This thesis explores the origins of the House and Temple form through the design of a house. The design looks to the theory of the original elements of architecture being the hearth, roof, mound and woven enclosure. Specific focus is given to the woven aspect of this theory, which is expounded upon in the wood structure and partitions of the house. The house exhibits the characteristic syntax of weaving with orthogonal geometric relationships and a hierarchy of elements. The structure and spaces of the house emerge from a rigid pattern grid defining the site and the historic temple symbolism of the double square. / Master of Architecture

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.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

This study is an urban analysis of Roman Pompeii. It explores the spatial structure of the town just before the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 72, and how public space was used for movement, activity and interaction between people. For this, Space Syntax was used, a topological method developed in the 1980s to analyse and plan modern urban contexts, based on the configuration of spatial systems in the axial and in the convex dimension, representing movement and “place” respectively. This method was used to establish an axial map of Pompeii, and to analyse the spatial configuration of three specific movement axes. The axial map strengthens one of the hypotheses discussed in current research about Pompeii, namely that of an older town nucleus in the west part of Pompeii. One part of the thesis is a hypothetical reconstruction of a town-wide traffic system for wheel-borne traffic. The routes were reconstructed to fit the archaeological evidence and meet certain other criteria, and were then independently checked against the axial analysis. As a conclusion, a regulated traffic system could be seen to have existed. A good case was made for how it could have worked. Another part of the thesis deals with the relation between public and interior space. The different types of interior spatial units lining the three chosen movement axes were investigated. The aim was to see how differences in both density of doorways and type of interface gave rise to different urban environments.  It was found that commerce and a concomitant dense interface with many street doors largely followed the dimension of movement. The segmentation of public space along the movement axes was explored in order to gain an insight into which segments of space held specific functions, and how how these functions related to dense and less dense interfaces between public and interior space. This segmentation emphasizes official buildings and monuments, which are allowed to disrupt what is otherwise the norm for the permeable interface between exterior and interior space. As a result, the picture of a town with two different types of interaction between people emerges. On the one hand, both fleeting and more intense interaction was facilitated in those spaces where official buildings and monuments were prominent, and where group identity was stressed. On the other hand, the more unregulated interaction largely took place “along the road” between these spaces.

Der W-Fragen-Erwerb stellt einen Teilbereich der kindlichen Syntaxentwicklung dar, die sich maßgeblich innerhalb der ersten drei Lebensjahre eines Kindes vollzieht. Eine wesentliche Rolle spielen dabei zwei Bewegungsoperationen, die sich auf die Position des Interrogativpronomens an die erste Stelle der W-Frage sowie die Position des Verbs an die zweite Stelle beziehen. In drei Studien wurde einerseits untersucht, ob deutschsprachige Kinder, die noch keine W-Fragen produzieren können, in der Lage sind, grammatische von ungrammatischen W-Fragen zu unterscheiden und andererseits, welche Leistungen sprachunauffällige und sprachauffällige deutschsprachige Kinder beim Verstehen und Korrigieren unterschiedlich komplexer W-Fragen (positive und negative W-Fragen) zeigen. Die Ergebnisse deuten auf ein frühes syntaktisches Wissen über W-Fragen im Spracherwerb hin und stützen damit die Annahme einer Kontinuität der kindlichen Grammatik zur Standardsprache. Auch scheinen sprachauffällige Kinder sich beim Erwerb von W-Fragen nicht qualitativ von sprachgesunden Kindern zu unterscheiden, sondern W-Fragen lediglich später korrekt umzusetzen. In beiden Populationen konnte ein syntaktischer Ökonomieeffekt beobachtet werden, der für eine spätere Umsetzung der Verbbewegung im Vergleich zur Bewegung des W-Elementes spricht. / Wh-questions represent one important step in the acquisition of children's syntax which generally takes place within the first three years. Two syntactic operations which are related to the position of the pronoun and the position of the verb play an essential role in this process. In three studies it was examined if children acquiring German could distinguish grammatical and non-grammatical wh-questions before being able to produce wh-questions themselves. Furthermore children with typical and atypical language acquisition were compared in their ability to comprehend and correct wh-questions of different complexity (positive and negative wh-questions). The results indicate an early syntactic knowledge about wh-questions in language acquisition and support the hypothesis of continuity between children's and adults speech. Children with typical and atypical language acquisition do not show any qualitative differences in their way to acquire wh-questions. Much rather the time point of acquisition is delayed. An effect of syntactic economy was found in both populations. Children seem to realize syntactic violations against the movement of the wh-element earlier than those against the movement of the verb.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / The CyberCIEGE project seeks to create an alternative to traditional Information Assurance (IA) training and education approaches by developing an interactive, entertaining commercial-grade PC-based computer game/virtual laboratory. CyberCIEGE will provide a robust, flexible and extensible gaming environment where each instance of the game is based on a fully customizable scenario. These scenarios are written in the CyberCIEGE Scenario Definition Language. Unfortunately, the trade-off for flexibility, extensibility and fully customizable scenarios is syntax complexity in the scenario definition language. This thesis will solve this real world problem by showing that the complexity of scenario definition language syntax can be managed through a software tool. This thesis will develop such a tool and further demonstrate that progress can be made toward automating scenario generation. / Civilian, Federal Cyber Service Corps, Naval Postgraduate School

Huang Pai-yuan. / Thesis submitted in: December 1999. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-140). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.i / List of Abbreviations --- p.vi / List of Tables and Figures --- p.vii / Abstract --- p.xi / Chapter Chapter One: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Goal of Child Language Research and Bilingual First Language Acquisition --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2. --- Single System Hypothesis Vs. Separate Systems Hypothesis --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.1. --- Single System Hypothesis --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.2. --- Separate Systems Hypothesis --- p.8 / Chapter 1.3. --- Autonomous Development Hypothesis Vs. Interdependent development Hypothesis --- p.10 / Chapter 1.3.1. --- Autonomous Development Hypothesis --- p.10 / Chapter 1.3.2. --- Interdependent Development Hypothesis --- p.12 / Chapter 1.4. --- The Present Study --- p.17 / Chapter 1.4.1. --- On the Issue of Transfer in BFLA --- p.17 / Chapter 1.4.2. --- A review of Peng (1998) --- p.18 / Chapter 1.5. --- Preview of Other Chapters --- p.20 / Notes to Chapter One --- p.21 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Methodology --- p.22 / Chapter 2.0 --- Introduction --- p.22 / Chapter 2.1. --- Source of Data --- p.22 / Chapter 2.1.1. --- Family Background and Linguistic Input --- p.22 / Chapter 2.1.2. --- Collection of Data --- p.24 / Chapter 2.1.2.1. --- Audio Recording --- p.24 / Chapter 2.1.2.2. --- Data Transcription --- p.25 / Chapter 2.1.2.3. --- Transcription of Cantonese data --- p.25 / Chapter 2.2. --- General Development of the Two Languages in the Bilingual Child --- p.26 / Chapter 2.2.1. --- Language Dominance --- p.26 / Chapter 2.2.2. --- Indices of Timmy's Bilingual Development --- p.27 / Chapter 2.2.2.1. --- MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) --- p.27 / Chapter 2.2.2.2. --- Syntactic Complexity --- p.36 / Chapter 2.3. --- Hypothesis and Predictions --- p.37 / Chapter 2.4. --- Analysis of Data --- p.38 / Notes to Chapter Two --- p.38 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- Development of Null Subjects in the Bilingual Subject's English --- p.39 / Chapter 3.0 --- Introduction --- p.39 / Chapter 3.1. --- Null Subject Phenomenon in Child Language --- p.39 / Chapter 3.1.1. --- Competence Accounts --- p.40 / Chapter 3.1.2. --- Performance Accounts --- p.43 / Chapter 3.1.3. --- Null Subjects in Timmy's English --- p.45 / Chapter 3.2. --- Properties of Null Subjects in Monolingual Child English --- p.45 / Chapter 3.3. --- Findings from Bilingual Corpus Data --- p.48 / Chapter 3.3.1. --- The Null Subject Rate in Timmy's