Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study focuses on the phenomenon of obligatory reflexivity in the Bantu language Lomwe-Mihavani (referred to as “Mihavani”). The aim of the study is to develop an analysis of this phenomenon in Mihavani within the broad framework of Minimalist Syntax, and more specifically within the framework of the Nominal Shell Analysis of obligatory reflexivity (NSA) proposed by Oosthuizen (2013). In order to achieve this aim, the study firstly provides a non-formalistic description of the reflexive elements in Mihavani, namely the reflexive marker -ii- and the reflexive pronoun -eekha-/-eekhi- (“self”), and also of five of the constructions in which they can occur, namely verbal object, small clause, infinitival, expletive and prepositional object constructions. Based on the subsequent analyses of verbal object constructions and (verbal and nominal) infinitival constructions, it is argued that the core hypotheses of the NSA, which were initially proposed for the West-Germanic language Afrikaans, hold for Mihavani as well. The coreferential relationship between, on the one hand, the reflexive marker -ii- or a reflexive pronoun and, on the other hand, its antecedent is claimed to be the result of phi-feature valuation of the reflexive by its antecedent when this antecedent is merged into the specifier position of an identity focus light noun n, the locus of the reflexive marker -ii-. In contrast to previous analyses of reflexivity, the NSA provides a structural account for the coreferential relationship between a reflexive element and its antecedent, which means that lexical features, such as [±anaphor] and [±pronominal], as well as external binding mechanisms, can be dispensed with. It is furthermore argued that the NSA can also account for the coreferential relationship between the subject and the subject marker and the object and the object marker in Mihavani, due to phi-feature valuation inside a nominal shell. It is claimed that the subject marker heads a theme focus nominal shell and selects an overt or covert subject complement, whereas the object marker heads a presentational focus nominal shell and selects an overt or covert object complement. It is also argued that the NSA can account for the interpretation of infinitival nominal constructions (i) containing the reflexive marker -ii- as “oneself” and (ii) containing both the reflexive maker -ii- and a reflexive pronoun as coreferential with either the subject or object of the matrix clause. Based on the NSA, the internal structure of the Mihavani reflexive pronoun is analysed as an identity focus nominal shell as well, headed by the stem -eekha-/-eekhi- (“self”). Such an analysis might provide an explanation for Mihavani obligatorily reflexive constructions, which lack the reflexive marker -ii- but contain a reflexive pronoun. This issue is left as a topic for further investigation. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie fokus op die verskynsel van verpligte refleksiwiteit in die Bantoetaal Lomwe-Mihavami (kortweg, “Mihavami”). Die oogmerk van die studie is om ’n analise van hierdie verskynsel in Mihavami te ontwikkel binne die breë raamwerk van Minimalistiese Sintaksis, en meer spesifiek binne die raamwerk van die Nominale Skulp-analise van verpligte refleksiwiteit (NSA) soos voorgestel deur Oosthuizen (2013). Om hierdie oogmerk te bereik, word daar eerstens ’n nie-formalistiese beskrywing gebied van die refleksiewe elemente in Mihavani, naamlik die refleksiefmerker -ii- en die refleksiewe voornaamwoord -eekha-/-eekhi- (“self”), asook van vyf konstruksies waarbinne hulle kan voorkom, naamlik verbale-objekkonstruksies, beknopte-sinkonstruksies, infinitiefkonstruksies, ekspletief-konstruksies en preposisionele-objekkonstruksies. Op basis van die daaropvolgende analises van verbale-objekkonstruksies en (verbale en nominale) infinitiefkonstruksies word daar geargumenteer dat die kernhipoteses van die NSA, wat aanvanklik voorgestel is vir Afrikaans, ’n Wes-Germaanse taal, ook vir Mihavani geld. Daar word aangevoer dat die koreferensiële verhouding tussen, enersyds, die refleksiefmerker -ii- of ’n refleksiewe voornaamwoord en, andersyds, sy antesedent die gevolg is van phi-kenmerkwaardering van die refleksiewe element deur sy antesedent wanneer die antesedent saamgevoeg is in die spesifiseerderposisie van ’n identiteitsfokus-ligte naamwoord n , die lokus van die refleksiefmerker -ii-. In teenstelling met vorige analises van refleksiwiteit, bied die NSA ’n strukturele verklaring van die koreferensiële verhouding tussen ’n refleksiewe element en sy antesedent, wat beteken dat daar geen noodsaak is vir leksikale kenmerke, soos [±anafoor] en [±pronominaal], en eksterne bindingsmeganismes nie. Daar word verder geargumenteer dat die NSA, op grond van phi-kenmerkwaardering binne ’n nominale skulp, ook ’n verklaring kan bied vir die koreferensiële verhouding tussen die subjek en die subjekmerker en die objek en die objekmerker in Mihavani. Daar word aangevoer dat die subjekmerker die hoof van ’n temafokus nominale skulp vorm en ’n overte of koverte subjekkomplement selekteer; die objekmerker, daarenteen, vorm die hoof van ‘n presentasiefokus nominale skulp en selekteer ’n overte of koverte objekkomplement. Daar word ook geargumenteer dat die NSA ’n verklaring kan bied vir die interpretasie van infinitiewe nominale konstruksies wat (i) die refleksiefmerker -ii- bevat met die betekenis “jouself, sigself” en (ii) sowel die refleksiefmerker -ii- en ’n refleksiewe voornaamwoord bevat waar beide koreferensieel is aan óf die subjek óf die objek van die matrikssin. Op basis van die NSA, word die interne struktuur van die refleksiewe voornaamwoord in Mihavani ook geanaliseer as ’n nominale skulp, een met die stam -eekha-/-eekhi- (“self”) as hoof. So ’n analise sou ’n verklaring kon bied vir verplig-refleksiewe konstruksies in Mihavani waarin die refleksiefmerker -ii- ontbreek maar waarin ’n refleksiewe voornaamwoord wel voorkom. Hierdie kwessie word gelaat as ’n onderwerp vir verdere ondersoek.

