Compounding in the world’s languages is a complex word-­‐formation process that is not easily accounted for. Moreover, incorporation is equally complex and problematic. This examination of compounding and incorporation in the Ket language seeks to identify the underlying logic of these processes and to work towards a typology that captures generalizations among the numerous ways in which languages expand their lexicons through these processes. Canonical Typology provides a framework that does just this. A preliminary canonical typology of compounds is proposed here, one that subsumes a range of compounds as well as incorporation. For this reason, the Ket language, which relies heavily on compounding and incorporation, will be used as a test case. The aim is to define the canonical com

Shawnee is a language whose alignment system is of the type first proposed by Nichols (1992) and Siewierska (1998): hierarchical alignment. This alignment system was proposed to account for languages where distinctions between agent (A) and object (O) are not formally manifested. Such is the case in Shawnee; there are person-marking inflections on the verb for both A and O, but there is not set order. Instead, Shawnee makes reference to an animacy hierarchy and is an inverse system. This thesis explores how hierarchical alignment is accounted for by Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), and also applies Paradigm Function Morphology to LFG’s m(orphological)-structure as most of the alignment system in Shawnee is realized in the inflectional morphology.

This is a study of processes of structural and functional diversification of the uses of three cognate verbs across the Indo-Iranian language family: “do/make”, “be/become”, and “give”. First, this study identifies over sixty distinct construction types in which these verbs are used, including complex predicate constructions, nominal predication constructions, serial verb constructions, and several distinct auxiliary constructions. Since the sets of verbs studied here are cognates, and share a common source, crosslinguistic differences in their uses are the result of grammatical change, and especially shared and parallel innovations of similar uses. Then, this study presents a taxonomy of different complex predication types with “do/make”, and shows that there are general patterns in the deployment of different types of complex predication to express different types of situations. These patterns exhibit “transitivity prominence” previously identified by typologists with “heavy” or “lexical” verbs. This study then shows that these patterns are the result of several distinct pathways of grammatical change, often motivated by analogy to existing constructions, giving raise to different types of N-V complex predication constructions. Then, this study shows that despite the fact that Indo-Iranian speakers can potentially deploy distinct constructions to encode each of the six nominal predication functions, sets of such functions are often co-expressed by the same structural coding means, especially clauses with cognate “be/become” verbs. This study uses a novel method, based on bipartite network graphs, to compare of the degree to which nominal predication functions are co-expressed in different languages. Finally, this study shows that the three sets of cognate verbs are more likely to be used similarity within branches and subbranches of Indo-Iranian than across branches. The scope of this branches, however, is different for different verbs: “do/make” and “give” behave more similarly in languages which belong to the same major branch, Iranian or Indo-Aryan, but “be/become” clusters are at different levels of subbranching. This is the result of the different types of innovations attested with these verbs: reanalysis and actualization motivated by analogy with “do/make” and “give”, and metaphorical and metonymy extensions with “be/become”.

Submitted by Franciele Moreira (francielemoreyra@gmail.com) on 2018-06-08T13:20:47Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Sofia Oliveira Pereira dos Anjos Coimbra da Silva - 2018.pdf: 4631002 bytes, checksum: 33e41732afd4a0f200a09e8ec8ae1229 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2018-06-08T15:05:53Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Sofia Oliveira Pereira dos Anjos Coimbra da Silva - 2018.pdf: 4631002 bytes, checksum: 33e41732afd4a0f200a09e8ec8ae1229 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-06-08T15:05:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Sofia Oliveira Pereira dos Anjos Coimbra da Silva - 2018.pdf: 4631002 bytes, checksum: 33e41732afd4a0f200a09e8ec8ae1229 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-04 / This study presents a descriptive analysis of Libras about the position of verbs in the turns of a dialogue between deaf people. For this, we resorted to the descriptive analysis, recognizing the dialogical interaction as a textual instrument, and to the semantic-syntactic theoretical base to analyse the documented data, which allowed us to observe the relations between elements that predicate and the position of verbal predication in the analyzed turns. Our analysis favors the typological-functional view, once our hypothesis is that the position of verbs is preferred in certain texts for inherent pragmatic factors and not derived from an underlying basic order.Thus, we use the theoretical bases of prototypicality in the simple sentence composition and in the verb semantics suggested by Givón (2001), in order to analyze the documented data. In the dialogue the verbs present an ending position when the turns contain predications, when relating elements, that represent changing of location and aspectual and descriptive information of the entities. The verbs present a medial and initial position when such predications have the articulated base anchored to the body. Therefore, the position of the verb will follow accordingly the compositional mode of the predicate inserted in the turn. The position of the verbs in Libras is a consequence of the pragmatic influence upon the semantic and syntactic structure of the units presented in turns in the analyzed dialogue. / Este estudo apresenta uma pesquisa de análise descritiva da Libras acerca da posição dos verbos nos turnos de um diálogo entre surdos. Para isso, recorremos à análise descritiva, reconhecendo a interação dialogada como instrumento textual, e à base teórica semântico-sintática para analisar os dados documentados, que permitiu observar as relações entre elementos que predicam e a posição da predicação verbal nos turnos analisados. Nossa análise privilegia a visão tipológico-funcional, uma vez que nossa hipótese é de que a posição dos verbos é preferida em determinados textos por fatores pragmáticos inerentes e não derivada de uma ordem básica subjacente. Para tanto, nos valemos das bases teóricas de prototipicidade na composição sentencial simples e na semântica dos verbos sugerida por Givón (2001), a fim de analisar os dados documentados. No diálogo, os verbos apresentam posição final quando os turnos contêm predicações que, ao relacionar elementos, representam mudança de localização e informações aspectuais e descritivas das entidades. Os verbos apresentam posição medial e inicial quando tais predicações têm base articulatória ancorada ao corpo. Sendo assim, a posição do verbo seguirá o modo composicional do predicado inserido no turno. A posição dos verbos na Libras é uma consequência da influência pragmática sobre a estrutura semântica e sintática das unidades apresentadas por turnos no diálogo analisado.

