This thesis has presented a comparative study of English and Spanish determiners. The comparison has been made at a surface level of the determiner systems of the two languages and also at a deep structure level. The reason of this comparison has been to find out how the two languages differ or have points of similarities. The points of difference have been taken into consideration to see how these differences between the two languages affect errors in writing compositions by Spanish-speaking students learning English.Some ideas have been drawn up of how constrastive analysis could help in teaching or learning a language.

The purpose of the study was two-fold. First, it investigated, described, and analyzed tense shifts and the roles of the present tense forms in IEIL autobiographical discourse. Second, as a contribution to the study of English interlanguage of Indonesian EFL learners it presents some pedagogical implications for the EFL teaching and learning in Indonesia and offers suggestions for further research. The data used for the study were twenty-six essays containing 1700 verb phrases in 937 sentences, which were written by twenty-six freshman EFL learners of the University of Sriwijaya in Palembang, Indonesia, in 1986.The results of the study show that tense use in IEIL is systematic, on one hand, and variable, on the other. Shifts of tense from past to present are generally predictable. The present tense usually functions to present the writer's evaluation or opinion, habitual occurrences, general truth, or factual descriptions functioning as permanent truth in relation to the writer's childhood. Occasionally, the present tense functions as the Historical Present to narrate past events. The past tense, on the other hand, usually functions to describe past truth and, at times, to narrate historical events such as the writer's date and place of birth.Variability also characterizes IEIL autobiographical discourse. That is, IEIL writers do not completely follow the present and past tense rules. For instance, they usually use the present tense to express habitual occurrences, but at other times they use past tense accompanied by such expressions as "on Sundays," "on holidays," "whenever," etc.In addition, the following conclusions have been drawn: (1) IEIL autobiographical discourse largely contains description expressed in the past tense; (2) discourses are highly recommended to be used as the first material in teaching linguistic phenomena such as tense shifts to Indonesian EFL learners; and (3) following the IL theory and principles, EFL teachers should not treat EFL learner's should treat them as a sign that they are in fact in the process of learning.deviants as a sign of improper usage and harmful but instead should treat them as a sign that they are in fact in the process of learning. / Department of English

Noun phrases (NPs) with the same reference may take a number of different forms. For example, in English a particular conference can be referred to as a conference, the conference, that conference, this conference, that, this, or it. This dissertation attempts to account for the use of such referring expressions in Chinese, based on Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski's (1993) Givenness Hierarchy, and compares the discourse use of Chinese referring expressions with those of English.The Givenness Hierarchy is given below:THE GIVENNESS HIERARCHY:inuniquelytypefocus > activated > familiar > identifiable >referential> identifiable that{it}this{that N}{the N}{indefinite this N}{a N}this NThe Givenness Hierarchy correlates the form of referring expressions with their cognitive statuses, with each status being necessary and sufficient for the appropriate use of a different form or set of forms.The dissertation tests the Givenness Hierarchy to see if it adequately explains the use of referring expressions in Chinese. The data for this study are drawn from spoken and written texts from several different text types (cf. Biber 1986, 1988). The spoken data represent three different speech situations, i.e., face-to-face casual conversations, news broadcasts, and public speeches. The written texts represent different types, including short stories, novels, academic prose, magazine and journal articles, published letters and personal letters. The spoken and written data cover a range of formality and degree of planning.The results of the study show that the Givenness Hierarchy cannot account for the choice of form when two forms meet the sufficient cognitive requirements for appropriate use. More specifically, the Givenness Hierarchy fails to account for choices in Chinese between yi `one' NP and a bare NP when type identifiable is a necessary and sufficient condition for the appropriate use of both, or between nei `that' NP and a bare NP when uniquely identifiable is a necessary and sufficient condition for the appropriate use of both.It is proposed that within the individual categories of the Givenness Hierarchy, further distinction of the degree of discourse salience must be made in order to account for the distribution of Chinese NP forms in discourse. For example, the study shows that nei `that' encodes a uniquely identifiable referent and is used to increase referential salience, while a bare NP encodes a referent of neutral referential salience. Following Givon's (1984) line of research, the use of the numeral yi `one' is to code pragmatically important referents in discourse vs. the use of a bare NP to indicate referentially unimportant referents.To interpret the distribution of referring expressions in Chinese discourse, a number of properties of different expressions have been identified and characterized. The distal demonstrative determiner nei `that' has an associative anaphoric use, encoding an entity whose referent is uniquely identifiable based on what Hawkins (1978, 1991) calls P-sets, association sets. This function of nei as an associative anaphor demonstrates that its deictic function has become weak. In this regard, nei is beginning to function like the English definite article the.The distal demonstrative determiner nei has a recognitional use in talk-ininteraction, to use Schegloff's (1996) terms, negotiating shared knowledge and personal experiences.The demonstrative determiners zhe/na 'this/that' are studied in terms of word order variation. When in postverbal position, they function as definite markers, precluding indefinite interpretation of the postverbal NP. In preverbal position, they tend to increase referential salience of the subject/topic NP.The demonstrative pronouns are compared with the neuter pronoun to `it' and zero when referring to inanimates. The neuter to and zero tend to continue a topic, while demonstrative pronouns are likely to signal topic shift. This distinctive feature is shared by both English and Chinese.In sum, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of the use of referring expressions in both Chinese and English, which should be of interest both to linguists and to language teachers. / Department of English

