Prior research has considered the sequential order of function words, after the contextual words of the text have been removed, as a stylistic indicator of authorship. This research describes an effort to enhance authorship attribution accuracy based on this same information source with alternate classifiers, alternate n-gram construction methods, and a genetically tuned configuration. The approach is original in that it is the first time that probabilistic versions of Burrows's Delta have been used. Instead of using z-scores as an input for a classifier, the z-scores were converted to probabilistic equivalents (since z-scores cannot be subtracted, added, or divided without the possibility of distorting their probabilistic meaning); this adaptation enhanced accuracy. Multiple versions of Burrows's Delta were evaluated; this includes a hybrid of the Probabilistic Burrows's Delta and the version proposed by Smith & Aldridge (2011); in this case accuracy was enhanced when individual frequent words were evaluated as indicators of style. Other novel aspects include alternate n-gram construction methods; a reconciliation process that allows texts of various lengths from different authors to be compared; and a GA selection process that determines which function (or frequent) words (see Smith & Rickards, 2008; see also Shaker, Corne, & Everson, 2007) may be used in the construction of function word n-grams.

The genesis of creole languages is important to the field of linguistics for at least two reasons. As newly emerging languages, creoles provide a unique window on the human language faculty and on the development of language generally (Veenstra 2008). They also offer insight into what are arguably universal linguistic structures. Two opposing theories have been in contention in the literature with respect to creole genesis: (1) that creoles owe their origin to the lexifier and substrate languages of their speech community and to other environmental influences (McWhorter 1997); and alternatively, (2) that universal innate linguistic structures or principles are the generative source of creole grammar (Bickerton 1981). Both theories have a claim to at least partial correctness. This thesis adds new evidence in support of the universalist/innatist argument. This thesis examines five written creole languages and two signed creole languages of geographic and historical diversity and focuses on the grammatical system of case, word order, and agreement of these languages as one axis along which to investigate the issue of creole genesis and universality. The signed languages in particular offer unique data, especially the data from Nicaraguan Sign Language, where there was an absence of significant lexifier and substrate influences. Patterns of what are termed core indispensable features in these seven language systems are uncovered, examined and compared. Further comparison is made with the case, word order, and agreement features of the world's languages generally and of creole languages as a subset of the world's languages, based on data in the World Atlas of Language Structures (Dryer & Haspelmath 2009) and in the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (Michaelis et al. 2013b), respectively. The findings and contributions to the field made possible from the data in this thesis are that there are commonalities in the case, word order, and agreement systems of the subject creole languages that qualify as core indispensable features and that these features are generated by universal innate linguistic expectations. These commonalities are: (1) that morphological case inflection is not a core indispensable feature; (2) that SVO word order is a core indispensable feature; and (3) that agreement as a feature, seen only when word order is apparently verb final, occurs only in the signed creole languages and is more accurately interpreted as topicalization incorporated into SVO word order rather than as an independent core feature. Nicaraguan Sign Language presents especially compelling evidence for these conclusions.

Languages differ in the means they avail themselves of for the structural realization of information structure, where available options are word order, prosody and morphology. Turkish has long been characterized as predominantly using word order and its variation in realizing information structure, where certain positions in a sentence are associated with certain pragmatic functions related to information structure. Prosody has been proposed to play only a secondary role interacting with word order. Contrary to this widely established view, the thesis argues that the notion that sentential positions have pragmatic functions and word order variation is a syntactic means to realize these functions can be abandoned, without any loss of explanatory power, in favor of a tune-based perspective where prosody is the sole structural determinant of information structure. In this setting word order variations are argued to be prosodically motivated, in that Turkish phonology imposes some precedence constraints on intonational contours. Word order variation then turns out to be just a consequence as opposed to being a determinant in attaining the right information structure required by the discourse context. To substantiate these claims a tune-based account, based on Steedman&#039 / s account of English information structure, is proposed for the structural realization of information structure in Turkish, whereby information structural units are directly associated with prosodic phrases intonationally marked in certain ways. Validity of the account is tried to be established by intonational analysis of recorded speech data. As for the explanatory value, the information structure phenomena that has received positional explanation in the relevant literature, are tried to be captured only in prosodic terms, without committing to positions, syntactic strategies and such.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the difference between SVO and OVS sentences in spoken Russian, which is a language with flexible word order although the basic order is SVO. Two experiments were conducted to understand the nature of intonation. Experiment 1 shows that the Subject appears as kontrast in OVS sentences, and as background in SVO sentences. The F0 curve rises in the Object position when the Subject is kontrast in OVS sentences. The analysis of the results of Experiment 2 shows that the initial element of the sentence plays an important role in intonation. When it is kontrasted, it always has higher (Hz) frequency pitch accent than the final element. There is no difference between SVO and OVS sentences in this respect because the initial element has high pitch accent, whether it is the Subject or the Object. The verb has no pitch accent and it has a flat intonation regardless of the WO of the sentence (SVO, OVS).

