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 …

Memetic Epidemiology: A Mathematical Model For Tracking The Spread Of Linguistic Features Across Western Europe, Benjamin Shavitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this dissertation is to introduce a powerful new method for demonstrating the role of contact in potential cases of linguistic contact spread, Memetic Epidemiology, that can facilitate extensive future research. This dissertation introduces and demonstrates the use of this method on examples from Western and Central Europe.

Part I begins by providing theoretical background for Memetic Epidemiology using understandings, including Memetics, and Evolutionary Phonology and its extensions. Part I proceeds to lay out the objective of Memetic Epidemiology: to provide a new means of demonstrating that contact influenced the rise of linguistic features in certain languages during …

Microvariation In Verbal Rather, Jim Wood

Yale Working Papers in Grammatical Diversity

This paper uses survey results and interactive mapping tools to analyze correlations across different versions of the non-standard verbal use of the word rather, in particular with participial morphology, as in rathered. Across numerous possible instantiations of the construction, there appear to be in fact a quite limited number of grammars, which are generated by an implicational hierarchy of functional heads, along with the availability of a silent verb HAVE. The overall picture supports several broader conclusions. First, silent verbs can be licensed by head-moving to a modal head in the extended projection. This movement is freely available, but …

Brown's Stages Of Morphosyntactic Development Applied To The Typical Development Of Italian, Marie Laiche

LSU Master's Theses

Background: In A First Language (1973), Roger Brown called for an increase in crosslinguistic data and analysis of morphosyntax across languages as more research in this field is crucial for working out the overarching determinants of language acquisition order and for the ability to accurately compare child language acquisition across different languages. An increase in this research would benefit linguistic researchers and speech-language-pathologists offering services to or evaluating children speaking a different language or more than one language. The current study seeks to add to the field of crosslinguistic research by adapting Brown’s guidelines of English language acquisition to the …

The Variable Expression Of Transitive Subject And Possesor In Wayuunaiki (Guajiro), Andres M. Sabogal

Linguistics ETDs

In Wayuunaiki, verbal affixes cross-reference clausal arguments in various ways. Most notably, there are two ways to express transitive subjects, and two ways to express possessors. Much like voice alternatives, the variable expression of subject and possessor impart different perspectives on a situation type, but unlike traditional voice categories, syntactic valence remains equal. This dissertation characterizes these constructions with a specific question in mind: what do these two cross-referencing alternations communicate and what influences their usage? To answer these questions, I consider the linguistic properties observed in the usage of these constructions in narratives (Jusayú 1986, 1994), and informal conversations. …

The Declensions Of Modern Eastern Armenian: A Paradigm Function Morphology Approach, Malachi W. Oyer

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

In traditional grammar, the inflection of a word’s different forms based on the possible morphosyntactic property combinations of the language can be ordered into a tables. Words of the same part of speech often can be grouped together when they inflect in similar fashions. These similar groups are represented by a single word that expresses the morphosyntactic property set possible for that part of speech. These groups are called declensions. These declensions are not always complete sometimes there is a particular morphosyntactic property set that does not have a corresponding form (word). This is known as defectiveness. One approach that …

Compounding And Incorporation In The Ket Language: Implications For A More Unified Theory Of Compounding, Benjamin C. Smith

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Compounding in the world’s languages is a complex word-­‐formation process that is not easily accounted for. Moreover, incorporation is equally complex and problematic. This examination of compounding and incorporation in the Ket language seeks to identify the underlying logic of these processes and to work towards a typology that captures generalizations among the numerous ways in which languages expand their lexicons through these processes. Canonical Typology provides a framework that does just this. A preliminary canonical typology of compounds is proposed here, one that subsumes a range of compounds as well as incorporation. For this reason, the Ket language, which …

Valence Sensitivity In Pamirian Past-Tense Inflection: A Realizational Analysis, Gregory Stump, Andrew R. Hippisley

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

La Syntaxe, La Morphologie Et La Phonologie De La Réduction Dans Les Titres, Ivan Chow, Volha Kharytonava, Mikalai Kliashchuk, Ileana Paul

French Studies Publications

Le présent article examine le cas de la réduction dans les titres de journaux avec les données de plusieurs langues. Nous constatons qu’il existe plusieurs types de réduction: la réduction syntaxique, morphophonologique, et la réduction phonétique. Nous faisons un survol des différents types et nous laissons pour la recherche future une analyse plus détaillée des structures.