Our everyday discourse is peppered with mini expressions known as binomials. They are engaging and rhythmic, and easily recalled; so much so that some have become a single entity of themselves such as ladies and gentlemen or bread and butter, while others are reversible or fluid such as night and day/day and night. Factors that contribute to the construction of word pairings are phonology and semantics, the balance beam of sound and rhythm versus its raison d'être. Some fixed binomial expressions have been seen to reverse over time from a rigid, fixed pairing to a fluid, mutable pair. The idea for this paper was prompted by a tweet that discussed the reversal of a previously fixed gender binomial —aunts and uncles began to change one hundred years ago from its earlier form of uncles and aunts. This binomial also had the audacity to flout the gender preference of the male lead, which made the phenomenon intriguing to follow. The aim of this paper is to look at particular word pairs, gendered and otherwise, to see how fixed or fluid they are over time, as well as to understand what determines change. The analysis includes previous research as well as corpus analysis to follow word pairs over time. Factors that contribute to change, particularly in gendered binomials, include politics and patriarchy, but perhaps more importantly, it is our own influence. Ultimately the balance is shifted by us; we affect change in our language through our discourse, pushing the lexical social influencers up the popularity ladder, giving the words in the first position an advantage in our collective memory through frequency, or in other words, cognitive accessibility.

This thesis investigates control infinitives and ECM-infinitives in the history of Swedish. Both constructions are non-finite, based on infinitives with or without complements, but share some properties and functions with finite subordinate clauses. Control infinitives (to-infinitives) are headed by the infinitive marker att (which in some cases may be omitted) and have invisible PRO-subjects (“controlled” by, i.e. co-referential with, the subject or object of the matrix), whereas ECM-infinitives are headed by overt subjects, distinguished by their “exceptional case marking” (ECM) from the matrix verb, and never contain the infinitive marker. According to the proposed analyses, conducted within the theoretical framework of generative grammar, control infinitives are CPs, taking the infinitive marker as a non-finite complementizer in C, but lack the TP of the I-domain, whereas ECM-infinitives have no C-layer but, nevertheless, a (sort of) TP. The historical investigation shows that control infinitives have developed more clause like properties over time. In Old Swedish (1220–1526), they only rarely contained e.g. negations or auxiliaries. It is not until the seventeenth century that these elements have come into use in the same way as in modern Swedish. This is accounted for by assuming that the control infinitive in Old Swedish was a recent innovation that did not initially make any use at all of the I-domain. The ECM-infinitives, on the other hand, are taken to have the same structure and function in Old Swedish as in Modern Swedish, as their use and properties have not changed significantly. In addition, the status of the infinitive marker has changed through the history of Swedish. Etymologically a preposition, it is here analysed as a verb phrase element in Early Old Swedish, not as a (non-finite) complementizer as in Modern Swedish. In early Modern Swedish (1526–1732), the preposition till is used in much the same function as att giving rise to two new infinitive markers: till att and till. This development of new infinitive markers is also accounted for in the thesis.

