with the CSJ findings. New data concerning case-marking of foci are explained in terms of whether an unfixed relation in a semantic tree is resolvable in incremental processing. The account also solves the island-puzzle without abandoning uniformity. As a further confirmation, the analysis is extendable to stripping/sluicing, making some novel predictions on case-marking patterns. Third, the entry of no characterises free relatives and change relatives in a unitary manner. Furthermore, the composite entry of no and a case particle predicts a vast range of properties of head-internal relatives, including new data (e.g., negation in the relative clause, locality restriction on the Relevancy Condition). In sum, the thesis presents a realistic, integrated, and empirically preferable model of Japanese. Some consequences stand out. The various new data reported are beneficial theory-neutrally. Formal aspects of Dynamic Syntax are advanced. The insights brought by a language dynamics account challenge the standard, static conception of grammar.

Essa dissertação pretende esclarecer o estatuto das orações relativas do karitiana (tupi- Arikém). Orações relativas podem ser classificadas como relativas de núcleo externo (RNE) e de núcleo interno (RNI), sendo o principal critério de diferenciação a posição do núcleo em relação à relativa: relativas com o núcleo adjacente à oração subordinada são classificadas como RNEs, enquanto aquelas com o núcleo interno à subordinada são RNIs (DE VRIES, 2006, CULY, 1990). Outro critério utilizado é a marcação de caso: se o núcleo estiver marcado com o caso exigido pelo verbo da matriz, a relativa será uma RNE; se for aquele exigido pelo verbo da relativa, ela será uma RNI (COLE, 1987). Dentro desse quadro, as orações do karitiana são difíceis de classificar: por um lado, o núcleo aparece sempre deslocado para a periferia esquerda (STORTO, 1999), algo característico de RNEs; por outro, a marcação de caso no núcleo segue o padrão de RNIs. À luz do trabalho de Basilico (1996), hipotetizamos que as relativas do karitiana seriam RNIs com frontalização opcional do núcleo. Se for o caso, é esperado que relativas com núcleos não frontalizados sejam permitidas. Montamos então um experimento para verificar se as relativas poderiam ter seus núcleos não frontalizados e testamos 14 falantes com uma metodologia de produção elicitada. Os resultados mostram que, embora haja uma tendência pela frontalização, núcleos não frontalizados são permitidos na língua, pois há casos de relativas de sujeito com a ordem OSV e de relativas de objeto SOtiV, OSV e SOV. Também foram produzidas relativas de objeto sem o morfema de foco do objeto , indicando que ele não é imprescindível para a relativização. Esse quadro aproxima nossas relativas das RNIs, pois RNEs não podem ter núcleos em outras posições além da periferia da oração relativa. Também analisamos propostas de análise sintática para as diversas ordens de palavras coletadas em nosso experimento. Vemos que aquelas que assumem algum tipo de deslocamento do núcleo para Spec de uma projeção de periferia seja CP ou AspP incorrem em diversos problemas, como a impossibilidade de derivar relativas de objeto SOtiV e a incapacidade de excluir estruturas agramaticais com advérbios. Assim, propomos que a frontalização do núcleo é uma adjunção a AspP. Dados de orações relativas com advérbios nos levam ainda a postular que, em relativas de objeto, a frontalização do núcleo ocorre em duas etapas: primeiro um movimento para Spec, vP e, em seguida, a frontalização para uma posição de adjunto de AspP. Essa primeira etapa do movimento seria marcada pela presença de em v e estaria na base do sincretismo desse morfema, que também está presente em perguntas qu- de objeto e em construções de foco do objeto. Por fim, oferecemos ainda uma análise da correlação entre a presença do morfema e a frontalização do objeto a partir do modelo de fases de Chomsky (2000, 2001), admitindo que o movimento do objeto para a borda do sintagma verbal seria uma operação sintática imprescindível para a subsequente frontalização do objeto / This dissertation aims to clarify the status of relative clauses in Karitiana (Tupi-Arikém). Relative clauses are traditionally classified as externally (EHRC) or internally-headed (IHRC) and the main criterion for their differentiation is the heads position: EHRCs have their heads adjacent to the relative clause itself, whereas IHRCs have internal heads (DE VRIES, 2006, CULY, 1990). Another criterion is case-marking: if the head is marked with the case demanded by the matrix verb, the relative is an EHRC; if it is the one demanded by the embedded verb, it will be an IHRC (COLE, 1987). Within this framework, karitiana relative clauses are hard to classify: on one hand, the head always appears fronted to the left periphery (STORTO, 1999), which resembles the pattern found in EHRCS; on the other hand, the case-marking on the head is similar to IHRCs. In the light of Basilicos (1996) work, one can hypothesize that karitiana relative clauses are IHRCs with optional head frontalization. In this case, it is expected that relatives with non-fronted heads will be allowed in the language. An experiment was designed in order to verify if karitiana relatives could have non-fronted heads and 14 speakers were tested with an elicited production methodology. The results show that, although there is a preference for frontalization, non-fronted heads are possible in the language, since subject relatives OSV and object relatives SOtiV, OSV and SOV were produced. There are also cases of object relatives without the object focus morpheme , indicating that it is not indispensable in relative clause formation. These results bring karitiana relatives closer to IHRCs, because EHRCs cannot have their heads in any other positions than in the periphery of the clause. We also discuss some syntactic proposals for the word orders found in our experiment, claiming that those which assume head dislocation to Spec of CP and AspP face some problems, such as the derivation of SOtiV object relatives and ungrammatical structures with adverbs. Therefore, our proposal is that the frontalization of the head is an adjunction to AspP. Paradigms of relative clauses with adverbs also show that, in object relatives, the frontalization of the head occurs in two steps: first the head moves to Spec, vP and then it is further fronted to the position of adjunct of Spec, AspP. The first step is marked with on v and it underlies the syncretism of this morpheme, which is also present in object wh- questions and object focus constructions. Finally, the correlation between and the frontalization of the head is analyzed within the phase theory framework (CHOMSKY, 2000, 2001) and it is assumed that object movement to vPs edge is a syntactic requirement for further frontalization

