This thesis examines the order in which attributive adjectives are placed when appearing in a string modifying the same head noun. Noun phrases featuring more than one adjective are examined in six languages, all of which have modification patterns which exhibit distinctive patterns of syntax and morphology. Northern Sotho is a Bantu language with postnominal adjectives, agglutinative morphology and qualificative particles which link modifier and head; Welsh also has predominantly postnominal adjectives but less complex adjectival morphology. Polish and English adjectives typically appear before the noun, and the order in which they are sequenced is compared with Chinese, in which all modification appears before the noun, including relative clauses. I also examine the syntax of adjective strings in Tagalog, an Austronesian language in which adjectives can appear both before and after the noun, and in which the nature of lexical categories is particularly complex. The universality of the adjective class has generated considerable debate among linguists, with much discussion in the last decade with regard to whether adjectives constitute a independent lexical category across all languages. Chinese, Tagalog and Northern Sotho are all languages in which the nature of the adjectival category has been questioned, and this comparative analysis of a syntactic phenomenon which is an essential characteristic of adjectives adds a new dimension to the debate surrounding the universality of the adjective class. Based on a combination of corpus data and field-based methods, I analyse the patterns which appear across the languages in my sample. I evaluate the various explanations of the different factors which affect the order in which English adjectives are placed ahead of a noun, and relate my findings to equivalent structures in each of my focus languages, before proposing some conventions which appear to be consistent across a representative sample of languages.

Abstract In previous chlorpromazine pharmacokinetic studies a dramatic elevation in blood plasma levels of this drug was observed when taken in combination with oral contraceptives. Different mechanisms have been postulated to explain this observation. The aim of the study was to investigate whether oral contraceptives such as ethinyloestradiol and progesterone enhance the absorption of chlorpromazine by means of inhibiting P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and if this effect is mainly due to ethinyloestradiol or progesterone or their combination. The Caco-2 cell line was used as an in vitro model to study the effects of these compounds on the transport of chlorpromazine. Both apical to basolateral (AP-BL) and basolateral to apical (BL-AP) transport studies were done on chlorpromazine in combination with different compounds. Ethinyloestradiol enhanced the AP-BL cumulative transport of chlorpromazine by 11.5% compared to the control group, which was also statistically significantly higher than the effect caused by progesterone (0.8%). A combination of these two steroidal hormones enhanced the cumulative transport of chlorpromazine by only 2.0% compared to the control group. This indicates the possible existence of separate drugbinding sites for these two hormones and chlorpromazine on P-gp. The drug-binding site (or receptor) for progesterone probably interacts allosterically with the binding site for ethinyloestradiol and thereby decreasing its transport enhancing effects on chlorpromazine.

The Ugandan Deaf Community, consisting of approximately 25,000 sign language users, has seen significant developments in its recent history. Government recognition of sign language, establishment of schools for the deaf, and the beginnings of research into Ugandan Sign Language (UgSL) have been important milestones. While Deaf Ugandans are entering university level education for the first time, a number of challenges to the community remain. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the linguistic structures of UgSL in order to produce a description of the language’s morphosyntax. There is a close relationship between word (or sign) properties and syntactic expressions, so UgSL is described here in terms of its morphosyntactic constructions, rather than a differentiation between morphological and syntactic features (cf. Croft 2001; Wilkinson 2013:260). While a substantial number of such descriptions exist for languages outside of Africa, this thesis is the first attempt at describing the morphosyntax of an African sign language. Many African sign languages are severely under-documented, and some are endangered. This study uses an inductive approach and a corpus-based methodology, examining how UgSL signers construct utterances of morphosyntactic complexity. The thesis is in three parts: part I is an introduction and overview of UgSL and also provides the theoretical and methodological background; part II provides a preliminary survey of UgSL grammar to provide a sider context for subsequent chapters; and part III is a detailed survey of five morphosyntactic domains of UgSL. The author is a native Deaf user of UgSL and a member of the Ugandan Deaf Community, as well as being fluent in several other sign languages and participating in international communities of Deaf people.

This thesis reports on a mixed methods experimental research study carried out at a university in Japan. The study investigated the effectiveness of two types of guided planning treatment towards specific language forms. Specifically, English relative clause types OS and OPREP as well as 3rd person singular and plural. Two groups of Japanese second year intermediate level learners performed a series of oral narrative tasks that increased in complexity over a three week period. Both groups were placed under different planning conditions. One condition involved ‘guided planning’ which consisted of continuous guidance towards English relative clauses and 3rd person singular and plural. The other condition ‘guided and unguided planning’ consisted of initial guidance towards the target forms and then the learners received unguided planning during the rest of the task sequence. During the treatment, both groups were interviewed about their planning strategies. It was hypothesized that the guided planning group would produce greater developmental gains in accuracy compared to the guided and unguided planning group. Learners’ L2 speech was measured in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity. The results showed that the guided planning group produced significantly greater gains in fluency and accuracy compared to the guided and unguided planning group. In addition, both groups focused on form during the task sequencing treatment. No previous studies have appeared to investigate the effects of guided and unguided planning with tasks that are sequenced over time. As a result, the findings of this study appear unique in reporting the benefits that guided planning and task complexity produces on L2 oral development in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity.

