This thesis is a pilot study investigating the influence of Information Structure on naturalness of (non-)canonical word order permutations among Russian Heritage speakers residing in mainland...Show moreThis thesis is a pilot study investigating the influence of Information Structure on naturalness of (non-)canonical word order permutations among Russian Heritage speakers residing in mainland Portugal. The obtained word order patterns are compared to the data collected from a homogenous group of monolingual Russian speakers from St Petersburg. The thesis in particular focuses on whether (in)definiteness plays a role in the distribution of extralinguistic information (TOPIC/FOCUS) in Heritage Russian. Through short dialogue recordings of Colloquial Russian, ratings of Subject FOCUS and Object FOCUS are elicited amongst the two participant groups, as part of the acceptability judgement task. It was hypothesised that Russian Heritage Speakers would map Word Order based on Information Structure similar to L1/1 speakers of Russian. For Subject and IO FOCUS sentences, the obtained results indicate that Russian Heritage speakers are non-target like. Russian Heritage speakers transfer the preference for VOS/SV DO IO order from European Portuguese as opposed to Russian OVS/S DO V IO.Show less
The current study offers the first clause type anticipation based on the prosody of Beijing Mandarin for native Taiwan Mandarin listeners, building upon the research of Gryllia et al. (2020). By...Show moreThe current study offers the first clause type anticipation based on the prosody of Beijing Mandarin for native Taiwan Mandarin listeners, building upon the research of Gryllia et al. (2020). By conducting an online audio-gating experiment, our findings indicated that TM listeners encounter difficulties anticipating wh-questions based on BM prosodic cues, whereas the anticipation of declaratives was more successful. The effect of the clause types intended by the BM speaker was significant from Gate II, and the effect of tones in Gate III suggested an intertwined interaction between tone and intonation. Additionally, the impact of the gate and its interaction with the intended clause type was also shown to influence the clause type anticipation.Show less
This thesis aims to provide an overview of relevant research on the -te iru form. Having summarised research by scholars such as Vendler, Dowty and Kindaichi, it proceeds to compare and contrast...Show moreThis thesis aims to provide an overview of relevant research on the -te iru form. Having summarised research by scholars such as Vendler, Dowty and Kindaichi, it proceeds to compare and contrast literature on the -te iru form itself. There appear to be two types of analyses for the -te iru form: polysemous and monosemous analyses. After comparing several accounts and providing some new data, I conclude that a monosemous account, which analyses -te iru as a pragmatically ambitious stative expression, is the most likely analysis.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
Ever since Elliott’s (1974) seminal work on exclamatives in English, formal linguists have dealt with questions such as how to formally characterize exclamatives, which components contribute to...Show moreEver since Elliott’s (1974) seminal work on exclamatives in English, formal linguists have dealt with questions such as how to formally characterize exclamatives, which components contribute to exclamativity and how many components are involved. In the literature there are several different approaches to exclamative constructions. Some have argued that exclamatives are semantically derived from questions (Guti´errez-Rexach, 1996; Zanuttini and Portner, 2003), others, however, derive exclamatives from degree constructions (Rett, 2008). Then there are some accounts claiming that exclamatives are derived from neither one of the two. Chernilovskaya and Nouwen (2012) for instance, claim that noteworthy evaluation is most crucial to exclamatives. The current thesis will follow Chernilovskaya and Nouwen (2012) by claiming that noteworthiness is a crucial component of exclamatives. This thesis aims at getting a better understanding of exclamative constructions. It makes an attempt to identify the components that are crucial to exclamative constructions and explain how each component semantically contributes to exclamativity. To do so, I examine Dutch particle exclamatives and define its characteristic components. These constructions consist of a first person singular pronoun me and a modal particle toch, as in, for example, the sentence Hij heeft me toch een boel auto’s! ‘Boy, does he have a lot of cars!’. Interestingly, unlike any other pronoun, the me pronoun in exclamative constructions occurs invariably in first person singular form and therefore has no other paradigmatic forms. I argue that this me pronoun is semantically distinct from all other pronouns in that it marks ego-evidentiality. Such being the case, the me particle indicates that the source of the content is the actual speaker him/herself or in other words the EGO. As a direct consequence of ego-evidentiality, the exclamative proposition becomes veridical, that is to say that whatever the speaker’s opinion is, it should be assumed to be true according to his/her perceptive world. To simplify matters, I have taken veridicality to be equal to factivity. The modal particle toch in isolation indicates an inconsistency with the common ground (Hogeweg et al., 2011), a notion we see back in the semantics of toch in exclamative constructions. I take the exclamative toch to be the overt realization of widening, a concept introduced by Zanuttini and Portner (2003). According to Zanuttini and Portner (2003) widening can be characterized as an operation extending the domain of a certain proposition to a wider domain which lies beyond what is expected. My concept of widening, however, slightly differs from Zanuttini and Portner’s concept of widening as I will incorporate the notion of noteworthiness, as defined by Chernilovskaya and Nouwen (2012), as well as a non-specificity requirement (a notion to some extent comparable to Rett’s (2008) degree restriction). By doing so, I am able to account for a wider range of exclamative constructions. The interaction of these two particles gives rise to exclamativity. It can be concluded that lexically the particle exclamatives consist of two components: an ego-evidentiality marker me and a widening marker toch. Semantically, it consists of factivity and widening. At the end of this thesis I examine to what extent this analysis is applicable to another Dutch exclamative construction, namely wh-exclamatives and how such analysis relates to the more general literature on exclamative constructions.Show less
