Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918-October 14, 1990) had a fascination with language that was clear to his family from his childhood. He was raised in a Jewish home with parents who fostered an understanding of the Hebrew language as well as musical artistry. By the time he was commissioned to compose Chichester Psalms for the Chichester Cathedral in 1965, his understanding of Hebrew poetry was considerable. Bernstein’s compositional approach in this work was influenced not only by his musical training but also by his heritage and culture, including his literary knowledge. Scholars have explored the diversity of styles and text-painting in the Chichester Psalms. This author’s intent is to provide analysis of Bernstein’s use of Hebrew poetic forms to organize his composition. His understanding of Hebrew syntax is apparent in his sequencing and arrangement of the texts. In his careful and creative approach to setting these texts, Bernstein is able to highlight the themes of peace and unity that are the focus of the chosen verses in their original form.

This dissertation is a theoretical and experimental investigation of number marking in Yucatec Maya, a language in which number marking has different properties than better known Indo-European languages with inflectional plural marking and obligatory number agreement. The primary goal of this thesis is to propose a formal syntactic analysis of plural marking in Yucatec Maya in the nominal and verbal domains. I do this by examining the distribution and interpretation of the plural morpheme and by proposing an analysis within a Minimalist framework. The secondary goal is to investigate how the formal representation of plural marking interacts with real-time sentence processing mechanisms. I do this through timed translation experiments (and a picture description experiment) with bilingual speakers of Yucatec Maya and Spanish, two languages in which the formal representation of number marking and agreement differs. These experiments are tests of the formal syntactic analyses proposed in this thesis, and they examine the effect of language-particular syntax on sentence processing mechanisms. In the nominal domain, I argue that the plural marker is adjoined to the Determiner Phrase, rather than heading a Number Phrase, following the syntax of plural marking proposed by Wiltschko (2008). It merges as an adjunct to the DP, lacking the ability to change the label of the element with which it merges. This analysis explains the distributional and interpretational properties of plural marking as well as the otherwise peculiar lack of morphosyntactic persistence in certain conditions in an experimental translation task. I also propose an analysis of plural marking in the verbal domain and its relationship to word order. In verb-initial clauses, the aspect-mood particle is the main predicate in T⁰ which is φ-deficient. There is no Agree for number between the plural-marked full DP and verb due to the absence of C⁰ (Chomsky 2008). For DP-initial clauses, a DP bearing plural morphology moves to the CP domain, triggered by a topic or focus feature. The uninterpretable number feature on C⁰ probes via T⁰ for an interpretable valued feature in its domain (Chomsky 2001). This analysis predicts asymmetric number agreement in Yucatec Maya, which is tested experimentally.

This thesis sets out to explore some of the ways in which videogames use space as a means of expression. This expression takes place in two registers: representation and embodiment. Representation is understood as a form of expression in which messages and ideas are communicated. Embodiment is understood as a form of expression in which the player is encouraged to take up a particular position in relation to the game. This distinction between representation and embodiment is useful analytically but the thesis attempts to synthesise these modes in order to account for the experience of playing videogames, where representation and embodiment are constantly happening and constantly influencing and shaping each other. Several methods are developed to analyse games in a way that brings these two modes to the fore. The thesis attempts to arrive at a number of spatial aesthetics of videogames by adapting methods from game studies, literary criticism, phenomenology, onomastics (the study of names), cartographic theory, choreography and architectural and urban formation analysis.