English over the Period of Study --- p.48 / Chapter 3.3.2. --- Null Subject with INFL Properties --- p.50 / Chapter 3.3.2.1. --- Null Subject and Inflected “be´ح --- p.51 / Chapter 3.3.2.2. --- Null Subjects and Modals / Semi-auxiliaries --- p.52 / Chapter 3.3.2.3. --- Null Subjects and Morphemes (/ Verbal Affixes) “-ed´ح，“-s´ح --- p.59 / Chapter 3.3.2.4. --- Null Subjects in Finite Subordinate Clauses --- p.63 / Chapter 3.3.2.5. --- Expletive Subjects and Null Subjects --- p.63 / Chapter 3.3.3. --- Null Subjects and Person: Sub-divisions --- p.66 / Chapter 3.4. --- General Development of Grammatical Subjects in Timmy's English Data --- p.68 / Chapter 3.5. --- Findings from Diary Data --- p.72 / Chapter 3.6. --- Conclusion --- p.73 / Notes to Chapter Three --- p.74 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- Development of Null Objects in the Bilingual Subject's English --- p.75 / Chapter 4.0 --- Introduction --- p.75 / Chapter 4.1. --- Null Object Phenomenon in Child English --- p.75 / Chapter 4.1.1. --- Competence Accounts --- p.75 / Chapter 4.1.2. --- Performance Accounts --- p.76 / Chapter 4.2. --- Properties of Null Objects in Child English --- p.77 / Chapter 4.3. --- Findings from Bilingual Subject's English Corpus Data --- p.79 / Chapter 4.3.1. --- Rate of Null Objects in Timmy's English over the Period of Study --- p.79 / Chapter 4.3.2. --- Comparison with Monolingual English Child Data --- p.82 / Chapter 4.3.3. --- Null Objects and Persons: Sub-division --- p.84 / Chapter 4.4. --- General Development of Grammatical Object --- p.86 / Chapter 4.5. --- Findings from Diary Data --- p.89 / Chapter 4.6. --- Conclusion --- p.90 / Notes to Chapter Four --- p.90 / Chapter Chapter Five: --- Development of Null Subjects and Null Objects in the Bilingual Subject's Cantonese --- p.91 / Chapter 5.0 --- Introduction --- p.91 / Chapter 5.1 --- An Overview of Null Arguments in Cantonese --- p.91 / Chapter 5.1.1. --- Null Arguments as a Grammatical Option in Cantonese --- p.91 / Chapter 5.1.2. --- Distribution of Null Arguments in Cantonese Sentences --- p.96 / Chapter 5.2 --- Rate of Null Subjects and Null Objects in Adult Cantonese --- p.98 / Chapter 5.3. --- Development of Null Subjects in Monolingual Cantonese Children --- p.100 / Chapter 5.4. --- Development of Null Subjects in Timmy's Cantonese --- p.103 / Chapter 5.4.1. --- The Rate of Null Subjects Over the Period of Study --- p.103 / Chapter 5.4.2. --- Comparison with Monolingual Cantonese Child Data --- p.108 / Chapter 5.5. --- Development of Null Objects in Monolingual Cantonese Children --- p.109 / Chapter 5.6. --- Development of Null Objects in Timmy's Cantonese --- p.112 / Chapter 5.6.1. --- The Rate of Null Objects in Timmy's Cantonese Over the Period of Study --- p.112 / Chapter 5.6.2. --- VP-ellipsis in Timmy's Cantonese Corpus Data --- p.115 / Chapter 5.6.3. --- Comparison with Monolingual Cantonese Child Data --- p.116 / Chapter 5.7 --- Findings from Diary Data --- p.117 / Chapter 5.8 --- Conclusion --- p.119 / Notes to Chapter Five --- p.120 / Chapter Chapter Six: --- Discussion of Findings and Conclusions --- p.121 / Chapter 6.0 --- Introduction --- p.121 / Chapter 6.1. --- A Summary of the Findings in the English Data --- p.122 / Chapter 6.2. --- A Summary of the Findings in the Cantonese Data --- p.124 / Chapter 6.3. --- Possibility of Interaction between the Two Language Systems and the Nature of Transfer --- p.125 / Chapter 6.4. --- Un-learning Null Arguments in Ll English --- p.129 / Chapter 6.5. --- Conclusions --- p.129 / Chapter 6.6. --- Suggestions for Further Study --- p.130 / Notes to Chapter Six --- p.130 / Appendices --- p.131 / References --- p.133

This is the first typological study devoted to Medieval Cypriot (MC). The objective of the study is to provide both syntactic and pragmatic factors which are determining for the word order of the language and to open new ways to recording mechanisms of word order change. Cypriot syntax deserves this attention, as it is a language highly interesting for the typologist as for the researcher of other linguistic areas; Modern Cypriot is VOS, and exhibits a series of exceptions to the general rules of V-initial languages. Medieval Cypriot conforms to most of Greenberg�s Universals (1963) which are pertinent to type VSO in that it has V in initial position in all unmarked clauses, in that it is prepositional, that adjectives mostly follow the noun they qualify, and so on. However, the comparison of MC to Greenberg�s Universals is not the aim of this work. Apart form the order of the main constituents, this research mainly focuses on revealing mechanisms of syntactic change not generally known, and on unveiling particular traits of the Cypriot VSO order