This dissertation describes and analyses a selection of morphosyntactic phenomena from the nominal, verbal and clausal domains of Barese, an upper southern Italian dialect of Puglia. Chapter 2 analyses pragmatically unmarked and marked sentential word orders in Barese. Barese is a null-subject language whose unmarked transitive word order is (S)VO, in which syntactic constituents can be displaced in accordance with their pragmatico-semantic relevance to the discourse. One peculiarity of Barese regards intransitives encoding a loco-temporal (c)overt argument, where VS and SV orders may both mark sentence-focus. While VS encodes a null loco-temporal argument, SV serves to encode broad focus whenever S is ‘accessible’ in the mind of both discourse participants forming part of their ‘common ground’. Chapter 3 examines the structure of Barese nominal expressions, focusing on the interaction between adjectives, possessives and demonstratives. Barese nominals nearly systematically precede adjectives and possessives, except for a small class of rudimentary evaluative adjectives which may occur prenominally. These orders, derived via the phrasal movement of the nominal across its modifiers, are contrasted with the head movement of a morpholexically restricted class of kinship nominals which can be modified by a defective set of enclitic possessives. The final section analyses the behaviour of Barese demonstratives, which only occur in prenominal position. In particular, a peculiar Barese structure which combines the definite article with the distal demonstrative pronoun is analysed, highlighting how it specifically marks discourse-old referents. Chapter 4 describes the mechanisms of auxiliary selection and past participle agreement operative in Barese. In relation to the former, Barese displays three different factors which may determine auxiliary selection, namely person, tense and mood. These three dimensions of variation are analysed in terms of parameter hierarchies which formalise the complexity of the semantic features involved in the selection of the auxiliaries HAVE and BE. It is argued that this complexity reflects different diachronic stages of auxiliary selection across different generations of speakers. The final section investigates Barese active past participle agreement which, unlike auxiliary selection, displays a conservative distribution licensed by direct objects and Undergoer subjects. The peculiarity of Barese, however, is that agreement is morpholexically limited to a small number of ‘strong’ participles which mark agreement exclusively through metaphonetic alternation. The final chapter is concerned with Barese progressive and andative periphrases which variously show inflected forms of the lexical verb in the 2SG-3SG of the present in place of the infinitive. These structures have been argued for Salentino and Sicilian dialects to have developed from instances of coordination with Latin AC ‘and’, which were then reinterpreted as instances of (pseudo-)coordination, namely subordination. In contrast, a different origin for these inflected forms of the lexical verb is proposed for Barese, where AC-coordination is not historically attested. It is argued that the loss of the infinitival ending -RE produced morphophonological identity, viz. syncretism, between the 3SG(/2SG) present and the infinitive, enabling the latter to be reinterpreted as a finite form within the periphrasis. This spred further across the neighbouring dialects to include more grammatical persons (3SG/2SG > 1SG > 3PL > all), as well as past and irrealis paradigms.

This thesis is concerned with Spanish weak dative pronominals. Similar elements-generally labelled as clitics- in many languages have been focus of much research in Linguistics. The present study, however, abstracts away from classic approaches that had the external form of clitics as their main focus and provides description and analysis of very specific uses of dative pronominal items, namely when they appear on ditransitive constructions, with psychological predicates or in a configuration where they are not lexically specified in the valency of the verb, the so-called non-selected datives. The analysis of the dative in ditransitive constructions is twofold. We claim that the distribution of the dative in such configurations has semantic and syntactic implications. The presence of the dative pronoun is becoming grammaticalised and provides an entailment of affectedness. In instances of clitic doubling where we have both the pronoun and a noun phrase, we are treating the pronoun as the element that the predicate subcategorises for and the noun phrase is linked to it through information structure. This analysis is quite innovative as it ensures both elements are linked but they retain syntactic independence, in contrast with their treatment in previous approaches. With psychological predicates, we are concerned with what the status of the dative marked argument is; as previous approaches have contradictory views of it as subject or object. We analyse this dative with the tools provided by Lexical Mapping Theory and disagree with previous accounts by proposing an analysis of this dative as OBJɵ. With regards to non-selected datives in Spanish, they have not been widely discussed in the literature. We describe the different types and propose a finer grouping based on their ability to be treated as derived arguments. We sketch an analysis that adds a dative argument to the valency of a predicate through a lexical operation.

