This thesis proposes a modification of Chomsky's (1992) theory of locality to deal with restructuring phenomena which allow an apparent violation of the locality condition on certain local processes. Various restructuring phenomena including long-distance NP movement exemplified by long-distance Object Preposing (Chapter 2) and long-distance head movement exemplified by clitic climbing (Chapter 3) are examined cross linguistically. Long-distance anaphora (Chapter 4) are also examined based on the view the locality on various types of anaphor-antecedent relationships follow from the theory of movement. / It is argued that the peculiar behavior of restructuring constructions in terms of locality follows from the lexical properties of restructuring verbs that allows a defective Tense to occur in the complement clause. The following effects result: (i) Case checking within the embedded clause becomes impossible; (ii) the defective Tense triggers incorporation of the infinitive verb into the matrix verb. As a result, the embedded element that requires Case is forced to raise into the matrix clause as a last resort operation, hence motivation long-distance movement. / In order to reconcile long-distance movement with the economy principle which requires chain links to be minimal, this thesis refines Chomsky's (1992) theory of locality. The proposed hypothesis claims that the locality condition on certain operations such as NP movement and head movement follows from the economy principle in such a way that an element can move to the closest position in which its morphological requirement can be satisfied. This notion of the shortest movement is further clarified in that the domain in which the shortest movement requirement is satisfied can be extended if there is an appropriate linked chain formed by head movement. The proposed system not only provides principled account for the phenomena of restructuring, but also has some important implications for the notion of economy of derivation.

This thesis investigates Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) where two or more finite verbs along with their complements occur in a single clause without any form of coordination or subordination. Two basic questions are addressed: (a) what types of SVCs are there, and how are they to be distinguished from other similar constructions? (b) what is the parameter that allows a language like Edo to have SVCs, and not English or French? / It is argued that true SVCs are those in which the verbs share internal as well as external arguments. Based on a battery of syntactic tests, it is proposed that there are two kinds of SVCs with distinct syntactic structures: resultative and consequential. This is contrary to the unified approach in previous works such as Baker (1989) and Collins (1997). It is argued that resultative SVCs are constrained to two verbs, the second of which is typically unaccusative, and they assign their internal theta roles to a single object---true internal argument sharing. Consequential SVCs are less constrained, and involve sequences of transitive verbs, with internal argument sharing realized via an empty category, pro, as the object of the second verb. Both kinds of SVCs contain two functional heads: an E(vent) head that binds the events denoted by the verbs which it dominates, and a Voice head that licenses the Agent of the events expressed by those verbs. / Some other constructions that have been classified as SVCs turn out to involve two separate clauses, each with their own E(vent) and Voice heads: covert coordinations, modal-aspectual verb constructions, and instrumental constructions. A syntactic structure for each of these non-SVCs is proposed. / Based on Pollock's (1989) approach to verb raising and the checking theory of Chomsky (1993, 1995), it is argued that SVCs can occur in languages where Tense (or other Infl categories) does not need to be checked. The parameter is as follows: non-SVC languages are those in which Infl must check features with the verb {English, French, Igbo, Chinese etc.}, versus SVC languages where it doesn't {Edo, Yoruba, Ewe, Akan etc.}

No description available.

This dissertation investigates (direct) object clitics and object omission in the acquisition of French as a first language. It reports on two original empirical studies which were designed to address aspects of object omission in child French that have remained unexplored in previous research. Study 1 investigates the incidence of object omission in the spontaneous speech of French-speaking children aged three and above, an age group for which no analysis, and only little data, have been available so far. Findings show that object omission continues to occur at non-negligible rates in this group. A comparison with age- and language-matched groups of English- and Chinese-speaking children (from Wang, Lillo-Martin; Best & Levitt 1992) suggests that French-speaking children omit objects at higher rates than their English-speaking peers, yet at lower rates than children acquiring a true null object language, such as Chinese. Study 2 was designed to investigate whether French-speaking children would accept null objects on a receptive task, an issue that has not been previously investigated. A series of truth value judgment experiments is developed, adapting an experimental paradigm that has not been used previously in the context of null objects. Results from English- and French-speaking children show that both groups consistently reject null objects on these tasks, a finding that constitutes counterevidence to proposals which attribute object omission in production to a genuine null object representation sanctioned by the child grammar. Overall, the pattern of results turns out not to be consistent with any developmental proposals made in the literature, suggesting that a novel approach is required. Proposing a minimalist adaptation of Sportiche's (1996) analysis of clitic constructions, and taking into consideration the recent emphasis on 'interface' requirements imposed by language-external systems, I put forward a hypothesis for future research, the Decayed Features Hypothesis (DFH), which locates the source of object (clitic) omission in child French in a specific language-external domain, namely the capacity of working memory.