that are not common to other VSO languages. The analysis can be defined as diachronic for it deals with the language written over a span of many years, as assumed from studying the texts. Some words and structures, used in the beginning of the narrative, seem to decrease in frequency in the end, or vice versa. It is diachronic considering it also allows for comparison with later (colloquial) and earlier (written) constructions of the language. However, it is mostly a synchronic analysis; the patterns observed are from within the same language spoken by the same people living in the same period, more importantly from within the same work. Makhairas is thus the only broad evidence of his period, offered both as a diachronic and a synchronic linguistic testimony of his time. As no language exists in vacuo, my description of MC starts with a historical approach to the language under study; it is almost impossible to realise the problems of colloquial, literary and foreign features without being aware of the earlier history of Greek in general and of Cypriot in particular, in some of its earlier documents. I refrained as far as possible from entering the field of comparative criticism with Medieval Greek. In this way I decided to focus on discussions based exclusively on the Cypriot forms and patterns, as presented and justified by the evidence in Makhairas, and as witnessed by history which, for many centuries, has singled out Cypriot from the rest of the dialects and the Greek language itself. So, alternative views, criticism and discussion of same mechanisms of change recorded within the broader Greek language have been more or less avoided. The exposition of the MC word order patterns is based on my hypotheses that word order, as I understand it, is founded on purposes of communication and that languages with extreme flexibility of order, such as Medieval Cypriot, may adopt patterns that display rigidity of order in a number of their elements. It is within these areas of rigidity that new mechanisms of change may be detected. I also hypothesised that the same syntactic changes within languages of the same branch may be merely coincidental, and that Greek or forms of Greek may well adopt foreign elements, only (but not exclusively) if these acquire the Greek endings, or if they appear as independent affixes, as is the case with the post-medieval referential Cypriot marker �mish� which is from Turkish. Acquiring particular elements from other languages does not mean acquiring their order. However, acquiring patterns that are similar to Greek from a borrowing language which has the same patterns does not exclude syntactic borrowing. Since Modern Cypriot is V-initial, I presumed that this might have also been its order in the Middle Ages. I judge that major mechanisms of syntactic change of the same period may have been triggered by factors internal to Cypriot rather than by the more general, universal mechanisms of change. Moreover, I speculated that MC was a far more marginalised language in the Middle Ages than what history and literature have taught us. Its creative dynamism and potentiality to �juggle� between words and patterns has been its greater forte. Cypriot has not been studied as a dialect, in this work. I avoided having only a partial or a shadowed understanding of its word order patterns. Exhaustive descriptions that show its particularities in the process of completion appear with both rigidity (in some elements) and flexibility of order, and most importantly, they exhibit a long-life endurance. I have also been concerned with forms and /or patterns of Greek such as the future and other periphrastic tenses, although they are already known and have been analysed at length in Greek linguistic studies. I concentrate here on some of these from a Cypriot perspective. Cypriot has never been classified as Balkan Greek or mainland Greek. Following this study, it will be clarified further that any attempt to fit MC into a framework defined along these categorisations will be successful only in some areas of the general Greek syntax. In fact, Cypriot opens the way for a further understanding of Greek syntax with its (almost) boundless flexibility; it is through MC and the unique data of Makhairas that the study of the Greek syntax is being enriched. Areas of fine-grained classificatory criteria result in connecting some MC syntactic traits to those of Greek and accrediting to the language its own word order singularities in what can be righteously called here the Cypriot syntax. Additionally, the study aims to open new areas of investigation on diachronic syntactic issues and to initiate new and revealing answers concerning configurational syntax. To determine the syntactic traits