The published work submitted herewith involves the application of Relevance theory (as a theory of verbal communication) to the description of Galician and Spanish, and to translation. The phenomena studied within these areas are examined from the point of view of language use. This allows us to see them together as instantiations of language and thus as being theoretically and fundamentally of a kind. As a result, they are also subject to the same principles of communication. The theoretical approach used and applied throughout is that of Relevance theory. This approach allows for an explanatory theory of verbal communication, which encompasses the two areas under study and thus provides a unitary theoretical framework to account for the phenomena examined. The various aspects of language description and translation explored here are therefore seen as instances of verbal communication to be studied precisely under a single general theory (and not as instances of different fields that should be examined by different theories). This submission is structured in three parts. The first part involves an introduction to the publications submitted, which includes a brief literature review. This review provides an overview of the most important approaches to communication, including the code mode, the Gricean approach and the approach adopted here, namely, Relevance theory. This introductory part also includes a discussion of the overall coherence of the publications submitted, together with their impact and contributions in the wider context of the field of study. The second part of this submission deals with applications of Relevance theory to the description of Galician and Spanish in a range of areas, including prepositional direct objects, presuppositional effects, interpretive use of language, and non-declarative sentences. In all these cases, current approaches are reviewed and critiqued, and alternative accounts are provided as applications of the theoretical framework provided by Relevance theory. The third and final part of this submission deals with applications of Relevance theory to translation in a number of areas, including interlingual interpretive use of language, interlingual enrichment, interlingual impoverishment, and degrees of acceptability in translation. One of the main themes in common between all these areas is the notion of discrepancy between original and target texts in translation. It is shown that many of these translation discrepancies arise from the gap found in verbal communication between what is encoded and what is communicated. Some of the most important types of gap that exist in verbal communication are examined in detail and their impact on translation explored throughout.

Many studies have investigated third language acquisition (L3A) as an independent area of research. The core common interest of these studies has been to search for the source of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) among the previously acquired languages (i.e. L1 and L2) in the learning of an L3. In the domain of morpho-syntax, three competing hypotheses have emerged: one attributes a primary role to the L1 as the source of CLI (Jin, 2009; Hermas, 2014); a second proposes the L2 as the main source of transfer (Bardel and Falk, 2007; Falk and Bardel, 2011); while a third considers that the order of acquisition per se is not the significant factor triggering CLI in L3A, but rather the degree of typological proximity between the L1/L2 and the L3 (Rothman, 2011, 2013, 2015). This study set out to test these hypotheses in the learning of L3 French by two groups: L1 speakers of Spanish and L1 speakers of Turkish, both of whom had learned English as an L2. Each group was further sub-divided by their L2 proficiency into lower intermediates (LIs) and advanced (Adv). Using a ‘mixed methods approach’ consisting of quantitative and qualitative instruments, the acquisition of four morpho-syntactic properties was investigated: (i) Gender, (ii) Number Concord, (iii) Definiteness/Specificity and (iv) Verb Raising. Results were consistent with the proposal of Rothman (2011, 2013, 2015); (psycho)typological proximity seems indeed to be a determining factor triggering CLI in L3A. However, unlike Rothman, who always advocates holistic typological proximity, this study found evidence for CLI based on property-by-property structural similarity. In particular, it is argued that in the absence of clear holistic typological similarity, structural similarity on a property-by-property basis (actual and perceived) is the driving variable for CLI at the initial state of L3A. These findings led to the proposal of a new model entitled the property-based structural proximity (PSP) hypothesis.