From the perspective of cognitive psychology, our knowledge of language can be viewed as mental representations and our use of language can be understood as the computation or processing of mental representations. This thesis explores the mental representation and processing of syntactic structure. The method used in this thesis is structural priming, a phenomenon in which people tend to repeat the linguistic structure that they have recently processed. The language under investigation is Chinese. The main research theme is divided up into four different questions. The first question is how syntactic structure is mentally represented. For a long time this has been a question for syntacticians whose main evidence is their intuition. There are, however, recent calls for experimental methods in the investigation of syntactic representation. I propose that structural priming can be used as an experimental approach to the investigation of syntactic representation. More specifically, structural priming can illuminate the constituent structure of a syntactic construction and help us determine which syntactic analysis corresponds to the representation of the construction. Three structural priming experiments on some controversial constructions in Mandarin were reported to show that structural priming can be used to distinguish alternative analyses of a syntactic construction. The second question concerns the use of thematic and lexical information in grammatical encoding in sentence production. Models of grammatical encoding differ in the locus of conceptual effects on grammatical encoding and the extent to which grammatical encoding is lexically guided. Five experiments were reported on these two issues. First, the results indicate that thematic information affects grammatical encoding by prompting the processor map thematic roles onto the same linear order as they were previously mapped. Though conceptual information was previously believed to only affect the assignment of grammatical functions (e.g., subject and object) to nouns (i.e., functional processing), this finding suggests that it can influence the linear order of sentence constituents (i.e., positional processing) as well. The results also show that the processor persists in using the same argument structure of the verb, implying that grammatical encoding is lexically guided to some extent. The third question concerns the processing of verb-phrase (VP) ellipsis in comprehension. Previous research on this topic disagrees on whether the interpretation of VP ellipsis is based over the syntactic or semantic representation of the antecedent and whether the antecedent representation is copied or reconstructed at the ellipsis site. An experiment was presented and the results show no structural priming effect from the ellipsis site. This suggests that no syntactic structure is reconstructed at the ellipsis and possibly no copying of the antecedent structure either. The results then favour a semantic account of VP ellipsis processing. The last question concerns the lexico-syntactic representation of cognates in Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals. Previous research has paid little attention as to whether cognates have shared or distinct lemmas in bilinguals. Two experiments show that the structural priming effect from the cognate of a verb was smaller than from the verb itself, suggesting that Cantonese/Mandarin cognates have distinct rather than shared lemmas, though the syntactic information associated with cognates is collectively represented across the two languages. At the end of the thesis, I discussed the implications of these empirical studies and directions of further research.

L'acquisition de connaissances relatives aux constructions verbales est une question importante pour le traitement automatique des langues, mais aussi pour la lexicographie qui vise à documenter les nouveaux usages linguistiques. Cette tâche pose de nombreux enjeux, techniques et théoriques. Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement à deux aspects fondamentaux de la description du verbe : la notion d'entrée lexicale et la distinction entre arguments et circonstants. A la suite de précédentes études en traitement automatique des langues et en linguistique nous faisons l'hypothèse qu’il n’y a pas de distinction marquée entre homonymes et quasi-synonymes ; de même, nous posons qu’il existe un continuum entre arguments et circonstants. Nous proposons une chaîne de traitement complète pour l'acquisition de schémas prédicatifs verbaux en japonais à partir d'un corpus non étiqueté de textes journalistiques. Cette chaîne de traitement intègre la notion d'argumentalité au processus de création des entrées lexicales et met en œuvre une modélisation de ces deux continuums. La ressource produite a fait l'objet d'une évaluation comparative qualitative, qui a permis de mettre en évidence la difficulté des ressources linguistiques à décrire de nouvelles données, plaidant par là même pour une lexicologie s'inscrivant dans le cadre épistémologique de la linguistique de corpus. / Lexical knowledge acquisition of verbal constructions is an important issue for natural language processing as well as lexicography, which aims at referencing emerging linguistic usages. Such a task implies numerous challenges, technical as well as theoretical. In this thesis, we had a closer look at two fundamental aspects of the description of the verb: the notion of lexical item and the distinction between arguments and adjuncts. Following up on studies in natural language processing and linguistics, we embrace the hypothesis that there is no clear distinction between homonyms and quasi-synonyms, and the hypothesis of a continuum between arguments and adjuncts. We provide a complete approach to lexical knowledge acquisition of verbal constructions from an untagged news corpus. The acquisition process makes use of the notion of argumenthood, and builds models of the two continuums. Our lexicon has been evaluated on a qualitative and comparative basis. Siding with lexicography anchored in the theoretical framework of corpus linguistics, we show the difficulty of using lexical resources to describe as yet unseen data.

The Baroque-era Spanish poet Luis de Góngora is renowned for his difficult syntax, and particularly for the literary device called hyperbaton, or the stylistic inversion of normal word order. While the elaborate gongorismo style has not gone unnoticed by linguists, classical analyses of the poet’s work typically view sentence structure as one-dimensional and characterize the force of a hyperbaton by the length of an interposed phrase. Taking the sonnets of Góngora as a data set, I invoke the theory of generative syntax to argue that this apparent interposition is actually multiple instances of raising, often into specifier positions, though typically for stylistic reasons rather than for the purpose of feature-checking. Esta tesis está escrita en español.

