This dissertation studies the prosodic structure of the variety of Jordanian Arabic that is spoken in the rural areas of the Governorate of Irbid (IA) by investigating the role of syntactic structure in the formation of prosodic domains. It empirically explores the word-level, phrase-level and clause-level prosody of IA and attempts to account for these empirical results in a framework based on the standard syntactic-prosodic interface principles developed in Match Theory (Selkirk 2011) and formulated as OT constraints (Prince & Smolensky 1993). The basic hypotheses in this dissertation are that the prosodic word (ω), phonological phrase (Φ) and intonational phrase (ι) are present in IA, and that they are anchored in syntactic constituents. Relying on hypotheses derived from the MATCH constraints (Selkirk 2011) that ensure the syntactic-prosodic correspondence, ω, Φ and ι should respectively match the grammatical word, syntactic phrase and clause and should recursively match embedded syntactic constituents. A series of experiments was designed to test the hypotheses. Twenty native speakers (ten males and ten females) of Jordanian Arabic living in Irbid participated in the tasks. Each pair of participants performed several tasks in one session. Two game-based tasks were designed to explore intonational and temporal cues to Φ and ι boundaries and examine their relation to XPs and clauses, respectively. Two additional reading tasks were designed to determine the application domain of post-lexical segmental processes in IA (the coarticulation of pharyngealization and vowel hiatus resolution). The collected tokens were submitted to acoustic and statistical analyses. Based on the results of these experiments, the existence of the ω, Φ and ι is confirmed and our understanding of their segmental and suprasegmental cues is refined. ω’s match grammatical words and are the domain of stress, realization of the feminine -t suffix and coarticulation of pharyngealization. Φ`s match syntactic phrases and are cued suprasegmentally: their right boundaries are marked by low phrase accents (L-) and pre-boundary syllable lengthening. As for ι`s, they match clauses and are cued by additional final lengthening, boundary tones (H% or L%) and resistance to vowel reduction. There is also ample evidence that syntactic nesting motivates prosodic recursion. At the ω level, the primary/secondary status of genitive constructs of stress mirrors syntactic nesting. At the Φ level, recursion is evidenced by gradient pre-boundary syllable lengthening, which is greater at the right boundaries of higher prosodic subcategories that match larger syntactic domains. As for recursion at the ι level, it is not only cued by gradient pre-boundary syllable lengthening, but also by boundary tones: continuative H% are used at sentence-internal ι boundaries, but L% tones are cues to boundaries of larger ι’s. However, prosodic recursion is not unconstrained in IA: prosodic domains can only consist of two subcategories, i.e. a minimal and maximal layers. In this way, prosodic recursion is neither prohibited as proposed in the early version of Strict Layer Hypothesis (Nespor &Vogel 1986, Selkirk 1986), nor free to perfectly mirror syntactic nesting. As in most previous case studies, it is proposed that the one-to-one correspondence constraints of Match Theory (Selkirk 2011) account for the prosodic patterns in IA, but have to be complemented with language-specific markedness constraints on phonological weight, exhaustivity and recursion. It is also shown that these explanatory principles can, with minor reorganization, account for the prosodic patterns described in other Arabic dialects.

This dissertation investigates subject expression patterns in Dominican Spanish (DS). In this variety, the null subject constructions associated with Non-Caribbean Spanish co-exist with the widespread use of overt subjects, which are found in specific constructions that are either rare or unattested in other Spanish varieties. Interestingly, these structures co-exist in the Dominican grammar with the null subject constructions associated with Non-Caribbean Spanish. While subject expression has been studied in a number of Spanish dialects within the generative and the variationist paradigms, monolingual Dominican Spanish, to the best of my knowledge, has not been investigated in previous variationist work. This study covers this gap by examining a large corpus of spontaneous speech (N=6005) gathered in the capital city of Santo Domingo and a rural area in the northwestern Cibao region. Furthermore, in line with the cohesive approach to syntactic variation developed in recent work (Adger and Smith 2005), theoretical implications are drawn from quantitative results. The results obtained in this study show that null and overt subject patterns in DS are regulated by the same constraints that have been found relevant in previous variationist work, i.e. discourse-related factor groups and Person (Otheguy, Zentella and Livert, 2007). These results depart from previous work in that evidence for language change in progress has been found in subject position patterns, rather than in null and overt subject distribution. When this phenomenon is examined, urban, young, high-middle class and female speakers arise as the social groups leading grammatical restructuring. Quantitative and qualitative evidence is taken into account for testing previous syntactic-theoretical proposals on DS. Taking the cartographic approach to syntactic structure (Rizzi 1997) as a point of departure, it will proposed that multiple specifier positions are available within the TP and CP fields to host strong and weak subjects. This proposal, in turn, makes it possible to account for the Null Subject Parameter profile displayed by synchronic DS without resorting to competing grammars in the minds of the speakers.

