Thesis (M. Augmentative and Alternative Communication)--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 217-233).

D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages) / The change in function of word categories is a widespread phenomenon in Zulu and can be indicated across the whole spectrum of language elements. The dynamic developing nature of the language entails that units may shift upwards or downwards within the hierarchy, resulting in their assuming either a higher or lower rank. The so-called "class prefix" of class 2a is typified as a specialised and rank shifted variant of the emphatic pronoun bona on account of its syntactic and semantic characteristics. The class prefix of class 1a has not yet completely passed through the development process from Ur-Bantu *Ta and currently shows charateristics of both copula and class prefix. Various other affixes of the noun such as, inter alia, the diminutive suffix and prefixes such as {-50-} and {~nga-} originated from former nouns and verbal stems. A 1arge degree of interaction occurs between pronouns and other word categories. The (abbreviated) demonstrative pronoun a functions as relative pronoun in establishing relative constructions. The verbal suffix {-yo} which functions in verbal relative constructions as nominaliser and with an emphatic semantic value also originated from a pronoun. A few pronouns from the locative classes may function as (auxiliary) verb stems while others serve as "conjunct ions". The distance indicating suffixes of the demonstrative pronouns, with the retention of significance, are employed in other word categori es such as adverbs and interjective demonstratives. Category shifting, therefore, also occurs on the level of morphemes. A mutual underlying composition is disclosed for all relative constructions (verbal and nominal) as consisting of the relative pronoun a as introductory member followed by a complement in the relative mood. This postulation makes provision for the occurence of a underlying copulative verb stem *-(1)i in the relative and situative moods. In the indicative the negative auxiliary verb stem -si is regarded as (underlying) part of the copulative construction. Various particle words such as the connective na and the instrumental nga, the hortative particles (m)a and A(ke), certain "conjunctions" such as uma and qede, the particles be and se and certain enclitic particles find their origin in verbs. It has been indicated within the category 'verb' that the aspectual morphemes originated in former verb stems. Certain verbs can be lowered in rank with specific morphological and semantic changes and then function as auxiliary verb stems. In certain cases the auxiliary verb stems can shift upwards in rank by morphematic elision of the concordial morpheme and be employed as autonomous "conjunctions". Adverbs are mainly derived from other word categories in that noun class prefixes function as adverbial prefixes. The adverbial prefix {ka-} is reduced to the obsolete class 13 of Ur-Bantu which contained mainly diminutive words as well as words with an adverbial significance. The morpheme {-ka} whi ch occurs in words such as kangaka originated in the demonstrative pronoun of this class, namely lakha. Ideophones show formal, semantic and syntatic similarities with verbs and are typified in principle as the complement of the auxiliary verb stem -thi.

This thesis is a case study on the emergence of functional categories in bilingual first language acquisition. The investigation focuses on the transition from one-word to multiword utterances and the shaping of functional projections of Determiner, Agreement and Tense and their associated formal features. The empirical basis of this work is a corpus of thirty-nine videorecorded observations of Carlo, an English-Italian bilingual child, during free-play sessions with an adult. Data was collected separately for English and Italian for a period of fifteen months from when the child was 1;10 until he was 3;1, and was then transcribed in CHAT format. Four interrelated lines of enquiry inform the analysis presented here. The principal research question concerns the acquisitional strategies adopted by C. in these early stages of development in the two languages. A bilingual child is the closest one can get to a perfect matched pair where a number of variables such as socio-cognitive development, socio-economic status, parents' education, etc. are eliminated, and the two main variables to be investigated are the child's two input languages. This is an ideal situation in which the respective roles of general acquisitional strategies and language particular ones can be teased apart. An analysis of the emergence of the morphosyntactic correlates of Determiner, Agreement and Tense categories in English and Italian reveals a discrepancy between the two languages in the age of acquisition, rate of acquisition and in the language-specific strategies the child adopts. The observation of a significant difference in C.'s acquisitional strategies in English and Italian leads us to the second and third research questions: the way in which the emergence of functional categories differs between the two languages, and the reasons why this should be the case. The most obvious difference is the extent to which morphological correlates of functional categories emerge in the child's speech. In Italian, verbal and nominal morphology emerges earlier than in English and, at least in the nominal system, there is evidence that an Agreement category is part of the child's grammar. In English, verbal morphology is virtually non-existent by the end of the period of observation, and there is no substantial evidence that either Agreement or Tense are realised. Lexically-specific, item-based learning plays a substantial role in both languages, but in Italian there is some evidence that a number of grammatical contrasts are becoming productive by age 3;0, albeit some of them are still limited to a small number of lexical items. Two reasons were identified for the observed differences in the emergence of Determiner, Agreement and Tense in English and Italian: a typological reason, and an environmental reason. The former concerns the richness of Italian morphology, where grammatical contrasts are transparently marked both on nominal and verbal paradigms, as opposed to the relative poverty of English morphology where such contrasts correlate less obviously ans systematically with morphophonological markers. The latter reason concerns the very different input conditions in which C. is exposed to Italian and English: Italian is the home language spoken to him by his family and his babsysitters, while he is addressed in English by the staff at the nursery where one adult is in charge of several children and cannot engage in the one-to-one interaction which is typical of the dyadic situation in which C. finds himself at home. The differences observed in the lead-lag pattern between C.'s Italian and his English also provide sufficient evidence to address the fourth research question concerning the separate developement of the two languages. The analysis of the data did not reveal any systematic interferences from one language to the other. On the contrary there is evidence that C. is sensitive to the different morphosyntactic cues of his two input languages, and that he can treat the two as independent, self-contained problem spaces.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 2000. / Abstract and vita. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 267-278).

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.