Typologisk klassificering av kardinaltals ordföljdstendenser har generellt utgått från en binär uppdelning i pre- och postnominella språk, men viss inomspråklig variation i ordföljdsmönster mellan olika kardinaltal har hittats bland världens språk. Tillgång till parallelltexter på många olika språk möjliggör storskalig kvantitativ typologisk analys av syntaktiska fenomen som detta, givet en lämplig strategi för språkoberoende parsning av icke-annoterat material. I denna studie undersöks aspekter av kardinaltalsberoende ordföljdsvariation i 1336 språk genom ordlänkning och annoteringsöverföring i en massivt parallell korpus av Bibelöversättningar. Källtexter märks upp med syntaktisk och lexikal annotering som förs över till icke-annoterad ordlänkad data på andra språk, och ordföljdstendenser för varje kardinaltal och språk mäts statistiskt. Utvärdering av metodens klassificering av generell kardinaltalsordföljd gav 87 % överensstämmelse med data från den manuellt sammanställda WALS-databasen, i linje med tidigare evalueringar av liknande metoder. Variation i ordföljdsmönster mellan individuella kardinaltal uppvisades i en väsentlig andel av undersökta språk, vilket motiverar värdet av en mer detaljerad klassificering av kardinaltals ordföljdstypologi. Undersökning av seriell ordföljdsvariation, där ett seriellt gränsvärde finns mellan olika dominerande ordföljdstyper i ett språks kardinaltalssystem, visade att den överlägset vanligaste strukturen för seriell variation i den undersökta datan var prenominella uttryck för 1 i språk där den dominerande kardinaltalsordföljden klassats som postnominell. / Typological word order classification for cardinal numerals has generally used a binary pre- or postnominal model, but in some languages word order behaviour has been shown to vary between individual cardinal numerals. This phenomenon can be quantitatively studied on a larger typological scale using massively parallel texts, given a cross-language method for parsing non-annotated texts. In this study, cardinal numeral-dependent word order variation is extracted from Bible translations in 1336 languages through word alignment and annotation transfer from syntactically and lexically annotated source texts to all translations in the corpus. Classification of dominant numeral word order using the transferred annotations agreed with manually gathered classifications from the WALS database for 87 % of common languages, which is in line with previous similar studies. Possible numeral-dependent word order variation was identified in a significant number of languages in the sample, supporting the case for use of a more nuanced word order classification structure. Analysis of serial word order variation, where a cardinal numeral of a certain value separates continuous numeral sequences with different dominant word orders, showed the most common structure for this type of variation to be the 1-numeral preceding the noun while all other numerals follow the noun they modify.

O presente trabalho trata de objeto de natureza interdisciplinar, a partir do qual abordamos questões linguísticas e sócio-históricas ligadas ao português paulista culto na São Paulo de início do século XX. Realizamos a descrição e análise da ordem de constituintes sentenciais em duas instituições escolares da Capital, complementarmente à análise das instituições e seus sujeitos, bem como de seu lugar na história/memória da cidade, buscando compreendê-los na dinâmica da vida paulistana da virada do século. O recorte linguístico considera as posições do sujeito e do clítico. O corpus é constituído de atas escritas por professores, diretores e secretários da Escola Normal (majoritariamente feminina) e do Ginásio da Capital (exclusivamente masculino), instituições importantes por seu papel na dinâmica de reorganização social e política em uma sociedade altamente heterogênea, em que as tensões repercutiam em formas diversas de distinção em todos os âmbitos da cultura local, inclusive o linguístico. Com o propósito de compreender amplamente nosso objeto, trabalhamos com os dados linguísticos e materiais que pudessem trazer ao presente um pouco da realidade da época e que recuperasse seus pontos de vista. Para isso, analisamos revistas de ensino, livros de matrícula, gramáticas, discursos e outras fontes. A perspectiva adotada, condizente com a natureza do objeto, é interdisciplinar, e teve por objetivo possibilitar uma análise do uso linguístico inserido nas relações sociais, assumindo pressupostos da sociolinguística, sociologia, antropologia e história, visando à compreensão integrada do fenômeno. / This work deals with an interdisciplinary object, in which we refer language issues and socio-historical linked to Portuguese Paulista in Sao Paulo early twentieth century. We perform the description and analysis of sentential constituent order in two schools of the capital, in addition to the analysis of institutions and their subjects, as well as its place in the history of the city, seeking to understand them in the dynamics of São Paulo of the early century. The linguistic focus considers the positions of subject and clitic. The corpus is composed of texts written by teachers, principals and secretaries of the Normal School (mostly female) and the Capital Gymnasium (exclusively male), important institutions for their role in the dynamics of social reorganization and politics in a highly heterogeneous society in which tensions had repercussions in various forms of discrimination in all aspects of local culture, including the language. In order to understand our object, we work with linguistic data and materials that could bring to present some of the reality of the time and to recover their views. For this, we analyze educational magazines, books, grammars, speeches and other sources. The perspective adopted is interdisciplinary, and aimed to enable an analysis of the inserted language use in social relations, taking on assumptions of sociolinguistics, sociology, anthropology and history, aiming at the integrated understanding of the phenomenon.