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Pronominal complex predicates in colloquial Persian are periphrastic constructions with an idiosyncratic syntactic pattern. They show a peculiar behavior compared to the regular agreement system in Persian, and they are the only construction in Persian which requires the obligatory presence of a pronominal enclitic. This work is an attempt to analyze this construction in order to find its function. For this purpose, a lexical semantic classification of them was proposed, which helped in presenting a new analysis. It was found out that this construction is used to express a particular diathesis in which the topic of the sentence (determined according to Givón’s topicality hierarchy) is an indirect participant. I proposed a hybrid dual-layer agreement system which includes a morphosyntactic and a semantic layer. The pronominal enclitic was analyzed as a phrasal affix and agreement marker by reference to Givón’s (1976) and Anderson’s (2005) arguments. The construction was analyzed to be an instance of the external possessor construction proposed by Haig (2008), which is observed in Iranian languages. The classification of the data clarified the mapping of semantics onto syntax. The proposed analysis could be added to and unified with the current analysis of Persian complex predicates (Bonami and Samvelian, 2009).

The evolution of social media platforms and other public forums in the digital realm has created an explosion of user-generated content and data as a component of the already content-saturated digital landscape. The distributed, horizontal nature of the internet as a platform makes it difficult to ascertain value and differentiate between texts of varying validity, bias, and purpose. In addition, the internet is not an inanimate interface. As Pariser (2011) argues, content aggregators, such as Google, actively filter, personalize, and therefore limit each individual's access to information, in both range and type. This has created a crisis of information valuation and control. Importantly, conventional curriculum does not furnish students with the information literacy tools necessary for them to navigate the digital landscape effectively. Information miners and developers, including news organizations, are falling victim to this fallacy as well. Lankshear and Knobel (2011) posit that empowering navigation and control in the digital landscape requires a new mindset. This research offers a context-driven approach that acknowledges this new mindset, promoting "rhetorical consciousness" (Murphy et al., 2003) within the network and providing a framework to recognize, challenge, and co-create gatekeeping roles and mechanism as they increasingly shift to the individual.

<p>This study argues that the observed-over-expected ratio, or O/E, is an inadequate metric for measuring the strength of consonant co-occurrence in Similar Place Avoidance. I advocate for the use of Yule's Q, an odds ratio based statistic that is not influenced by the relative proportions of labials, coronals, and dorsals in the dataset. This position is advanced on general statistical and linguistic considerations as well as through the analysis of empirical data from 32 languages. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Parallel typological analyses are conducted using O/E and Yule's Q. Cross-linguistic comparisons using O/E suggest that CVC sequences with two coronals are the least marked of the homorganic pairs. The same analysis using Yule's Q suggests any place of articulation may be the least/most marked in a given language; there are no cross-linguistic preferences. The disagreement between the two statistics can be accounted for by the fact that O/E is sensitive to the margin totals: coronals only appear to pattern separately from the labials and dorsals in the O/E analysis because they are considerably more frequent than are labial and dorsal segments.</p> <p><br></p> <p>To advance the use of Yule's Q in the study of Similar Place Avoidance, the paper provides guidance on constructing confidence intervals, measuring/interpreting effect size, and appropriate use of significance testing. Two case studies on aspects of Similar Place Avoidance in Latin and Medieval Castilian illustrate the proposed methodology.</p>

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation presents a analysis of negation in a spoken language, i.e., Khuzestani Arabic (KhA), and a sign language, i.e., Sadat Tawaher Sign Language (STSL). STSL emerged naturally without any intervention such as deaf education after a man lost his hearing around sixty years ago in a small village named Sadat Tawaher located in southwestern Iran. After this incident, the deaf person's family came up with a gestural system to communicate with him. Despite the fact that everyone in Sadat Tawaher, including the deaf person's family, speaks KhA, I hypothesized that KhA and STSL possess different grammatical ways to express negation. Data gathered using signed productions, story-telling, and grammaticality judgments clearly showed that negation is preverbal in KhA but sentence-final in STSL. </p>

Mandarin Chinese has long been known to possess a category of words known as ‘coverbs’ in the literature, which sit in the gray area between verb and preposition. Li and Thompson (1974) describe the historical origins of Mandarin coverbs to be full transitive verbs, despite their modern state being decidedly less verbal. They also note that coverbs are a non-homogenous class. This thesis works to establish categories of coverbs in Mandarin Chinese and their distance from true verbhood in order to understand the diachronic shift that coverbs are currently undergoing before our very eyes. I will draw on the work of scholars of Atlantic-Congo languages, Oceanic languages, and other languages of mainland Southeast Asia, to create semantic, syntactic, and morphological testing for Mandarin coverbs. Using the results of this three-pronged testing approach, I will map the results on a six-pointed verb-preposition matrix in order to visualize the space between verb and preposition and how Mandarin coverbs inhabit it. I will then use these diagrams to create a numerical score for each category of coverb and place them on a linear progression between verbhood and prepositionhood. Lastly, this work will analyze the theta roles assigned by Mandarin coverbs in each category and propose stages of diachronic development for Mandarin coverbs.