The research examined the relationships between the morphological structures and features of Arabic and English verbs. An examination of the corpus in the research, which compiled 2000 verbs and their translation from various texts, showed that correlation between verb aspects are minimal. Therefore it is admissible to say that there is no correlation between morphological aspects and categories of Arabic and English verbs. Through analysis of Arabic verb patterns, the research demonstrated the primacy of a morpheme as one of the significant linguistic structural units that incorporates semantic and syntactic features, and also as a pivotal translation unit. The data analysis also signified that genre variation in Arabic is well established and can be clearly identified through morphological aspects of the verb and their distribution in text types. / Master of Arts (Hons)

This thesis examined the factors of L1, input frequency and emergent productivity in child L2 acquisition. This thesis is the first study to look at the interplay of L1 and usage factors in children learning a L2. The focus of the thesis was an investigation of these factors in the acquisition of article and auxiliary systems of English, which have been proven to be problematic areas for both L1 and L2 learners. While accounts of L1 transfer in L2 are better developed in generative theory, the roles of input frequency and emergent productivity are better developed in constructivist theory. The thesis assessed these two approaches against the data from L2 children from various L1 backgrounds. The children’s accuracy and error patterns with articles and auxiliaries were investigated. The main findings were as follows. L1 typology facilitated the acquisition of the structure of the NP and VP, but it only extended as far as the awareness of the presence of the functional morpheme (article or auxiliary). L1 transfer effects were observed only in the first 1.5 years of acquisition, which could be due to the unstable L1 knowledge in child L2 learners. The use of articles and auxiliaries was also influenced by their input frequencies and distribution, as more frequent forms were supplied more accurately and were substituted for less frequent forms. Different forms of articles and auxiliaries emerged separately and followed different paths of development. It was argued that they were acquired piecemeal and that productivity with these forms emerged gradually. It was concluded that constructionist theories were better supported by the data, since the findings on input frequency and productivity were not compatible with the generative approach, and L1 transfer was incorporated into the constructionist approach to account for the findings. It was argued that by the onset of acquisition, child L2 learners had established constructions in their L1 that were abstract enough to be transferred to L2 and did not rely on lexically specific information. As all children learned specific morphological forms of L2 piecemeal, in doing so they demonstrated input effects that held across all L1 backgrounds.

This dissertation provides an account of an often-noted change in the history of French: the shift in the expression of the internal argument of a small class of dynamic two-place verbs best represented by aider ‘to help’ from “dative”, i.e., as an indirect object with the preposition à, to “accusative”, i.e., as a direct object with no preposition. The change does not appear to be correlated with a change in the meaning of the verbs. Traditional commentators have viewed it as random, affecting only a few lexical items, rather than systematic. One of the central results of this thesis is that the valency change affects a class of some twenty verbs at approximately the same period and it follows the same time course. Moreover, three properties distinguish this class of verbs from all others taking indirect objects in French: following current ideas about the syntactic manifestation of verbs and their arguments, they have a non relational argument structure, they do not possess lexical directionality, and they select for first or third order entities. These facts suggest that a structural change underlies the change in the realization of the internal argument. Adopting Lightfoot’s (1999, 2006) “cue-based” approach to language change, it is proposed that the valency change is a result of the loss of a functional item encoding directionality. Directionality is a derived property in Medieval French, available in particular to prepositions. It is demonstrated that when à was able to encode direction, it was also able to license first and third order complements in a broader range of contexts, namely, with aider-type verbs. The loss of this functional item is also correlated with several other structural changes that occurred in the 16th and 17th century.

