Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Newcastle, 1999. / Department of Modern Languages. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 309-390). Also available online.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 124-126). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 230-240). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ball State University, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Apr. 27, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 382-392).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 1998. / Title from title page screen, viewed July 11, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Janice Neuleib (chair), Julia Visor, Jerry Weber, Heather Graves. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-176) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Psychology Department, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-205).

Non-representational cognitive science is a promising research field that provides an alternative to the view of the brain as a “computer” filled with symbolic representations of the world and cognition as “calculations” performed on those symbols. Autopoiesis is a biological, bottom-up, non-representational theory of cognition, in which representations and meaning are framed as explanatory concepts that are constituted in an observer’s description of a cognitive system, not operational concepts in the system itself. One of the problems of autopoiesis, and all non-representational theories, is that they struggle with scaling up to high-level cognitive behaviour such as language. The Iterated Learning Model is a theory of language evolution that shows that certain features of language are explained not because of something happening in the linguistic agent’s brain, but as the product of the evolution of the linguistic system itself under the pressures of learnability and expressivity. Our goal in this work is to combine an autopoietic approach with the cultural transmission chains that the ILM uses, in order to provide the first step in an autopoietic explanation of the evolution of language. In order to do that, we introduce a simple, joint action physical task in which agents are rewarded for dancing around each other in either of two directions, left or right. The agents are simulated e-pucks, with continuous-time recurrent neural networks as nervous systems. First, we adapt a biologically plausible reinforcement learning algorithm based on spike-timing dependent plasticity tagging and dopamine reward signals. We show that, using this algorithm, our agents can successfully learn the left/right dancing task and examine how learning time influences the agents’ task success rates. Following that, we link individual learning episodes in cultural transmission chains and show that an expert agent’s initial behaviour is successfully transmitted in long chains. We investigate the conditions under which these transmission chains break down, as well as the emergence of behaviour in the absence of expert agents. By using long transmission chains, we look at the boundary conditions for the re-establishment of transmitted behaviour after chain breakdowns. Bringing all the above experiments together, we discuss their significance for non-representational cognitive science and draw some interesting parallels to existing Iterated Learning research; finally, we close by putting forward a number of ideas for additions and future research directions.

Egypt in the early Byzantine period was a bilingual country where Greek and Egyptian (Coptic) were used alongside each other. Historical studies as well as linguistic studies of the phonology and lexicon of early Byzantine Greek in Egypt testify to this situation. In order to describe the linguistic traces the language-contact situation left behind in individuals' linguistic output, this thesis analyses the syntax of early Byzantine Greek texts from Egypt. The primary object of interest is bilingual interference in the syntax of verbs, adverbial phrases, discourse organising devices and formulaic sections. The thesis is based on a corpus of Greek and Coptic private letters on papyrus, all of which date from the fourth to mid-seventh centuries, originate from Egypt and belong to bilingual, Greek-Coptic, papyrus archives. The data is analysed with a particular focus on three interrelated questions: (1) What kinds of deviations from the standard pattern appear and to what extent can language-internal confusion account for them? (2) How are instances of language-internal confusion and bilingual interference distributed over the selected syntactic domains? (3) Do deviations from the standard accumulate in certain letters or archives belonging to the corpus and do they correlate with additional indicators of bilingualism such as code-switching or circumstantial information about writers? In addition to answering these questions, the thesis seeks to explain the observed distributions. The results obtained from this study suggest that bilingual interference is linked to the way writers assimilated structures. In fact, there is a marked difference between deviating syntactic structures in non-formulaic and formulaic contexts. The study further suggests that bilingual interference does not affect every domain of syntax to the same degree. The degree of complexity of the syntactic structure in question as well as the degree of divergence from the corresponding Coptic structure seem to play a role.

A critical exploration of seven peer-reviewed published papers supports the author’s contention that learning in Higher Education is a fragile system of conscious and unconscious transactions that serve to weaken a process that is already precarious. Over the course of this essay and the accompanying papers, the submission is that learning is brittle, and easily broken. The Fragile Learner is described as someone close to conceding defeat to circumstances that threaten his education. The Fragile Learner might be a student of a Higher Education Institution, but also might be an appointed educator. Alongside notions of barriers to learning, this submission explores identities and tensions. Although some of the ideas that make up my picture of Fragile Learning have been researched by other contributors (notably Meyer and Land; Britzman), my own contribution sees the complexities through various psychoanalytic lenses. Fundamentally, it is the addition of psychoanalysis that makes Fragile Learning original. It is argued that anxiety is an important part of adult learning. Fragile Learners might experience anxieties that are internal and complex but which appear to be attacks from other people. Alternatively, Fragile Learning might be a consequence of learners having suffered illness or indisposition. It is important that something can be blamed. The themes of fragility and anxiety – not to mention the difficulties that arise from distance learning – are present throughout.