of MC a meticulous work of counting was needed. The counting of the order of the main constituents from both the more general narrative patterns of the Chronicle as well as of those passages thought to be more immediate to the author�s living experience(s) was done manually. The primarily and more difficult task of considering, following and explaining pragmatic word order patterns in the Chronicle has been the stepping stone of this research. Earlier (and forgotten) stages of Greek, and patterns exclusive to Cypriot, assembled in a unique lexicon and with special Cypriot phrasal verbs, have provided answers to explaining the Cypriot structure. In addition to statistics, areas of language contact have also been explored, both in the morphology and in the syntax. More importantly, the extreme word order freedom of MC that illustrates word order processes based entirely on internal structural changes, aims to contribute to discussions regarding morphology and syntax versus morphosyntax. Chapter 1 provides all the background information of the history and language in Cyprus, prior to the Middle Ages. Chapter 2 deals with the description of the data and the methodology used to assess them. Chapter 3 exhibits the MC verbal forms, both finite and non-finite; it examines non-finites more closely, inasmuch as they play an important role in the change of the order of major constituents and uncover and explain the role of V-initial structures. Chapter 4 is the core chapter of this work. It displays Cypriot particularities of word order, reveals data concerned with the word order of the major constituents within the clause and unfolds explanatory accounts of them; lastly, it classifies MC as a V-initial language. Chapter 5 summarises conclusions, adds a further note on the Cypriot morphosyntactic traits while placing the results into the contemporary scholarship on VSO languages, also suggesting additional research areas into the MC patterns. The examples from Makhairas have been written in the monotonic system, where only one accent has been used; other special symbols have been eliminated or modified in the interest of making the text readable in the absence of the right font. However, Ancient Greek words appear with their appropriate accents. Abbreviation C indicates structures or words that remained unchanged in Cypriot over a long period of time, and G means a form or word accepted in both their written and spoken forms over a long period of time in Greek. A morphemic analysis of each form of the glosses has not always been given. I limited myself to glossing some elements only, for the better understanding of some examples.

<p>Although several systems with structure editors have been built, no model exist to formally describe the edit operations used in such editors. This thesis introduces such a model --- a formalism to describe general structure edit operations for text oriented documents. The model allows free bottom-up editing for any tree-based structural document with a textual content. It can also handle attribute and erroneous structures. Some classes of common structures have been identified and structure editor specifications constructed for them, which can be used and combined in the creation of other structure editors.</p>

Adverb positioning is guided by syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic considerations and is subject to cross-linguistic as well as language-specific variation. The goal of the thesis is to identify the factors that determine adverb placement in general (Part I) as well as in constructions in which the adverb's sister constituent is deprived of its phonetic material by movement or ellipsis (gap constructions, Part II) and to provide an Optimality Theoretic approach to the contrasts in the effects of these factors on the distribution of adverbs in English, French, and German. <br><br> In Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), grammaticality is defined as optimal satisfaction of a hierarchy of violable constraints: for a given input, a set of output candidates are produced out of which that candidate is selected as grammatical output which optimally satisfies the constraint hierarchy. Since grammaticality crucially relies on the hierarchic relations of the constraints, cross-linguistic variation can be traced back to differences in the language-specific constraint rankings. Part I shows how diverse phenomena of adverb placement can be captured by corresponding constraints and their relative rankings: <br><br> - contrasts in the linearization of adverbs and verbs/auxiliaries in English and French<br> - verb placement in German and the filling of the prefield position<br> - placement of focus-sensitive adverbs<br> - fronting