Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 157-159.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

M.Litt. et Phil. (German) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This study deals with the influence of other languages on Venda. It begins by looking at the various contact situations and then analyses the adaptation of foreign linguistic forms and their impact on the Venda language. Chapter 1 gives a historical perspective of Venda. The focus here is on the origin of the Venda language and the different contacts it has had with other languages during and after migration. Chapter 2 analyses the adaptation of foreign linguistic forms to the Venda lexical­ semantic system, while chapter 3 focuses on adoptives in relation to the Venda sound system. Chapter 4 focuses on the grammatical (i.e morphological and syntactic) adaptation . This chapter concludes by looking at the impact of adopted linguistic forms en the Venda grammatical system. The final chapter gives a general conclusion on the adjustment of adopted linguistic forms and their effects on the Venda language. / African languages / M.A. (African languages)

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sheffield. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 360-378).

The first part of this thesis addresses the following questions: where in the syntactic tree, and at what representational level is an NP Case-checked. To this end, it presents converging data from French, Welsh and Irish, which suggest (i) that Case-checking may be accomplished under a variety of functional projections (subject to parametric variation); and (ii) that Case positions are--at least partially--independent of the A/A$ sp prime$-distinction. It furthermore presents evidence from Irish and Welsh--VSO languages in which NPs typically raise to their Case position only at LF--that NPs are, under certain conditions, Case-checked at S-structure. / Chapter 2 investigates word order and cliticisation in Standard French and Quebec French interrogatives and proposes a typology of interrogatives. Chapter 3 and 4 account for complementizer variation, pre-verbal particles and agreement patterns in Welsh and Irish under a Case-theoretic approach. / The second part of this thesis concerns the conditions on the availability of structural accusative Case. A theory of structural Case is proposed according to which accusativity is a configurational rather than a lexical property--i.e., resulting from syntactic geometry and not from lexical feature specifications on verbs. To this end, a comparison between the syntactic mapping of stative and perfective predicates in Irish and English is undertaken.

On the basis of an investigation of a corpus of 5.5 million words, this thesis analyses the use of the present perfect in modem American and British English. The investigation traces the development of the present perfect from its origins as a structure with adjectival meaning to its modern-day use as an aspectual verb form. A frequency analysis tests the claims of various writers that the present perfect is losing ground against the preterite and is less frequent in American than in British English. Neither claim is supported by the results of this analysis. A temporal specifier analysis investigates the co-occurrence of a large number of adverbials with the various verb forms. It finds that certain groups of specifiers which have hitherto been considered markers for the present perfect are in fact very poor indicators. Specifiers indicating a period of time lasting up to the moment of utterance, however, are found to be very reliable indicators. With one exception no significant difference was found between the British and American corpora in this respect. A functional-semantic analysis examines the various theories of the present perfect against the background of the results of the empirical investigation and finds them to be insufficient in one or more respects. In the final chapter the division between tense and aspect is shown to be artificial and a model of the present perfect is presented which is based on the idea of multilayered aspectual values. The model is centred on the unifying concept of phragmatisation - the closing of the event time-frame. According to this model, discourse topics involving the present perfect are perceived to describe an event which takes place in a time frame which is not closed to the deictic zero point at the moment of utterance. The final section describes which factors are operative in the phragmatisation or closing of event time frames.