In this thesis, I conduct a detailed case study of expressive suffixes in Russian. I show that although the suffixes under investigation have the same function (“expressive”), they differ significantly in their formal properties. I identify two major semantic types of expressive suffixes: attitude and size suffixes. Attitude suffixes convey an attitude of the speaker toward the referent. Size suffixes both convey an attitude and refer to the size of the referent. I argue that the two different semantic types map onto different syntactic types. Attitude suffixes are syntactic heads, while size suffixes are syntactic modifiers. As heads, attitude suffixes determine the formal properties (syntactic category, grammatical gender and inflectional class) of the derived form. As modifiers, size suffixes do not determine the formal properties of the derived form. Attitude suffixes can attach both to category-free √Roots and to categories (n/a/v), while size suffixes can only attach to a noun category. I investigate the functional and formal properties of Russian expressive suffixes in a systematic way, which has not been done before. In doing so, I analyze how expressive suffixes pattern along several kinds of criteria (gender/class change, category change, subcategorization). An important byproduct of this analysis is that I show how grammatical gender of an expressive form can be predicted from its inflectional class (combined with animacy and natural gender of the base). One implication of this analysis is that I show that the formal properties of expressives are no different from those of non-expressives (descriptives), as both expressives and descriptives can attach as heads or modifiers either to √Roots or categories. Another implication is that the formal criteria which I develop for a small set of expressive suffixes in Russian can be extended to set up a cross-linguistic typology of expressives. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

The intent of the thesis, as explained in the Introduction, is to examine the development and use of the verb + preposition + infinitive construction in Castilian. The Introduction serves to present the problem and to suggest an explanation. That is, the postulation of an initial prepositional meaning within the construction, which has since been lost in many cases. Chapter One deals with the three terms employed in the construction, and indicates the possible ambiguity of each term, and the complexity inherent within its use. It examines several accepted definitions of the terms and of their relationship to one another, and seeks to resolve several consequent problems. Chapter Two consists of a study of the development of the construction from Latin to Old Spanish. It attempts to deal briefly with various Latin constructions and their subsequent influence, and tries to show how many of them resulted in the Spanish construction under consideration. Chapter Three examines a number of examples of this construction in Old Spanish. It presents a possible interpretation of these quotations in the context of the verb + preposition + infinitive construction, and attempts to demonstrate how and why they occurred, comparing and contrasting Old and modern usage. Chapter Four is an examination of the situation of Modern Spanish, in terms of the same construction. It looks at a number of verbs in the language, indicates their etymology briefly, and points out various comparisons and contrasts with modern French. A discussion of these forms follows, with the intent of corroborating the original hypothesis. The Conclusion consists of a summation of the information gained in the course of the study. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