of topical arguments and adverbs<br><br> Part II extends the analysis to a particular phenomenon of adverb positioning: the avoidance of adverb attachment to a phonetically empty constituent (gap). English and French are similar in that the acceptability of pre-gap adverb placement depends on the type of adverb, its scope, and the syntactic construction (English: wh-movement vs. topicalization / VP Fronting / VP Ellipsis, inverted vs. non-inverted clauses; French: CLLD vs. Cleft, simple vs. periphrastic tense). Yet, the two languages differ in which strategies a specific type of adverb may pursue to escape placement in front of a certain type of gap. In contrast to English and French, placement of an adverb in front of a gap never gives rise to ungrammaticality in German. Rather, word ordering has to obey the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic principles discussed in Part I; whether or not it results in adverb attachment to a phonetically empty constituent seems to be irrelevant: though constraints are active in every language, the emergence of a visible effect of their requirements in a given language depends on their relative ranking. The complex interaction of the diverse factors as well as their divergent effects on adverb placement in the various languages are accounted for by the universal constraints and their language-specific hierarchic relations in the OT framework. / Die Positionierung von Adverbien wird von syntaktischen, semantischen und pragmatischen Erwägungen geleitet; sie unterliegt der zwischen-sprachlichen als auch der einzel-sprachlichen Variation. Ziel der Arbeit ist es, diejenigen Faktoren zu identifizieren, die ausschlaggebend sind für die Platzierung von Adverbien im allgemeinen (Teil I) sowie in speziellen Konstruktionen, in denen die Schwesterkonstituente eines Adverbs aufgrund von Bewegung oder Ellipse kein phonetisches Material enthält (Gap-Konstruktionen, Teil II). Des weiteren sollen die unterschiedlichen Ausprägungen dieser Faktoren in den distributionalen Mustern des Englischen, Französischen und Deutschen in einem optimalitätstheoretischen Rahmen erklärt werden. <br><br> In der Optimalitätstheorie (Prince & Smolensky 1993) ist Grammatikalität als optimale Erfüllung einer Hierarchie von verletzbaren Constraints definiert: Für einen gegebenen Input wird eine Menge von Outputkandidaten bereitgestellt, aus der derjenige Kandidat als grammatischer Output gewählt wird, der die Constrainthierarchie am besten erfüllt. Da die hierarchischen Relationen der Constraints für die Ermittlung des grammatischen Outputs entscheidend sind, kann zwischen-sprachliche Variation auf Diskrepanzen in den einzel-sprachlichen Constrainthierarchien zurückgeführt werden. Der erste Teil der Arbeit zeigt, wie diverse Phänomene der Adverbstellung mit entsprechenden Constraints und ihren Anordnungen erfasst werden können: <br><br> - Kontraste in der Linearisierung von Adverbien und Verben/Auxiliaren im Englischen und Französischen<br> - Verbplatzierung im Deutschen und Vorfeldbesetzung<br> - Platzierung von fokus-sensitiven Adverbien<br> - Voranstellung von topikalen Argumenten und Adverbien <br><br> Der zweite Teil der Arbeit spezialisiert sich auf ein bestimmtes Phänomen der Adverbpositionierung: das Meiden der Adverb-Adjunktion an eine phonetisch leere Konstituente (Gap). Englisch und Französisch ähneln sich insofern, als die Akzeptabilität der Adverbpositionierung vor einem Gap beeinflusst wird vom Typ des Adverbs, seinem Skopus und der syntaktischen Konstruktion (Englisch: wh-Bewegung vs. Topikalisierung / VP Voranstellung / VP Ellipse, invertierte vs. nicht-invertierte Sätze; Französisch: CLLD vs. Cleft, einfache vs. periphrastische Tempusformen). Die beiden Sprachen unterscheiden sich jedoch darin, ob - und falls ja - welche Strategie ein bestimmter Typ von Adverb verfolgen kann, um der Stellung vor einem speziellen Gap zu entkommen. Im Gegensatz zum Englischen und Französischen führt die Stellung eines Adverbs vor einem Gap im Deutschen nie zu Ungrammatikalität. Vielmehr hat die Adverbpositionierung den in Teil I diskutierten syntaktischen, semantischen und pragmatischen Prinzipien zu gehorchen; ob dies in der Adjunktion eines Adverbs an eine phonetisch leere Konstituente resultiert, scheint dabei irrelevant: Obwohl Constraints in jeder Sprache aktiv sind, hängt es von ihrer relativen Anordnung zueinander ab, ob sie einen sichtbaren Effekt in einer gegebenen Sprache hinterlassen. Die komplexe Interaktion der diversen Faktoren sowie deren divergierende Ausprägung auf die Adverbplatzierung in den unterschiedlichen Sprachen können in der Optimalitätstheorie auf die universalen Constraints und deren einzel-sprachliche Anordnung zurückgeführt werden.