This dissertation provides a formal syntactic analysis of complex-path motion predicates in Ghanaian Student Pidgin (GSP) – an English-lexified expanded pidgin spoken by (mostly male) students in Ghanaian high schools and universities – within the Generative Constructivist framework. The data for the study was collected from three speakers with an instrument consisting of a battery of animated video-clips designed to elicit and contrast the following set of parameters that correspond to the various subcomponents of a motion event – path, telicity, result and agentivity. With regard to the path subcomponent, the dissertation found that GSP is able to express the 3-D vectorization of the path in motion predicates via verbal morphology in Serial Verb Constructions – a proposal which had already been argued by some earlier researchers (Benedicto, Cvejanov, & Quer, 2008; Benedicto & Salomon, 2014; Zheng, 2012). On the issue of the Telicity subcomponent, this dissertation follows in the footsteps of Borer (2005) who argues (among other things) that an event is telic when the functional projection, Asp_Q, is assigned range by a subject-of-quantity internal constituent. However, where this dissertation forges new ground is in proposing that, in motion predicates, it is not the internal constituent that assigns range to Asp_q, as usually assumed, but rather the reaching of an endpoint (which obtains in GSP as the reach substructure). Additionally, the dissertation also shows that this is only compatible with a reachable (i.e. non-projective) XP_loc – a connection made possible by analyzing the internal structure of the XP_loc along the lines of Svenonius, 2008, 2010). The chapter on the Resultative subcomponent shows that the Resultative substructure (unlike some prevailing analysis, e.g. Ramchand, 2008) is independent of Telicity. Finally, with regard to agentivity, the dissertation makes a crucial discovery about the structural difference between initial contact and continuous contact agentives – i.e. the additional functional projection of a grammacticalized <i>make</i> (present in initial contact agentives, but absent from continuous contact agentives) which signals the separation of the figure from the agent. <br>

Esta pesquisa investiga interface sintática e semântica das construções que expressam números em duas línguas da família linguística Tupi. Os objetivos são i) propor uma análise da interface sintática e semântica da estrutura composicional dos numerais nas línguas Tupi e ii) avaliar o impacto dessa análise para a compreensão da morfossintaxe dos sistemas numéricos em geral. Foram selecionados os sistemas numéricos das línguas do karitiana (Arikém) e do kaiamurá (Tupi-Guarani). No caso do karitiana, os dados foram coletados pela autora deste projeto em uma Iniciação científica financiada pelo CNPq em 2015. No caso do kamayurá a fonte dos dados foi a Gramática do Kamayurá (SEKI, 2000). A pesquisa toma como ponto de partida as seguintes teorias: i) Estratégia de empacotamento proposta por Hurford (1987, 2006, 2010) para explicar a sintaxe da formação dos numerais nas línguas naturais. Nessa abordagem operações sintáticas expressam operações matemáticas, como multiplicação e adição, e numerais complexos são formados a partir de numerais e bases morfêmicas multiplicativas; ii) teoria Fregeana para palavras numéricas desenvolvida por Rothstein (2013, 2017) que propõe que numerais complexos são formados a partir de numerais básicos e multiplicadores lexicais <n <e, t>. As hipóteses iniciais foram: i) a estratégia de empacotamento opera na formação recursiva de numerais complexos em línguas Tupi e isso dá apoio empírico à tese de que esse mecanismo é um universal sintático que orienta a formação dos sistemas numéricos nas línguas naturais; ii) o conceito de base morfêmica multiplicativa (HURFORD, 1987,2006,2010) é compatível com o conceito de léxico multiplicativo (ROTHSTEIN, 2013). As hipóteses foram confirmadas e a análise dos dados mostrou que: i) ambas línguas expressam os numerais compostos via numerais básicos, bases auxiliares e coordenação, ii) ambas línguas apresentam estruturas aditivas nos numerais compostos e iii) a abordagem foi produtiva para elucidar a composição desses sistemas numerais. / This research aims to investigate the syntactic and semantic interface of the numerical expressions in two indigenous languages of different subfamilies of the Tupi linguistic family . Our goals are i) to propose an analysis of the syntactic and semantic interface of the numerical compositional structure in the Tupi languages and ii) to evaluate the impact of this analysis for the comprehension of the morphosyntax of numerical systems in general. The numeral systems analyzed of the languages Karitiana (Arikém), Kaiamurá (Tupi-Guarani). In the case of Karitiana , data were collected by the author of this project in 2015 in a Scientific Initiation funded by CNPq. For kamayurá, the source of data was the Kamyurá Grammar (SEKI, 2010). The research take as its starting point the following theories: i) Packing strategy proposed by Hurford (1987, 2006, 2010) to explain the syntax of numerals formation in natural languages. In this approach, syntactic operations express mathematical operations, such as multiplication and addition and complex numerals are formed from a basic numeral and a multiplicative morphemic base; ii) Fregean theory for numerical words developed by Rothstein (2013, 2017) which proposes that complex numerals are formed from basic numerals and lexical multipliers <n <e, t>. The initial hypothesis was: i) the packaging strategy operates on the recursive formation of complex numerals in Tupi languages and this gives empirical support to the thesis that this mechanism is a syntactic universal that guides the formation of numerical systems in natural languages ; ii) the concept of multiplicative morphemic base (Hurford, 1987,2006,2010) is compatible with the concept of lexical multiplier (Rothstein 2013). The hypotheses were confirmed and the data analysis showed that: i) both languages express the compound numerals via basic numerals, auxiliary bases and coordination, ii) both languages have additive structures in the compound numerals and iii) the approach was productive to elucidate the composition of these numerical systems.

