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published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Wang Lidi. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-244). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

This study is a comparative analysis of the syntax of adverbials in Chinese and Italian in the context of an anti-symmetric view of clause structure. Through a detailed investigation of selected sentence adverbs, aspect adverbs and manner adverbs, various similarities and differences between Italian and Chinese are identified. Chinese adverbials are mostly pre-verbal (with a few exceptions) while in Italian they can also appear after the verb. Such differences are plausibly accounted for through the verb-movement analysis: the Italian verb raises, overtly, to the left of adverbs, probably as a consequence of the rich inflectional morphology, while in Chinese the verb cannot overtly raise out of VP, due to the scarce inflectional morphology of the language. The traditional analysis of adverbs as adjuncts, coupled with directionality parameters, is not needed in order to explain the facts. The study shows that when adverbs such as the Italian adverb presto and the corresponding Chinese adverb kuai (‘quickly’) appear in different syntactic positions, they may receive different interpretations. This fact cannot be properly captured by the adjunct analysis, but it is predicted by the F-Spec hypothesis, according to which each class of adverbs occupies a specific syntactic position within the functional projections above VP. The double analysis of Italian bene (‘well’), which can be an adverb but can also (in specific cases) be interpreted as a predicate, is a clear example in support of the functional vs. predicational nature of adverbs, a fact also noted in the predicational analysis of the Chinese post-verbal V-deconstructions. Finally, Italian adverbs like stranamente (‘oddly’) are ambiguous between a clausal and a manner reading when appearing in post-verbal / pre-object position, while in Chinese the corresponding adverb qiguai shows the same ambiguity in the pre-verbal position. This, again, is associated with the possibility in Italian, but not in Chinese, for the verb to raise to the left of adverbs. Overall, the study supports the view that several word order and interpretative properties which differ between languages can be reduced to a few abstract syntactic principles. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study exammes different approaches to analysing the syntactic derivation of nouns from verbs within the theoretical framework of Principles and Parameters (PP phrases by presenting a contrastive study of English and Greek derived nominal expressions. The thesis discusses the well-known distinction between result nominals and process nominals, and it demonstrates that, in contrast to result nominals, process nominals license argument structure obligatorily and can be modified by aspectual adverbials. It is shown that the role of functional categories is crucial for an explanation of the differences between these two noun classes of derived nominals. In particular, it is suggested, following a proposal by Alexiadou (2001), that the verbal functional categories vP and AspectP are projected with process nominals, but not with result nominals. This analysis also accounts for the derivation of Greek nouns from ergative/unaccusative verbs, but it also explains the projection of the patient/theme as the internal argument of a result nominal and the aspectual modification of passive nominals. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 1951. / INLEIDING: Die doel van hierdie studie is om na te gaan wat die Afr. verbale hendiadis is, hoe dit gebruik word en, indien moontlik, wat die herkoms daarvan is. My uitgangspunt is dus deurgaans die algemene omgangstaal, ter aanvulling waarvan ook die skryftaal nagegaan is. Ek besef daarby dat daar baie gevalle kan wees waarvan ek geen kennis dra nie. My uitsprake geld dus (moontlik) net van my materiaal, Hierdie werk is suiwer arialities-deskriptief van aard: ek beskryf aan die hand van versamelde voorbeelde die Afr. taal soos ek dit in horisontale perspektief 1) waarneem. Aan die einde word die vertikale 2) egter daarby betrek om die herkoms enigsins in oenskou te neem.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts