The main purpose of this thesis is to shed new light on Japanese grammar under the framework of the Givónian approach, with special attention to OSV word orders and by-passives: scrambling (O_ACCSV), topicalization (O_TOPSV), ni-passive (S NP_NI V), and niyotte-passive (S NP_Niyotte V). This approach measures the discourse status of a referent by utilizing anaphoric and cataphoric co-referencing relationships within the texts. However, it is conceivable that OSV word orders and by-passives are also influenced by multiple factors other than information structure. Specifically, previous studies point out the possibility that heaviness and animacy are relevant to this issue. Therefore, the present study performs the corpus analysis, taking three factors into consideration: heaviness, animacy, and information structure. First, OSV word orders have proven to be influenced by information structure and heaviness. In terms of information structure, scrambling correlates 'topic shift' from the referent of the scrambled object to that of the subject. In contrast, topicalization interrelates with 'continuing topic' realized as the referent of the subject. In terms of heaviness, the direct object tends to be longer than the subject in OSV word orders. Yet, animacy has no influence on the choice of word orders. Second, by-passives are affected by information structure and animacy. In terms of information structure, the ni- and niyotte-passives are selected in order to maintain the topic continuity by promoting the topical logical object to the grammatical subject. However, the ni-passive is relevant to global topic whereas the niyotte-passive is related to local topic. In terms of animacy, the ni-passive prefers animate subjects while the niyotte-passive tends to select inanimate subjects. Yet, heaviness is unrelated to the use of by-passives in Japanese. In conclusion, the thesis provides a functional analysis of OSV orders and by-passives from a descriptive and empirical point of view by using a written Japanese corpus. The new data reported contribute to elucidating the argument encoding system of Japanese.

This thesis analyzes the focus of the sentences in contemporary Spanish. The theoretical part presents definitions of key terms such as Czech and Spanish word order, Prague School Theory, Topic and comment etc. The second part of the thesis is practical and focuses on a detailed analysis of a few selected Spanish articles.

The purpose of this Diploma Thesis is to describe very clearly the form and frequency of the subject in Spanish non-literary texts in comparison with Czech. The Thesis is divided into two parts, theoretical and practical. The theoretical passage is focused on description and characterization of Czech and Spanish subjects, based on particular representative grammars. I have used primarily The Hand Grammar of Czech Language for a description of the subject in Czech texts and to describe the subject in Spanish I have especially used The New Grammar of Spanish. Further theoretical chapters of the Thesis are focused on word order and journalistic style. The practical part contains the results of analysis of the form and frequency of the subject in non-literary texts. The result of these analysis helps us to compare all occurrences of researched languages. Summary in Spanish makes part in the end of this Thesis.

A central concern of generative grammar is the relationship between hierarchy and word order, traditionally understood as two dimensions of a single syntactic representation. A related concern is directionality in the grammar. Traditional approaches posit process-neutral grammars, embodying knowledge of language, put to use with infinite facility both for production and comprehension. This has crystallized in the view of Merge as the central property of syntax, perhaps its only novel feature. A growing number of approaches explore grammars with different directionalities, often with more direct connections to performance mechanisms. This paper describes a novel model of universal grammar as a one-directional, universal parser. Mismatch between word order and interpretation order is pervasive in comprehension; in the present model, word order is language-particular and interpretation order (i.e., hierarchy) is universal. These orders are not two dimensions of a unified abstract object (e.g., precedence and dominance in a single tree); rather, both are temporal sequences, and UG is an invariant real-time procedure (based on Knuth's stack-sorting algorithm) transforming word order into hierarchical order. This shift in perspective has several desirable consequences. It collapses linearization, displacement, and composition into a single performance process. The architecture provides a novel source of brackets (labeled unambiguously and without search), which are understood not as part-whole constituency relations, but as storage and retrieval routines in parsing. It also explains why neutral word order within single syntactic cycles avoids 213-like permutations. The model identifies cycles as extended projections of lexical heads, grounding the notion of phase. This is achieved with a universal processor, dispensing with parameters. The empirical focus is word order in noun phrases. This domain provides some of the clearest evidence for 213-avoidance as a cross-linguistic word order generalization. Importantly, recursive phrase structure "bottoms out" in noun phrases, which are typically a single cycle (though further cycles may be embedded, e.g., relative clauses). By contrast, a simple transitive clause plausibly involves two cycles (vP and CP), embedding further nominal cycles. In the present theory, recursion is fundamentally distinct from structure-building within a single cycle, and different word order restrictions might emerge in larger domains like clauses.

