by Tan Lee Yong. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-157). / Chapter Chapter One --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two --- The Aspectual Properties of Motion Verbs / Chapter 2.0 --- Introduction --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1 --- The classification of verbs in English with regard to aspectual properties --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2 --- The classification of verbs in Chinese with regard to aspectual properties / Chapter 2.3 --- The aspectual properties of motion verbs --- p.26 / Chapter 2.4 --- Conclusion --- p.36 / Chapter Chapter Three --- The Ergativity of Motion Verbs / Chapter 3.0 --- Introduction --- p.38 / Chapter 3.1 --- What is ergativity? --- p.38 / Chapter 3.2 --- The semantic approach to ergativity --- p.41 / Chapter 3.3 --- The syntactic approach to ergativity --- p.46 / Chapter 3.4 --- The syntactic-semantic approach to ergativity --- p.49 / Chapter 3.5 --- The ergativity of motion verbs --- p.60 / Chapter 3.6 --- The interrelationship of ergativity and aspectuality of motion verbs --- p.66 / Chapter 3.7 --- Ergativity in Chinese --- p.78 / Chapter 3.8 --- Conclusion --- p.91 / Chapter Chapter Four --- Lexicalization Patterns of Motion Verbs / Chapter 4.0 --- Introduction --- p.94 / Chapter 4.1 --- What are lexicalization patterns? --- p.96 / Chapter 4.2 --- More on the properties of motion verbs --- p.97 / Chapter 4.3 --- Lexicalization patterns of motion verbs: a crosslinguistic review --- p.100 / Chapter 4.4 --- Lexicalization patterns of motion verbs in English --- p.112 / Chapter 4.5 --- Lexicalization patterns of motion verbs in Chinese --- p.121 / Chapter 4.6 --- Conclusion --- p.135 / Chapter Chapter Five --- Summary and Conclusion --- p.136 / Notes --- p.145 / References --- p.148 / Appendix 1 A comprehensive list of motion verbs in English --- p.158 / Appendix 2 A comprehensive list of motion verbs (roots only) in Chinese --- p.160

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-212). / This dissertation develops a form of relativism in which propositions are treated as sets of world-time-individual triples, in contrast to standard views that treat them as sets of worlds or world-time pairs. This builds on existing proposals for predicates of personal taste such as fun and tasty, and has ties to approaches to de se attitudes involving centered worlds. I develop an accompanying pragmatic view in which the context set is similarly construed as a set of world-time-individual triples. The semantic and pragmatic systems together are used to account for the behavior of predicates of personal taste, epistemic modals, indicative conditionals, and a variety of attitude reports, including control constructions. I also explore ways that this account can help solve puzzles related to Moore's paradox. To give one concrete example, I propose that the proposition expressed by the sentence it might be raining is the set of world-time-individual triples <w,t,x> such that it's compatible with x's knowledge in w at t that it's raining. On the pragmatic side, a speaker is justified in asserting this sentence in a conversation if it is compatible with the speaker's own knowledge that it's raining; by asserting it, though, the speaker is making the stronger proposal to make it common ground that it is compatible with the knowledge of the entire group of conversational participants that it's raining. If this proposal is accepted by the other participants, then the group will have established that their knowledge states are aligned in a particular way. I introduce the core semantic and pragmatic proposals in Chapter 2, focusing on epistemic modals, predicates of personal taste, and belief reports. / (cont.) In Chapter 3, I extend the analysis to indicative conditionals, showing that this solves longstanding puzzles involving the relationship between conditionals and disjunction. In Chapter 4, I extend the approach to certain control constructions, with a special emphasis on capturing their de se interpretation. In Chapter 5, I look at two puzzles related to Moore's paradox, with special attention to the meaning of imagine. / by Tamina C. Stephenson. / Ph.D.