Languages are not often very flexible in reordering their heads and complements. Many languages have a fixed preference, for example, for either prepositions or postpositions (Dryer, 2013). If...Show moreLanguages are not often very flexible in reordering their heads and complements. Many languages have a fixed preference, for example, for either prepositions or postpositions (Dryer, 2013). If there are any occurrences of inversion, they are either obligatory, or at least, when optional, bound by restrictions; as can be seen in Broadwell (2006). Bidayuh - an Austronesian language of Borneo, a language not very well documented - shows some peculiar inversions of preposition and noun phrase. These inversions only occur with movement. The current study examines P-DP reordering for DP’s that have moved to the front of their simple matrix clause; to the front of their embedded clause; or out of their embedded clause, to the front of the matrix clause. It looks into several different prepositions and different matrix verbs, as well as different DP complements. All three movement conditions elicit different sets of restrictions on reordering P and DP. The data are discussed in the light of Merchant’s (2002) theory of swiping and Hartman and Ai’s (2009) account of it. Unfortunately, the current study cannot draw any hard conclusions. More research is needed.Show less
Relative pronouns in a variety of languages are analyzed. Earlier analyses focusing mainly on the Promotion Theory are evaluated and the Promotion Theory is rejected as it cannot elegantly explain...Show moreRelative pronouns in a variety of languages are analyzed. Earlier analyses focusing mainly on the Promotion Theory are evaluated and the Promotion Theory is rejected as it cannot elegantly explain resumptive pronouns and it cannot handle coordinated antecedents. It is concluded that an adequate theory cannot raise the antecedent out of the relative clause. A new theory is introduced that analyses relative clauses as being selected by an Adjectival Phrase with a phonologically null head while the relative pronoun is simply coreferential with the antecedent.Show less
In this thesis I examine the question that was left unanswered in Tulling (2014). Why can some SFP1s, like the Dutch hè, attach to [-Q]-questions, while most SFP1s are unable to attach to questions...Show moreIn this thesis I examine the question that was left unanswered in Tulling (2014). Why can some SFP1s, like the Dutch hè, attach to [-Q]-questions, while most SFP1s are unable to attach to questions? This paper focuses on rhetorical wh-questions. First the different theories on the structure and meaning of rhetorical questions are discussed. Then I define what I consider a rhetorical question, and provide tests to distinguish rhetorical questions from ordinary questions in Dutch. I argue against the proposal that ordinary questions and rhetorical questions are semantically and structurally the same (Copanigro & Sprouse 2007), and argue in favor of the idea that RQs and OQs are actually semantically and syntactically different from each other. Combining earlier theories on the semantics and structure of rhetorical questions (Han 2002, Obenauer & Poletto 2000) and generalizations on the structure of SFPs using the split-CP hypothesis (Law 2004, Sybesma & Li 2007), I propose the following to account for the main question of this paper: In contrary to wh¬-words in ordinary questions, which are positioned in [Spec, ForceP], the wh-words in rhetorical questions are positioned in [Spec, EpistP]. Following Sybesma & Li (2007) SFPs are base generated across the different layers of CP. The SFP1 hè is base generated in Epist0. SFP1s have an inherent feature [+SFP] which requires to be checked by all the relevant sentence information. In ordinary statements, the entire sentence moves to [Spec, EpistP] to check this SFP feature in sentences with hè. In RQs the wh-word carries all the relevant epistemic information of the sentence (Han 2002), and the SFP-feature can be checked. In ordinary questions there is no wh-word in EpistP, and the [+SFP]-feature cannot be checked; the sentence is ungrammatical. Show less
Westergaard et al. (2005, 2012) have shown that some dialects of Norwegian, contrary to Standard Norwegian, may violate the Verb Second requirement in some or all types of wh-questions. Focussing...Show moreWestergaard et al. (2005, 2012) have shown that some dialects of Norwegian, contrary to Standard Norwegian, may violate the Verb Second requirement in some or all types of wh-questions. Focussing on Northern Norwegian, I discuss the optionality of the Verb Second requirement in wh-questions with simplex wh-phrases in this dialect. Based on data from Norwegian informants, as well as previous literature on this dialect, an analysis of the optionality of Verb Second will be given. This analysis builds on Sportiche’s approach on clitic movement in Romance languages (1996). It is shown that in Northern Norwegian complex wh’s move like phrases, whilst simplex wh’s can move (long-distance) as phrases as well as heads, analogous to the movement of Romance clitics. As an alternative analysis, the possibility that Northern Norwegian simplex wh’s undergo phrasal movement but merge into C0, is also discussed on the basis of the head movement account by Matushansky (2006).Show less