In this paper the changes that occur in the translation of initial sentence elements regarding clause element function as well as thematic structure are analyzed. The first part of the aim is to investigate how these functions and structures change in translation. The second part of the aim is to analyze the potential risk of syntactic interference from using thematic or word order solutions that are too close to the SL or too uncommon in the TL. To answer this the source text and translated text were divided by individual sentences and categorized by word order, thematic structure and differences between ST and TT. The results were compared to previous research by mainly Altenberg (1998) and Hasselgård (1998), with additional use of primarily Bohnacker (2010), Munday (2012) and Tirkkonen-Condit (2014) for further definitions of syntactical interference. The quantitative results suggested that there may be syntactical interference. This can be found mainly in the lack of ASV→SV word order structures, possibly due to a fear of deviating too far from the ST structure, and by an abundant use of formal subject (det), due to overcompensating by using TL specific structures that are perceived as common. However, it is not easy to find examples of translationese in syntax from only a cursory glance and the in-depth qualitative analysis was necessary for this conclusion.

This thesis investigates the syntactic structure of determiner phrases (DP) and their distribution in pre- and postverbal subject positions in Standard Arabic (SA) and Saudi dialects (SUD). It argues that indefinite DPs cannot occupy preverbal subject positions unless they are licensed by modification. Working within the theory of syntactic visibility conditions (visibility of the specifier and/or the determiner) put forth by Giusti (2002) and Landau (2007), I propose that adjectives, diminutives or construct states (CS) together with nunation can license indefinite DPs in preverbal subject positions. The syntactic derivation of the licensed indefinite DP depends on its complexity. In other words, in the case of simple DPs (e.g., a noun followed by an adjective), the correct linear word order is achieved by the syntactic N-to-D movement which takes place in the syntax proper. By contrast, if the DP is complex as in diminutives or CSs, the narrow syntax may not be able to derive the correct linear order. Therefore, I propose a novel analysis that accounts for the mismatches between the spell out of the syntax and the phonological form. I argue that the derivation of diminutives and CSs is a shared process between the narrow syntax and the phonological component (PF). I show that movement operations after-syntax (Lowering and Local-dislocation) proposed by Embick and Noyer (1999, 2001, 2007), in the sense of Distributed Morphology (DM), can account for the mismatch. The last theoretical chapter of the thesis investigates the linguistic status of nunation. I argue that nunation is an indefinite marker that performs half of determination with a full lexical item satisfying the other half. As far as the subject position is concerned, the current thesis includes two experimental studies that investigate processing of syntactic subjects in different word orders (SVO/VSO) by two groups: Native speakers (NSs) and Heritage speakers (HSs) of Arabic whose dominant language is English. The first study aims to answer two questions: a) which word order is more preferred by NSs, SVO or VSO? and b) which word order requires more processing? The second study aims to answer the same questions but with different participants, HSs. It also aims to check whether or not the dominant language grammar affected the heritage language grammar. Results showed that VSO is more preferred than SVO by both groups. As far as processing is concerned, NSs significantly processed subjects in VSO faster the SVO; they showed no significant difference when processing postverbal subjects in definite and indefinite VSO. By contrast, HSs processed subjects in SVO faster than VSO; however, the difference was not significant. The slow processing of VSO shown by HSs might be attributed to the effect of the dominant language which has a different word order from the heritage language.