With the development of Descriptive Translation Studies (e.g. Even-Zohar, 1978; Toury, 1995), and more importantly, with the ‘cultural turn’ and the subsequent ‘power turn’ in Translation Studies (e.g. Bassnett and Lefevere, 1990; Tymoczko and Gentzler, 2002), it is now generally recognized that translation is not a mere linguistic phenomenon, but a complex social and political process involving competing values and ideologies. This thesis aims at presenting a manifold and multifaceted vision of literary translation in contemporary China, while at the same time, remaining critically aware of our own positions and perspectives. Derived from the researcher’s personal experiences in and observation of China’s highly politicised literary milieu, the current study of literary translation is carried out from two different perspectives. The first is related to the social and political dimension of translation, which is concerned with the general context of translation, translation practices, literary norms as well as the structures that support them. The second perspective focuses on the more personal dimension, which is influenced by personalities and dispositions of the individuals involved in translation. Moving along the spectrum with political coercion and pressure on one end and personal decisions and responsibilities on the other, this thesis asserts that the political and the personal are two sharply different yet intimately intertwined domains of translation. In conclusion, it is recommended that future research should place greater emphasis on the dialectical relationship between lived personal experience and structural power relations in translation. This emphasis, as is demonstrated in this thesis, will provide a base for us to recognize the centrality of human agency and the possibility of resistance through translation, to understand translation as a site of power struggle and potential change, and finally, to strive for translation research and practice that is more socially relevant and personally meaningful.

The lack of norms for speech sound acquisition and phonological error patterns in the Syrian variety of Arabic is one of the challenging aspects of diagnosing and treating speech disorders in speakers of this language. Although there are normative data which speech language therapists could use to assess the phonological skills of Syrian children, these are based on data standardized on children speaking other varieties of Arabic, such as Jordanian. This may lead to incorrect diagnosis and inappropriate treatment. In order to address this problem, a detailed study of Syrian Arabic was carried out for this thesis. This study was carried out to provide reliable normative data for speech sound acquisition and phonological error patterns in Syrian children between the ages of 2:6 and 6:5. One hundred and sixty typically developing Syrian children were recruited from Damascus to participate in this cross-sectional study. The results indicate that acquisition of the vowels in Syrian Arabic was almost complete by the age of 3. However, some errors persisted at this age and these mainly related to the production of diphthongs. The two diphthongs which were studied did not appear in the children’s speech samples until the age of 5:0-5:5, but they did not reach the acquisition criterion. For the consonants, the results suggest that there is a gradual development in their correct production: correct production started at 71.3% at the age of 2:6-3:0 and increased with age to 94.3% in children aged 6:0-6:5. All the consonants in Syrian Arabic were acquired by age 6:5, except for the affricate /ʒ/. The order of consonant acquisition in terms of sound class was: median approximants > nasals > plosives > the lateral approximant /l/ > all fricatives except/ʒ/ > the trill. The findings also showed that the order of speech sound acquisition in Syrian children is very similar to that in children from other language backgrounds. The results for consonant acquisition also indicated that 11 consonants are acquired between the ages of 2:6-4:0. These early-acquired consonants are / b, f, j, m, n, l, t, d, h, ʔ, w, h /. They include plosives, nasals, the lateral and a few fricatives. One of these fricatives has an anterior place of articulation while three are produced in the posterior portion of the oral cavity, i.e. /h, ʔ, ʕ/. Seven consonants were acquired between the ages of 4:0 and 5:0. These were /x, s, z , ʕ, tˁ, dˁ, k/. Most of which are fricatives and emphatics. The late-acquired consonants are /ʃ, r, sˁ, ɣ/ which are acquired between the ages of 5:0 and 6:5. There were clear differences in the percentage of correctly produced consonants indifferent word positions. In general, word-final consonants were produced correctly slightly more often than those in initial and medial positions. This was true for all agegroups. This difference was significant between initial and final position, and between medial and final positions; however, no significant difference was found between initial and medial positions. As far as the phonological error patterns (all phonological error patterns whatever their percentage big or small) are concerned this study identified a total of 11 phonological error patterns in Syrian children. These errors were: r-deviation, fronting, stridency deletion, de-emphasis, weak syllable deletion, stopping, backing, glottalization, devoicing and assimilation. There was also one dialectal error pattern called epenthesis, in which a vowel is inserted between consonants in order to simplify their pronunciation. Epenthesis is singled out from phonological error patterns that while it is considered a phonological error pattern in some languages, in Syria it is a dialectal error appears in normal speech and as such not consider phonological error pattern. Using a developmental criterion to define the phonological error patterns used by Syrian children, the study revealed that there are 9 typical phonological errors. These errors are: r-deviation, fronting, stridency deletion, de-emphasis, weak syllable deletion, consonant deletion, backing, glottalization, and devoicing. The results of this study showed that Syrian children no longer produce developmental errors by the age of 5:5.