A ordem de constituintes sentenciais é um tema que já foi abordado em muitos estudos e ainda gera interesse entre os linguistas. Os trabalhos diacrônicos sobre o assunto apontam que, ao longo da história do Português Brasileiro (PB), a ordem SV (sujeito-verbo) tem sido privilegiada em contraposição à sequência VS (verbo-sujeito), mais usual em estágios anteriores da língua (cf. Berlinck: 1989, Duarte: 1992, Torres Morais: 1993, e outros). Fixando o olhar no final do século XIX, analisamos a posição do sujeito em relação ao verbo em textos da Escola Normal da Capital (ENC), comparando-os com textos de escritores brasileiros e portugueses, com vistas a identificar um modelo linguístico referencial para a instituição. O corpus da pesquisa foi constituído a partir de cartas e atas produzidas por professores e diretores da ENC, homens públicos de prestígio na época, o que caracteriza esse material como sendo a expressão de um padrão linguístico culto. Visando a analisar o fenômeno linguístico inserido em seu contexto de produção, fizemos o levantamento e caracterização de aspectos da cidade e da instituição escolar (como o corpo de diretores, docentes e discentes, e o currículo escolar, em particular da língua portuguesa), buscando, deste modo, realizar uma análise complementarmente histórica, social, cultural e linguística. / Word order has been the theme of many researches, but it still intrigues linguists. Diachronic studies have shown that in the history of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) the order SV (subject-verb) has been used in preference to the sequence VS (verb-subject), which was more common in earlier stages of the language (cf. Berlinck: 1989, Duarte: 1992, Torres Morais: 1993, among others). Focusing on the phenomenon of word order at the end of the 19th century, we analyze the subject position in relation to the verb in texts from the Escola Normal da Capital (São Paulo Normal School - ENC) and compare the data with texts produced by Brazilian and Portuguese writers, with the intention of identifying a linguistic referential model for the educational institution. The research corpus is composed of letters and minutes written by the teachers and principals of the ENC, prestigious public men at that time; hence this material can be taken as the expression of a standard linguistic variety. Aiming at analyzing the linguistic phenomenon within its production context, we did a survey and a characterization of aspects of the city and the institution (such as the board of principals and teachers and the student body, as well as the school curriculum, especially the Portuguese syllabus), with the purpose of conducting an analysis that is historical, social, cultural and linguistic altogether.

O presente trabalho trata de objeto de natureza interdisciplinar, a partir do qual abordamos questões linguísticas e sócio-históricas ligadas ao português paulista culto na São Paulo de início do século XX. Realizamos a descrição e análise da ordem de constituintes sentenciais em duas instituições escolares da Capital, complementarmente à análise das instituições e seus sujeitos, bem como de seu lugar na história/memória da cidade, buscando compreendê-los na dinâmica da vida paulistana da virada do século. O recorte linguístico considera as posições do sujeito e do clítico. O corpus é constituído de atas escritas por professores, diretores e secretários da Escola Normal (majoritariamente feminina) e do Ginásio da Capital (exclusivamente masculino), instituições importantes por seu papel na dinâmica de reorganização social e política em uma sociedade altamente heterogênea, em que as tensões repercutiam em formas diversas de distinção em todos os âmbitos da cultura local, inclusive o linguístico. Com o propósito de compreender amplamente nosso objeto, trabalhamos com os dados linguísticos e materiais que pudessem trazer ao presente um pouco da realidade da época e que recuperasse seus pontos de vista. Para isso, analisamos revistas de ensino, livros de matrícula, gramáticas, discursos e outras fontes. A perspectiva adotada, condizente com a natureza do objeto, é interdisciplinar, e teve por objetivo possibilitar uma análise do uso linguístico inserido nas relações sociais, assumindo pressupostos da sociolinguística, sociologia, antropologia e história, visando à compreensão integrada do fenômeno. / This work deals with an interdisciplinary object, in which we refer language issues and socio-historical linked to Portuguese Paulista in Sao Paulo early twentieth century. We perform the description and analysis of sentential constituent order in two schools of the capital, in addition to the analysis of institutions and their subjects, as well as its place in the history of the city, seeking to understand them in the dynamics of São Paulo of the early century. The linguistic focus considers the positions of subject and clitic. The corpus is composed of texts written by teachers, principals and secretaries of the Normal School (mostly female) and the Capital Gymnasium (exclusively male), important institutions for their role in the dynamics of social reorganization and politics in a highly heterogeneous society in which tensions had repercussions in various forms of discrimination in all aspects of local culture, including the language. In order to understand our object, we work with linguistic data and materials that could bring to present some of the reality of the time and to recover their views. For this, we analyze educational magazines, books, grammars, speeches and other sources. The perspective adopted is interdisciplinary, and aimed to enable an analysis of the inserted language use in social relations, taking on assumptions of sociolinguistics, sociology, anthropology and history, aiming at the integrated understanding of the phenomenon.

