The purpose of this study was to explore how syntactic skill was maintained or lost by L2 Mandarin Chinese learners over time. In addition, this study endeavored to discover how a learner's L1 affects the attrition process of word order in Mandarin Chinese. To find out how certain Chinese syntactic structures were subject to attrition over time and how syntactic errors could be attributed to L1 transfer, five types of Chinese syntax that either resembled English, were very different from English, or had no counterpart in English were selected. They included subject-verb-object sentences, modifiers before modified, time and other adverbial clauses, and object-raising in Chinese specific ba construction. Twenty-four university students of Chinese-as-a-second-language speakers, who intensively learned and used Mandarin Chinese in a host culture setting for 16-22 months, participated in this study. By the time participants were tested a second time, they had discontinued regular usage of the L2 for 12 to 17 years. To find out how L2 syntactic attrition developed over time, participants were divided into three groups according to the year of departure from the L2 environment. They were also grouped into two groups by the length of time in the L2 setting to examine whether exposure time to the L2 affected the maintenance of overall L2 syntactic skill. The results indicated that the subjects retain a fair amount of their language education within the first couple years of discontinued regular L2 usage. In the meantime, it was found that the extra six months exposed to the L2 does not extend the long-term maintenance of overall L2 syntactic skill. The results did not show that the distance of structural properties between the learner's L1 and L2 necessarily predicted patterns of regression towards L1 syntactic ordering. Instead, the frequency of use, how often the structure appears in daily interaction with the target society and how well the syntactic structure was acquired in the first place, played a greater role in predicting whether the structure will likely be forgotten.

Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka hur svenska läromedel för gymnasiet definierar begreppen verbfraser och predikat. Följande frågeställningar har använts: Hur beskrivs verbfrasen /predikatet i aktuella läromedel? Finns det problem med beskrivningen? Problem syftar i det här fallet i första hand på beskrivningar som är tvetydiga, motstridiga, begränsade eller strider mot den vetenskapliga norm som Svenska Akademiens grammatik (SAG), i kraft av att vara det dominerande standardverket, får representera i denna uppsats. Nio aktuella läromedel som innehåller grammatikbeskrivningar för gymnasiet har undersökts. Metoden har till största del bestått i en kvantitativ innehållsanalys. Därigenom har beskrivningen i respektive läromedel kunnat presenteras med hjälp av diskreta kategorier. Dessa kategorier anger hur verbfrasen och predikatet förklaras i olika hänseenden och vilka syntaktiska beståndsdelar som beskrivs ingå i dessa. Undersökningen visar att begreppen predikat och verbfras definieras på olika sätt i de olika läromedlen. Inte sällan finns även motstridiga uppgifter om vilka delar av satsen som räknas in i verbfrasen och predikatet i en och samma lärobok. I de läromedel som beskriver båda begreppen uppstår antingen en redundant beskrivning eller två alternativa beskrivningar, vilket i båda fallen bedöms vara förvirrande i denna uppsats. De tre läromedel som inte använder begreppet verbfras har inte samma problem med krockar mellan beskrivningen av verbfrasen och predikatet. De har däremot överlag en grund beskrivning eftersom ingen av dessa heller beskriver strukturen hos andra fraser mer ingående. Slutligen föreslås två alternativa beskrivningar - en mycket platt beskrivning där verbala led anges som huvud i en sats bestående av flera verbelement som knyter olika satsdelar till sig. I en sådan platt beskrivning bedöms även dikotomin mellan subjekt och predikatsled vara onödig. Det andra förslaget på beskrivningsmodell är trogen den som presenteras i SAG. Den senare beskrivningen har ett större förklaringsvärde genom att den tydliggör verben i en verbkedjas relation till varandra men är även mer avancerad. Satsadverbialets funktion blir tydligare i denna beskrivning genom att det framgår i beskrivningen att denna enhet är överordnad verbfrasen. Förslagsvis kan denna modell presenteras som ett sätt att nyansera den tidigare modellen utan att eleverna ska vara tvungna att lära sig använda den fullt ut. I denna uppsats framhålls att ett användande av båda termerna tenderar att leda till krockar i beskrivningen.