It is the goal of all reading instructors to use techniques that will enhance reading comprehension. This is certainly no less so in the second language classroom. Studies have shown that readers possess schemata for text structure that is activated during the reading process. It has also been shown that a reader's textual schemata may be culturally influenced and that second language students may possess textual schemata that conflicts or interferes with the structure of the text making comprehension more difficult. For this reason, second language learners may benefit from explicit instruction in text structure and content relationships. Semantic mapping is a text organization strategy which may be used to explicate text structure and content relationships with both expository prose and fiction. The purpose of this study was to use semantic mapping to explicate the structure and content of short fiction and to measure the effect, if any, on comprehension. For the purposes of this study, comprehension was defined two ways: (1) recognition comprehension, which is the ability to retain and recall factual detail from text content, and (2) comprehension as evidenced by the use of certain critical thinking skills, i.e., elaboration and supplementation in forming written responses. Two hypotheses were posed: 1. The use of semantic mapping will result in an increase in recognition comprehension by a treatment group of English as a second language readers using a semantic mapping strategy, as compared to a control group using an advance organizer, based on a combination multiple choice and true/ false quiz. 2. The use of semantic mapping will result in greater use of elaboration and supplementation by a treatment group of English as a second language readers using a semantic mapping strategy, as compared to a control group using an advance organizer, based on an analysis of a quiz requiring written responses. In order to determine the results of this study, .t-tests were used to compare the mean scores between groups. In the case of recognition comprehension, the group receiving the treatment, semantic mapping, did score significantly higher than the control group. In the case of comprehension, as evidenced by the use of elaborations and supplementations in written responses, the group which used semantic mapping showed a higher level of use, but the difference was not statistically significant. A Mann-Whitney U test ranked the subjects' scores individually on an ordinal scale and then compared the means between groups. In the case of elaborations the treatment group showed a significantly higher level of use. However, there was no corresponding significant difference in the case of supplementations.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

No description available.

This thesis is concerned with the connection between syntax and semantics regarding the construction of special meaning in English. To investigate this construction I have taken a selection of English idioms, modified them in structured ways and then presented them to a group of English mother tongue speakers to test whether, although modified, these idioms retain their idiomaticity. These modifications took the form of two specific operations, those of mobility and transferability (the latter operation was created for the purpose of this thesis). An idiom’s parts are considered mobile if its parts can undergo movement and retain an idiomatic reading. In this thesis, the movement operation that I was concerned with was passivisation. An idiom’s parts are considered transferable if one of its parts can be replaced (e.g. the verb with another verb or the object determiner phrase with another determiner phrase) and idiomaticity is retained. I hypothesise that whether an idiom’s parts are transferable and mobile is dependent on whether the idiom is compositional or not. I will discuss the above hypothesis against previous work of both Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist Program and Jackendoff’s (1997) representational modularity. The results gained in this study show that idioms cannot be categorised neatly as compositional or non-compositional, but rather exist on a continuum of idiomaticity. On the one end of the continuum exist idioms that are completely inflexible and the rate of flexibility increases the further the continuum extends. Therefore on the one side of the scale is an idiom such as “trip the light fantastic” which is inflexible and on the other side is an idiom such as “I lift my hat to you” which is flexible but in restrained ways. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

The thesis investigates the formal semantics of temporal indexical expressions in English. Examples of such expressions include now, tomorrow and last year. In the past, research has concentrated on instances of such expressions which have two major properties. These indexicals are sensitive to extralinguistic context, and while they do possess descriptive meaning, that meaning does not appear within the propositions which correspond to utterances of the sentences which contain the indexicals. The thesis argues that this line of research has neglected a significant body of natural language evidence in which indexicals display rather different behaviour. We term indexicals from the first group unbound, and indexicals from the second group bound. Given these two domains of indexical evidence, the thesis sets out to achieve three primary aims. The first aim is to provide a formal semantic representation of both bound and unbound indexicals which systematically relates them, while distinguishing them from non-indexical expressions. To establish this aim, we informally investigate the relationship between the two types of indexical, and propose a unifying generalisation. This generalisation is then embedded within an existing but novel semantic system, due to Richards, called IQ. IQ is an interval-based semantics for tenses and temporal quantifiers in English which makes use of double-indexing. IQ must be modified so as to properly accommodate indexicals. With a new representation in hand, we demonstrate that the thesis can adequately treat both types of indexical occurrence. The second aim of the thesis is to assess the effects of the incorporation of the two types of indexical on the semantic entities of IQ. The propositions of IQ already include two major types: value free and value specific. Using the new representation of indexicals, the thesis shows that there are further varieties of the value free proposition. These propositions are then compared with Kaplan's contents, Frege's thoughts and Russell's propositions. The final aim is to establish a rigorous formulation of a fragment of the version of IQ derived in the thesis. Given this formulation, it is possible to assess its position relative to a landmark in the logic of indexicals. Using mathematical techniques, the thesis proves that the tense operators and indexical operators of the final version of IQ have particular properties which distinguish them from those in other indexical logics also based on double-indexing.

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1985. / Bibliography: leaves 147-151. / Photocopy. / xiv, 151 leaves, bound 29 cm

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND HUMANITIES. / Bibliography: leaves 256-259. / by Marcia Christine Linebarger. / Ph.D.