Michel de Montaigne believed that to judge a man, we must follow his traces long and carefully. This chronological study of Fou Lei (1908-1966) traces, firstly, his footsteps as a cogent critic of art, literature, music and politics, and as the most accomplished translator of French literature in China of the twentieth century, and secondly reveals a fraction of an intellectual labyrinth meandering through China’s fragmented modern history, almost Oedipal in its disposition towards its past, and its tragic love relations with the West, real or envisioned. Fou Lei the translator of Balzac and Fou Lei the art critic have been the subjects of recent scholarly work of Nicolai Volland and Claire Roberts. This thesis proposes an intellectual biography of Fou Lei and commences, by necessity, with a narrative of his youth – especially the years he spent in Europe – which he himself scarcely mentioned, and the analysis of which is sorely missing in existing literature. Hitherto unpublished documents that I discovered in France and Switzerland contribute to this biography. A close examination of Fou Lei’s early, especially emotional, life is made with the purpose of contextualising his subsequent moral and existential choices. These choices in turn are historicised through his writing, translation and correspondence. Archival findings in Paris lend significant insight into the agony in which he lived during his last years in China, where political predicaments alone were responsible for his death. There are two dimensions to this investigation: intellectual and linguistic. A recurring theme is that of parallels, and a sustained inquiry that of how to reconstruct, then deconstruct, the process of cultural translation and appropriation. Allowing the material to dictate my treatment of it, I make as my focus the internal life of an individual against external conditions. Fou Lei, who chose to live a strictly sedentary life in response to his circumstances, justifies and demands this treatment. Squarely through the point of view of an intellectual who made sense of external and internal realities by way of rigid dichotomy, I obliquely challenge generalised ideas, in particular those of this intellectual himself. I thereby draw attention to the specific thought process of his generalising and the possible ways of understanding it, throwing into question the linguistic instability inherent in these efforts. Under psychological considerations, pre-supposed categorisations dissolve. The ingenium of an individual scrutinised in a given historical situation makes specific the notion of “culture” in a defined context, itself routinely entangled not least semantically. Other than situating Fou Lei, where necessary, in his social milieu, I make apparent, and give accent to, a milieu of words, one with indistinct geographical and temporal boundaries, to glimpse the mental world of a multilingual literatus, the devotion of whose entire adult life was to the craft of language. For the same reason that a thesis on Joseph Conrad might not be expected to discuss Poland, I restrain, where possible, inclined elaboration on the elephantine subject that is China in my study of Fou Lei. I hope to illustrate the “obsession with China” – as C. T. Hsia termed it – that he shared with his contemporaries without falling victim myself to that obsession. This individualistically-driven narrative yet serves a historical purpose. It allows Fou Lei himself to take us from a post-revolutionary, post-May Fourth, post-White Terror Shanghai to an inter-war Europe during the Great Depression, and back to a China entering the Sino-Japanese War, then the Civil War, changing thereafter from a Republic to a People’s Republic under progressively totalitarian control, and traversing endless upheavals into the Cultural Revolution. This voyage becomes thereupon itself a witness both to Fou Lei’s desperate interaction with his time, and to his fierce insistence on autonomy. Notwithstanding our way of arguing being by and large linear, in no way should Fou Lei’s journey be conceptualised as so. In a peculiarly three-dimensional manner, there was more a dislocation, or a continuous array of dislocations, that he had to make sense of in relation to his own country, the political signification of which changed several times over in the lifetime of that particular generation, than the easily supposed confrontation and integration between the so-called East and West. What this modern Chinese intellectual, decidedly archaic in his moral standing and profoundly romantic in a nineteenth-century European sense, obliges, is multi-disciplinary research from multiple angles. What this study of his youth, now positioned in relation to his entire life, reveals, are aspirations that were never fulfilled, seeds that never grew. What it portrays is a sensitivity determined to educate himself against all odds. To a certain extent, this is not so much an analysis of what he achieved – and achieve he did, formidably – as of how he was aborted, and why. In Fou Lei and his Alibis, we observe a man of letters turning time and again to art and literature as a refuge, and I raise, and leave open, questions about his conditions and reactions, still unresolved; questions of alienation and exile, imposed and chosen; questions of perceived roots, perceived universality; the question, as Simone Weil put it, of the relationship between destiny and the human soul.

No description available.

No description available.

