The present study undertook to address two questions: (1) are there any age-relatable relationships between the spoken and written syntax of adolescent students within a mainstream secondary school? (2) are there any relationships associated with the educational attainment of these students? To this end, the study analysed 180 pairs of spoken and written non-narrative texts, eliciting each such pair from students attending a mainstream English secondary school. This bespoke corpus was further designed so as to be balanced across three year groups (Year Seven, Year Eight, Year Nine) and two National Curriculum attainment levels (Level 4, Level 5). Syntactic packaging was chosen as the study’s analytical focus; defined here as comprising how clauses are combined via coordination and subordination. To help ensure a more in-depth analysis, an extended set of measures was employed, ranging from the general (e.g. the number of clauses per t-unit) to the more specific (e.g. the number of non-finite adverbial clauses per t-unit and per clause). So analysed, the study found that adolescent students at the present age and attainment levels can and do differentiate their spoken and written syntax, at least for these texts and these measures. It also found this differentiation to be something that varied according to the particular kind of packaging. Thus, for example, the spoken texts exhibited greater numbers of t-units per t-unit complex, together with a greater prominence of finite adverbial and post-verbal complement clauses. Thus, also, the written texts exhibited a greater overall prominence of non-finite clauses. And, thus, both modalities exhibited similar proportions of relative clauses. Finally, this differentiation was found to be developmentally static, with participants handling their spoken and written syntax for these measures in much the same way, regardless of their age or attainment level. Overall, these findings are interpreted in terms of the participants tapping into the differential production conditions of the two modalities but without necessarily fully exploiting these conditions. Furthermore, when placed in the context of the wider evidence base, the findings point to two general conclusions. Firstly, they indicate students at the present age and attainment levels to be at a stage where their syntactic output is in line with that of more mature discourse. Secondly, they indicate modality to be an aspect of student syntax that is characterised by a potentially high degree of sensitivity to the wider discourse context.

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This study deals with the description of Tagalog syntax using the techniques of transformational-generative grammar. Specifically, the formulations in this work follow, to a large extent, the statements of Chomsky in his "A Transformational Approach to Syntax." The primary aims of this work are to formulate the basic rules of Tagalog kernel sentences, and to show some of the most common transformations in the language. Further, this thesis seeks to establish a basis for a more detailed study of the transformational syntax of Tagalog, and expects to provide a point of departure for future contrastive analyses of Tagalog and other languages. The author believes that he has provided the teacher of Tagalog with basic material for the teaching of the fundamentals of Tagalog transformational- generative grammar, and the new learner with a ready manual for the easy grasp of the core of Tagalog structures. The analysis concerns the linguistic intuition of the author as a native speaker of Tagalog. The steps involved in the analysis are as follows: investigation of actual and possible sentences known and permitted by the intuition of the author, including a large written corpus; formulation of the rules of various kernel sentences, generation of grammatical strings with morphographemic realizations, accompanied by the necessary explanations including tree structures; collating the different kernel rules and forming the base rules of Tagalog kernel sentences; showing some of the most common transformations, with pertinent comments; and concluding with a summary of what was discovered in the investigation, along with recommendations for further study and investigation. The formulations show the rules for six types of sentences, namely, sentences of the construction verb phrase plus noun phrase; sentences of the copula types, which are adjective or adjectival phrase plus noun phrase, adverb or adverbial phrase plus noun phrase, noun phrase plus noun phrase, pronoun plus noun phrase, and prepositional phrase plus noun phrase. All the kernel sentence rules are brought together in the base rules of Tagalog kernel sentences. Ten kinds of transformations are shown: pronoun transformation — declarative and imperative-—, negative transformation, yes-no interrogative transformation, yes-no negative interrogative transformation, pronoun-negative-interrogative transformation, ay inversion transformation, manner adverbial transformation, indirect object transformation, -in- passive transformation, and: nominalization transformation. The investigation finds some deep regularities in the language; and it also finds some problems for further study and investigation. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