This study presents a pragmatic viewpoint toward the analysis of definiteness, regarding the universal, primitive notions of topic, theme, focus, emphasis, specificity, reference, and restrictivity as the controlling features of discourse which are coded in derivative syntactic structures such as the Finnish case selection and word order and the English determiner system in irregular ways. The explanation of the English article as a mere marker of definiteness which is to be translated into Finnish as case, word order, and stress variations does not reveal how each language deals with nounrelated discourse functions. But if the pragmatic motivation controlling the expression of definiteness is first analyzed as an organizing principle in the syntax of an utterance, then the language-specific, superficial manifestations can be identified in a more exhaustive manner.The basic hypothesis in the study was that definiteness is a grammatical concept which is derived from the universal pragmatic functions but may not always be established in each language separately as a syntactic category. It was shown how the pragmatic notions of topicality, thematicity, focality, emphasis, specificity, reference, restrictivity,.and presuppositionality interact with the derived features of case, word order, stress, and function words in Finnish. It was observed that due to their biassed typological nature, languages combine the primitives in different ways so that a language which lacks a morphological or lexical system of marking definiteness (Finnish) must allow for more extensive pragmatic control of word order than a language which has an overt article system (English) in order to reflect the pragmatic conditions of an utterance.It was suggested in the study that the primary function of case markings (specifically, the nominative/accusative vs. partitive contrast) in Finnish is not the expression of definiteness through the totality/ partiality contrast and that the order of sentence elements is not always a direct indicator of definiteness or indefiniteness. Instead, the Finnish case selection is a result of pragmatic functions such as topicality, focality, completeness of action, specificity, referentiality, and emphasis, whereas word order in its marked/unmarked forms is related to givenness/newness and thus, topicality/focality. Seven Subject Rules and four Object Rules were formulated to account for the typological limits within which the pragmatic control of sentence elements in Finnish must operate.The study concluded that definiteness is a pragmatic consequence of a number of different things which are not coded in Finnish as they are in English. Whereas English has syntacticized definiteness and Finnish has not, the discourse functions which correspond to Finnish case and word order and the English article system are interpreted pragmatically in ways that are not equivalent between the two languages. Because definiteness is subject to syntactic limitations which themselves are contingent on pragmatic factors,: it is appropriate to speak of definiteness as a derivative function which can be attributed only to languages with an overt article system.

This dissertation is a contrastive study of the semantics, pragmatics, and discourse functions of demonstratives in English and Chinese.It is shown that there is a metaphorical relationship between the basic semantic properties of demonstratives and their various uses in the two languages. The proximal demonstrative tends to be used for spatial, temporal, or emotional closeness, or for a foregrounded referent, whereas the distal demonstrative is usually used for spatial, temporal, or emotional remoteness, or for a backgrounded referent. However, details of the metaphorical extensions in the two languages may vary. Functional differences between demonstrative pronouns and neuter pronouns in English and Chinese are also discussed. It is shown that demonstrative pronouns tend to code a higher degree of topic discontinuity or topic change, and neuter pronouns a greater degree of topic continuity in the two languages.In addition to contributing to an understanding of the basic factors governing the uses of demonstratives in English and Chinese, which could be used as a basis for further cross linguistic study, this research should also have some pedagogical value for teaching both English and Chinese as foreign languages. / Department of English