This study aims to investigate the proposed complementary relationship between impoliteness (as a form of aggression), and humour (as a form of entertainment). Taking the fictional film As Good As It Gets, I draw from a number of scenes involving the main protagonist Melvin Udall. Although this character is extremely offensive to others, the film is classified as a romantic comedy. As such, it offers a good basis on which to test out my ideas regarding the proposed relationship between impoliteness and humour, and more importantly, how and why we may feel the need to laugh at what is essentially socially proscribed and disturbing behaviour. My work, then, contributes to two main academic fields of interest: with regards the field of impoliteness I demonstrate why offensiveness can be entertaining by making specific links with humour theory, and within the field of stylistics I show how a multi-disciplined approach to character analysis can offer us richer observations and interpretations of behaviour, than would otherwise be available through analysis of models in isolation.

Muslims across the world memorize the Quran in Arabic for verbatim recall. Memorizers can be native speakers of Arabic, non-native speakers of Arabic, or non-Arabic speakers. The last category of speakers constitutes an unusual learner population, in that they cannot draw on primary linguistic knowledge to assist their memorization. Research on memorization suggests that memorization may instil sensitivity to patterns that can be used to bootstrap learning. The purpose of this study is to investigate if memorization of the Quran by non-Arabic speaking memorizers leads to pattern recognition in Classical Arabic. Memorizers of the Quran with no knowledge of Arabic were tested on their awareness of language patterns through a grammaticality judgement task (study 2). Contrary to implicit predictions in the research literature, findings from the language tests indicated that the participants had not developed any sensitivity to the morphological patterns of Classical Arabic. These results are discussed in the light of expert Quran memorizers’ reflections on their memorization practices (study 1), including what they brought to the act of memorization and what, according to them, underlay their success in memorization. It is proposed that memorizers’ extreme risk aversion in memorization stands in their way of developing awareness of the language patterns. This interpretation is further evidenced by results from a follow up study on native speakers of Arabic, who also did poorly on the grammaticality judgement task. The conclusion drawn is that Quran memorizers recite accurately because they don’t learn the language. It is further concluded that Quran memorization is a special case, in which a range of extra linguistic factors such as identity, motivation and intention play an important role.

Field-names in Scotland are part of the oral tradition, passed down from generation to generation of farmers. Despite the valuable holdings at the Scottish Field Name Survey (University of Edinburgh), work to collect these names has been patchy and many areas of Scotland remain uncovered. The introduction of a new numbering system for tax purposes has resulted in a marked decline in the use of field-names, and generally only older members of the community can recall the names. There are few written records that preserve early forms, and little systematic study of the topic. Therefore, time is running out to collect the names of Scottish fields. The focus of this thesis is a corpus of 1552 field-names from the north-east of Scotland which I collected using a socio-onomastic approach. Spoken interviews were used as the main tool for data collection drawing on practices from the discipline of sociolinguistics. A key aspect of this research is the social aspect of naming and the combination of sociolinguistic methods with more traditional onomastic methods.

Variationist research in the Labovian paradigm has traditionally looked at the structured heterogeneity found in first language (L1) speech. More recently this quantitative methodology has been applied to speakers acquiring a second language (L2), usually in immigrant settings. This research has shown that alongside well documented L2 acquisition processes, sociolinguistic patterns are also found, just as in native speech. This dissertation examines the speech of native speakers of Spanish acquiring English in Chile, extending traditional quantitative methodology to L2 contexts, specifically to English as a foreign language (EFL) situations. I examine the variation of four phonetic variables: voiceless alveolar fricative (ʃ), voiceless alveolar affricate (ʧ), and postvocalic (r), which range from stigmatised to prestigious in both Spanish and English; and voiced dental fricative (ð), which has been extensively documented in English, mainly constrained by linguistic factors. Through the analysis of the speech of eighteen university students, I seek to test, firstly, whether the patterns of variation characteristic of Chilean Spanish are transferred to English and secondly, whether the variation exhibited by native speakers of English is replicated in EFL contexts. The results suggest that: (1) the expected transfer of patterns from Chilean Spanish to English does not occur for the variables (ʃ) and (ʧ), and (2) the patterns found in non- native speech in EFL contexts replicates the patterns found in native speakers of English for the variables voiced dental fricative (ð) and postvocalic (r). Amongst the social factors considered, the effect of social class is shown to contribute to the variation of postvocalic (r) and (ʃ), as years of instruction in English did to the variation of (ʃ); in relation to the contribution of internal factors, it is found that phonetic environment and position have an effect on the varying use of (ʃ) and (ð). As predicted for (ð), the effect of purely linguistic factors is confirmed. Thus this study demonstrates that the notion of structured heterogeneity can be extended to contexts of EFL, especially in relation to the effect of internal constraints.