A ordem de constituintes sentenciais é um tema que já foi abordado em muitos estudos e ainda gera interesse entre os linguistas. Os trabalhos diacrônicos sobre o assunto apontam que, ao longo da história do Português Brasileiro (PB), a ordem SV (sujeito-verbo) tem sido privilegiada em contraposição à sequência VS (verbo-sujeito), mais usual em estágios anteriores da língua (cf. Berlinck: 1989, Duarte: 1992, Torres Morais: 1993, e outros). Fixando o olhar no final do século XIX, analisamos a posição do sujeito em relação ao verbo em textos da Escola Normal da Capital (ENC), comparando-os com textos de escritores brasileiros e portugueses, com vistas a identificar um modelo linguístico referencial para a instituição. O corpus da pesquisa foi constituído a partir de cartas e atas produzidas por professores e diretores da ENC, homens públicos de prestígio na época, o que caracteriza esse material como sendo a expressão de um padrão linguístico culto. Visando a analisar o fenômeno linguístico inserido em seu contexto de produção, fizemos o levantamento e caracterização de aspectos da cidade e da instituição escolar (como o corpo de diretores, docentes e discentes, e o currículo escolar, em particular da língua portuguesa), buscando, deste modo, realizar uma análise complementarmente histórica, social, cultural e linguística. / Word order has been the theme of many researches, but it still intrigues linguists. Diachronic studies have shown that in the history of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) the order SV (subject-verb) has been used in preference to the sequence VS (verb-subject), which was more common in earlier stages of the language (cf. Berlinck: 1989, Duarte: 1992, Torres Morais: 1993, among others). Focusing on the phenomenon of word order at the end of the 19th century, we analyze the subject position in relation to the verb in texts from the Escola Normal da Capital (São Paulo Normal School - ENC) and compare the data with texts produced by Brazilian and Portuguese writers, with the intention of identifying a linguistic referential model for the educational institution. The research corpus is composed of letters and minutes written by the teachers and principals of the ENC, prestigious public men at that time; hence this material can be taken as the expression of a standard linguistic variety. Aiming at analyzing the linguistic phenomenon within its production context, we did a survey and a characterization of aspects of the city and the institution (such as the board of principals and teachers and the student body, as well as the school curriculum, especially the Portuguese syllabus), with the purpose of conducting an analysis that is historical, social, cultural and linguistic altogether.

