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published_or_final_version / abstract / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the relation between the teaching of Chinese syntax and the acquisition process by adult learners based on multitheoretical and multimethodological approaches. Through a brief review of the features of Chinese syntax and a comparative study of three different syntactic analytic systems, a Chinese linguistic background is provided. A further study of pedagogical Chinese syntax was conducted by investigating the teaching materials and methods introduced in three commonly used Chinese textbooks. Based on the Chinese linguistic and pedagogical background, the surveys were designed to probe the learners' acquisition process of Chinese syntax. The studies involved a total of 73 subjects who are native English speakers learning Chinese at different universities. It has been found that: (1) adult learners' acquisition order and rate are closely related to their cognitive skills; (2) the scope of acquisition in adults is subject to time limitations; (3) analysis & analogy are the main methods used by adult learners in the acquisition of syntax; (4) the learning environment & the knowledge of the target syntax by adult learners are not required to be situationally linked; (5) the process of syntactic transfer is incomplete among adult learners due to the lack of target language input; (6) the general failure rate in L2 acquisition partially associates with the lack of the fully functional innate language faculty; (7) the adult learners' common mistakes in syntactic acquisition process are predictable due to syntactic transfer and the influences from L1; (8) different teaching methods result in different strengths in students; (9) there is a gap between grammatical competence & communicative competence in the adult learners' acquisition process. According to those features, I proposed nine pedagogical principles for the Chinese syntax teaching, and a case study of teaching Chinese structures with three post-verbal complements was conducted in order to have a field-test. The discussion in this dissertation has partially confirmed the claim made by psycho-linguistic researchers that learning a second language is a complex process. There is a hierarchical order in acquiring language competence, and the acquisition of hierarchically ordered skills requires integrated approaches.

This dissertation presents a partial grammar of the Guipuzkoan dialect of Basque, and develops a theory of how to capture the syntactic and morphological relationships between arguments and argument-categorizing-elements (ACEs) in simple sentences. I assume the background of the theory outlined in A Syntax of Luiseno (Steele in prep.). Starting with the assumption that an ACE and an aux(iliary) particle sequence form together the sentential nucleus and represent the minimal requirement for sentencehood, I focus on the representation of the relations between the ACE-argument-structure and the morphological make-up of the aux form, that is, the aux-structure. I argue for a principle which determines whether the aux-structure satisfies the argument requirement of the ACE. In order to characterize overt case-marked constituents, I consider various syntactic phenomena. Then, I introduce and discuss (i) a rule which co-indexes directly an overt constituent with an argument-slot in the ACE-argument-structure, and (ii) a checking device which associates, on the basis of case-matching, an overt constituent with a morpheme (understood as a form plus meaning combination) in the aux-structure. Finally, I investigate the linear distribution of overt case-marked constituents. Special attention is given to the issue of focus in positive and negative simple sentences.

One of the most striking features of Saramaccan syntax is the almost categorically finite status of its sentential complements and serial verbs. In fact, a study of these constituents in the language is to primarily observe how characteristics of finite sentential structures are beginning to be lost in certain instances. The first three chapters are largely preliminary in nature. Chapter I briefly introduces Saramaccan, discusses the Government and Binding grammatical model and outlines why it is superior to competing approaches. This chapter also defines many of the pertinent concepts needed for the analyses. Chapter II looks at tense, modality and aspect markers and determines when a +Tense value is possible for a clause. In this context, we find that the complements of perception verbs are finite. The remainder of Chapter II and all of Chapter III determine the dislocation patterns and identifying parameters of various categories. The next three chapters investigate serial structures. In Chapter IV, it is found among other things that complementizer-like fu (from for) and taa 'say, that' are main verbs. Chapter V analyzes the Instrumental, Benefactive and Dative serials. We conclude that the Instrumental and Benefactive are contained within finite clauses, while the Dative serial verb is either an infinitive or has been deleted. Finally in Chapter VI, the many serials discussed exhibit a wide range of features which lead us to believe that some are fully finite, others are infinitives, and one has reanalyzed to another category. It is claimed in the last chapter, based on the evidence, that there is really no difference between sentential complements and serial structures; both are or were finite clauses. In addition, based on the nature of serials reported in the literature for West African languages, Saramaccan appears to be significantly different. This leads to the conclusion that serials spontaneously emerged in Saramaccan during the creolization process rather than being a continuation of such structures from West African languages.

This dissertation examines Ilocano, an Austronesian Filipino language, within the Minimalist Framework, in an effort to tease apart the general syntactic properties of the language. I show that Ilocano underlying structure can easily be captured within the standard syntactic structures proposed for languages generally (Universal Grammar). In my examination of ellipsis in Ilocano, I concern myself strictly with syntactic and not semantic properties. I show that syntactic feature distribution (e.g. [+FOC], [+NEG], [+DET]) in combination with the two basic operations of the Minimalist Program: FEATURE-CHECKING and MERGE can account for both the underlying structure of Ilocano utterances as well as the word-order at Spell-Out, without making any stipulations not found in languages generally.My research also reveals new insights and corrects existing assumptions about certain previously undiscovered underlying structural properties of Ilocano. I account for the restrictive word ordering and structure found in Ilocano by assigning a universally applicable, non-controversial set of functional and lexical features to morphemes. These features satisfy, individually or collectively, feature-checking requirements in the language, resulting in the attested output of Ilocano. The types of ellipsis considered as a diagnostic toward that end are: NP-ellipsis, Bare Argument Ellipsis/Stripping, Gapping, Sluicing and Psuedogapping. I argue that the primary mechanism which licenses ellipsis in Ilocano is FOCUS-RAISING which allows extraction of remnant material prior to ellipsis of the TP in the case of all verbal-type ellipsis in Ilocano; or the DP in terms of Ilocano NP-ellipsis.

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This thesis by publication presents a study on English adpositions (e.g. to, in, at, from, in frontof, through). It attempts to offer a solution to the following three outstanding problems, whichare presented in each of the three parts making up the thesis, preceded by a general introduction(chapter 1) and followed by the general conclusions (chapter 7). The first part includes chapter2, and discusses the problem of What is the relation between adpositions and the non-linguistic,visual content they represent. The second part includes chapters 3 and 4, and discusses theproblem ofwhat is a proper compositional theory of the Syntax and Semantics of adpositions.The third part includes chapters 5 and 6, and discusses the problem of what is the psychologicalreality of this theory, regarding adults and children’s data.The following three solutions are suggested. First, the relation between adpositions and theircorresponding visual information is an isomorphism: adpositions capture how we “see” possiblespatio-temporal relations between objects, at a flexible level of fine-grainedness. Second, aproper compositional treatment of adpositions treats each syntactic unit (in front, of ) as offeringa distinct semantic contribution, hence spelling out a restricted instance of a spatio-temporalpart-of relation. Third, this compositional treatment of adpositions can also stand as a theory ofon-line interpretation in adults and a theory of their acquisition in children.These three answers are couched within a single theoretical approach, that of Discourse Representation Theory, and offer a unified solution to three apparently distinct problems regardingspatial adpositions and their linguistic properties.