This dissertation provides an account of an often-noted change in the history of French: the shift in the expression of the internal argument of a small class of dynamic two-place verbs best represented by aider ‘to help’ from “dative”, i.e., as an indirect object with the preposition à, to “accusative”, i.e., as a direct object with no preposition. The change does not appear to be correlated with a change in the meaning of the verbs. Traditional commentators have viewed it as random, affecting only a few lexical items, rather than systematic. One of the central results of this thesis is that the valency change affects a class of some twenty verbs at approximately the same period and it follows the same time course. Moreover, three properties distinguish this class of verbs from all others taking indirect objects in French: following current ideas about the syntactic manifestation of verbs and their arguments, they have a non relational argument structure, they do not possess lexical directionality, and they select for first or third order entities. These facts suggest that a structural change underlies the change in the realization of the internal argument. Adopting Lightfoot’s (1999, 2006) “cue-based” approach to language change, it is proposed that the valency change is a result of the loss of a functional item encoding directionality. Directionality is a derived property in Medieval French, available in particular to prepositions. It is demonstrated that when à was able to encode direction, it was also able to license first and third order complements in a broader range of contexts, namely, with aider-type verbs. The loss of this functional item is also correlated with several other structural changes that occurred in the 16th and 17th century.

This dissertation examines the role of modal verbs and rhetoric in the creation of Shakespeare's comic action. I argue that by focusing on the characters' uses of language in these plays, we can recover a sense of subjectivity and agency for Shakespeare's comic characters, instead of treating them as mere "types" swept along by the force of comic convention. Modal verbs--"can," "may," "must," "ought," and "will"--encode and enact subjectivity at the linguistic level, demonstrating a speaker's perceptions about the action of the main verb: whether a speaker thinks an action is possible or impossible, likely or unlikely, necessary or merely beneficial. Modal verbs therefore indicate an entirely different category of comic action: not just the oversized action of mistaken identity or farce, but the more subtle mental activity that underpins all subsequent action. Likewise, an examination of Shakespeare's comic rhetoric reveals that, far from being inconsequential or merely decorative, it is a force in its own right; I argue that the characters' insistence on the overt use of rhetorical devices, wordplay, and logical debate is a form of action that creates the comic world. Characters use strategies derived from logic and rhetoric in order to persuade themselves and others into positive action, achieving comic endings by verbal means.

We often want to explain and predict behavior, both our own and that of others. For various reasons we want to know not only why (in the sense of etiology) someone is doing what he is, but we also have interests in understanding the agent's reasons for which he is acting as he is. Though not uncontroversial, it is common to cite intentional states when offering such explanations. Most philosophers take certain intentional states to be the causes of our actions and to play a role in accounting for the reasons for which one acts. Additionally, most theorists who adopt such a line take the relevant intentional states to be propositional attitudes, most commonly beliefs and desires (or other pro attitudes which relate one to a proposition). In many of our explanations, we do indeed cite beliefs and desires, but we also cite many other psychological states that aren't obviously beliefs or desires. In fact, some of the relevant psychological states don't even appear to be propositional attitudes. In this paper I pursue two lines of questioning, one about the explanations of action and one about intentionality. First, what role is played by these apparently non-propositional attitudes? Such attitudes turn up in Davidson's locus classicus and can be found in the most recent work on action as well, but explications are sparse. Second, are these attitudes in fact non-propositional? Despite appearances to the contrary, one might argue that such states are to be, in some way or other, assimilated to the more familiar propositional attitudes. I resist this line in the second chapter. / text

Imaging has revealed that brain activation of verbs with verifiable products (‘throw, kick’) activate language areas as well as the motor cortex responsible for the performance of the action described. An exploratory comparison of eye related verbs with no verifiable products (‘observe’) to mouth related verbs with verifiable products (‘shout’) has revealed a similar activation pattern. Thus in order to further study mental action verbs with no verifiable products, the present two-part study used words that were suitable across two modalities (e.g. you can ‘perceive’ both through vision and audition) and compare them to themselves under differing contexts of auditory and visual verbs so as to eliminate any word characteristics differences, as well as explored the two modalities directly. The primary purpose was to delineate whether associative learning or the mirror systems theory might better account for the acquisition of this unique subclass of verbs. Results suggest that Mirror systems theory more likely accounts for the observed cognitive processing differences between the two verbs. Keywords: Verbs, language, Event-related potentials, abstract, associative learning theory, mirror systems theory.