The determiners, including such words as the articles, the and a, and the demonstratives, this and that, have been studied from many points of view. There are grammatical theories of their derivation and use, philosophical investigations and psychological studies, looking at adult use. However, few studies have considered the acquisition of these small, but important, words in child language development. Those studies that do exist tend to regard the child's acquisition as a progressive approximation to, or attainment of, adult usage. Chapter 1 of the thesis reviews the previous literature in the area in order to place in perspective the present research study. Chapter 1 is divided into six sections. The first section serves as a short introduction to the determiners and examines briefly some of the approaches to their study. Philosophical and linguistic studies are mentioned in passing. Historically, the definite, article the and the demonstrative that are derived from the same word in Old English (poet), while a is derived from the numeral one. However, most psychological studies of determiner acquisition have been derived from the assumption that the definite and indefinite (articles are part of one contrastive system. In order to discuss the psychological studies, section 2 examines the grammatical theories, starting with Christophersen (1939) and Jespersen (1949), of the articles and the demonstratives, as contrastive systems of language use. However, a second approach, which is taken up by developmental psycholinguists, is what is termed the functional approach. This approach is advocated primarily by psycholinguists and philosophers of language, who believe that the articles and demonstratives are linked (as they are historically) into one integrated system of determination. Section 3 therefore considers integrated theories of determiner acquisition, commencing from the work of Lyons (1975, 1977). It has been established that there are two theoretical approaches to the study of determiner acquisition, the contrastive approach and the integrated functional approach. The rest of Chapter 1 is concerned with empirical approaches, and section A examines some psychological studies of article acquisition. The work of Brown (1973), Maratsos (1976) and Warden (1973) represents studies based on the assumed contrast between the and a. The work of Bresson (1974) and Karmiloff-Smith (1976, 1979) represents the functional approach to article acquisition. The contrastive approach tends to regard the child as working towards adult competence with the articles, and thus the young child errs in his use. Brown, Maratsos, and Warden each deal at length with the child's apparent egocentric use of the definite article. The child uses the instead of a, when introducing a referent known to himself, to a listener who does not have the same knowledge. Brown draws on spontaneous speech, and considers mainly the correctness of syntactic forms. Maratsos and Warden consider the meanings of the words and the child's developing grasp of the articles as a semantic system. Bresson and Karmiloff-Smith, while both working with French-speaking children, consider the articles as part of a total system of determination. Although Bresson tends to regard the children as erring when they do not possess adult functions of the articles, Karmiloff-Smith, in a very extensive study, looks at what the children produce and understand. She then postulates the functions the determiners have for young children, how the functions are initially established and how they develop and change with an increase in linguistic and cognitive competence. The present research thesis could be viewed as an extension of this approach with English-speaking children. A similar distinction between the contrastive and functional approaches to determiner acquisition is seen with the demonstratives, and section 5 of Chapter 1 considers the work of Clark (1978). She looks at the acquisition of the demonstratives (and other deictic pairs) in terms of the child learning specific contrasts, e.g. this vs. that as proximal vs. non-proximal spatio-temporal distance. While Karmiloff-Smith also deals with the demonstratives in her functional approach, the work of Wales (1978, 1979) is discussed. Wales, while considering experimentally the acquisition of the contrastive deictic terms, also looks at spontaneous use of the determiners in mother-child interaction. Not only is the speech examined, but also the nonlinguistic gestures that accompany the speech of young children. The final section of the review chapter summarises the previous research. Also presented are the broad aims of the experiments that are reported in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. The functional approach is taken, with the. research being based on the notion that the article system and the demonstrative system are not separate and individually contrastive systems, but are linked via the and that, in their deictic functions. The experiments aimed to show how production and comprehension of the determiners can be influenced by various contextual factors. Each experiment was designed to allow for maximum flexibility, and all verbal and nonverbal responses were recorded and subjected to analysis. In this way, a clearer indication of precisely what functions of the articles and demonstratives three year old children are competent with, can be gained. Chapter 2, presenting the article comprehension experiments, commences by outlining the theoretically assumed adult functions of the articles. These functions may not necessarily be the ones on which the three year old child's article system is based. However, the functions are derived from adult-based notions of usage, so it is reasonable to suggest that they will serve as valid assumptions on which to base the experiments. Three experiments were conducted aimed at examining the young child's understanding of assumed contrasts between the functions of the and a. In all but one condition of one experiment, the children did not provide evidence of understanding the theoretically assumed contrasts. Instead, nonlinguistic response bias explanations were put forward of how the children were performing. However it is not known if the response biases arise because the children do not understand the language, or whether such biases (for absolute location, for relative location, depending on the nature of the task) block any potential understanding. Finally, the problem of designing tasks suitable for article comprehension is discussed. Chapter 3 presents the experiments designed to elicit the articles (and other determiners, both linguistic and nonlinguistic). Experiments to elicit only the articles (and their assumed contrast) tend to be fairly un-natural (see Maratsos, 1976), and hence flexible task designs were adopted for the present studies. Many forms of determiner use were elicited by these tasks, and these form the basis for Chapter 3. Experiment 4 studied the already well-documented use of the indefinite article for naming. However, a large incidence (about 30%) of article omission was recorded - an incidence which re-occurred throughout the experiments. Experiments 5 to 7 investigated the effects of various manipulations on subsequent article use. These variables included : the naming of the objects prior to subsequent questioning; altering the form of the question posed; the use of hidden vs. visible arrays; and variation of the class composition of the arrays. It was found that there was an interactive effect of these variables on subsequent article use and the functions of these article forms, but that the form of the question posed. had the greatest effect.

