Not available / text

published_or_final_version / Language Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

No description available.

This thesis provides an analysis of wh-questions in Nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree). The study is done within the Principles and Parameters framework (Chomsky 1981, 1986, 1995). I argue that Nêhiyawêwin wh-words like awfna 'who' are not generated in argument position and do not undergo A-bar movement to Spec CP (Chapter 3). Rather, they are licensed as the predicate of a nominal clause, and respect the same syntactic constraints as other nominal clauses: they are strictly predicatê-initial; obey a referentiality hierarchy; and display agreement for number, animacy and obviation (chapter 4). I analyze Nêhiyawêwin nominal clauses as IP with a null Infl head in which the predicate fronts to Spec CP. The clausê-initial position of the wh-word is thus part of a more general process of predicatefronting. The nominal clause analysis of wh-words accounts for the absence of wh-movement per se in the language, as well as for the absence of wh in situ. However, based on their interpretive properties, wh-questions must contain an operator-variable chain. I argue that the operator-variable relation arises when the subject of the nominal clause links to an A-position in a subordinate clause. This occurs in one of two ways: by means of the kâ-complementizer or the ê-complementizer (Chapter 5). If the subordinate clause has kâ-, the resulting structure is a relative clause which restricts the reference of the subject. This yields a cleft construction: Who is it[sub i] that Mary likes t[sub i] ? If the subordinate clause has ê-, the clauses are conjoined, and null-operator movement in the subordinate clause forces an anaphoric relation between the wh-word and the A-position in the ê- clause: Who is he[sub i] & OP[sub i] Mary likes him[sub i]. Having shown how Nêhiyawêwin wh-words are associated with an operator-variable chain, I then consider the consequences of the proposed analysis (Chapter 6). A defining property of wh-chains is their sensitivity to island effects. Consistent with this, there is an argument/adjunct asymmetry in Nêhiyawêwin, which in turn bears on the question of where overt arguments are positioned in a polysynthetic language. I argue that complement clauses are basê-generated in an A-position, unlike overt DPs which are in an A'-position (adjoined to IP). This explains why long-distance extraction is possible from complement clauses, while extraction from adjunct clauses is ungrammatical. Another property of wh-chains is their sensitivity to Weak Crossover (WCO). WCO effects are absent in Nêhiyawêwin wh-questions. I argue that WCO may be avoided because there is no movement of a truly quantificational operator in the sense of Lasnik and Stowell (1991), but rather movement of a null operator. I then propose a Weakest Crossover analysis for the absence of WCO, following Demirdache (1997).

This dissertation explores the question of whether Tagalog, a language of the Philippines, is an ergative language. It is claimed that Tagalog is best characterized as neither accusative nor ergative but rather as a language that is a hybrid of these two language types. Tagalog's hybrid nature is neatly captured structurally within Principle and Parameters theory using VP internal subjects. In terms of Case, Tagalog not only has nominative-absolutive Case checking and ergative Case checking but it also makes extensive use of inherent accusative Case assignment. As a result, Tagalog has both a (NOM ACC) basic transitive sentence type, like accusative languages, and a (ERG ABS) basic transitive sentence type, like ergative languages. A specific structural analysis is given for these basic sentences under an Economy approach. This analysis is extended to account for complex sentences including sentences involving morphological causatives, conjunction reduction and raising.

This thesis discusses Internally Headed Constructions in Japanese, specifically, the "Counter-Equi NP" (CENP) construction and the "Internally Headed Relative Clause" (MC) construction. In both of these constructions, an NP within the embedded clause is interpreted as an argument of the matrix clause. / There are two major goals in this thesis. The first goal is to provide a unified syntactic and semantic analysis of the CENP and IHRC constructions. I argue that the CENP construction is basically the same as the IHRC construction, even though some previous researchers have assumed the contrary (Kuroda 1992, 1999, Ohara 1996, Shimoyama 1999, among others). Furthermore, I argue that both the CENP NP and the MC NP are arguments of the matrix verbs. / The second goal is to closely examine the syntactic and semantic properties of the CENP construction and the IHRC construction. As discussed by Hoshi (1995) and Shimoyama (1999), the interpretation of the argument which is "modified by the IHRC" in these constructions is quite similar to that of E-type pronouns (Evans 1977a,b; 1980). In addition, there are some facts that show that the event of the embedded clause is linguistically connected to the event of the matrix clause. Regarding all these properties, the CENP construction behaves in the same manner as the IHRC construction. In this thesis, adapting the E-type pronoun analyses of the IHRC (Hoshi 1995 and Shimoyama 1999), I propose an alternative analysis of the CENP construction and the IHRC construction to capture those properties. / Moreover, even though the CENP construction and the IHRC construction share many properties with each other, there are some differences between them (Shimoyama 1999, among others). In particular, the CENP cannot appear as the subject of the matrix clause, whereas the IHRC can. However, we observe restrictions on possible internal heads with regard to the subject IHRC, in contrast to the CENP. This thesis tries to account for those differences under a unified analysis of the CENP construction and the IHRC construction, together with an analysis of the subject MC, which adapts Shimoyama's (1999) analysis of the IHRC.

