Magister Artium - MA / This study sought to investigate the alleged problem of ‘academic dependency’, on the part of South African sociologists, on western scholarship. The stated problem is said to undermine South African sociologists’ ability to set their own intellectual and epistemological agenda. Sociology in South Africa is characterised by two issues: ‘negations’ and theoretical ‘extraversion’. In the light of the foregoing claim, the study sought to investigate the underlying epistemological features of sociology curriculum in one of the South African universities. In investigating these issues, the thesis relies on the notion of ‘authentic interlocutors’ put forward by Archie Mafeje. Literature on transformation of the social sciences in (South) Africa was reviewed. Methodologically, the study assumes a qualitative approach. In order comprehensively to understand the problem under investigation, in-depth interviews were conducted along with a review of course outlines of the selected department of sociology; these, in turn, were subjected to content analysis. Interviewees included, respectively, academic members of staff and postgraduate students. The study concludes by highlighting the ‘ontological disconnect’, on the part of South African sociologists, not only with their immediate environment but the rest of the African continent. In maintaining this view, it argues that their ontological and epistemological standpoints only succeed in highlighting their cultural affinity with Euro-American perspectives. The said ontological disconnect and cultural affinity, it is argued, lead to extraverted curricula

Cette thèse porte sur les constructions nominales et adjectivales en non- ([non-N] et [non-Adj])en français d’un point de vue synchronique et diachronique dans le cadre de la grammaire de constructions. À partir d’un corpus constitué d’occurrences de [non-N] et de [non-Adj] issues de la base de données Frantext, de la Base de Français Médiéval, de dictionnaires, de la presse écrite et de la Toile, je montre que le patron [non-N] est une construction morphologique dans laquelle non- est un préfixe, tandis que le patron [non-Adj] est une construction syntaxique où non est un adverbe. Les [non-N] peuvent prendre trois interprétations (que j’appelle ontologique,complémentaire et contraire) selon le type de nom base et les informations pragmatiques fournies par le contexte. Les [non-Adj] sont comparés aux [in-Adj], avec lesquels ils partagent un sémantisme négatif mais dont ils se différencient sur plusieurs points (préférence pour les bases apparentées à des verbes, absence d’intégrité lexicale, expression de la négation contradictoire ou contraire). Je montre que les [non-N] et les [non-Adj] ont en commun des propriétés formelles et sémantiques et je propose de représenter ces constructions comme l’instanciation d’une construction plus générale qui maintient la distinction entre morphologie et syntaxe tout en tenant compte de la proximité entre ces deux constructions. Enfin, je montre que les [non-N] et les [non-Adj] ont émergé à la fin du moyen français à partir d’emplois syntaxiques de non, à la faveur de changements opérés dans le système de la négation verbale du français. / This dissertation deals with nominal and adjectival constructions in non- ([non-N] and [non-Adj])in French from a synchronic and diachronic perspective within the framework of constructiongrammar. On the basis of a corpus of [non-N] and [non-Adj] drawn from the Frantext database,the Base de Français Médiéval, dictionaries, the written press and the internet, I show thatthe [non-N] pattern is a morphological construction in which non- is a prefix, whereas the[non-Adj] is a syntactic construction in which non- is an adverb. [Non-N] can have three differentinterpretations (which I call ontological, complementary and contrary), depending on the basenoun and pragmatic information provided in the contex. [Non-Adj] are compared to [in-Adj], withwhich they share a negative meaning but from which they differ in several respects (preferencefor bases related to verbs, no lexical integrity, expression of contradictory or contrary negation).I show that [non-N] and [non-Adj] have common formal and semantic properties and I proposean analysis whereby they are represented as instantiations of a more general construction. Thisanalysis maintains the distinction between morphology and syntax and at the same time takesinto account the similarities between the two constructions. Finally, I show that [non-N] and[non-Adj] have emerged from syntactic uses of non at the end of the Middle French period as aresult of changes in the system of verbal negation in French.375

