Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Nembi Discourse Structure, Ruth A. Tipton

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis deals with the way paragraphs, sentences, and clauses are brought together in Nembi discourse to form a coherent unit. Insights into discourse structure and discourse analysis gained from Joseph Grimes, Robert E. Longacre, and Michael A. K. Halliday are applied in the study of Nembi narrative and procedural texts. The thesis is based on the analysis of fourteen texts: four procedural and ten narrative. Six of the narratives are ancestral legends, and four are based on recent events. The analysis has led to several conclusions about discourse in the Nembi language.

Discourse is organized into an introduction, a …

The Phonology Of Texmelucan Zapotec Verb Irregularity, Charles H. Speck

Theses and Dissertations

The phonological rules governing Texmelucan Zapotec verb allomorphy are presented here as part of the phonological component of a generative grammar of the type conceived of by Chomsky and Halle but modified by Stampe, Rhodes and others. This modified theoretical framework has been referred to as natural phonology. Basic to the theory of natural phonology is Stampe's observation that two distinctive types of phonological principles operate in natural languages: natural processes which are innate and rules which are learned. The natural phonemic level is seen to relate to these principles.

In section 1: Lower Level Phonology, those principles which operate …

On The Dutch Expletive And Related Syntactic Problems, Kornelis J. Boot

Theses and Dissertations

In his Über das niederländische Adverbialpronomen 'er' Bech argues that the subject expletive of Dutch is inserted when the NP subject has an indefinite article. Bech also claims that the subjective expletive is a local subject and not a logical subject.

This thesis proposes that the use of the subject expletive cannot be based upon a traditional structuralist concept. The author rejects some of Bech's claims and argues for a semantic distinction between definiteness and non-definiteness as a basis for expletive insertion. An attempt is also made to apply the same distinction in accounting for the use of het with …

The Design And Evaluation Of A Course In Conversational Indonesian, Marit Ann Kana

Theses and Dissertations

Of the language learning materials which already exist on Indonesian, the language of nearly one hundred million people in Malaysia and the Republic of Indonesia, none is particularly suited for fieldworkers--that is, whose whose interest in the language is more practical than academic, whose intent is to live and work in Indonesia for an extended period of time. Fieldworkers need to develop the communicational skills of listening and speaking over those of reading and writing. They also need to learn the speech level which is most appropriate for foreigners. In Indonesia this is a formal language style, one which shows …

Syntactic Combinations Of Verbs In Lakota Sioux (Teton Dakota), Michael Robert Scott

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explain the differences among syntactic combinations of verbs in Lakota Sioux (Teton Dakota). The thesis at first examines the literature on combinations of verbs in Lakota. Thereafter criteria for distinguishing morphological combinations of verbs (compounds) and syntactic combinations of verbs are set forth. The criteria are: potential for replacement, regularity of meaning, and potential for variation in inflection. The emphasis of the thesis is on the classification of syntactic combinations of verbs which it proposes.

The classification contains six classes, two of which are subdivided. The classification is based on the interaction of …

Difference Coefficients For Determining Dialect Relatedness, Robert E. Larsen

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents a method of determining the degree of relatedness of the dialects of a language based on "difference coefficients" which are determined by assigning number values to the degree of feature difference between lexical items on survey word lists. Then a tentative phonological reconstruction of the Proto language from which the dialects are descended was done using 100 utterances on a standard survey word list in each of the ten dialects. The reconstruction is very tentative because of the limited amount of data available in each dialect.

A family tree was prepared using the innovations that various dialects …

A Natural Phonology And Morphophonemics Of Chimalapa Zoque, Lyle M. Knudson Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes, by means of a modified natural phonological model, the phonological component of the Chimalapa Zoque language spoken in southern Mexico. An analysis of the processes occurring in the production of Zoque speech has resulted in the conclusion that a system of interrelated hierarchically-ordered rules and processes exist which generate the speech output of a native Zoque speaker. Four distinct sets of phonological rules are described herein. Morphophonemic rules are those applied earlier to an abstract underlying form due to their grammatical conditioning and more radical changes. Following those rules are the careful speech allophonic processes which are …

Subordinating And Coordinating Particles In Lakhota, Wolfgang Corduan

Theses and Dissertations

In her Dakota Texts Ella Deloria appears to be using cha and chanke interchangeably. The goal of this paper is to show that the difference lies in the realm of subordination. For this purpose other languages have been examined to detect how subordination is marked in them. Both German and English are shown to mark subordinate clauses overtly, but Lakhota markers are not so apparent. Subordination is formally defined in a Generative Semantic framework and pertinent works on Lakhota grammar are reviewed. The solution implied by Boas and Deloria that cha is a subordinator is accepted and proven to be …

Lakota Language Lessons, Frances J. Bates

Theses and Dissertations

This set of introductory materials in Lakota is divided into five main parts. These parts are: I Teacher's Manual, II Language Lessons, III Student Workbook, IV Test Booklet, and V Summary Statement.

The first part, that of the Teacher's Manual, begins with a statement of the objectives and the procedures used in developing the materials and an explanation of the design and the use of these materials. The remainder of the Manual contains a description of the orthography and the sound system, a tentative syntactical description, and a discussion of selected semantic concerns.

The second part consists of five Lessons …

Structure Of The Kogi Verb Auxiliary And Its Distribution In Discourse, Chadwick M. Stendal

Theses and Dissertations

Certain frequent long words in the Kogi (Aruakan) language of Colombia, South America, were regularly translated by the first linguists who worked in the area as meaning 'and so' or 'afterwards', in spite of the fact that the words were highly variable, and complicated in structure.

When the author and his wife began working on the language, the only additional clue available to them was the information, from one of the previous scholars, that one syllable in the words marked indicative mood.

Prom this point on intensive scrutiny was made of text recorded by the author and transcribed from his …

Some Psycholinguistic Aspects Of Brôu Literacy Problems, Eugenia Johnston

Theses and Dissertations

Before literacy materials can be prepared for preliterate groups, the analyst must discover the native speaker's reactions (1) to the sounds of his language so that a psychophonemic orthography can be developed, and (2) to the structure of his language, so that teaching methods will build on these reactions and help the prospective reader learn more quickly and easily to read and write his language.

Problems include immediate constituents of vowel glides and consonant clusters, syllable stress, syllable division within words, punctuation signals, and tone designation. In the Brôu language the main problem was to ascertain whether Brôu intuitions would …

Clause And Sentence Boundary Markers In The Dakota Language, Donald S. Stark

Theses and Dissertations

From the introduction: "Based on [the] recorded data [of a natural conversation], rather than on suggested or controlled informant responses to out-of-context situations, a procedure will be described by which the larger grammatical sequences (i.e., sentences and clauses) of Dakota may be delimited from the larger speech continua in which they are imbedded.

"1.3 There are today two main views regarding the fundamental procedure to be followed in the linguistic analysis of a corpus of data, each with its group of adherents. One group considers that the analyst will obtain best results, save time, and produce a more accurate final …