Syntax Commons^™

Exploring Etymology Assignment Description, David Wolff

Open Educational Resources - Teaching and Learning

The English language is a borrowed language, a blend of words from many languages from around the world. We see this in the various ways sounds are represented by letters and letter combinations. In transparent or shallow orthographies, there is high predictability and consistent letter-sound correspondence whereas in opaque or deep orthographies, there are many ways to spell the same sound as well as there are many sounds for the same spellings (Burkins & Yates, 2021; Moats, 2020). This assignment description is a guided inquiry for preservice teachers to explore the concept of etymology by watching and reflecting on six …

The Influence Of Visual Perspective On The Cognitive Effort Required For Mental Representation, Jeffrey P. Hong

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Mental representation is the process by which an individual simulates an event in their mind’s eye. This process is the foundation of the ability to remember the past, engage in prospective thinking, or imagine fictitious scenarios. An individual can mentally represent any event through their own eyes—the first-person perspective or from the viewpoint of an external observer—the third-person perspective. The perspective of representation influences outcomes related to memory, visuospatial processing, affect, social cognition, clinical diagnoses, and language processing. In turn, an individual’s tendency to favour either perspective is shaped by related factors.

The current research consists of four experiments, designed …

How Phonological And Syntactic Overlap Impact Cognate Processing Speeds In Bilinguals, Ella Marie Peterson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper investigates individuals who are proficient in two languages (bilinguals) and the speeds at which bilinguals process cognates (words with comparable form and meaning across languages). This paper cites two ongoing experiments: The Language Identification (LID) task and the Self-Paced Listening (SPL) task. Findings from the LID suggest that phonological overlap in cognates facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in isolation. Findings from the SPL suggest that syntactic overlap in cognates also facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in sentences. These findings are significant in that the tasks present cognates to participants in …

Mirativity In English Response Particles: An Analysis From The Syntax/Semantics Interface, Randi Martinez

Yale Working Papers in Grammatical Diversity

Responses to questions can provide significant insight about linguistic structure and meaning. In this paper, I propose an analysis of the structure of assertions and various responses to assertions, bringing together semantic and syntactic considerations. The analysis incorporates a Speech Act Phrase (SAP, Speas & Tenny 2003), which is taken to encode illocutionary force. I present novel data on a polar response particle (PRP) form that has not yet been considered in the literature, namely, the English yeah-huh/nuh-uh responses. I show that these are polarity-based responses that signal disagreement and mirativity. I discuss the syntactic and discourse-related restrictions for yeah-huh/nuh-uh …

Completive All In English And The Status Of All, Carolina Fraga

Yale Working Papers in Grammatical Diversity

In this paper I discuss a novel construction in English, restricted to existentials and possessive have sentences, exemplified by sentences such as There’s all sand in my hair. I argue that the syntax and the semantics of this construction, which I have labeled the completive all construction, can be explained only if all is understood to be modifying a silent element (in the sense of Kayne 2004). In particular, I propose that completive all sentences contain a silent SPACE element and a silent preposition WITH. All is the modifier of a PP headed by silent WITH and the nominal …

Not Me Getting With The Times: A New Kind Of Not-Fragment In English, Guilherme M. C. Pereira

Yale Working Papers in Grammatical Diversity

In this paper, I describe a relatively new construction in colloquial use by many English speakers: a discourse-initial not-fragment that draws attention to a factual event and conveys some attitude towards it, typically that it is embarrassing, surprising, ironic, ridiculous, or simply bad. A prototypical example of this construction, which I call “spotlight not,” is an utterance like Not me going to Starbucks for the second time today, which is taken to indicate that the speaker is indeed going to Starbucks for the second time that day, and that they find this fact embarrassing or surprising, ironic, …

The Impact Of The First Language Transfer On English Language Syntax For Arab Esl Students At Private Language Center In Mid-Size University Town, Mohammed A. S. Abdalhadi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the Impact of the First Language Transfer on English Language Syntax for Arab ESL Students at Private Language Center in Mid-Size University Town. The research population was 12 participants from Spring International Language Center through Intensive English Program and 7 participants from Adult Education center. The writing samples and interview were the main two instruments to analyze the data. I used constructive Analysis (CA), Error Analysis (EA), and coding to analyze the writing samples and the interview. The study focused on the syntax transfer between Arabic L1 and English L2, so Adjective/noun order, Subject/verb order, Number/numbered order, …

'You' Will Always Have 'Me': A Compositional Theory Of Person, Kaden T. Holladay

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the morpho-syntactic makeup of personful expressions
in natural language; special focus is given to referential uses of personal pronouns. The central thesis guiding the inquiry is that utterance contexts, which serve to fix the semantic values of person indexicals, are specifically a kind of centered situation. This treatment of contexts puts restrictions on what kinds of person features are definable, and the resulting inventory of such features (in conjunction with independently-motivated pragmatic constraints on the use of referential expressions) provides a novel explanation for the typology of person systems.

Long(Er) Object Movement In Turkish, Duygu Göksu

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on long object movement (LOM), which is a type of A-movement from the embedded object position inside an infinitive to the matrix subject position. In the literature, LOM is usually equated with restructuring. The dissertation demonstrates that LOM is not a uniform phenomenon in Turkish. Verbs that allow LOM fall into two types and exhibit distinct behaviors, with only one type counting as restructuring. The infinitival complements of one class of LOM verbs show dependency on the matrix domain for structural case-checking of an embedded object. These verbs are analyzed as restructuring LOM verbs selecting a reduced-size …

Acquisition Of Main-Clause Wh-Questions In Egyptian Arabic-English And Spanish-English Bilingual Children, Riham H. Mohamed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the production and judgment of Egyptian Arabic (henceforth EA) main-clause wh-questions in EA-English bilingual children living in Ontario, Canada, or in the United Kingdom. The three comparison groups are EA monolingual children and EA monolingual adults living in Egypt, and first-generation Egyptian immigrants. The results are compared to previous research on the acquisition of obligatory subject-verb (S-V) inversion in Spanish wh-questions.