It is well known that parallelization of software is a difficult problem to solve. This project aimed to research a possible solution by creating a programming language for parallelization and subsequently analyzing its syntax and semantics. This analysis consisted of readability and writability tests followed by a subjective discussion from the point of view of the author. The project resulted in the Majo programming language. Majo uses a graph based concurrency model with implicit shared data synchronization. The model is integrated into the languages design, making it easier to use. The analysis of the language showed that the integration of the threading model simplifies the writing of parallel software. However, there are several syntactic elements that could be improved upon, especially regarding the communication between concurrently executing threads. In conclusion, the author believes that the way forward in regards to parallel programming is to make programming languages more human centric and design syntax in a way that intuitively expresses the underlying semantics.

De uma maneira geral, este trabalho tem como objetivos descrever e analisar alguns aspectos dos Sintagmas Nominais em Karitiana. Primeiramente, retomamos as discussões de Müller, Storto e Coutinho-Silva (2006a,b) e Sanchez-Mendes (2007) acerca da quantificação em Karitiana e descrevemos o comportamento do suposto quantificador Universal: akatyym, propondo que em Karitiana exista um processo específico de \'quantificação\' que não pode ser tratado como quantificação nominal ou adverbial conforme descrito em Bach et al (1995), pois o que nossa análise tanto do ponto de vista morfossintático, quanto do ponto de vista semântico aponta é que NP+akatyym é uma sentença relativa com núcleo interno, e sua suposta força quantificacional de Universal pode ser justificada como uma característica das relativas livre de núcleo interno que ao interpretar semanticamente seus núcleos nominais internamente ao CP, gera uma operação que tem como resultado semântico uma denotação de entidade plural máxima ou completa (cf. Grosu & Landman, 1998). Além disso, este trabalho analisa alguns fatos inter-relacionados dentro do Sintagma Nominal: analisamos as estruturas demonstrativas, mostrando que elas também são melhor analisadas como sentenças relativas e propomos uma descrição e análise dos pronominais em Karitiana tanto do ponto de vista da Morfologia Distribuída, seguindo os trabalhos de Ritter e Harley (1998), Hanson, Harley e Ritter (2000) e Harley e Ritter (2002) para a composição da geometria de traços no paradigma dos pronomes pessoais na língua, quanto dos recursos envolvidos na ligação e co-denotação (Büring, 2005). Por fim, apontamos que a não existência de um item lexical específico para a Quantificação Universal Nominal, de pronomes demonstrativos e de uma efetiva morfologia de número nos pronomes pessoais corroboram a hipótese de não existência da categorial funcional DP nos nominais em Karitiana proposta por Müller, Storto & Coutinho-Silva (2006a,b). / In a general aspect, this work has as its goals to describe and analyze some aspects of the Karitiana Noun Phrases. First, we take up again the discussions from Müller, Storto & Coutinho-Silva (2006a,b) and Sanchez-Mendes (2007), on Karitianas quantification, and we describe the behaviour of the alleged universal quantifier: akatyym, proposing that, in Karitiana, there is a specific quantificational process that cannot be treated as noun ou adverbial quantification as described in Bach et al (1995), since what our analysis shows from the morphossyntactic, as well as the semantic point of view, is that NP +akatyym is a internalheaded relative clause, and its alleged Universal quantificational force can be justified as a characteristic of the internal-headed free relatives, that, as it interprets its nominal heads semantically DP-internally, generates an operation which has as its semantic result a denotation of plural maximum or complete entity (cf. Grosu & Landman, 1998). Besides, this work analyzes a few interesting facts correlated within the Noun Phrase: we analysed the demonstrative structures, showing that they are best analyzed as relative clauses, and we propose a description and an analysis of the Karitiana pronouns from both the Distributed Morphology point of view, following the works of Ritter & Harley (2002), for the feature geometry composition for the person pronouns paradigm, and also of the resources involved in binding and co-denotation (Büring, 2005). At last, we point that the non-existance of a specific lexical item for universal quantification of nominals, of demonstrative pronouns and of an effective number morphology in the personal pronouns corroborate the hypothesis of non-existance of the functional category DP in the Karitiana nouns, as proposed by Müller, Storto & Coutinho- Silva (2006a,b).