Essa dissertação pretende esclarecer o estatuto das orações relativas do karitiana (tupi- Arikém). Orações relativas podem ser classificadas como relativas de núcleo externo (RNE) e de núcleo interno (RNI), sendo o principal critério de diferenciação a posição do núcleo em relação à relativa: relativas com o núcleo adjacente à oração subordinada são classificadas como RNEs, enquanto aquelas com o núcleo interno à subordinada são RNIs (DE VRIES, 2006, CULY, 1990). Outro critério utilizado é a marcação de caso: se o núcleo estiver marcado com o caso exigido pelo verbo da matriz, a relativa será uma RNE; se for aquele exigido pelo verbo da relativa, ela será uma RNI (COLE, 1987). Dentro desse quadro, as orações do karitiana são difíceis de classificar: por um lado, o núcleo aparece sempre deslocado para a periferia esquerda (STORTO, 1999), algo característico de RNEs; por outro, a marcação de caso no núcleo segue o padrão de RNIs. À luz do trabalho de Basilico (1996), hipotetizamos que as relativas do karitiana seriam RNIs com frontalização opcional do núcleo. Se for o caso, é esperado que relativas com núcleos não frontalizados sejam permitidas. Montamos então um experimento para verificar se as relativas poderiam ter seus núcleos não frontalizados e testamos 14 falantes com uma metodologia de produção elicitada. Os resultados mostram que, embora haja uma tendência pela frontalização, núcleos não frontalizados são permitidos na língua, pois há casos de relativas de sujeito com a ordem OSV e de relativas de objeto SOtiV, OSV e SOV. Também foram produzidas relativas de objeto sem o morfema de foco do objeto , indicando que ele não é imprescindível para a relativização. Esse quadro aproxima nossas relativas das RNIs, pois RNEs não podem ter núcleos em outras posições além da periferia da oração relativa. Também analisamos propostas de análise sintática para as diversas ordens de palavras coletadas em nosso experimento. Vemos que aquelas que assumem algum tipo de deslocamento do núcleo para Spec de uma projeção de periferia seja CP ou AspP incorrem em diversos problemas, como a impossibilidade de derivar relativas de objeto SOtiV e a incapacidade de excluir estruturas agramaticais com advérbios. Assim, propomos que a frontalização do núcleo é uma adjunção a AspP. Dados de orações relativas com advérbios nos levam ainda a postular que, em relativas de objeto, a frontalização do núcleo ocorre em duas etapas: primeiro um movimento para Spec, vP e, em seguida, a frontalização para uma posição de adjunto de AspP. Essa primeira etapa do movimento seria marcada pela presença de em v e estaria na base do sincretismo desse morfema, que também está presente em perguntas qu- de objeto e em construções de foco do objeto. Por fim, oferecemos ainda uma análise da correlação entre a presença do morfema e a frontalização do objeto a partir do modelo de fases de Chomsky (2000, 2001), admitindo que o movimento do objeto para a borda do sintagma verbal seria uma operação sintática imprescindível para a subsequente frontalização do objeto / This dissertation aims to clarify the status of relative clauses in Karitiana (Tupi-Arikém). Relative clauses are traditionally classified as externally (EHRC) or internally-headed (IHRC) and the main criterion for their differentiation is the heads position: EHRCs have their heads adjacent to the relative clause itself, whereas IHRCs have internal heads (DE VRIES, 2006, CULY, 1990). Another criterion is case-marking: if the head is marked with the case demanded by the matrix verb, the relative is an EHRC; if it is the one demanded by the embedded verb, it will be an IHRC (COLE, 1987). Within this framework, karitiana relative clauses are hard to classify: on one hand, the head always appears fronted to the left periphery (STORTO, 1999), which resembles the pattern found in EHRCS; on the other hand, the case-marking on the head is similar to IHRCs. In the light of Basilicos (1996) work, one can hypothesize that karitiana relative clauses are IHRCs with optional head frontalization. In this case, it is expected that relatives with non-fronted heads will be allowed in the language. An experiment was designed in order to verify if karitiana relatives could have non-fronted heads and 14 speakers were tested with an elicited production methodology. The results show that, although there is a preference for frontalization, non-fronted heads are possible in the language, since subject relatives OSV and object relatives SOtiV, OSV and SOV were produced. There are also cases of object relatives without the object focus morpheme , indicating that it is not indispensable in relative clause formation. These results bring karitiana relatives closer to IHRCs, because EHRCs cannot have their heads in any other positions than in the periphery of the clause. We also discuss some syntactic proposals for the word orders found in our experiment, claiming that those which assume head dislocation to Spec of CP and AspP face some problems, such as the derivation of SOtiV object relatives and ungrammatical structures with adverbs. Therefore, our proposal is that the frontalization of the head is an adjunction to AspP. Paradigms of relative clauses with adverbs also show that, in object relatives, the frontalization of the head occurs in two steps: first the head moves to Spec, vP and then it is further fronted to the position of adjunct of Spec, AspP. The first step is marked with on v and it underlies the syncretism of this morpheme, which is also present in object wh- questions and object focus constructions. Finally, the correlation between and the frontalization of the head is analyzed within the phase theory framework (CHOMSKY, 2000, 2001) and it is assumed that object movement to vPs edge is a syntactic requirement for further frontalization