This thesis outlines a syntactic analysis of Noun Incorporation in Cree. In this construction, certain morphemes, 'medials', that appear as the nominal root of an external NP can alternatively appear within a verb. This thesis extends previous analyses of Algonquian medials by utilizing the theory of Incorporation developed in Baker (1988b). Within this theory of grammar, medials are base-generated as nouns within an 'object' NP and then optionally adjoined to the verb stem as a result of head (X$ sp{ rm o}$) movement. Established restrictions on head movement can account for many properties of NI, including paraphrasing, doubling, bare modifiers, possible thematic relations, and differences between NI and compounds. The efficacy of the syntactic approach validates a modular account of polysynthetic word formation. In addition, the distribution of Cree NI validates several putatively universal principles of theta-role assignment.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the phenomenon of multiple subjects in Korean. In SOV languages like Korean and Japanese, where double subjects (S + S + V), occur, the second subjects has a subject marker in the surface form, but functions as the object of that structure. This relationship is termed as ergativity: the hypothesis of this study is that ergativity accounts for double subject constructions. When the hypothesis is applied to double subjects, almost all of them are identified as ergative structures.Another typical characteristic of the Korean language is that when topicalization is applied to a possessive structure in the subject position, it produces two successive NPs. Subjectivalization can further be applied to both NPs resulting in two subjects. The same phenomenon occurs when it applied to a structure which has a series of NPs or Locatives. In a few rare cases, these double subjects precede the ergative structure which already has other double subjects. Then the structure might have as many as four subjects in the surface structure.

The purpose of this study was to determine if the 'language listening' of children ages three years and three months (3.3) to three years and nine months (3.9) as measured by their behavioral response is influenced by the word-order of an interrogative sentence when presented in normal word-order, misplaced word-order, and scrambled word-order.'Language listening' for the purpose of this investigation was defined as the interpreted meaning of a young child as measured by the correct behavioral response to verbal stimuli ordered in specific syntactical variations. The verbal stimuli were written in three variations of word order. These patterns were normal word order which was the regular order of an interrogative sentence; misplaced word order was a pattern in which all parts of the verb and noun were interchanged in position; and scrambled sentence were positioned randomly without any set pattern of order.The subjects in this study were selected from the available population of children attending five nursery schools located in the metropolitan area of Muncie, Indiana. Selection of subjects and categorization into groups was based upon the index of the mean length of utterance of each individual member. This index was computed from a language sample containing one hundred utterances that were collected in the Screening Session.'Language listening' was measured by the relevant responses of subjects performance to specific requests to respond with an appropriate toy to the question asked and the directions given. Scripts used in the Data Collection Session combined a series of nine behavioral tasks with three of each of the types of word order--normal, misplaced, and scrambled.One major limitation of this study was the index used to measure the verbal maturity of the subjects in this study. This index is an average of the utterance used by the child and disguises the verbal expansion ability of the child and the sophistication of the child's verbal ability. Another limitation of this study was the selection of the behavioral tasks. It was observed that the subjects' performance in some cases was made from an anticipated response rather than responding from actual understanding of the tasks. It appeared that the behavioral tasks were oversimplified to be used the subjects included in this study.A research design employing the use of a Latin Square was constructed to combine the behavioral tasks with the types of word order. An analysis of variance was used for the analysis of data. The F-ratio, derived from an analysis of variance, was used to test statistical significance of the null hypotheses. The .05 level of significance was designated as the standard of significance.The findings of this investigation revealed that there is no statistical significance between 'language listening' and the type of word order. It was also determined in this study that the type of word order does not differentially affect children with varying verbal maturity. The findings did agree with research in the area in regard to children with a nonfluent level of verbal maturity. Agreement was found to support the research that with children having a nonfluent level of verbal maturity, the type of word order that is used as verbal stimuli does not affect the meaning that they glean from the stimuli.Among the recommendations offered was that further research be conducted with children in the early stages of language listening. It was also recommended that further research be conducted using an index of verbal maturity that is descriptive of the actual verbal ability of the child.