This study of the variable use of ne in synchronous electronic French discourse follows the methodological guidelines and the theoretical framework proposed and subsequently elaborated by Labov for analyzing variable features of language. This thesis provides a quantitative variable rule (i.e., VARBRUL) analysis including age as a factor group (i.e., independent variable), thereby making a new contribution to this area of inquiry. The data (50,000 words from the vingtaine 'twentysomething' channel and 50,000 words from the cinquantaine 'fiftysomething' channel) are a subset of 100,000 words from a corpus of one million words collected in 2008 by the thesis director from the public chat server EuropNet. This study aims to answer the following overarching question: To what extent does age-compared to other factors-influence the variable use of ne in verbal negation in synchronous electronic French discourse? In order to answer this question, and possibly others, the VARBRUL analysis will include age, subject (e.g., noun vs. pronoun), type of second negative particle (e.g., pas 'not', jamais 'never', personne 'no one'/'nobody', and so forth), as well as verbal mood/tense.

As gramáticas normativas, as descritivas e as semânticas assim como outras obras que tratam sobre a negação e sobre a restrição em francês moderno descrevem as expressões \"ne que\", \"sans que\", \"rien que\", \"bien que\", \"autre que\", \"nul autre que\" e \"pour peu que\" em diversos quadros teóricos sem descrever seus valores semânticos, suas naturezas verdadeiras e as funções de \"que\" distinguindo seu valor dos que a ele estão associados. Esse estudo, fundamentado nos princípios da teoria psico-mecânica de Gustave Guillaume (1971, 1973) e expandido pelas considerações semântico gramaticais elaboradas pelo Prof. M. Jacques Ouellet (2004), tenta identificar, compreender e explicar o funcionamento do \"que\" restritivo encontrado nas expressões acima, principalmente na de \"ne... que\". / Prescriptive, descriptive and semantic grammars, as well as other works dealing with negation and restrictions in modern French, describe the expressions ne... que, sans que, rien que, bien que, autre que, nul autre que and pour peu que by a variety of theoretical approaches without describing their semantic values, their very nature and the functions of que. Moreover, these works do not distinguish the value of que from those associated with it. This study, founded on the principles of psico-mechanic theory elaborated by Gustave Guillaume (1971, 1973) and expanded by grammatical semantic studies made by Prof. Jacques Ouellet, M.A. (2004), tries to identify, understand and explain the functioning of restrictive que, found in the above-mentioned expressions, especially in ne... que.

abstract: ABSTRACT This study explores some grammatical aspects of Rural Palestinian Arabic (RPA), spoken in the vicinity of the city of Tulkarm in the Northwest part of the West Bank, and compares the variety to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Urban Palestinian Arabic (UPA). The study introduces an overview of the Arabic language and its colloquial dialects and the status of diglossia in the Arab world. Subject-verb agreement in MSA and RPA is also discussed. The focus of this study is on the pronominal system and negation in both MSA and RPA. It investigates the correlations between dependent subject pronouns and independent pronouns and their phonological and syntactic relationships. I argue that dependent subject pronouns are reduced forms of the independent subject pronoun. The study explains how dependent subject pronouns are formed by deleting the initial syllable, except for the first person singular and the third person masculine plural, which use suppletive forms instead. Dependent object pronouns are also derived from their independent counterparts by the deletion of the second syllable, with the exception of third person plural pronouns, which take the same form as clitics attached to their hosts. I argue that dependent subject pronouns are agreement affixes used to mark verb argument features, whereas pronominal object and possessive pronouns are clitics attached to their hosts, which can be verbs, nouns, prepositions, and quantifiers. This study investigates other uses of subject pronouns, such as the use of third person pronouns as copulas in both MSA and RPA. Additionally, third person pronouns are used as question pronouns for yes/no questions in RPA. The dissertation also explores the morphosyntactic properties of sentential negation in RPA in comparison to sentential negation in MSA. The study shows that the negative markers ma: and -iš are used to negate perfective and imperfective verbs, while muš precedes non-verbal predicates, such as adjectives, prepositional phrases (PPs), and participles. The main predicate in the negative phrase does not need the noun phrase (NP) to raise to T if there is no need to merge with the negative element. Keywords: Standard Arabic, Rural Palestinian Arabic, Urban Palestinian Arabic, independent pronouns, dependent pronouns, pronominal clitics, copula pronouns, negation / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2019

