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The systems underlying incremental sentence comprehension are, in general, highly successful -- comprehenders typically understand sentences of their native language quickly and accurately. The occasional failure of the system to deliver an appropriate representation of a sentence is therefore potentially illuminating. There are many ways the comprehender's general success could in principle be accomplished; the systematic pattern of failures places some constraints on the possible algorithms. This dissertation explores two cases of systematic failure, negative polarity illusions and substitution illusions (sometimes called "Moses illusions") with the goal of identifying the specific circumstances under which the illusion arises, and, as a consequence, the specific constraints placed on possible implementations of linguistic knowledge. In the first part of this dissertation, I explore the profile of the negative polarity illusion, a case in which a sentence containing an unlicensed negative polarity item and a preceding, but not structurally-relevant licensor is perceived as if it is acceptable, at least in early stages of processing. I consider various proposals for the grammatical knowledge that determines the restricted distribution of negative polarity items, and possible algorithms for using that grammatical knowledge in real time to process a sentence containing a negative polarity item. I also discuss possible parallels between negative polarity illusions and superficially-similar illusory phenomena in other domains, such as subject-verb agreement. Across sixteen experiments, I show that the profile of the illusion is more restricted than previously thought. Illusions do not always arise when an unlicensed negative polarity item is preceded by a structurally-irrelevant licensor, and the circumstances under which they do arise are quite specific. These findings suggest that the negative polarity illusion may be meaningfully distinct from other illusory phenomena, though this conclusion does not necessarily require stipulating a separate mechanism for every illusion. I discuss the implications of these findings for possible real-time implementations of grammatical knowledge. In the second part of this dissertation, I turn to the substitution illusion, a case in which a word in a trivia fact is swapped out for another word, making the sentence a world knowledge violation, but comprehenders do not consciously detect the anomalous nature of the sentence. Here I attempt to develop specific and testable hypotheses about the source of the illusion, paying particular attention to how the same mechanism that "fails" in illusion sentences (in that it does not allow the comprehender to detect the anomaly) serves the comprehender well in other circumstances. I demonstrate that the substitution illusion, like the negative polarity illusion, is more restricted than previously thought -- some stimuli yield very high illusion rates while others yield very low illusion rates, and this variability appears to be non-random. In seven experiments, I pursue both a correlational approach and an experimental manipulation of illusion rates, in order to narrow the space of possible explanations for the illusion. These investigations collectively demonstrate that occasional errors in comprehension do not necessarily reflect the use of "shortcuts" in sentence processing, and can be explained by the interaction of the linguistic system with non-linguistic components of the cognitive architecture, such as memory and attention. While neither illusion phenomenon is ultimately fully explained, the research presented here constitutes an important step forward in our understanding of both domains and their broader implications. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The present study aimed to catalogue and compare usage patterns of verb-particle constructions (VPCs) in Modern Standard Arabic and English by native and learner writers. Building upon an analysis of a multi-genre monolingual Arabic corpus, use of both Arabic and English VPCs was explored in a bilingual L1 (first language) Arabic L2 (second language) English corpus containing essays written by the same authors in both languages. While Arabic usage was compared between the monolingual and bilingual corpora, usage between languages within the bilingual corpus was also analyzed. Bilingual-L2 English usage was then compared to a multi-L1 learner corpus and a native English corpus, and an error analysis was conducted to determine any L1 influence/transfer effects of the L1 Arabic on VPC use in the L2 English. The goal of these comparisons was to create a comprehensive picture of VPC usage from several angles based on natural language data. While English VPCs have received extensive attention, there have been few, if any, studies of large-scale usage patterns of these constructions in Arabic, and how these patterns play a role in L2 English VPC use by Arabic speakers. This analysis was designed to give a more Arabic-centered overview of native VPC usage and find corresponding gaps and overlaps in English usage based on authentic, empirical examples. The results of this study have implications for both L1 Arabic L2 English learners as well as L2 learners of Arabic. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

