Digital Commons Network^™

The Parsing And Interpretation Of Comparatives: More Than Meets The Eye, Margaret Ann Grant

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines comparative constructions, both in terms of their representation in syntax and semantics and in terms of the way these representations are built and interpreted incrementally during sentence processing. While there has been extensive investigation of comparatives in the syntax and semantics literature (see Bresnan, 1973; von Stechow, 1984; Heim, 1985; Kennedy, 1999, among others), there has been little work on how comparatives are processed (although see Fults and Phillips, 2004; Wellwood et al., 2009 for work on so-called comparative illusions). In the first half of the dissertation, I address issues that are primarily syntactic in nature; in …

Roots Of Modality, Aynat Rubinstein

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores the interplay of grammar and context in the interpretation of modal words like ought, necessary, and need. The empirical foci of the discussion are patterns in the use of strong and weak necessity modals in conversation, and the interpretation of syntactically and semantically versatile modals like need in the various grammatical configurations they appear in across languages.

It is argued that a sensitivity to collective commitments in a conversation is necessary for understanding certain aspects of modal strength, in particular the traditional distinction between strong and weak necessity modals (exhibited by must and ought …

Verbalizing In The Second Language Classroom: The Development Of The Grammatical Concept Of Aspect, Prospero N. Garcia

Open Access Dissertations

Framed within a Sociocultural Theory of Mind (SCT) in the field of Second Language Acquisition (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), this dissertation explores the role of verbalizing in the internalization of grammatical categories through the use of Concept-based Instruction (henceforth CBI) in the second language (L2) classroom.

Using Vygotsky's (1986) distinction between scientific and spontaneous or everyday concepts applied to L2 development (Negueruela, 2008), this study focuses on the teaching and potential development of the grammatical concept of aspect in the Spanish L2 classroom, and the role of verbalizing in its internalization. It is proposed that verbalizing mediates between the learners' …

Stress In Harmonic Serialism, Kathryn Ringler Pruitt

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a model of word stress in a derivational version of Optimality Theory (OT) called Harmonic Serialism (HS; Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004, McCarthy 2000, 2006, 2010a). In this model, the metrical structure of a word is derived through a series of optimizations in which the 'best' metrical foot is chosen according to a ranking of violable constraints. Like OT, HS models cross-linguistic typology under the assumption that every constraint ranking should correspond to an attested language.

Chapter 2 provides an argument for modeling stress typology in HS by showing that the serial model correctly rules out stress patterns …

The Role Of Contextual Restriction In Reference-Tracking, Andrew Robert Mckenzie

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores the semantics and syntax of switch-reference (SR). It makes novel generalizations about the phenomenon based on two empirical sources: A broad, cross-linguistic survey of descriptive reports, and semantic fieldwork that narrowly targets the Kiowa language of Oklahoma. It shows that previous attempts at formalizing switch-reference cannot work, and offers a new theory of switch-reference that derives the facts through effects that emerge from the interaction between the syntax and the semantics.

The empirical investigation results in four major findings: First, SR is introduced by its own head, instead of being parasitic to T or C. Second, switch-reference …

Goals, Big And Small, Martin Walkow

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores the interaction of syntax and morphology in the morpholog- ical realization of AGREE-relations. I present two case studies of derivational interactions of AGREE-processes where the morphological realization of the later processes are affected by the earlier ones. The two cases studied differ in the way probes and goals interact. The first part of the dissertation explores restrictions on clitic combinations where two goals vie for the features of one probe. The second part discusses the reverse situation, where two probes are agreeing with the same goal.

The first configuration arises in restrictions on clitic combinations where v …

Syntax-Prosody Interactions In Irish, Emily Elfner

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is an empirical and theoretical study of sentence-level prosody in Conamara (Connemara) Irish. It addresses the architecture of the syntax-phonology interface and the relation between syntactic constituent structure and prosodic structure formation. It argues for a fully interactional view of the interface, in which the phonological form may be influenced by a number of competing factors, including constraints governing syntax-prosody correspondence, linearization, and prosodic well-formedness. The specific proposal is set within the framework of Match Theory (Selkirk 2009, 2011), an indirect-reference theory of the syntax-prosody interface in which correspondence between syntactic and prosodic constituents is governed by a …