Ontologies are machine processable artifacts and the core structures of the Semantic Web. OWL (Web Ontology Language) is a W3C Recommendation language for developing ontologies; it is based on Description Logics, allowing for precise knowledge representation and sound and complete automated reasoning over the collection of axioms in an OWL document. Although ontologies are useful for sharing terminologies, their design and reuse are difficult and time consuming processes. Despite the efforts of the community towards the development of OWL ontologies, there is a lack of methods and tools for reusing and inspecting ontologies, i.e., reverse engineering methods. This thesis focuses on the area by investigating the detection of regularities in ontologies, for the purpose of abstracting sets of axioms into patterns that can be verified and reused. Its main contribution is the Regularity Inspector for Ontologies (RIO) framework, which implements methods to find syntactic regularities (repetitive structures in the asserted axioms) and semantic regularities (repetitive structures in the entailments) in an ontology. Regularity detection is achieved through the use of cluster analysis for detecting similarities in sets of axioms. This thesis provides experimental evidence for the effectiveness of regularity analysis for the inspection of patterns, and the discovery of modeling irregularities (often modelling errors) during quality assurance for real, large ontologies. In particular, empirical analysis showed that RIO could successfully detect regularities in ontologies, revealing the patterns adopted by the developers. It can be also used to trace pattern deviations as part of checking conformance to an intended design template during quality assurance of an ontology. This work has been motivated by the existence of pattern based systematic development methodologies and the lack of methods for discovering patterns in existing ontologies --- the natural complement of these pattern based development methodologies.

Une question centrale des recherches sur la lecture concerne la nature séquentielle ou parallèle de l’identification des mots pendant la lecture de phrases. L’hypothèse dominante postule que l’attention spatiale est allouée à un seul mot à la fois, et qu’avec cette contrainte, l’identification des mots doit forcément s’opérer de manière séquentielle. Cependant, un certain nombre de résultats suggèrent, au contraire, que l’attention spatiale peut être allouée à plusieurs mots à la fois, de manière distribuée. Cette attention disbribuée pourrait permettre l’identification en parallèle de plusieurs mots de manière simultanée, et les travaux présentés dans cette thèse cherchent à déterminer la viabilité de cette hypothèse. Notamment, nos travaux visent à préciser le niveau de traitement (visuel, orthographique, lexical, sémantique ou syntaxique) permis par cette attention distribuée. / This thesis addresses one of the most hotly debated issues in reading research: Are words processed serially or in parallel during reading? One could argue that this is primarily a question of visuo-spatial attention: is attention distributed across multiple words during reading? The research presented here suggests that attention can indeed be allocated to multiple words at once. It is further established that attention is a key factor driving (sub-lexical) orthographic processing. The next question, then, is whether multiple lexical representations can be activated in parallel. This thesis comprises a wealth of evidence for parallel lexical activation: firstly we have found that readers activate embedded words (e.g., ‘use’ in ‘houses’) alongside the word that is to be recognized, indicating that parallel lexical processing would occur even if readers could effectively focus their attention on single words. Moreover, we have found that semantic and syntactic categorization decisions about foveal target words are influenced by the semantic and syntactic aspects of surrounding words, even when all these words are presented for a duration shorter than the average time needed to recognize a single word. Hence, given that readers’ attention is spread across multiple words and that multiple lexical representations can be activated in parallel, it seems reasonable to claim that the reading system is in principle a parallel processing system.