‘Scrambling’ languages allow arguments in a given sentence to be ordered in a variety of ways while leaving the grammatical roles of these arguments unchanged. West Germanic languages like German, Dutch, Yiddish, and West Flemish exhibit, to different extents, scrambling properties (Haider, 2006; Grewendorf, 2005; De Hoop, 2003). One well established assumption is that a prerequisite for scrambling is a rich (overt) case morphology: Grammatical relations need to be overtly marked on arguments in order for them to freely permute (Haider, 2006; Mahajan, 2003). Afrikaans, like other West Germanic languages, also allows a certain degree of flexibility (Molnárfi, 2002; Biberauer & Richards 2006; Conradie, 2007 Huddlestone, 2010). Generally, however, it is assumed to be much more rigid than a richly inflected language like German, in part because Afrikaans is the most morphologically ‘impoverished’ of all the West Germanic languages (Molnárfi, 2002; Biberauer & Richards, 2006; Huddlestone, 2010). In this thesis, I draw attention to certain double object constructions in Afrikaans that allow German-like flexibility without German-like morphology. Afrikaans allows the indirect and direct object of particular verbs to optionally invert their canonical order in finite embedded sentences without V-raising. I propose an analysis within a minimalist framework that accounts for the flexibility exhibited by these constructions. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

Traditionally, typological classifications have been done in a macro-typological perspective; that is,they have been based on balanced world-wide samples of languages, which often avoid includingclosely related languages, since these are supposed to act alike with respect to their typologicalfeatures and structures. However, attention has recently been drawn to the idea that even closelyrelated languages, as well as dialects within languages, may differ on their typological features. Theintention of this thesis is to give an overview of and study how the Germanic languages differ fromeach other in regards to their negative word orders and negation strategies. Mainly their negativeadverbs (English equivalent not), but also their negative indefinite quantifiers, are analyzed in mainclauses, subordinate clauses, and (negative) imperative structures. The focus lies on the standardlanguage varieties, but some of their non-standard varieties are included, in order to be able to give amore detailed description of the variation within the family. The expected result that the ratherhomogeneous described area of the Germanic languages will turn out to be much more complex, withrespect to negation aspects, is confirmed. The results show that the standard language varieties behavedifferently than the non-standard ones, which are less "rare" cross-linguistically. In addition, the nonstandardNorth-Germanic varieties show that multiple negation occurs in the North-Germanic branch,which is traditionally claimed to not occur. / Typologiska klassifikationer har traditionellt gjorts från ett makrotypologiskt perspektiv; vilketinnebär att de har baserats på utvalda språksampel där närbesläktade språk ofta exkluderas, eftersomdessa antas uppvisa liknande typologiska särdrag och strukturer. Nyligen har det dock påpekats attnärbesläktade språk, och även dess dialekter, kan uppvisa signifikant variation med avseende på derastypologiska särdrag. Syftet med den här studien är att ge en översikt över och studera hur degermanska språken skiljer sig åt vad avser deras ordföljd i negativa satser samt derasnegationsstrategier. Det negativa adverbet (motsvarande svenskans inte) står i fokus men ävennegativa indefinita pronomen analyseras, i huvud- och bisatser samt i (negativa) imperativakonstruktioner. Fokus ligger på standardspråkvarianterna, men några icke-standardvarianter till dessainkluderas, för att kunna ge en mer detaljerad beskrivning över variationen inom språkfamiljen.Hypotesen att det traditionellt homogent beskrivna germanska området är mer komplext vad gällernegationsaspekter bekräftas. Resultaten visar att de standardspråkvarieteterna uppvisar olika mönsterjämfört med de icke-standardspråkvarieteterna, som är mindre "ovanliga" i världens språk. Dessutomvisar de nordgermanska icke-standard språkvarieteterna att dubbelnegation förekommer i dennordgermanska språkgrenen, vilket traditionellt har antagits inte förekomma alls.

This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of modified inductive learning compared with deductive learning of English grammar among foreign language students. In order to achieve this purpose, two classes in Year Nine in a secondary school in Sweden were taught using the two different methods. An initial grammar test determined that the students struggled with word order, which as a result was chosen as the area to teach. A pre-test/post-test-design was used to examine the effect of the two methods, and compared with a control group. The results reveal that the inductive method should be favoured overall, but suggests that the deductive method may produce significantly better results among weaker students.