Analyzed clasification of English mental process verbs, their semantic structure; the process of subjectivization; experiencer's position in a sentence. / Mentalinio proceso veiksmažodžių klasifikacijos analizė, jų semantinė struktūra; subjektyvizacijos procesas; patirtį gaunančio asmens pozicija pateikta sakinyje.

The aim of the work is the examination of the usage of idiomatic eglish verbs. Phrasal verbs are the derivatives derived according to the following pattern: V (verb) + pv (postverb) = Vpv (verb postverb). They are regarded as one more type of word formation. English phrasal verbs are divided into non-reversible, metaphoric, and metonymic. / Darbo tikslas yra idiominių anglų veiksmažodžių vartojimo tyrimas. Fraziniai veiksmažodžiai yra išvestiniai žodžiai, sudaromi pagal tokią schemą: V (veiksmažodis) + pv (postverbas) = Vpv (frazinis veiksmažodis). Jie yra laikomi dar viena žodžių darybos rūšimi. Fraziniai veiksmažodžiai yra suskirstyti į nereversiškus, metaforinius ir metoniminius.

This dissertation deals with semantics of modality in general and semantics of the Norwegian modal verbs in particular. My lead-off assumption is that modality deals with people’s attitude towards the trustworthiness of propositions (epistemic attitude) and the presence or absence of obstacles for a state of affairs to occur (non-epistemic attitude). I distinguish between neutral and non-neutral attitude on the one hand and between simple and complex attitude on the other. Neutral attitude means that, in the speaker’s view (or someone else’s view, if the speaker is reporting others’ attitude), there are no obstacles to accept a proposition as correct or a state of affairs as likely to occur. However, the speaker may equally accept that the same proposition may turn out to be incorrect, or the same state of affairs may turn out not to be worth to occur. In either case, no conflict will arise between the speaker’s beliefs (expectations) and the reality. Non-neutral attitude means that the speaker only is willing to accept a proposition as correct, or a state of affairs as likely to occur. If the proposition turns out to be incorrect, or the state of affairs turns out not to be likely to occur, a conflict arises between the speaker’s beliefs (expectations) and reality. At the same time, the speaker may signal that other participants may have different attitudes than her own, which does not mean that the speaker is unsure about her own attitude. I use the terms simple and... [to full text] / Šioje disertacijoje tyrinėjama modalumo semantika, ypatingą dėmesį skiriant norvegų kalbos modaliniams veiksmažodžiams. Modalumas suvokiamas kaip kategorija, susijusi su žmonių požiūriu į propozicijų tikėtinumą (episteminis požiūris) ir į kliūčių įvykiams įvykti ar situacijoms susiklostyti buvimą ar nebuvimą (neepisteminis požiūris). Išskiriami, viena vertus, neutralus ir neneutralus požiūris, ir, kita vertus, paprastas ir kompleksinis požiūris. Terminas paprastas požiūris vartojamas kalbant apie atvejus, kai kalbėtojas posakyje tik išreiškia vieną požiūrį, nesudarymas prielaidų manyti, kad egzistuoja ir kitokių požiūrių galimybė. Terminas kompleksinis požiūris vartojamas kalbant apie atvejus, kai kalbėtojas, išreikšdamas vieną požiūrį, sykiu leidžia manyti, kad galima turėti ir kitokį, alternatyvų požiūrį. Neutralus požiūris visada būna paprastas, o neneutralus gali būti arba paprastas, arba kompleksinis. Toliau disertacijoje šis modelis pritaikomas norvegų kalbos modalinius veiksmažodžių KUNNE, MÅTTE, SKULLE, VILLE ir BURDE semantiniam aprašui. Esamojo laiko forma kan dažniausiai vartojama neutraliam požiūriui išreikšti, o esamojo laiko formos må, skal ir vil dažniausiai vartojamos paprastam neneutraliam požiūriui išreikšti. Ir esamojo laiko forma bør, ir būtojo laiko (preterito) forma burde dažniausiai vartojamos kompleksiniam neneutraliam požiūriui reikšti. Būtojo laiko formos skulle ir ville gali būti pavartojamos ne temporaline reikšme, transformuojant paprastą... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]