Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Typology Of Morphological Argument Focus Marking, Aidan Alexander Aannestad

Theses and Dissertations

One of the methods that languages use to indicate which argument (if any) is in focus is morphological; however, there seems to be a major gap in the literature when it comes to understanding the variety and classification of morphological argument focus marking constructions. This thesis is an attempt to fill that gap. I present here both an overview of the types of morphological focus marking constructions found in the world's languages, and a taxonomic classification of said constructions based on the grammaticalisation pathways that result in their genesis. Such constructions include not only the traditional `particle focus' constructions, but …

Alternations In Murui: A Morphological Approach, Amy Havlicek

Theses and Dissertations

Murui is a Witotoan language spoken in Colombia and Peru. This thesis focuses on alternations of voiced and voiceless alveolar and velar stops in Murui that occur at some morpheme boundaries in verbs. The alternations of the voiced and voiceless alveolar stops occur in the active indicative suffix allomorphs [‐dɯ] ~ [‐tɯ] ~ [‐d] ~ [‐t] and the alternations of the voiced and voiceless velar stops occur in the passive indicative suffix allomorphs [‐ka] ~ [‐ɡa]. These stops may also become voiced or voiceless when other suffixes are present in the verb. I focus my analysis on the inflectional morphology …

Numeral Incorporation In American Sign Language, Vanessa L. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Numeral incorporation is a moderately productive process in ASL which combines a numeral and a base to form a compounded fully formed sign. Numeral-incorporated signs involve some sort of simultaneity of the base and the numeral. I interviewed six individuals who use ASL as their primary language in order to gather examples of numeral-incorporated signs in ASL, thus getting a sampling of variation in the American deaf community.

Traditionally, numeral incorporation has been viewed as a process of combining a numeral sign with a noun, which I call a source sign. Instead, I found that the source signs are separate …