In this thesis we shall investigate the kinds of information which the Human Sentence Processing Mechanism employs during the resolution of local syntactic ambiguity in written texts. The thesis is in three parts. In Part I we consider some current models of syntactic ambiguity resolution. On the one hand, we consider the structural approaches, in which the processor considers only syntactic information when choosing between alternatives. On the other, we consider the interactive approaches, in which different kinds of information are brought to bear during the resolution process. In Part II, we describe a number of experiments which contrast the predictions of these two approaches. In particular, we investigate the processing of sentences which are locally ambiguous between a simple noun phrase analysis and a complex noun phrase analysis. Frazier (1979) predicts that the simple noun phrase analysis is chosen because it utilizes fewest phrasal nodes in its associated phrase marker. Crain and Steedman (1985), however, predict that the interpretation of the noun phrase is determined by referential factors, such as whether or not a unique referent can be identified for the noun phrase. The results support Crain and Steedman's interactive hypothesis. In Part III, we consider some theoretical issues concerning the timing of the processor's decisions. Crain and Steedman's original model is modified in the light of such considerations. We explore the implications of the modification for the status of syntax and semantics within our model of sentence comprehension. In the final chapter, we attempt to explain the existence of parsing preferences in sentences which are presented in isolation, and for which no explicit contextual information has been provided. We conclude that contextual considerations, such as the distinction between what is and what is not already known to the hearer, are of fundamental importance during the resolution of local syntactic ambiguity by the Human Sentence Processing Mechanism.

In this thesis, I argue that early child second language (L2) grammars allow truncation, on a par with proposals by Rizzi (1993/1994) and Haegeman (1995) for first language (L1) acquisition. This account (the Truncation Hypothesis) holds that Rizzi's (1994) Root Principle, according to which root declaratives are CPs, is initially underspecified in L2 systems (for processing reasons). This means that the root of main declaratives will not systematically be CP. Instead, different types of roots should be projected, such as CP, IP or VP, with VP underlying root infinitives. If one further assumes that functional categories are present in early grammars, the possibility of truncation can thus account for optionality of verb-movement and finiteness in early SLA, and more generally for why such categories seem to be optionally projected initially (Vainikka & Young-Scholten, 1994; 1996; Eubank, 1992; 1993/1994; 1996). / Predictions based on the Truncation Hypothesis were tested against longitudinal spontaneous production data from child and adult L2 learners. There were two child and two adult learners of L2 French (whose L1s were English and Arabic) and two child two adult learners of L2 German (native speakers of Romance pro-drop languages). The findings suggest that the distribution of finite and nonfinite verbs is structurally determined in L2 child grammar, i.e. tenseless verbs only appear when VP is the root, while finite verbs are found when functional categories are projected. This in turn means that children project truncated structures in early L2 acquisition. I argue that no other theory of the nature of early L2 grammars is able to account for the full range of properties of the child L2 data. / The adult data are less conclusive concerning the possibility of truncation in adult L2 grammars. In particular, the learners seem to use infinitival markers as substitutes for finite inflections, which means that nonfinite verbs are found in contexts which are not predicted by the Truncation Hypothesis. The difference between the child and adult learners is attributed to problems that adults may have in mapping the syntactic and morphological systems (Lardiere, 1996), and not to a discrepancy in syntactic knowledge.

No description available.

Research on morphological variability in second language (L2) acquisition has focused on the syntactic consequences of variability: that is, whether or not morphological variability entails underlying syntactic deficits. The interrelationship between morphological features in their own right has been largely ignored. This thesis addresses the representation of L2 features by investigating the use of default morphology---the outcome of systematic substitution errors employed by speakers of L2 Spanish. It is hypothesized that underspecified features act as defaults; by assumption, those features that are unmarked are underspecified. / Evidence to support this hypothesis comes from two sets of experiments conducted on intermediate- and advanced-proficiency L2 Spanish subjects (L1 English). The first set of experiments addresses verbal morphology, and consists of a spontaneous production experiment on person, number, tense, and finiteness, and a comprehension task on person and number. The second set of experiments addresses gender and number in nominal morphology, and consists of a spontaneous production experiment on determiners, an elicited production experiment on clitics and adjectives, and a picture-selection task on the comprehension of clitics. Across tasks and across verbal and nominal domains, errors involve the systematic substitution of underspecified morphology. The observation that morphological variability extends to comprehension, and is qualitatively similar to the variability found in production, counters the suggestion that variability is strictly a product of mere performance limitations on production. Finally, the systematicity of substitution errors suggests that the natural classes of features such as gender, number, tense, and person are acquirable in an L2, regardless of whether or not these features have been instantiated in the native language.