Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Role And Reference Account Of Information Structure In Somali, Jennifer Girard

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a study of focus structure in Somali within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). Focus is an important phenomenon in Somali, and this thesis investigates the different types of focus which occur in Somali, the effects of the focus markers on other features in the language, and the interaction between syntax and focus structure. Data on Somali focus structure was collected in consultation with three native speakers of Somali, and also gathered from previous research on the Somali Language. Although word order in Somali is relatively free, focus structure is correspondingly rigid, a finding which …

Word Order And Information Structure In Russian Syntax, Elena V. Rodionova

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempts to explain variability of word order in Russian declarative sentences. I argued that Russian word order is not "free" but encodes different types of focus: predicate, sentence, and narrow. Chapter 1 of this thesis critiques several theories of grammar that attribute alternative word orders in Russian primarily to differences in style. Chapter 2 discusses the advantages of Lambrecht's information structure theory and Role and Reference Grammar as a theoretical framework for my research. Chapter 3 presents the empirical core of the paper, a detailed revision of Krylova and Khavronina's (1986) classification of Russian word order types into …

Two Studies Of Mixtec Languages, Inga Mckendry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of two independent papers and a text. One paper is centered on Mixtec languages as a whole, the other paper and the text present the variety of Mixtec spoken in the southeastern portion of the district of Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, Mexico.

The first paper builds on work published by Stephen A. Marlett in which it is posited that nasalization is a feature of the morpheme rather than the syllable. Data not included in Marlett's study, which corroborates his findings, are presented. Also in the light of these data, modifications to his analysis are suggested. This paper also presents …

Hindi-Urdu: Stress Accent Or Non-Stress Accent?, Lars O. Dyrud

Theses and Dissertations

The Hindi-Urdu stress system has been a problematic topic for over a century. Hayes (1995) says, '... this topic has its empirically dismaying aspects: the published descriptions almost all disagree with one another, and seldom mention the disagreement.'

The literature today divides languages between 'stress accent' languages and 'non-stress accent' languages. According to Beckman (1986), 'stress accent' languages are those that use phonetic attributes other than pitch to indicate a prominent syllable, while 'non-stress accent' languages are those that use only pitch to mark a prominent syllable.

In the past, several quantitative studies of phonetic correlates of stress in Hindi-Urdu …

Information Structure In Acadian French, Emma Pavey

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines aspects of information structure in Acadian French, focusing on the use of detached (also referred to as 'moved' or 'dislocated') syntactic structures in the spoken language. The data is from interviews with Acadian French speakers and is analyzed using Role and Reference Grammar as a theoretical framework. One section of this paper also reviews existing literature on the subject. This study is innovative empirically in that it studies a Canadian variety of French which has not been significantly discussed previously in the literature on information structure nor within the RRG model. The detached clauses are subdivided into …