In this study a set of rules that generate certain time expressions in English is constructed. The methodology used is mainly that outlined by Noam Chomsky in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965). The discussion is confined to those time expressions that are single words, single phrases, or sequences of phrases in surface structure. These have the basic deep structure Prep + Det + N (S'), where N has the syntactic feature [+ Time]. Surface structure single word time expressions are derived from this deep structure by deleting Prep and rewriting the NP as a single lexical item; surface structure sequences of phrases are derived by applying the relative clause transformation to the embedded S. Chomsky's list of syntactic features for nouns is extended by adding some inherent features and some selectional features. The additions are needed to distinguish nouns that can occur in time expressions from those that cannot, to state the collocation restrictions between some prepositions and determiners and the time nouns, and to state certain ordering restrictions on surface structure sequences of phrases. The time expressions considered are subcategorized into Locative Time and Duration Time on the basis of collocation with some subclasses of Verb. These subcategories are formally distinct in that their prepositions are mutually exclusive. Locative Time expressions are further sub-categorized into Dynamic Time expressions, those whose collocation restrictions with Auxiliary expansions are linguistically determinable, and Static Time expressions, those whose collocation restrictions are not linguistically determinable. These two subcategories are, again, formally distinct, for their determiners are mutually exclusive. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis is the first work devoted specifically to the syntax of wh-questions in a Southern Interior Salish language. As such, it provides a descriptive foundation for future work on the syntax of Okanagan, as well as forming the basis for comparative investigation of wh-questions both within the Southern Interior branch of the Salish family and between the Southern Interior and other better known branches. Chapter 2 examines the basic word order patterns for clauses and describes the distribution of determiners and complementizers in cleft constructions. Chapter 3 compares three potential analyses of wh-questions for Okanagan: a wh-in-situ analysis,, a wh-movement analysis, and a cleft analysis. I show that a wh-in-situ analysis was not viable for Okanagan on the basis of a comparison of word order possibilities in non-wh sentences and wh-questions. I then turned to the other two possible analyses, a wh-movement analysis along the lines of English, and a cleft analysis, as suggested for other Salish languages by Davis et al (1993) and Kroeber (1991, 1999). Choosing between these analyses proved much more difficult: evidence exists both for and against each analysis, and I was unable to choose between them. Chapter 4 examines multiple wh-questions in Okanagan. It appeared possible for at least some speakers to produce multiple wh-questions with either two argument wh-phrases or an argument and an adjunct wh-phrase. The latter type of multiple wh-question showed an interesting type of reverse superiority effect: speakers consistently preferred to place the argument wh-phrase in preverbal position and the adjunct wh-phrase in post-verbal position. If this really is a superiority effect, it implies that the relative structural positions of adjuncts and arguments are the opposite of those found in English. Chapter 5 investigates long-range wh-dependencies. First of all, I established that such dependencies are indeed possible. I show that long-range dependencies are sensitive to at least three standard island constraints: the Complex Noun Phrase Constraint, the Wh-Island Constraint and the Adjunct Island Constraint. Though I was unable to choose between a wh-movement and a wh-cleft analysis for wh-questions, my research unequivocally establishes the existence of A-bar movement dependencies in Okanagan. This is demonstrated by the existence of long-range movement assymetries as shown by superiority effects in multiple wh-questions and by the existence of adjunct island effects which argue strongly that there must be a configurational basis for the argument/adjunct distinction contra the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis (see Jelinek and Demers 1994 on Northern Straits Salish). Another important consequence of this work is the distinction between two types of focus structure in Okanagan. On the one hand, as in other Salish languages, a nominal predicate (including a wh-predicate based on the argument wh-words swit and stim') may occur with a relative clause introduced by the determiner i?; on the other hand both adjunct and argument DP's (including wh-adjuncts) may occur in cleft structures introduced by one of the complementizers ki?and ta?. Though this distinction corresponds in some ways to that between 'bare' and 'introduced' clefts in other Salish languages (see Kroeber 1999, pg. 370-373), the details of the introduced cleft construction in particular differ in significant ways from the rest of Salish. It remains to be seen how other Southern Interior languages behave in this respect. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

Submitted in fulfillment for the Degree Master of Arts in the Department of African Languages at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 1990. / In any language, words are uttered systematically according to certain rules. Each language has therefore its own system. Language may be defined as "a system of utterances governed by a set of.rules". In a language there are partial systems such as Phonetics, Morphology, Syntax, etc. Wnen these partial systems are put together they form a unique system of a particular language. Phonetics is the study of a single speech sound. A word is made up of a number of phonetic units.

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This thesis has two aims: The first is to establish that OSV word order sentences in Turkish, along with the related Oblique-NP SV word order sentences, can have two different syntactic structures, one resulting from A-movement, and the other from A’-movement; I refer to the structures resulting from A-movement as ‘subject suppression’ constructions. The second aim of the thesis is to analyze the syntactic structure of subject suppression constructions. I rely on novel tests based on the semantics of specificity in Turkish to delineate the subject suppression constructions. I then propose that these constructions have their external arguments merged in the specifier of VP, and semantically interpreted via a special composition rule, as suggested by Kratzer (1996, p. 113) before being dismissed in favour of her VoiceP proposal. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

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No description available.