This thesis presents an analysis of the structure and function of cleft constructions in discourse. Drawing on a corpus of naturally-occurring spoken and written data, we present a multi-layered explanation of how it-clefts, wh-clefts, and reverse wh-clefts are different from non-clefts, and from one another. After a review of previous research on clefts in discourse, we explore the aspects of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics relevant to the structure and function of all three types of cleft. The discussion falls into three main parts: An analysis of the three cleft types, within the framework of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (cf. Gazdar et al. [1985]), in which particular attention is paid to the variety of constituents that can appear in particular positions in each type. The output of the grammar rules is compared to the examples that occur in the corpus of data. A treatment of cleft presupposition in terms of an analogy (suggested by van der Sandt [1988]) between presupposition and the treatment of pronominal anaphora in Kamp's [1981] Discourse Representation Theory An examination of the range of accentual patterns, presuppositional relations, and information structures typically appearing in clefts of all three kinds. We show that marked distinctions exist between the three cleft types in terms of all these factors, and suggest ways in which this helps to differentiate the range of discourse contexts in which clefts in general, and each cleft type in particular, are appropriate. At the end of the thesis we point to an analogy between the formal model for clefts presented and a psychological model of sentence processing We also suggest how the conclusions regarding both the structure and function of clefts as a class of construction and the distinction between the three types of cleft could be synthesised in a decision procedure for syntactic choice. Finally, we suggest some related areas for further research.

No description available.