Quantification, Misc., Jan Anderssen

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigates various topics concerning the interpretation of determiner phrases and their connection to individual entities. The first chapter looks at a phenomenon called telescoping, in which a quantificational expression appears to bind a pronominal form across sentence boundaries, at odds with commonly assumed and well motivated constraints on binding. I investigate the limited circumstances under which telescoping is available and argue that the mechanism that makes it available should respect said locality constraints. In particular, I argue that the impression of co-variation arises not because of binding by the initial quantificational expression, but because an of independent, albeit …

Constraining Interpretation: Sentence Final Particles In Japanese, Christopher M. Davis

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with how pragmatic particles interact with sentential force and with general pragmatic constraints to derive optimal dynamic interpretations. The primary empirical focus of the dissertation is the Japanese sentence final particle yo and its intonational associates. These right-peripheral elements are argued to interact semantically with sentential force in specifying the set of contextual transitions compatible with an utterance. In this way, they semantically constrain the pragmatic interpretation of the utterances in which they occur. These conventional constraints on interpretation are wedded with general pragmatic constraints which provide a further filter on the road to optimal interpretation.

Mojarra Aesthetics In Piolin Por La Ma?Ana: A Time And Space For The Dislocated, J. Luis Loya Garcia

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is a cultural analysis of Piolín por la Mañana, a Spanish-language radio talk show conducted by Eduardo Piolín Sotelo and broadcast from Los Angeles. The program expands the boundaries of the performing arts as well as the reach and elasticity of literary tropes and study. It connects often geographically disparate ―imagined communities‖ of working class Latino/as by revisiting traditional Mexican theater, joke delivery style, literary genre (e.g., magical realism and the picaresque), and taxonomies of everyday personalities. Central to my discussion of Piolín is listener participation, which stages community formation within the radio-text.

The introduction and the first …

Natural Selection And The Syntax Of Clausal Complementation, Keir Moulton

Open Access Dissertations

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 …

A Blog-Mediated Curriculum For Teaching Academic Genres In An Urban Classroom: Second Grade Ell Students’ Emergent Pathways To Literacy Development, Dong-Shin Shin

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the academic and social goals that three second-grade English language learners in a U.S. urban school bring to their blog-mediated academic writing practices, and the interrelated nature of those goals. This study aims to bridge the dichotomy between approaches to studying computer-mediated language and literacy development that are oriented toward academic goals inside school, and those that are oriented toward social goals outside school. The study also aims to investigate connections between language use and language development by highlighting linguistic features of semiotic choices that the students made for their texts. This builds upon recent research studies …

Two Types Of Definites In Natural Language, Florian Schwarz

Open Access Dissertations

This thesis is concerned with the description and analysis of two semantically different types of definite articles in German. While the existence of distinct article paradigms in various Germanic dialects and other languages has been acknowledged in the descriptive literature for quite some time, the theoretical implications of their existence have not been explored extensively. I argue that each of the articles corresponds to one of the two predominant theoretical approaches to analyzing definite descriptions: the `weak' article encodes uniqueness. The `strong' article is anaphoric in nature. In the course of spelling out detailed analyses for the two articles, various …

Optionality And Variability: Syntactic Licensing Meets Morphological Spell-Out, Cherlon Ussery

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores case and verbal agreement in Icelandic. Case and agreement generally pattern together, but there are exceptional instances in which case and agreement come apart. In Icelandic, verbs agree with Nominative DPs. However, in some constructions, agreement with a Nominative is optional. In the standard account of case and agreement (Chomsky 2000), both types of features are determined simultaneously via the same syntactic operation. The standard theory, therefore, predicts that case and agreement should pattern the same way, and that neither should be optional. Moreover, based on fieldwork conducted at the University of Iceland, I present data that …

An Investigation Of Temporal Resolution Abilities In School-Aged Children With And Without Dyslexia, Elena Zaidan

Open Access Dissertations

Dyslexia is a clinical diagnosis often associated with phonological processing deficits. There are, however, other areas of concern, such as the presence of auditory temporal processing (ATP) disorders. One method of investigating ATP is the gap detection (GD) paradigm. This study investigated GD performance using the Gaps-in-Noise © (GIN) test in three groups of 30 children, aged 8 to 9 years. GD thresholds and gap identification scores (%) were determined for each participant. The three groups of participants included (Group I) children with dyslexia and phonological deficits, (Group II) children with dyslexia and no significant phonological deficits, and (Group III) …