The focus of this study is to investigate the potential role of cross-linguistic influence in narrow syntactic structures. Until fairly recently, it was believed that only structures that exhibit syntax-pragmatics interfaces are vulnerable to cross-linguistic influence …

Towards A Generative Approach In Understanding The Kónkóló Timeline In Yoruba Music, Olupemi Oludare

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication

The kónkóló timeline is ubiquitous in most Yoruba musical practices; serving as the background rhythmic pattern and time marker, it is the principal pattern that delineates the music’s rhythmic structure. Previous bodies of work have investigated the nature of Western rhythm from a range of different perspectives, such as in terms of cultural significance, cognitive and neural relationships with language and movement, and potential pedagogical and therapeutic value. There is also increasing interest in the connections between formal and traditional semantic approaches to analysing musical meaning, including for rhythmic structures. The current, interdisciplinary study attempts to bring together aspects of …

Syntax And Semantics Of Music: Preface, Philippe Schlenker, Jurgis Skilters

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication

N/A

Destined Failure, Chengjun Pan

Masters Theses

I attempt to examine the complex structure of human communication, explaining why it is bound to fail. By reproducing experienceable phenomena, I demonstrate how they can expose communication structure and reveal the limitations of our perception and symbolization.I divide the process of communication into six stages: input, detection, symbolization, dictionary, interpretation, and output. In this thesis, I examine the flaws and challenges that arise in the first five stages. I argue that reception acts as a filter and that understanding relies on a symbolic system that is full of redundancies. Therefore, every interpretation is destined to be a deviation.

L’Emprunt Lexical De L’Arabe Algérien À L’Amazighe : Étude Sur Un Corpus Parémiologique, Abdelaziz Berkai

Journal of Amazigh Studies

Résumé :

Une étude très récente de parémiologie contrastive entre le kabyle et l’arabe algérien montre, par-delà l’« isomorphisme » parémiologique existant entre les deux langues-cultures, qu’un certain nombre de mots de l’arabe dialectal seraient des emprunts à l’amazighe. C’est l’étude de ces emprunts au plan lexico-sémantique, et subsidiairement étymologique, qui constitue l’objet de notre proposition de contribution. Nous commencerons chaque fois par la vérification des données en arabe classique et en dialectal algérien, avant d’analyser les matériaux amazighs et d’en tirer les conclusions qui s’imposent.

Mots-clés : emprunt lexical, parémiologie, arabe algérien, et langue amazighe

Lexical borrowing of Algerian …

The Would-Chuck Construction, Grace Teuscher

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

In Standard American English sentences, only one modal verb is typically allowed. However, in certain varieties of English, most notably the Double Modal Construction, spoken mainly in the American South, more than one modal is allowed. This thesis provides a syntactical analysis of a currently under-researched construction—the Would- Chuck Construction. Here, four modal verbs are allowed in the English middle field: first is typically will, followed by the perfect have, which is then followed by another modal and another perfect auxiliary. This results in a sentence resembling “I will have should have pet the cat.” When the linear order of …

Between Verb And Preposition: Diachronic Stages Of Coverbs In Mandarin Chinese, Glynis Jones

Masters Theses

Mandarin Chinese has long been known to possess a category of words known as ‘coverbs’ in the literature, which sit in the gray area between verb and preposition. Li and Thompson (1974) describe the historical origins of Mandarin coverbs to be full transitive verbs, despite their modern state being decidedly less verbal. They also note that coverbs are a non-homogenous class. This thesis works to establish categories of coverbs in Mandarin Chinese and their distance from true verbhood in order to understand the diachronic shift that coverbs are currently undergoing before our very eyes. I will draw on the work …

What Before Means: Teaching About The Communicative Contribution Of The English Pluperfect, Max Miller

Publications and Research

This paper presents a text-based analysis of the communicative functions of the simple past and pluperfect tenses of English, and offers a pedagogical approach to assist learners in acquiring them. Following a functional, usage-based linguistics perspective, the analysis holds that the simple past expresses Time PAST, while the pluperfect expresses Time PAST, BEFORE. Thus only the latter tense signals a speaker's subjective creation of a linkage in time. The understanding of these meanings can enhance an English language teacher's effectiveness in the classroom (as in selecting texts and activities) and a language user's effectiveness in communication. A classroom-based pedagogical application …

"Does This Make Sense?": The Effect Of Congruent Guise In Regional Accent On Grammatical Acceptability Judgments, Nour Kayali

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This study seeks to unite sociophonetic speech perception and syntax research by presenting participants with congruent or incongruent social expectations during a structural grammaticality judgement task. Participants completed a between-subjects matched guise survey with place-based grammatical structures spoken in either a congruent place-based, local accent or a nonlocal accent. Place-based structures are consistently rated more acceptable in the local accent than the nonlocal. These results suggest that judgment of grammaticality results from an interplay of sociocultural expectations with accent and sentence structure. Judgement of structural grammaticality is not independent of social expectation.

Collaborative Textbook On English Syntax (Version 1.0), Matt Garley, Karl Hagen, The Students Of Eng 270 At York College / Cuny

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Rubric For Educational Resources For An Undergraduate English Syntax Course, Matt Garley

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.