Plurilinguismus oder „English only“? Als politische Institution, in der es nur sprachliche und kulturelle Minderheiten gibt und geben wird, folgt die Europäische Union einer plurilinguistischen Orientierung, womit ein erheblicher Bedarf an Sprach- und Kulturkenntnissen (und deren Erwerb) verbunden ist. Grosso modo umfasst die EU drei große indoeuropäische Sprachfamilien: die romanische, slawische und germanische. Innerhalb jeder dieser Sprachgruppen gibt es etymologisch bedingte Gemeinsamkeiten, die v.a. die Phonologie, Morphologie, Lexik und Syntax betreffen. Die Kenntnis dieser synchron erkennbaren gemeinsamen Elemente bzw. ihrer einzelsprachlich äquivalenten Varianten ermöglicht transferhaftes Lernen im Sinne der Interkomprehension in Sprachfamilien. Grundlage der romanischen Interkomprehension ist das „Vulgärlatein“, dessen Spezifik v.a. gegenüber den heutigen Sprachen der Romania herausgestellt wird. Den lerntheoretischen Hintergrund der Interkomprehension bilden die Interlanguage-Hypothese, die Annahme mentaler Netzwerke sowie die verschiedenen Verarbeitungsstadien des interkomprehensiven Spracherwerbs: Spontangrammatik, Mehrsprachenspeicher und didaktischer Monitor. Zudem wird die Rolle mutter- und fremdsprachlicher Transferbasen sowie die der einzelnen Transferdomänen (Form, Inhalt, Funktion, Pragmatik, Didaktik) erläutert. Schwerpunkte der vorliegenden Arbeit bilden die Motivation und die einzelnen Verarbeitungsstadien beim interkomprehensiven Lesen, wobei dem sprachlichen Vorwissen der Lesenden besondere Bedeutung zukommt. Der vorgeschlagene Leitfaden für das erschließende Lesen umfasst drei Gesamtlektüren und berücksichtigt dabei sowohl sprachsystematische als auch textlinguistische Kriterien. Zur Illustration dient ein aktueller Text in Nissart, der auch verschiedenen Probanden vorgelegt wurde. Die Analyse ergab, dass ein globales Textverständnis durch die Kenntnis einer romanischen Sprache spontan gegeben ist, dieses Globalverständnis im Einzelnen jedoch deutlich differieren kann. Am Ende der Arbeit werden mit der Darstellung der strukturellen Besonderheiten des Rumänischen die Grenzen interkomprehensiven Leseverständnisses gezeigt, aber auch der erleichterte Einstieg in die Sprachproduktion dargelegt. / Plurilinguism or “English only”? As a political institution consisting of linguistic and cultural minorities only, the European Union prefers plurilinguism creating a significant need for specific cultural and language knowledge (and acquisition). The EU is divided into three big Indoeuropean language families: the Romance, the Slavic and the German. Within each of them there are etymological based equivalences concerning e.g. phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic characteristics. Knowing these synchronic discernible elements and their specific equivalences enables language acquisition by transfer-based learning. The basis of Romance intercomprehension is “Vulgarlatin”, whose characteristics are compared to those of the modern romance languages. The theoretical background of intercomprehension is formed by the Interlanguage-Hypothesis, concepts of mental networks and several processes of intercomprehensive language-acquisition: spontaneous grammar, multilingual memory and didactic monitor. The role of transfer-bases (mother-tongue and foreign language(s)) and of each one of the transfer-domains (form, content, function, pragmatic, didactic) is explained. The focus in this paper is on motivation and the specific steps of the intercomprehensive reading process, whereby special emphasis is placed on the reader´s previous knowledge. The suggested guide to “reading by intellectual guessing” encompasses three readings and takes into consideration not only criteria of the language-system, but also those of textual linguistics. To illustrate the whole process, a contemporary text in Nissart is analysed. This text also was analysed by several test-persons. Result: By knowing one romance language a spontaneous global comprehension of another one is possible, but there can be significant differences in the details of this global comprehension. The paper concludes by using the structural characteristics of Romanian to illustrate the limits of spontaneous intercomprehensive reading comprehension on the one hand, but the facilitation of language production on the other.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-247).

Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1996. / "Stellingen" laid in. Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-221).