This dissertation is a first look at English-speaking children’s acquisition of the syntax of the partitive. It presents four experiments that contrast three types of structures and examines how they interact with adjectival modification: the partitive, the pseudopartitive and complex nouns with prepositional adjuncts. The experimentation investigates whether children recognize that the Determiner Phrase (DP) in the partitive is a barrier to adjectival modification. The partitive is contrasted with the pseudopartitive –a minimal pair structure that lacks an internal DP. The data shows that children under the age of six do not distinguish between the partitive and the pseudopartitive. They allow adjectives preceding the partitive to modify the second noun; this is standardly considered licit for the pseudopartitive structure, but not the partitive. This result is evidence that children are under-representing the syntax of the partitive and of DP. Syntactic representations of minimal DP and minimal partitive structures are suggested and it is argued that these structures may persist as an option in the adult grammar. Chapter 2 discusses multiple layers in DP, DP’s status as a barrier/phase and how children acquire its syntax (Abney 1987, Cinque 1994, de Villiers & Roeper 1995, Kupisch 2006, Bošković 2008). This chapter also includes evidence for an underrepresented DP in the grammar of some adult English speakers (Schafer & de Villiers 2000, Carlson et al 2006). Chapter 3 presents background literature on the syntax of the partitive (Jackendoff 1977, Hoeksema 1996), introduces the pseudopartitive structure (Selkirk 1977, Stickney 2004 and Alexiadou, Haegeman & Stavrou 2007) and presents acquisition hypotheses. Chapters 4 & 5 present a pilot experiment and three picture choice tasks. The experimental data shows that children and a subset of adults do not distinguish between partitive and pseudopartitive and yet they maintain a clear distinction between pseudopartitive and other similar complex nouns. Chapter 6 presents two syntactic analyses of the data. One uses a split-DP structure (Zamparelli 2000, Laenzlinger 2000) to explain the lack of barrier in children’s partitives. The other suggests a reduced partitive structure (Rutkowski 2007). Both analyses require a reanalysis of the features of DP in children’s partitives.

This dissertation examines the syntax and semantics of clausal complements. It identifies semantic underpinnings for some syntactic properties of the arguments of propositional attitude verbs. The way clausal arguments compose with their embedding predicates is not uniform and semantic differences emerge from the syntactic context clausal arguments appear in. Three case studies are taken up: clausal arguments of nouns, dislocated clausal arguments (sentential subjects and topics), and infinitival complements with overt subjects (AcI constructions). Chapter Two assembles evidence to support Stowell’s (1981) claim that the clausal complements of nouns are modifiers. It is shown that the clausal complements of nouns behave like adjuncts in their ability to bleed condition C (Kuno 2004 and Jacobson 2003, and explored here further). The compositional strategy used to compose attitude nouns with their arguments, following Kratzer (2006), is shown to account for this behavior and to be commensurate with observations made by Grimshaw (1990). I then show how the modifier status of clausal complements of nouns is determined by the way in which nominals are formed from clause-taking verbs. Chapter Three examines another complementation strategy, found with fronted clauses. New data from binding is provided in support of Koster’s (1978) hypothesis that clauses do not move. Specifically, fronted clauses fail to show the effects of syntactic reconstruction. An analysis, making crucial use of de re attitude ascription, is offered to account for ‘apparent’ binding into fronted clauses. Chapter Four makes the case for enriching the meanings of clausal complements. By examining some new patterns with accusative with infinitive (AcI) constructions (such as I see him to be a fool), I argue for decomposing certain doxastic attitude verbs, putting the introduction of alternatives into the complement. Here too the role of de re attitude ascription is shown to play a crucial role. It is argued that AcI constructions involve de re attitude ascription, with added constraints (determined by the lexical content of the embedding verb) on the nature of the Acquaintance Relation (Kaplan 1968, Lewis 1979). Several predictions about the kinds of verbs that can participate in AcI are borne out.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(文学) / 甲第24276号 / 文博第901号 / 新制||文||723(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院文学研究科文献文化学専攻 / (主査)教授 家入 葉子, 教授 廣田 篤彦, 教授 河﨑 靖 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Letters / Kyoto University / DGAM

Hyper-raising (HR) is a cross-clausal dependency where the DP subject of a finite complement clause surfaces as an apparent argument of the matrix verb (Alboiu and Hill, 2016; Carstens, 2011; Ferreira, 2004; Fong, 2017; Halpert, 2019; Lee and Yip, 2020; Nunes, 2008; Ura, 1994, 1995). HR is puzzling because it involves apparent DP raising from a finite complement, even though the driving mechanism of raising - the non-finiteness of the complement clause - is absent. Nonetheless, the majority of the existing literature argues that HR is, like raising, A-movement. In this thesis, I present novel data on HR from Brazilian Portuguese that contradicts these analyses. Specifically, I show that HR displays signature properties of a control dependency. Thus, I argue that HR is not an instance of A-movement, but an instance of control into a finite complement clause. I demonstrate a technical implementation of the Agree Model of Control (Landau, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2013) in the context of HR in Brazilian Portuguese that accounts for the relevant data while also providing novel predictions and extensions. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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