In spite of the vast amount of research on mood in Romance languages, certain fundamental issues are clearly underrepresented, particularly in the field of diachronic linguistics. With this in mind, the primary goal of this dissertation is to provide a comprehensive explanation for developments in Romance mood distribution. Unlike the majority of existing research, this approach does not analyze mood in isolation, nor does it look outward for language-external explanations. Instead, changes in mood usage are related to major typological developments via several interconnected analyses which rely heavily on data from Latin and medieval Spanish and French. This investigation, which takes as its starting point the well-attested typological shift from OV to VO word order, addresses four major issues. The first of these is branching congruency, whereby post-posed subordinate clauses are more closely associated with explicit subordinating conjunctions. This hypothesis is tested via a quantitative analysis of Latin data, in order to establish a link between conjunctions and VO word order. The development of these subordinating elements is then analyzed within the grammaticalization framework, which provides insight into the nature of specific Latin and Romance forms, in addition to demonstrating the usefulness of certain theoretical notions. The outcome of this process is a highly generalized Romance subordinator, which is argued to have undergone partial synthesis with the subjunctive, evidenced by an increase in both obligatoriness and contiguity. Finally, these cumulative changes in the linguistic system are shown to have had substantial destabilizing effects on the existing subjunctive / indicative contrast. The significance of this claim is that, already in Latin, mood selection is characterized by a loss of motivation and an increase in automaticity. As a result, subsequent changes in mood distribution in Romance languages are not viewed merely as reductive phenomena, but rather as signs of the refunctionalization of a destabilized, yet viable, paradigm. / text

Iquito, a highly endangered Zaparoan language of the Peruvian Amazon, exhibits a typologically unusual word order alternation that marks the grammatical category of reality status (i.e. the distinction between realized (realis) and unrealized or hypothetical (irrealis) events). This alternation is the only reliable marker of the category; Iquito does not employ morphology to mark the realis/irrealis distinction. While the word order of Iquito realis constructions is reliably SVO, the word order of irrealis constructions does not fall into one of the canonical orders. It is characterized by an element (X) intervening between the subject and the verb, resulting in the order SXV. In this dissertation, I provide a detailed description and analysis of the realis/irrealis word order alternation. Using data from both elicitation and texts that I collected while in the field, I describe the types of elements that occur in the preverbal position of the irrealis construction, determine what unifies these elements, and establish which element of the sentence will occur in this position and what conditions this choice. Relying on the available data for the other languages in the family, I examine the expression of reality status in these languages and discuss how reality status comes to be associated with word order. I also provide a survey of other languages exhibiting similar word order alternations and discuss how they compare to the alternation we see in Iquito, concluding that Iquito is an example of an “ideal” word order alternation because word order is the sole indicator of the grammatical category with which it is associated. / text

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

The Japanese language exhibits a free word-order phenomenon called scrambling. Because each noun phrase (NP) is case-marked with postpositional particles, it allows a freer word order than such languages as English. For simple transitive sentences, Subject-Object-Verb is the canonical word order while OSV is the scrambled word order. Previous studies with native speaker (NS) children have found that they go through a developmental stage during which they consistently misunderstand scrambled sentences, taking the first NP in OSV sentences to be the subject. It has also been found that NS adults experience slowdowns in reading and comprehending scrambled sentences. However, investigations into the processing of scrambled sentences by second language (L2) learners have been scarce, and it is not entirely clear how scrambled sentences are processed and acquired by L2 learners. This three-article dissertation aimed at investigating how simple transitive sentences with a scrambled word order (i.e., OSV) are processed and acquired by L2 learners whose native language is English. The first article (Chapter 2) examined L2 learners’ grammatical knowledge and production performance of the OSV sentences through two tasks (fill-in-the-blank and picture description). The results indicated a positive relationship between the learners’ general proficiency in Japanese and their knowledge/production performance of the OSV sentences, although there was a rather large individual difference even within proficiency groups. It was also found that the difficulty in producing OSV sentences was mostly due to a lack of grammatical knowledge, but the relationship of grammatical knowledge and production performance interacted with the types of sentences. For reversible sentences (in which both the subject and object NPs are animate), there was evidence that errors in the production of OSV sentences were caused by the overuse of the canonical template (i.e., SOV). For non-reversible sentences (in which the subject NP is animate and the object NP is inanimate), on the other hand, there was little evidence that a processing problem such as the overuse of the SOV template caused the production difficulty. The second article (Chapter 3) examined the comprehension processes of OSV sentences. While the results of a pilot study (sentence correctness decision task) indicated that both the L2 learners and NSs took longer to read and comprehend OSV sentences than SOV sentences, the results of a self-paced reading task suggested that the processing of OSV sentences by L2 learners might be quite different from that of NSs. The NS participants read more slowly at the second NP position when they read the OSV sentences. On the other hand, the L2 learners, regardless of their proficiency level, did not show such slowdowns. However, the data provided evidence that the advanced L2 learners integrated the case particles more consistently in their sentence comprehension than the learners with lower proficiency. The third article (Chapter 4) examined whether a psycholinguistic task (syntactic persistence with picture description) might facilitate the production of scrambled sentences among L2 learners, for the purpose of exploring the possibility of using such a method as an L2 instructional tool. While the main task (Task 4, which used regular SOV/OSV sentences as primes) was not very effective in eliciting the production of OSV sentences, the follow-up task (Task 6, which used questions in SOV/OSV orders as primes) observed a more positive effect of syntactic persistence. Based on the results, explicit instruction and practice on scrambling is suggested. Since processing of scrambled sentences requires that L2 learners be aware of the functions of case markers (and other postpositional particles) instead of relying on the canonical template, such explicit instruction and practice may also contribute to the acquisition of the particles that mark case.

