This study compares the use of the Dutch definite articles ‘de’ and ‘het’ by three groups of learners of Dutch as an L2 with different L1 backgrounds: French, Polish and Indonesian. It was expected...Show moreThis study compares the use of the Dutch definite articles ‘de’ and ‘het’ by three groups of learners of Dutch as an L2 with different L1 backgrounds: French, Polish and Indonesian. It was expected that the French group would be most accurate in their article use when looked at the distinction between common gender and neuter gender contexts and was least likely to avoid definite article use by means of substitution (with an indefinite article) or omission due to positive language transfer effects. The Polish group was expected to perform less accurate than the French group only in terms of article use, not gender distinction. The Indonesian group was expected to perform less accurate than the French group on both fronts. In order to test the hypotheses a corpus study was conducted. The results did not confirm the hypotheses, no effects of language transfer were found.Show less
This paper presents a study of article omission in two types of headlines, focusing on the differences between article omission in printed headlines and article omission in digital headlines. The...Show moreThis paper presents a study of article omission in two types of headlines, focusing on the differences between article omission in printed headlines and article omission in digital headlines. The study is carried out on a corpus of 120 news items collected from ‘De Volkskrant’, with half of the material from the physical paper and the other half from the corresponding digital news items. The research reflects on earlier findings in the field of article omission and presents new findings regarding the differences between article omission in physical and digital headlines and regarding other determiners that can be omitted as well. A theory about shifting the focus of investigation to the realization of articles instead of the omission thereof, initiated by Oosterhof and Rawoens (2017), is further elaborated.Show less
Within sign language poetry there is a genre that has not been the subject of scientific research yet, even though it has been around for quite some time: visual vernacular. It differentiates...Show moreWithin sign language poetry there is a genre that has not been the subject of scientific research yet, even though it has been around for quite some time: visual vernacular. It differentiates itself from other types of sign language literature in that it hardly ever uses anything but iconic signs, and this is what makes it internationally comprehensible across sign language borders. It is even understandable to audiences who do not have any knowledge of a sign language. Besides iconic signs, it uses many cinematographic techniques such as role switching from and to different subject or objects within the story. Visual vernacular is different from another type of sign language literature called classifier stories mainly in that the latter uses sign language specific lexicon which visual verancular does not. Another similar form of art, this time outside the sign language realm, is pantomime, but this is different from visual vernacular in many ways, one of the most prominent of which is that pantomime performers are only the storyteller whereas visual vernacular performers swith between the storyteller, main protagonist and any other subject or object in the story. By making a literary overview and using a dataset of different types of visual vernacular stories, this thesis provides an inter and intra sign language poetry genre comparison.Show less
In this thesis, I will use comparative data, archaeological evidence and the social and ecological changes in our ancestors' lives, not to pinpoint the exact moment in time language came to be, but...Show moreIn this thesis, I will use comparative data, archaeological evidence and the social and ecological changes in our ancestors' lives, not to pinpoint the exact moment in time language came to be, but to make a case for why two million years ago is more likely than 50.000 years ago.Show less
When infants have two possible rules that they can discover in an artificial language, a prosodic rule and a structure rule, which one do they discover and does this change with development? Prior...Show moreWhen infants have two possible rules that they can discover in an artificial language, a prosodic rule and a structure rule, which one do they discover and does this change with development? Prior studies on infants’ cue weighing suggest a preference for prosodic cues for eight-month-old infants, and a preference for structure for ten-month-old infants when segmenting speech. Using a Headturn Preference Procedure with adapted stimuli from Spierings and ten Cate (2014), we compared looking times for a prosody and structure test condition. We found condition did not have a significant effect on looking time. However, ten-month-old infants had significantly longer looking times compared to the eight-month-old infants. We also found a significant difference for gender, suggesting that female infants have a preference for a different cue to discover underlying language patterns than males.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
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