This thesis provides an analysis of wh-questions in Nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree). The study is done within the Principles and Parameters framework (Chomsky 1981, 1986, 1995). I argue that Nêhiyawêwin wh-words like awfna 'who' are not generated in argument position and do not undergo A-bar movement to Spec CP (Chapter 3). Rather, they are licensed as the predicate of a nominal clause, and respect the same syntactic constraints as other nominal clauses: they are strictly predicatê-initial; obey a referentiality hierarchy; and display agreement for number, animacy and obviation (chapter 4). I analyze Nêhiyawêwin nominal clauses as IP with a null Infl head in which the predicate fronts to Spec CP. The clausê-initial position of the wh-word is thus part of a more general process of predicatefronting. The nominal clause analysis of wh-words accounts for the absence of wh-movement per se in the language, as well as for the absence of wh in situ. However, based on their interpretive properties, wh-questions must contain an operator-variable chain. I argue that the operator-variable relation arises when the subject of the nominal clause links to an A-position in a subordinate clause. This occurs in one of two ways: by means of the kâ-complementizer or the ê-complementizer (Chapter 5). If the subordinate clause has kâ-, the resulting structure is a relative clause which restricts the reference of the subject. This yields a cleft construction: Who is it[sub i] that Mary likes t[sub i] ? If the subordinate clause has ê-, the clauses are conjoined, and null-operator movement in the subordinate clause forces an anaphoric relation between the wh-word and the A-position in the ê- clause: Who is he[sub i] & OP[sub i] Mary likes him[sub i]. Having shown how Nêhiyawêwin wh-words are associated with an operator-variable chain, I then consider the consequences of the proposed analysis (Chapter 6). A defining property of wh-chains is their sensitivity to island effects. Consistent with this, there is an argument/adjunct asymmetry in Nêhiyawêwin, which in turn bears on the question of where overt arguments are positioned in a polysynthetic language. I argue that complement clauses are basê-generated in an A-position, unlike overt DPs which are in an A'-position (adjoined to IP). This explains why long-distance extraction is possible from complement clauses, while extraction from adjunct clauses is ungrammatical. Another property of wh-chains is their sensitivity to Weak Crossover (WCO). WCO effects are absent in Nêhiyawêwin wh-questions. I argue that WCO may be avoided because there is no movement of a truly quantificational operator in the sense of Lasnik and Stowell (1991), but rather movement of a null operator. I then propose a Weakest Crossover analysis for the absence of WCO, following Demirdache (1997). / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation argues for the existence of functional attitude predicates, light attitudes, such as light say and light see. Two phenomena are identified as functional attitudes: evidentiality and logophoric say-complementizers. I propose that reportative evidential markers and logophoric licensing complementizers are cross-linguistic variations of overt morphosyntactic realizations of the same light attitude: a functionalized predicate say. The parallel between evidentiality and logophoricity drawn here highlights their properties that have not been discussed or formally accounted for until now, and explains why they are in a typological complementary distribution across the world's languages. At the same time, direct and reportative evidentials even within the same language exhibit a number of syntactic and semantic differences that have not been noticed in the literature before. I derive them from the analysis of reportative and direct evidentials as different kinds of functional predicates: say and perceive, respectively. After establishing the nature of evidentials, I develop their syntactic and semantic properties formally. I claim that light attitudes are hosted by a projection cP, which selects CP and has properties similar to that of the light verb projection vP, such as argument structure, thematic roles, and `flavors'. The semantic composition of light attitudes is based on that of lexical attitudes, for which I am following and expanding ideas from de-compositional semantics. This allows for a simple and conceptually motivated analysis that does not need any additional theoretical primitives. I develop novel methodology to test for evidential challengeability and newness of evidentials that take the between-evidential differences into account. The results support the representation of the evidential contribution as a presupposition.

The purpose of this dissertation is to account for the syntactic and semantic traits of Tłı̨chǫ modal clauses within a cross-linguistic typology of conditional clauses. This dissertation provides a comprehensive description and analysis of clauses that are introduced by nı̨dè, a Tłı̨chǫ word with cognates in many Dene languages. Clauses that are introduced by nı̨dè are modal adjuncts, which cover predictions about the future (future temporal adverbial clauses, when), hypothetical scenarios (conditional clauses, if) and generic or habitual generalisations about the world (restrictive clauses, whenever). I provide a unified account for all of these uses by showing that they are all in the realm of modality. I then hypothesise that nı̨dè is a complementiser which introduces a modal adjunct clause. I follow von Fintel (2006) and Kratzer (2012) and suggest that nı̨dè restricts a modal operator in its apodosis. This account explains apparent gaps in the Tłı̨chǫ grammar, and in particular within concessive adjunct clauses ('even though...'), which cannot be introduced by nı̨de, and attributes this mismatch to the difference between the factivity of concessive adjunct clauses on the one hand and modality in clauses introduced by nı̨dè on the other hand. I contrast this with concessive conditional clauses ('if.... even...'), which can be introduced by nı̨dè, and in which nı̨dè scopes over the concessive adverb kò (following Bennett, 1982, 2003). This work highlights the ways in which Tłı̨chǫ conditionals are different from, and similar to, previous cross-linguistic generalisations of conditionals. Conditionals in Tłı̨chǫ and other Dene languages differ from many accounts of conditionals, which focus on the role of the verbal form in communicating speaker attitudes about the hypotheticality of the proposition in the conditional (Iatridou, 2000; Karawani, 2014). In contrast, Tłı̨chǫ uses verb aspect inside clauses to indicate the action as complete or incomplete, much like in matrix clauses. Tłı̨chǫ speakers communicate their attitudes of the likelihood and hypotheticality of the proposition using other means, such as adverbs and evidentials. However, Tłı̨chǫ is also similar to other languages, in extending the modal nature of conditional clauses to a subtype of conditionals called premise conditionals, which communicate rhetorical devices and a variety of metatextual comments (Dancygier, 1993, 1999). This is unexpected, as I argue that nı̨dè must introduce a modal clause, whereas premise conditionals seemingly deal with facts. I argue that despite first impressions, Tłı̨chǫ premise conditionals are still within the realm of modality, as they are either used to express propositions that are not accepted as fact by the speaker, or are used to restrict a modal in the adjoined clause, much like hypothetical conditionals. The structure of Tłı̨chǫ premise conditionals is likewise similar to the structure that has been proposed in the past for other languages (Haegeman, 2003, 2010). / Graduate