In 1942, Paul C. Rosenbloom put out a definition of a Post algebra after Emil L. Post published a collection of systems of many–valued logic. Post algebras became easier to handle following George Epstein’s alternative definition. As conceived by Rosenbloom, Post algebras were meant to capture the algebraic properties of Post’s systems; this fact was not verified by Rosenbloom nor Epstein and has been assumed by others in the field. In this thesis, the long–awaited demonstration of this oft–asserted assertion is given. After an elemental history of many–valued logic and a review of basic Classical Propositional Logic, the systems given by Post are introduced. The definition of a Post algebra according to Rosenbloom together with an examination of the meaning of its notation in the context of Post’s systems are given. Epstein’s definition of a Post algebra follows the necessary concepts from lattice theory, making it possible to prove that Post’s systems of many–valued logic do in fact form a Post algebra.

Negation is a complex phenomenon present in all human languages, allowing for the uniquely human capacities of denial, contradiction, misrepresentation, lying, and irony. It is in the first place a phenomenon of semantical opposition. Sentences containing negation are generally (a) less informative than affirmative ones, (b) morphosyntactically more marked—all languages have negative markers while only a few have affirmative markers, and (c) psychologically more complex and harder to process. Negation often conveys positive meaning. This meaning ranges from implicatures to entailments. In this dissertation, I develop a system to reveal the underlying positive interpretation of negation. I first identify which words are intended to be negated (i.e, the focus of negation) and second, I rewrite those tokens to generate an actual positive interpretation. I identify the focus of negation by scoring probable foci along a continuous scale. One of the obstacles to exploring foci scoring is that no public datasets exist for this task. Thus, to study this problem I create new corpora. The corpora contain verbal, nominal and adjectival negations and their potential positive interpretations along with their scores ranging from 1 to 5. Then, I use supervised learning models for scoring the focus of negation. In order to rewrite the focus of negation with its positive interpretation, I work with negations from Simple Wikipedia, automatically generate potential positive interpretations, and then collect manual annotations that effectively rewrite the negation in positive terms. This procedure yields positive interpretations for approximately 77% of negations, and the final corpus includes over 5,700 negations and over 5,900 positive interpretations. I then use sequence-to-sequence neural models and provide baseline results.

Abstract: This dissertation deals with nominal constructions in nicht- ([Nicht-S]) in German from a synchronic perspective within the framework of construction grammar. On the basis of a corpus of [Nicht-S] drawn from the DWDS database, it is shown that the [Nicht-S] pattern is a morphological construction in which nicht- is a prefix. [Nicht-S] can have three different interpretations, which are called ontological, classifying and normative, depending on the base noun and pragmatic information provided in the context. An analysis is proposed whereby they are represented as instantiations of a more general construction.

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Matryoshka is a poetry collection that inhabits the space between danger and desire. The poems are largely voice-driven and confessional, sprouting from a speaker who is somehow ruthlessly honest and deceptively evasive at the same time. She covets the domestic only to set it on fire. She runs for comfort and greets the comfortable with a knife. In the beginning of the collection, we see a speaker navigating her relationships with others. The poems in section one are seeped with intense longing and physical desire. In section two, we see the speaker turn her gaze inward and are met with a raw exploration of the self; a revelry of bad decision making, self-deception, and complicated sexuality. The collection leaves the reader curious and comfort-seeking. / Master of Fine Arts