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This thesis considers various questions about acceptability judgement tasks (AJTs). In Chapter 1, we compare the prevalent informal method of syntactic enquiry, researcher introspection, to formal judgement tasks. We randomly sample 200 sentences from Linguistic Inquiry and then compare the original author judgements to online AJT ratings. Sprouse et al., 2013, provided a similar comparison, but they limited their analysis to the comparison of sentence pairs and to extreme cases. We think a comparison at large, i.e. involving all items, is more sensible. We find only a moderate match between informal author judgements and formal online ratings and argue that the formal judgements are more reliable than the informal judgements. Further, the fact that many syntactic theories rely on questionable informal data calls the adequacy of those theories into question. In Chapter 2, we test whether ratings for constructions from spoken language and constructions from written language differ if presented as speech vs as text and if presented informally vs formally. We analyse the results with an LME model and find that neither mode of presentation nor formality are significant factors. Our results suggest that a speaker's grammatical intuition is fairly robust. In Chapter 3, we quantitatively compare regular AJT data to their Z-scores and ranked data. For our analysis, we test resampled data for significant differences in statistical power. We find that Z-scores and ranked data are more powerful than raw data across most common measurement methods. Chapter 4 examines issues surrounding a common similarity test, the TOST. It has long been unclear how to set its controlling parameter d. Based on data simulations, we outline a way to objectively set d. Further results suggest that our guidelines hold for any kind of data. The thesis concludes with an appendix on non-cooperative participants in AJTs.

Ojibwe is a member of the Algonquian language family. These languages are known for their complex verbal morphology. This makes Ojibwe an excellent case study for testing theoretical concepts. In this thesis, I examine the syntax and semantics of the Ojibwe verbal domain, drawing on three theoretical frameworks, the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1993; 1998), Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993; Embick & Noyer, 2007), and Neo-Davidsonian Semantics (Heim & Kratzer, 1998; Kratzer, 2015). I begin my analysis by looking at the composition of vP. I show that Ojibwe verb phrases may contain multiple vPs. Following a Distributed Morphology account (Halle & Marantz, 1993; Embick & Noyer, 2007), this structure must be built in the syntax; at all stages in the derivation, if the verb stem has at least one vP, it may be used as a fully-formed verb. Further, I discuss the semantics of categorising v in Ojibwe, and provide sample denotations for different types of v. Ojibwe verbal agreement morphology is complex and a number of previous accounts have been proposed (Bruening, 2005; Béjar & Rezac, 2009; Lochbihler, 2012; Oxford, 2013). I demonstrate that these previous proposals run into difficulty with multiple vP structures. Oxford (2013) comes closest, and I build on his proposal to account for Ojibwe verbal agreement. I argue that Voice (Kratzer, 1996) is the phase edge, and verbal agreement occurs on a head above this. Agree happens simultaneously with both arguments, and a portmanteau morpheme (the theme sign) results. Only the argument in the highest spec-v can agree with the theme sign. As a result, applicatives show agreement with the Goal rather than the Theme. I discuss two other agreement suffixes and argue that they are the result of a post-syntactic fission operation (Embick & Noyer, 2007, p. 314). Finally, I examine the semantics of agreement. While much has been written on the syntax of agreement in Ojibwe, the semantics has been left relatively unstudied. I show that the theme sign puts constraints on argument structure based on the saliency of arguments to the discourse. My proposal assumes speech act participants are always more salient than non-participants, and that obviation modifies a third person argument to mark it as less salient. I propose that instead of referring only to semantic roles, the denotation of the theme signs refer to bundles of syntactic features. In this way, the theme sign will impose conditions on the two highest DPs in a sentence, regardless of their semantic role. This allows the same denotation to target the Theme in monotransitive sentences, and the Goal in applicative sentences. Thus, I provide both syntactic and semantic analyses of agreement in Ojibwe.

abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore the syntax and pragmatics of subject doubling in spoken French. Many prescriptivists have considered it a redundant and ungrammatical form, but over the years, it has gained more interest from syntacticians. It is widely acknowledged that dislocations involve topics, but the position of these structures is very disputed. Some linguists believe in base generation while others state there is movement. The status of subject clitics also comes into play and their role as arguments or agreement markers is crucial to understanding the issues at stake with a topic analysis. It is often argued that the clitics are undergoing a linguistic cycle whereby they lose their function of argument, and need to be reinforced by disjunct pronouns. In this study, I examined which analyses support my data and I attempted to determine what structures tend to be most dislocated by looking at the environment of the discourse in a corpus of spoken French. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. French 2012

Différentes études sur de larges corpus oraux ont permis ces dernières années de mettre en lumière des structures bien particulières tout en élaborant différents modèles articulés autour de nouvelles unités opératoires censées remplacer avec efficacité la notion de phrase. Nous pensons à l’inverse que la notion de phrase comme prédication assortie d’une modalité énonciative peut aisément être conservée pour traiter du français parlé, à condition cependant d’être perçue en temps réel. La phrase, désormais analysée en « noyau + affixes », est en effet avant tout une unité de traitement et de production n’ayant qu’une existence temporaire dans le flux de l’activité productive et interprétative. Ce postulat nous permettra d’expliquer certains phénomènes averbaux typiques de l’oral comme les réalisations de compléments différés, les répétitions, les reformulations, les recatégorisations de prédicats en affixes. Nous nous sommes donc intéressée plus particulièrement aux différents fonctionnements des segments sans verbe dans un corpus oral. Un premier ensemble rassemble les segments sans verbe fonctionnant en tant que phrases selon des degrés de prédicativité plus au moins élevés : prédications averbales, prédications interjectives et réalisations averbales d’une prédication verbale implicite. Cependant, pour de nombreux segments sans verbe, l’interprétation est moins sûre et ces segments dits « flottants », en marge des emplois canoniques, nous renvoient à la problématique de la phrase. C’est par exemple le cas de compléments différés, constituants averbaux oscillant entre trois pôles : éléments intégrés, éléments détachés et éléments autonomes. / Over the last few years, various studies on large corpora in spoken French have shed light on quite specific structures and have come up with various patterns which resort to new operating units. These units are alleged to efficiently replace the notion of sentence. However, we have chosen to keep the word 'sentence', which we define as the association of a predication and of an enunciative modality. We therefore think that this definition needn’t be replaced to analyse spoken French, provided the segment under scrutiny is deciphered at the time of its utterance. In this study, we will consider that the sentence is composed of a “nucleus plus affixes” and that it is above all a means of analysis as well as a production unit which are both temporary within the process of the productive and interpretative activity. This postulate will enable us to explain why some verbless structures are only found in spoken French, such as the product! ion of deferred complements, repetitions, rewordings and the re-categorizing of predicates into affixes. We took special interest in the various functions performed by verbless segments in a spoken French corpus. A first subgroup includes verbless segments which work like sentences in so far as they express various levels of predicability, such as verbless predications, interjectional predications, or verbless realisations of an implicit verbal predication. Yet, this analysis does not seem to work when applied to many verbless segments called floating segments since they do not correspond to the canonical definitions of the sentence. We thus have to reconsider what a sentence is, especially when we tackle postponed complements, or verbless constituents which partake of the three following categories: integrated elements, detached elements and autonomous elements.