The goal of this thesis is to present a detailed study of the second language acquisition (SLA) of English aspect by native speakers of Slavic languages. A parameterized distinction between English and Slavic aspect is proposed, in order to account for the subtle differences between English and Slavic telic and alelic sentences. Thus the thesis opens a new area of parameter research in SLA and studies in depth the mental representation of aspect in interlanguage. / It is proposed that, the four aspectual classes of verbs (Vendler 1967), viz. accomplishments, achievements, activities and states, can be represented in four different phrase structure templates, projecting from the verb's lexical semantical structure and making reference to the properties of the object. It is argued that the four templates are language universals, and the parameterized distinctions between languages involve the syntactic positions of meaning-based primitive predicates like CAUSE, BECOME and BE (Dowty 1979). It is at this level that the English-Slavic contrast receives an explanation. / Based on the syntax-theoretical treatment of Slavic and English aspect, the them investigates the process of SLA of aspect in Slavic speakers at three levels of proficiency in English: low intermediate, high intermediate and advanced. L2 learners are found to be capable of resetting the aspectual parameter value to the English setting, thus successfully acquiring a property of language almost never taught in language classrooms. / The thesis also studies the acquisition of a cluster of constructions, which syntactic research relates to the English value of the aspectual parameter, and which have been found to appear together in the speech of English children (Snyder & Stromswold 1997): Double Objects, Verb-Particles and Resultatives. Results indicate that every one of these constructions forms part of this aspect-related cluster and that knowledge of aspect and knowledge of the cluster co-occur. / The results of the experimental studies bring new evidence to bear on the theoretical choice between direct access to the L2 value (Epstein, Flynn Martohardjono 1996, Flynn 1996) or starting out the process of acquisition with the L1 value of a parameter (Schwartz & Sprouse 1994, 1996), supporting the latter view.

It is widely recognized that differences in both prosodic complexity and position-sensitive contrasts exist both within and across languages. In contemporary phonological theory, these differences are often attributed to differences between heads and non-heads and the asymmetries in licensing potential that exist between such positions. / In this thesis, the consequences of such differences for the second language (L2) acquisition of prosodic complexity and position-sensitive contrasts are explored. It is argued that an explanatorily adequate account of L2 syllabification must include highly-structured representations as well as a theory of licensing, which distinguishes between the licensing of a given position and the licensing of featural content in such a position. Using data drawn primarily from a number of studies that investigate the acquisition of French by native speakers of English and Mandarin, it is demonstrated that the widely-attested interlanguage (IL) syllable-structure-modification processes of deletion, epenthesis, and feature change have a common source. Specifically, all three processes result from the IL grammar's inability to license a syllable position or (some of) the featural content present in such a position in the target representation. Within Optimality theory, the framework adopted, this is formalized through the competition between Faithfulness constraints and Markedness constraints, which evaluate the wellformedness of the licensing relationships. Finally, it is argued that Prosodic Licensing and the principle of Licensing Inheritance from Harris (1997) work together to encode prosodic markedness in representation, as they create a series of head-dependent asymmetries in which heads are strong licensors vis-a-vis their dependents.

Developmental Language Impairment (DLI) is a language disorder characterized by difficulties in both language production and comprehension most readily observable on the morphological level. Previous research suggests that DLI subjects are atypical regarding word decomposition and word formation. / Given these observations, two questions arise: What is the extent of DLI insensitivity to word-internal structure and to morpheme features? and Is this insensitivity equally evident in inflectional, derivational and compounding processes? Three experiments address these questions: plural formation, nominal compounding and diminutive formation and comprehension. / These word formation processes are very productive Greek and are observed from (2;0) onwards in non-impaired children cross-linguistically. Nominal roots (bound) are mapped to other bound morphemes: inflectional affixes for plural formation, derivational affixes and inflectional affixes for diminutive formation, and lexical morphemes and inflectional affixes for compound formation. / In this thesis, the performance of Greek DLI subjects was compared to that of non-impaired controls using elicited production and comprehension tasks that probed real and novel word formation. Results show that DLI children are not sensitive to morphological features and have difficulty knowing where root boundaries are. Given the atypical performance of DLI children, the initial hypothesis on the building of an atypical competence appears to be supported.

This thesis examines the influence of definiteness and movement on Mohawk free word order from the perspective of Government and Binding Theory. On the one hand, Mohawk data show that the relative order of NP's with respect to the verb does not determine definiteness and that the particle ne is not a definite determiner, the language lacking this type of "pure" marker for this feature, all of which contradicts previous claims. It is argued that pragmatic considerations will determine the interpretation of nominals. On the other hand, the evidence shows that there is no movement operation in the production of free word order in Mohawk, unlike in other scrambling languages. The evidence is accounted for by the fact that NP's are base generated in adjunct position (Baker 1991a) and coindexed with pro's in argument position which are licensed by the rich agreement morphology on the verb.