Magister Artium - MA / The purpose of this study is to investigate how subject PRO of the infinitive in Sesotho is assigned an antecedent The general framework which is assumed is the Government Binding theory of generative grammar, in particular one of its subtheories, namely the Control theory which is concerned with the assignment of an antecedent to the subject PRO in the infinitive. A survey of the work done by various linguists on the Infinitive in Bantu languages shows that much has been written on the properties of the infinitive. In the Nguni languages, especially in Xhosa, considerable research has been done to establish the syntactic nature of the infinitive in the various constructions that it may occur. The Infinitive in Sesotho has, however, not been studied extensively. The central issue of this study relates to establishing the antecedent of the subject PRO of the infinitive in the various constructions in which it may appear. It is demonstrated that in some instances it is possible for two different NP arguments in a sentence to serve as a possible antecedent of the empty category PRO. This examination of control of the subject PRO in the infinitive in Sesotho has revealed the following: The subject PRO in the infinitive must have antecedent. In such cases the empty category PRO which is obligatory control is considered to behave like an anaphor, because as an empty of the clausal complement it must take its referential index from either the subject or object argument of the matrix sentence. This implies that the empty category PRO has no capacity for independent reference. 2. The subject PRO in the infinitive may have an In such cases the empty category PRO which is subject to non-obligatory control is considered to behave like a pronoun, because the empty category PRO may either refer to individuals independently or co-refer to individuals already named on a given sentence. Finally the subject PRO in the infinitive can at times have no antecedent at all In such cases the empty category PRO is subject to arbitrary control, because its antecedent may be implicit This has been established in the following instances: 3.1 There are cases where the infinitive is a complement of a Verb or a Copulative with the subject position occupied by an empty existential pronominal which is associated with the existential morpheme Ho. This pronominal is an empty category just like PRO, but is in a non-argument position, for it lacks a thetha-role. This is attributed to the fact that the existential pronominal associated with Ho, which signifies "it" or "there" is a dummy element and has therefore no semantic role. Therefore the antecedent of the subject PRO in the infinitive can be "anyone in general". The interpretation thereof is known as arbitrary control. It has also been established that, the Nominal infinitive, which has in Sesotho, like all other nominals, a class prefix which is morphologically marked with a prefix Ho, is subject to arbitrary control (see 3 above). This is attributed to the fact that its subject NP-argument has a non-referential expression which is thus ungoverned, because it has no agreement (-AGR) and can therefore not be assigned Case.

Magister Artium - MA / Daar is 'n toenemende belangstelling in die rol wat die linguistiek speel ten opsigte van die hantering van taalgebreke by kinders. Hierdie verskynsel kan gedeeltelik aan twee ontwikkelings in die linguistiek toegeskryf word, nl. (a) die bekendmaking van 'n transformasionele grammatika soos vervat in Noam Chomsky se Syntactic Structures in 1957 en (b) die feit dat transformasionele grammatici beklemtoon dat 'n linguistiese teorie moet kan verklaar hoe kinders taalstrukture verwerf. Dit het tot 'n hernieude belangstelling in taalverwerwing aanleiding gegee. Volgens Ingram (1976:6) kan linguiste 'n bydrae t.o.v. ten minste vyf aspekte lewer: (a) 'n boek t.o.v. algemene fonologiese aspekte moet saamgestel word; (b) 'n omvattende boek ten opsigte van die wyse waarop normale kinders die fonologie van hulle taal verwerf, moet saamgestel word; (c) 'n versameling tegnieke t.o.v. die verkryging en ontleding van kindertaal moet ontwikkel word; (d) 'n boek wat die aard van fonologiese afwykings in kinders beskryf, moet saamgestel word; (e) 'n versameling terapeutiese riglyne vir die behandeling van fonologiese afwykings moet ontwikkel word. Wanneer ons gekonfronteer word met kinders wat aan die een of ander taalgebrek ly, ontstaan daar onmiddellik die behoefte om die kind se taalsisteem te beskryf. Die deskriptiewe metode wat gebruik word, moet effektief genoeg wees om die kind se eie reëlsisteem uit te beeld asook die kompleksiteit van die strukture wat verwerf is. Sommige linguiste glo dat die TGG die regte stap in hierdie rigting is.

This study evaluated the possible influence of linguistic demands on speech motor control by measuring articulatory movement stability during conditions of increasing grammatical complexity. There were 60 participants in three age groups: 20-30 years, 40-50 years, and 60-70 years, with equal numbers of men and women in each group. These speakers produced 10 repetitions of five different sentence or phrase conditions. These five conditions included two baseline measurements and three sentences of varying complexity. Each complexity condition had an MLU count of 23, word length of 17, syllable length of 25, and contained the phrase open boxes of pompoms. Complexity was measured by node-count and grammatical structure. Lower lip movements during production of the target phrase were used to compute the spatiotemporal index (STI), a measure of lip movement stability over 10 repetitions. It was predicted that STI would be lower (indicating greater stability) in the baseline and low complexity conditions. Comparison of complexity conditions against the baseline-counting condition demonstrated significant differences in the upper lip's STI, displacement, and velocity, as well as in vocal intensity. Speech motor differences between the grammatical complexity levels were minimal and could be attributed to several factors, such as speaking rate or semantic differences. An unexpected finding of this study was the influence of age on speech production. Participants from the 60 year-old group had significantly longer utterance duration, while those from the 20 year-old group had the highest lower lip and jaw STI values. These findings suggest that speech motor control matures even beyond young adulthood and that linguistic complexity does not appear to have a consistent effect on speech movement variables.