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) --University of the North, 1978 / Refer to the document

This paper investigates the structural properties of morphosyntactically marked focus constructions, focussing on the often neglected non-focal sentence part in African tone languages. <br>Based on new empirical evidence from five Gur and Kwa languages, we claim that these focus expressions have to be analysed as biclausal constructions even though they do not represent clefts containing restrictive relative clauses. <br>First, we relativize the partly overgeneralized assumptions about structural correspondences between the out-of-focus part and relative clauses, and second, we show that our data do in fact support the hypothesis of a clause coordinating pattern as present in clause sequences in narration. <br>It is argued that we deal with a non-accidental, systematic feature and that grammaticalization may conceal such basic narrative structures.

This dissertation investigates two facts about language processing. The Good Enough Approach claims that language users do not form a fully detailed representation of the input unless the task at hand requires it. On the other hand it has been shown that language users display internal preferences when they are faced with ambiguous input, as to what direction disambiguation should take. It has been proposed that these preferences are based on previous experience with similar inputs. This thesis investigates these two issues using tools from the fields of decision making and reinforcement learning. Specifically feedback and payoffs associated with sentence interpretations are manipulated to explore reading behavior, understood as a process of information seeking, and disambiguation choices. In four eye-tracking-reading experiments, the experimental stimuli are sentences containing a relative clause attachment ambiguity. Experiment 1 investigates whether the combination of the degree of ambiguity of a sentence and the possible payoffs, affect people’s reading times for the potentially ambiguous parts of a sentence, as well as their disambiguation choices. Experiment 2 investigates the role of feedback in such processes, a combination related to expected utility maximization. Experiment 3 studies how participants learn from feedback under risky or non-risky conditions. The last experiment investigates whether participants adjust their responses to evidence provided by feedback even overriding their internal initial bias towards a default response. / text

This dissertation examines the processing of sentences involving long-distance linguistic dependencies, or sentences containing elements that must be linked across intervening words and phrases. Specifically, both behavioral (self-paced reading and eye tracking) and neurophysiological (electroencephalography) methods were used (a) to evaluate the relative importance of backward- and forward-looking dependency satisfaction processes in the comprehension of sentences involving wh-dependencies and (b) to determine the extent to which common neurocognitive mechanisms are involved the processing of wh- and anaphoric dependencies. With respect to the first issue, both behavioral andneurophysiological results indicated a core role for forward-looking, expectancy-based processes in the comprehension of wh-dependency sentences. Regarding the latter issue, despite considerable overlap in the reading patterns associated with wh-dependencies and (at least some types of) anaphora, the neurophysiological responses related to these dependency types indicated that their processing draws on distinct neurocognitive mechanisms.