This thesis presents a new description and theoretical analysis of the nominal system of Katcha (Nilo-Saharan, Kadu), spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. The description and analysis are based on a synthesis of data from several sources, including unpublished archive material and original fieldwork. The study is placed in context with a discussion of the demographic, cultural and political background affecting the Katcha linguistic community, a review of the current state of linguistic research on Katcha and a discussion of the ongoing controversy over the place of the Kadu languages within the language phyla of Africa. The morphosyntactic descriptions first focus on the role of nominals as heads, considering phenomena such as classification, agreement and modification. It is shown that Katcha has a unusual system of gender agreement with three agreement classes based on the concepts of Masculine, Feminine and Plural and that the gender of a noun may change between its singular and plural forms. Surprisingly, these phenomena are both most commonly found in Afro-Asiatic, which is not a phylum to which Kadu has previously been ascribed. The gender changes are shown to be predictable, determined by number-marking affixes. The study then gives a unified analysis of various types of nominal modifiers; relative clauses, possessives, demonstratives and adjectives all display similar morphological properties and this is accounted for by analysing all modfiers as appositional, headed by a demonstrative pronoun. This analysis of modifiers shows them to be related to, though not the same as, the notions of relative markers and construct state found widely in African languages. The role of nominals within sentential argument structure is then considered, with discussion of phenomena such as prepositional phrases, case and verbal valency. From the interaction of prepositions and pronouns, it is tentatively concluded that Katcha has three cases: Nominative, Accusative and Oblique. From the interaction of verbs and nouns, it is demonstrated that the verbal suffixes known as ‘verb extensions’ primarily serve to license the absence of otherwise mandatory core arguments. The second part of the thesis provides a theoretical analysis of the nominal system within the framework of Dynamic Syntax (DS). Two key features of the DS formalism come into play. Firstly, DS construes semantic individuals as terms of the epsilon calculus. Verb extensions are analysed as projecting context-dependent epsilon terms, providing a value for the ‘missing’ argument. Secondly, DS allows information sharing between propositions by means of a ‘LINK’ relation. Prepositional phrases are analysed as projecting a subordinate proposition which shares an argument with the matrix tree. These two formal tools come together in the analysis of nominal modifiers, which are construed as projecting an arbitrarily complex epsilon term LINKed to some term in the matrix tree, directly reflecting their descriptive analysis as appositional nominals. In presenting new data for a little studied language, this thesis adds to our knowledge and understanding of Nuba Mountain languages. In describing and analysing some of the typologically unsual features of Katcha’s nominal system, it challenges some standard assumptions about these constructions and about the genetic affiliation of the Kadu family. And in the theoretical analysis it demonstrates the suitability of Dynamic Syntax to model some of the key insights of the descriptive analysis.

This thesis deals with french V-N compounds (casse-noisettes) and their occurences in frWac corpus. The first aim of this work is to describe composition and french compounds, particularly the V-N compounds. The second aim is to verify their occurences in frWac corpus and to characterize their semantic and morphosyntactic properties. This work is divided in two parts: the theoretical and the practical one. The first one deals with the process of composition and compounds in general with special attention to characteristics of VN compounds. In the second part, the corpus analysis will be proceeded, the quantitative and the qualitative ones. The subject of research are the VN compounds, we will focus especially on their morphological, syntactic and semantic properties.

This study provides a syntactic analysis of the Senufo Nafara Determiner Phrase. It aims at investigating two major questions that are the status of definite markers, and the underlying structure and derivations leading to the surface word order [N AP Def Dem Num] observed in the language. I argue that the (indefinite) markers occurring in DPs are clitics attaching to the rightmost AP element, and spelling out the fused heads of several functional categories (gender, number, definiteness, and possibly others). In a cartographic approach to DP structure, I argue in favor of multiple Functional Projections occurring above NP. More particularly, I consider AP, DemP, and NumP as their own FPs in which adjectives, demonstratives, and numerals are all functional heads. While A and Dem show overt agreement in definiteness, gender, and number, cardinals do not. I argue that the surfacing word order is the result of roll-up movement with pied-piping, motivated and limited by agreement. Phrasal movement only occurs when required for agreement purposes, and more particularly in order to check uPhi features (and therefore EPP features). For that reason, numerals do not participate in movement, and surface in phrase-final position.

abstract: The following thesis document entitled, "A 'Reasonable Reader of Poetry's' Briefed Introduction: A Sam Harris Application on the Lack of Authorship in Poetry and Poems" explores the concept of writing itself applied to the world of poetry. This document uses Sam Harris' critique and redefinition of free will as an illusion applied to authorship and the concept of self within poetry. This thesis upholds Sam Harris' application of the illusion of free will against and within conventions of experimental poetry to do with the persona poem, deviated syntax, memory, Confessionalist poetry, and so on. The document pulls in examples from Modernist poetry, Confessionalist poetry, prose poetry, contemporary poetry, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and experimental poetry. This thesis ends with the conclusion that further research needs to be done with regard to how this lack of authorship applies to copyright law within the poetry field. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Creative Writing 2015