This thesis studies word order variations in Swiss-German sentences that contain infinitival complements. Such sentences exhibit interesting word order. Verbs can be in different orders and the objects selected by these verbs can be in different positions relative to them. The aim of this thesis is to give a general account of these word order facts based solely on structural properties of the complements in the underlying structure. In particular, it is claimed that Swiss-German verbs that take infinitival complements do not all select the same type of complements. Some verbs (like modals, perception verbs and causatives) select VPs, others (like raising verbs) select IPs and others (like control verbs) select IPs or CPs. Mechanisms such as extraposition, verb raising and proliticization then apply to different structures in order for the sentence to satisfy T-linking. Extraposition applies to IPs and CPs, verb raising to IPs and VPs and procliticization to verbs that are sister to VPs.

Abstract: This dissertation investigates the syntax and also some aspects of the morphology of Tharifith Berber (such as, the inflectional classes of nouns and the Construct State) within the Distributed Morphology framework (Halle & Marantz 1993, et al.). One of its main objectives is to demonstrate how morphology could be brought within the range of syntax. This view becomes apparent when inflectional morphemes which project in the syntax are also used to derive words. Contrary to what has always been reported, that Berber is an unquestionable VSO language, I show that Tharifith has now shifted to a Topic-Initial configurational system. This claim is based on two pieces of evidence: (1) the SVO order is preferred over VSO, (2) when the object is a clitic both the verb and the clitic are required to be in the initial position of the clause. I propose an account arguing that the two alternations instantiate a Topic-fronting phenomenon, which requires the initial position of the clause to be filled with Topic. Of interest to word order is another property displayed by some WH- complex clauses which require Verb-First. A careful analysis of the structure of these clauses reveals that this is an instantiation of V-to-C movement, also known as the verb second phenomenon (V2). While the movement to the initial position in the main clause is argued to be motivated by Topic, I show that V2 is motivated by the feature Focus which needs to be checked in C. Due to the fact that this operation is sensitive to the phonological property of the complementiser, I make the claim that discourse features, at least in Berber, should be generated at PF. Despite the fact that the subject, object and dative clitics are often grouped under the ‘clitic – banner,’ I show that the first set displays the properties of agreement markers on the verb while the other two sets are claimed to be argument XPs. The approach takes an in-depth theoretical approach to the study of clitics. In a framework where syntax operates on purely formal features, and taking on board the view that clitics as arguments have the formal features required by the computation identical to the ones found with lexical NPs, it is argued that any other distinction between the two sets of arguments is made post-syntactically. Argument structure is then claimed to follow from a fairly small number of principles which govern their syntactic system. The study discusses the movement of clitics at length, and argues it to be phonological. Crucial to the analysis is the fact that this movement operation is not only dependent on the phonological property of clitics but is also dependent on the property of functional elements that host them. Evidence is provided which shows that only functional categories that are phonologically dependent can be hosts. I then conclude that cliticisation is in fact an attraction by the host, a process which occurs during the mapping of the syntactic output to phonology. I further argue that this type of PF merger which is claimed to generate the placement of clitics is constrained by an adjacency relation. Additional support to the claim that morphology should be subject to syntactic principles is found with valency. I show that the system, in many respects, treats the structure of verbs and clauses along the same line. Furthermore, the meaning which is traditionally claimed to be inherent to words is shown from the verbal system to follow from the syntactic structure the verbs project.