Magister Artium - MA / This thesis .investigates the function of a topicalized constituent .in the narrative non-direct speech texts .in 2 Kings. Many traditional BH grammarians described the :function of a topicalized constituent as "emphasis". Recent BH grammarians pointed out that extralinguistic factors like the total communicative context should also be considered in the description of a function for a topicalized constituent. The shift from the structural to a more pragmatic approach is illustrated in this study. The pragmatic approach proved to be not only possible, but also advantageous to the study of function in BH. The aim of this study was to test the viability and results of the various theories and categories of the BH linguists. This study also researched whether their linguistic approaches are indeed an improvement on the descriptions as defined by the traditional grammarians. In other words, to see whether and in which way more recent studies of BH could aid the understanding of the function of a topicalized constituent in BH word order. The methodology utilized in this study is briefly outlined as follows: 1. This study examined the description of word order in terms of the traditional and more recent approaches. The categories used to describe the function of a topicalized constituent were our main focus. At the end we compiled a theoretical frame of reference that we regard as representative of modem attempts to acquire a more refined comprehension of BH word order. A theoretical linguistic framework was formulated which could be used in our description of a sentence in BH in 2 · Kings. This attempt could be described as eclectic because it used the diverse perceptions from the various linguistic approaches. Richter's theoretical linguistic framework (with its limitations) together with contributions of Van der Merwe, Buth and Gross were used as a basis for the description of the sentences. 3. Sentences were analysed systematically and holistically at the different levels of description, namely morphology, morphosyntax, sentence syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Because of the difficulty in defining semantics and with pragmatics still in disarray, this study defined some semantic-pragmatic concepts it worked with. 4. In the description of sentences we incorporated and tested the viability of the different categories of various grammarians. By carefully considering the context of each sentence, this study posed the question: which, if any; of the categories could adequately describe the semantic-pragmatic function of a topicalized constituent in 2 Kings.

The case in Czech is the basic morphological means by which nouns express their function in a sentence. The objective of this thesis is to describe, from a frequency point of view, the relation between form and function of nouns, or, more precisely, how frequently cases (both simple and prepositional) are used to realise syntactic functions in sentences. The thesis is based on one of the largest corpora of written synchronic Czech: 100-million-token corpus SYN2005. In order to obtain data on frequencies of syntactic functions of nouns in relation to their cases, we annotated the corpus SYN2005 with a dependency syntactic annotation. For this annotation, we adopted the format of the analytical layer of the Prague Dependency Treebank. The syntactic annotation has been performed by a stochastic parser: the MST parser. Since the reliability of this annotation was not high enough, we have built an automatic correction module, which identifies errors of syntactic annotation in the output of the stochastic parser and corrects these errors by means of linguistic rules. We have implemented 26 different rules, but annotation errors have been reduced by merely 6-8%. However, this correction module can be further developed. It can be used to correct the output of any dependency parser trained on the data from...

The present study sought to determine the effect different stimulus material has on the language elicited from children. Its purpose was to determine whether a significant difference existed among language samples elicited three different ways when analyzed using DSS. Eighteen children between the ages of 3.6 and 5.6 years were chosen to participate in the study. All of the children had normal bearing. normal receptive vocabulary skills and no demonstrated or suspected physical or social delays. Three language samples. each elicited by either toys. pictures. or stories. were obtained from each child. For each sample. a corpus of 50 utterances was selected for analysis and analyzed according to the DSS procedure as described by Lee and Ganter (1971).