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This thesis describes the expression of focus in Basque declarative sentences through the use of morphological, lexical and syntactic devices. It analyzes the different degrees of emphasis that can be provided by the combination of these three types of mechanisms, and the interaction ofthe expression of focus with the expression of the new/given information distinction.This study shows that constituents containing background information normally occur either before the focused element or after the verb, and that topics occur in sentence initial position. Elements whose information is non-contrastive and whose reference is already included in the verbal inflexion are normally deleted. The element with new information always occurs before the verb and receives the highest semantic prominence. The content of the focused element can also be emphasized by morphological means. This combination of syntactic and morphological mechanisms, along with the fact that there are several places in which each sentence element can occur, allow for the occurrence of several degrees of emphatic prominence. / Department of English

In this thesis I extend a class of grammars called conjunctive grammars to a stochastic form called stochastic conjunctive grammars. This extension allows the grammars to predict pseudoknotted RNA secondary structure. Since observing sec- ondary structure is hard and expensive to do with today's technology, there is a need for computational solutions to this problem. A conjunctive grammar can handle pseudoknotted structure because of the way one sequence is generated by combining multiple parse trees. I create several grammars that are designed to predict pseudoknotted RNA sec- ondary structure. One grammar is designed to predict all types of pseudoknots and the others are made to only predict a pseudoknot called H-type. These grammars are trained and tested and the results are collected. I am able to obtain a sensitivity of over 75% and a speci city of over 89% on H-type pseudoknots

Automated testing is superior to manual testing because it is both faster to execute and achieves greater test coverage. Typical test generators are implemented in a programming language of the tester’s choice. Because most programming languages have complex syntax and semantics, the test generators are often difficult to develop and maintain. Context-free grammars are much simpler: they can describe complex test inputs in just a few lines of code. Therefore, Grammar-Based Test Generation (GBTG) has received considerable attention over the years. However, questions about certain aspects of GBTG still remain, preventing its wider application. This thesis addresses these questions using YouGen NG, an experimental framework that incorporates some of the most useful extra-grammatical features found in the GBTG literature. In particular, the thesis describes the mechanisms for (1) eliminating the combinations of less importance generated by a grammar, (2) creating a grammar that generates combinations of correct and error values, (3) generating GUI playback scripts through GBTG, (4) visualizing the language generation process in a complex grammar, and (5) applying GBTG to testing an Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed parser and a web application called Code Activator (CA). / Graduate

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No description available.

No description available.

This thesis examines the patterns of stress found in modern Russian inflectional paradigms (nouns, verbs and adjectives), and variation in these patterns. It also examines the 'retraction' of stress onto prepositions before certain nouns and numerals, for example нá день, зá сорок, and onto the negative particles не and ни before the past forms of certain verbs, for example нé дан, нѝ бьіло, and variability in these phenomena. After a detailed survey of literature in the field, a new approach to the treatment of mobile stress in Russian is proposed, called the 'distinctive approach'. This approach takes as its basis not the movement of stress between word-forms, from one morpheme, or one syllable, to another, but rather the patterns of contrasts made by stress between word-forms, and the resulting phonetic realisation of stems. This forms the basis of an original categorisation of the inflectional stress patterns found for nouns, verbs and adjectives, which are examined in detail. Areas of instability in the system are identified, as indicated by the existence of stress variants. Certain of these areas are then further investigated by means of a comparison of dictionary data from standard reference works of the last forty years with new research data provided by a survey of twenty-one Muscovites in the age-range 23 to 62; full tables are given containing the results of this investigation. Each word is then discussed in detail, and a summary given of the changes in stress identified for each word-class. This thesis concludes that there is widespread variation in patterns of mobile stress, and that developments of a varied and disparate nature are taking place in the different parts of the inflectional system. There is, in addition, some evidence that stress mobility, particularly within the sub-paradigm, is being abandoned in favour of fixed stem- or desinence-stress. A reduction in the incidence of stress mobility is also seen in the area of the 'retraction' of stress onto prepositions and negative particles.

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.