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The current study investigated the language behaviour of older adults before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Linguistic complexity (LC)—a measure of lexical and morpho-syntactic richness—is an index of both cognitive functioning and creativity. The increased physical and social isolation during the pandemic yielded reports of heightened levels of creativity as well as cognitive decline, bringing forth two counter-directed predictions: (1) given the threat to cognitive functioning posed by the pandemic, LC may steadily decrease following the onset of the pandemic, or; (2) consistent with the creativity boost reported during lockdowns, LC may be greater after the onset of the pandemic. This work analyzed the syntactic and lexical complexity of texts from the CoSoWELL corpus (v1.0), a collection of personal narratives written by 1028 mature adults (55+) collected at five test sessions spanning before (t1) and after (t2-t5) the beginning of the pandemic. Two lexical variables (type-token ratio; noun-verb ratio) and six syntactic variables (two syntactic variants of type-token ratio; embeddedness; D-ratio; longest dependency path; mean length utterance) were used to calculate LC. All measures saw statistically significant gains from t1 to t2, and further increased across subsequent test sessions. These findings confirmed the second hypothesis and, I argue, support a pandemic-related boost to creativity. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / The COVID-19 pandemic has been isolating, and isolation is a mixed bag: being alone promotes self-reflection and overthinking, and doing too much is linked to stress and mental illness. However, more time spent in solitude is also linked to greater creativity. Creativity means more new ideas, which come through as longer, more detailed sentences, with less repetition. This research looked at stories by older adults about their lives, written before and during the pandemic. Surprisingly, the language in the stories became more descriptive and diverse over time—meaning people were being more creative after COVID-19 hit. In the wake of this lonely storm, one silver lining has emerged: whether in spite of or because of this pandemic, creativity is flourishing.

The capacity to flexibly combine words into a virtually infinite number of well-formed sentences is uniquely human and rests upon syntax (Berwick et al., 2013; Friederici, 2017). At the formal level, linguistic units are recursively combined into constituents according to syntactic rules and grammatical categorical information (Chomsky, 1995). At the neural level, neuroimaging studies support the role of Broca’s area in syntactic composition purely based on grammatical categorical information (Goucha & Friederici, 2015; Zaccarella & Friederici, 2015b). Furthermore, both the latency and attention-independent nature of the Early Left Anterior Negativity (ELAN) event-related potential (ERP) component elicited by syntactic categorical violations indicate that the analysis of syntactic categorical information is a fast and automatic process (Friederici, 2011). However, at present it remains unclear how syntactic composition takes place at the cognitive level. The present work examines how Broca’s area might incrementally build syntactic structures. Two hypotheses, namely categorical prediction or bottom-up integration, are investigated focusing on basic two-word structures, in order to highlight compositional processes while limiting extra-linguistic (e.g., working memory) demands (Pylkkänen, 2020; Zaccarella & Friederici, 2015b). Study 1 adapted a two-word ERP paradigm with syntactic categorical violations (Hasting & Kotz, 2008), shown to elicit a two-word equivalent of the ELAN component termed Early Syntactic Negativity (ESN). Study 1 successfully elicited an ESN effect with the stimulus list and timing of events employed. Study 2 tested the causal role of Broca’s area in syntactic categorical prediction, by simultaneously employing online transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and ERP measures. Crucially, the ESN effect was not affected by the functional disruption of Broca’s area by TMS at the predictive stage. Study 3 tested whether evidence for syntactic categorical prediction can be found at the behavioral level, employing a two-word masked syntactic priming paradigm (Berkovitch & Dehaene, 2019; Pyatigorskaya et al., 2023) to focus on automatic linguistic processes. A significant masked syntactic priming effect was observed, which however did not stem from facilitation in processing well-formed structures compared to a neutral context but rather from inhibition of the ungrammatical structures compared to a neural condition. This result converges on earlier observations made at the agreement level (Friederici & Jacobsen, 1999) and is not compatible with a central role of predictive processes in automatic categorical analysis. Finally, a comprehensive Review of two-word studies on syntactic processing characterized syntactic composition as a two-step and rule-based combinatorial process, achieved with a central role of Broca’s area and the posterior temporal lobe in the representation and combination of syntactic features, relying on efficient bottom-up integration rather than top-down prediction in the formation of constituents. Building on the results of the three studies and the review work, the present thesis puts forward a neurocognitive model of two-word incremental syntactic composition upon which future research can be based.