In the last few decades, there has been increased interest in the incorporation of data from bi- and multilingual individuals in linguistic theory: from second language acquisition and language attrition to heritage varieties and code-switching. This dissertation discusses a range of ways in which code-switching data can provide insight into the mechanisms that underlie linguistic structures. The data will be analysed within the framework of Minimalist Generative syntax and Distributed Morphology.The first part investigates grammatical gender assignment in code- switching between English, a language without grammatical gender, and two languages with grammatical gender: French and Belgian Dutch. These languages have comparable, but different gender systems. French has two genders: masculine and feminine, whereas Belgian Dutch adds a third: neuter. The study in this part of the dissertation compares gen- der assignment strategies in bilinguals with different profiles. In addition, the code-switching data provide evidence against the default status of neuter in Belgian Dutch.The second part focuses on word order and includes two studies: one on verb-second word order in Dutch-English code-switching and one on adverb placement in English-French and Dutch-English code- switching. The verb-second chapter identifies a lacuna in the traditional Generative analysis for verb second and uses the CS data to address this. The chapter on adverb position looks at placement of the adverb between the verb and its direct object, which is allowed in Dutch and French, but not in English. For all domains investigated, it is found that the finite verb predicts word order.Taken together, these studies demonstrate that bilingual data can shine a light on elements of the theory of grammar which remain in the shadows when only monolingual data is used. / Les dernières décennies ont vu croître l’intérêt pour l’intégration à la réflexion en linguistique théorique des données produites par des locuteurs/trices bilingues ou multilingues, que celles-ci concernent l’acquisition d’une langue seconde, l’attrition, les langues d’héritage ou l’alternance codique. Le présent travail développe plusieurs exemples où les données issues de l’alternance codique éclairent les mécanismes qui sous-tendent les structures linguistiques. Les données recueillies sont interprétées dans le cadre de la syntaxe générative minimaliste et de la morphologie distribuée (« distributed morphology »).Dans un premier temps, nous analysons l’attribution du genre grammatical dans l’alternance entre l’anglais, d’une part, et le français et le néerlandais de Belgique, de l’autre. Alors qu’il n’y a pas en anglais de genre grammatical, le français et le néerlandais de Belgique marquent ce genre, mais de façon différente :si le français distingue deux genres, masculin et féminin, le néerlandais de Belgique y adjoint un troisième, le neutre. Dans cette partie de la thèse, nous dressons le profil des stratégies d’attribution du genre auprès de deux types distincts de bilingues et nous établissons également que le neutre n’est pas le genre par défaut en néerlandais de Belgique.Dans un second temps, nous nous penchons sur l’ordre des constituants. Dans une première étude, nous examinons l’ordre des mots avec « verbe second » (V2) dans l’alternance anglais-néerlandais. Nous abordons ensuite le placement de l’adverbe dans l’alternance anglais- français et anglais-néerlandais. Le chapitre consacré à V2 identifie une lacune dans la littérature générative et tire profit des données de l’al- ternance pour y proposer une solution. Le chapitre consacré à l’adverbe s’intéresse au placement de celui-ci entre le verbe et son objet, position licite en français et néerlandais mais pas en anglais. Dans ces deux études, il apparaît que c’est la langue du verbe à la forme finie qui prédit l’ordre des constituants.L’ensemble des recherches ici réunies démontre que les données bilingues mettent en lumière des aspects de la théorie grammaticale qui restent dans l’ombre lorsque le chercheur se limite à des données monolingues. / Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

1 Kateřina Rysová Annotation The presented thesis is focused on the Czech word order of contextually non-bound verbal modifications. It monitors whether there is a basic order in the contextually non-bound part of the sentence (significantly predominant in frequency) in the surface word order (cf. narodit se v Brně v roce 1950 vs. narodit se v roce 1950 v Brně; literally to be born in Brno in 1950 vs. to be born in 1950 in Brno). At the same time, we try to find out the factors influencing the word order (such as the form of modifications, their lexical expression or the effect of verbal valency). Finally, we briefly compare the word order tendencies in Czech and German. For the verification of the objectives, mainly the data from the Prague Dependency Treebank are used. The work is based on the theoretical principles of Functional Generative Description. Research results demonstrate that, at least in some cases, it is possible to detect certain general tendencies to use preferably one of two possible surface word order sequences in Czech. Abstract The aim of the doctoral thesis is to describe particular aspects of the Czech (and partly also German) word order in the sentences coming mainly from journalistic texts. The first part examines the role of different types of verbal modifications in sentence...

This thesis deals with the issue of positioning of cataphoric words in a Latin sentence. The theoretical part presents selected studies of Dirk Panhuis and Olga Spevak, two researchers examining the Latin word order from a communicative perspective. This is followed by a general definition of cataphora and its placement within the Latin syntactic context. Chapter 4 presents a statistical analysis of the position of cataphors in a Latin sentence based on excerpts from selected letters of Seneca the Younger and two of Cicero's philosophical works (Laelius de amicitia and the 2nd book of De officiis). The analysis confirms the assumption that Latin cataphors quite often occur in the initial sentence position, which contradicts the conclusions of the aforementioned Panhuis study. Individual analyses show how the tendency to occur in the initial or other position changes depending on the specific cataphor and the type of postcedent to which a cataphor refers.

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