It is standardly believed that some occurrences of expressions designate singularly, while other occurrences of expressions designate plurally. For instance, the singular expression the student may be used on an occasion to talk about one particular student, while the plural expression the students may be used on an occasion to talk about several different students. But it is rarely appreciated that several occurrences of expressions may together designate in a manner that is both plural and structured. Hence, the expressions the students and their essays may be jointly used on an occasion to talk about some students and some essays in a way that relates each student with the sub-collection of the essays that they authored. In other words, several occurrences of expressions may together designate a system of objects that may involve a non-trivial relation among them. The first part of this dissertation investigates the semantic role that variables play in first-order languages. Variables are the most notable type of expression that partakes in this form of structured plural designation. I present a view according to which variables are interpreted by "sui generis" intensional entities. More specifically, I claim that variables express special concepts for thinking about the objects that make up a domain of quantification. These concepts differ from other more familiar intensional entities precisely because they provide ways of thinking about structurally dependent systems of objects. The second part of this dissertation investigates the semantic role that pronouns play in natural languages. Pronouns are commonly believed to be the closest natural language analog to variables. I substantiate this view by arguing that the same intensional entities used to interpret variables should also be used to interpret pronouns. In particular, I claim that some occurrences of expressions are governed by use-conditions that require a speaker to have one or more appropriate concepts of this kind in mind as intended subjects of discourse. Those communicative intentions are then used to fix the content of suitable subsequent occurrences of pronouns. After arguing for this view, I conclude by briefly sketching how it may be compositionally implemented in a standard semantic architecture with a few modest adjustments. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation explores aspects of Me'phaa morphosyntax, from verb roots to verb-initial word orders. I argue that patterns of agreement map directly onto the syntax of argument structure, which in turn feed the language's unique manifestation of ergativity. Me'phaa agreement morphology is richly complex, and I show that this is due, in part, to three core "ergativity properties" (Deal, 2015) coalescing in the language: transitive subjects and intransitive subjects are encoded differently for a subset of verbs (the ergative property), intransitive subjects are sometimes marked with the same morphology as transitive objects (the absolutive property), and split-intransitivity in the language yields differential marking for intransitives (the argument-structural property). This produces a system that is "consistently" ergative, with a particular ergativity property being visible depending on what verbs are under comparison, and what clause types are involved. I propose an explanation of this rich agreement morphology by appealing to the syntax of argument structure. I argue that Me'phaa's way of being ergative is not about verbs "per se", but verbal structures (Marantz, 2013) with distinct functional components and configurations. Language-specific unaccusativity diagnostics and other tests point to the existence of a constellation of verbal structures. Orienting to structural diversity reveals how Me'phaa's patterns of verbal agreement reflect a high degree of sensitivity to underlying geometries. Me'phaa agreement exponents reflect their probe, and an array of functional heads in the verbal domain participate in Agree(ment). This means that higher functional heads (e.g., T) are not required for such operations in the language. Instead, the very pieces involved in building verbal structures are the ones responsible for determining verbal agreement. In addition to laying the foundation for building the clause from the verb up, showing how the verb itself offers a snapshot of the core clausal architecture, this work further accounts for how the verbal and inflectional domains interact to produce verb-initial orders. I propose a VP-remnant raising account for Me'phaa, attending to aspects of the derivation that successfully account for both morpheme order in the verb stem as well as constituent order at the larger clausal level. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation examines complementizer agreement (CA) phenomena in which phi-features appear on a complementizer, clause-linking marker, or otherwise, syntactically speaking, at the C[superscript 0] position. This dissertation will argue that CA is in fact a straightforward output of the syntax module under standard Minimalist assumptions, and that the analysis of CA requires that we simplify rather than complicate our understanding of the probe-goal relationship. CA may be the result of a uphi-probe at C[superscript 0] acting alone, agreeing with a closest goal in situ. More common are cases where CA in relative clauses results from the combination of Agree and movement into specC. An independent phi-probe at C[superscript 0] is both synchronically necessary, and also to be diachronically expected given the source constructions. I argue that the goals available for probes at C[superscript 0] are fed into the closest goal position by the lower structure and that argument structure--e.g., the placement and feature checking of subjects and objects--and information structure--e.g., the raising of Topics--may feed arguments and their phi-features into the path of C[superscript 0]'s probes and yield CA. Cross-linguistic differences in the ability of non-subjects to agree at C follow straightforwardly from differences in the reusability of phi-features in different languages (cf. Carstens 2003). Diachronically, having uphi probe at C[superscript 0] is the natural output of syntactic directionality (as argued for by, e.g., van Gelderen 2009). phi-features of source constructions influence the phi-features found in their descendants; upward- (Bantu) and downward- (Germanic) agreeing CA are the outputs of different diachronic developments. One has its source in the inherent phi-features of a pronoun (goal reanalyzed as probe), while the other is a reanalysis of a verb as a complementizer (T-to-C reanalysis). I propose that CA--while typologically exotic--is syntactically normal. Accounting for CA with a normal Agree relation solves several theoretical issues for the C-T relationship and provides valuable insight into the nature of probes and the behavior of Agree. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation approaches the idea of lexical types such as word, clitic and affix from an oblique angle. Starting with Cardinaletti & Starke's (1999) diagnostics for the Weak Pronoun, I deconstruct the category of clitic, breaking it down into two binary qualities: the syntactic primitive of being linked to a head of a different basic phrasal category, and the phonological primitive of being internal to the phonological word of the host. I argue that the syntactic behaviors of clitic-words, in particular pronominal clitic-words, are predictable if we assume that there is an operation that allows Xmin/max elements to fuse with X[superscript 0] nodes during a syntactic derivation. This creates a complex X[superscript 0] node that selects a clitic-type spell-out form. This fusion process--m-merge, adapted from Matushansky (2006)--is the same process that drives the incorporation part of head-movement. I also propose that the features identified as phonologically clitic-like--reduction, lack of a syllabic nucleus, no coordination and morphological simplicity--result from a similarity to inflectional affixes. Instead of arguing for a distinct clitic phonology I suggest that clitics---when they are simple feature bundles---and agreement affixes are functionally identical and therefore are likely to undergo spell-out in the same way, in particular by being realized internally to their hosts' phonological word, and being able to determine the shape of their host to a greater extent than we expect word-level phonological processes to allow. The evidence supporting these claims shows that many strange grammatical phenomena can be explained simply if we adopt the above principles. The operation m-merge--fusing an Xmin/max to an X[superscript 0] node--offers a straightforward account of the WH as C pattern in interrogative relatives in Middle Bavarian and Lake Constance Alemannic. Considering how my model affects the diachronic trajectory of word-to-clitic-to-affix and adopting a restricted version of Roberts (2010) Move via Agree provides insight into the behavior of French subject pronouns in Old French, Standard French, and Contemporary Colloquial French. Most dramatically, my model offers a straightforward analysis for eight highly distinct types of phi marking in Middle Welsh, even to the point of predicting that three very different syntactic contexts will have the same realization for a phi-marked element. In sum, I argue that although clitics look and behave quite differently from canonical independent words and inflectional affixes, with a thorough understanding of the operations underlying head-movement and vocabulary insertion for paradigmatic elements, clitics are a predicted part of the model. Instead of requiring extra apparatus to explain, clitics offer us ways of simplifying our approach to syntax and the syntax-morphology interface as a whole. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Predicting the outcome of language contact situations is complicated by the fact that the primary agents of linguistic change--individual speakers--are unpredictable (van Coetsem, 2000; Thomason, 2001). My dissertation examines the variety of Spanish spoken in Galicia, Spain, where individual language choices are often motivated not by utility but by complex identitary and ideological factors. Specifically, I employ both spoken and written data to investigate the distribution of two verb constructions that have parallel forms, but differing functions, in Galician and Spanish. I seek to determine the role of linguistic and social factors in conditioning the distribution of these forms in the contact variety of Spanish. Results indicate that, while language contact is likely at play in the region, both historical and more recent social factors such as education and mobility practices (i.e. Britain, 2010) must be taken into account in determining the impact of Galician on the Spanish spoken in the region. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation presents the results of a typological study that investigated the global distribution of antipassive constructions, as well as the distribution of the relevant antipassiverelated features. The sample includes data from 445 languages, which represent 144 language families and isolates. This larger study is informed by an in-depth analysis of Kaqchikel antipassives, and how this influences our understanding of antipassives of Mayan languages. The goals of this study are (1) to provide a more comprehensive look at antipassives and antipassive-type structures than had previously been attempted; (2) to provide an updated account of antipassives in Mayan languages, based on primary data; (3) to discover which other typological factors relate to the existence of antipassives in a particular language (4) to discover the types and distribution of features in antipassive-type constructions cross-linguistically, and (5) to establish guidelines for the identification and description of antipassive-type constructions in a wide variety of languages. Among other discoveries, findings show that about 25% of the world's language have antipassive constructions. Antipassives tend to exist in languages with ergative-absolutive verb alignment, although there are also non-ergative languages which have antipassives. Additionally, while there is on some level a division between antipassives which serve primarily syntactic functions and those which serve primarily pragmatic functions, the more consistent distinction is between antipassives with allow the patient to be expressed in an oblique phrase and those which do not. There are also a small number of languages which can be said to have more than one antipassive. Mayan languages are known for having a rather large number of voice distinctions, including passives and antipassives. I identify five morphosyntactically distinct agent-preserving detransitivizing constructions in Kaqchikel, two of which I considered to be antipassives. I also look at several issues involving the markers for these constructions, the syntactic contexts in which they appear, and how they differ in terms of their function. The facts for Kaqchikel are also compared with what is known about other K'ichean and non-K'ichean languages. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation examines primarily the syntactic, but also the semantic/pragmatic behavior of sentential complement clauses in Turkish and proposes a new classification of such complements. A head-final language, Turkish lacks an overt, lexical complementizer akin to English "that". The most frequent types of sentential complementation in the language are nominalized clauses; however, it is shown that analyses in which nominalized clauses have a DP-layer above or below them are not tenable. It is argued that both nominalized clauses in Turkish and "that"-clauses in English have a [+n/- v] feature in C: in Turkish, this nominal feature manifests itself through nominalization, whereas in English this [+n/ -v] feature manifests itself through the demonstrative "that", also a nominal expression. Embedded "ki"-clauses, generally thought of as just another case of subordination, albeit with an "Indo-European" pattern where "ki" is considered a complementizer, are shown to be paratactic clauses with their own assertoric illocutionary force. The "ki" element, originally borrowed from Persian, is analyzed here as a coordinator of category C. The puzzling root-clause character of these clauses, as well as their characteristic syntactic/semantic behavior with respect to word order, NPI-licensing, "wh"-questions, binding, and focusing adverbs are explained by virtue of this paratactic analysis. The peculiar syntactic and semantic/pragmatic properties of clauses traditionally labelled as "fully finite complements" are shown to be due to their embedded root clause status. These embedded root clauses (ERCs) are also assertions, introducing new information into the discourse. The dissertation further reveals a tight relationship between the position and the interpretation of both DPs and CPs in Turkish. Extending Diesing's (1992) Mapping Hypothesis to CPs, it is argued that referential arguments--both DPs (accusative marked object NPs) and CPs (nominalized clauses)--are externally merged above the VP, whereas non-referential arguments--both existential DPs (bare object DPs) and assertive CPs (embedded root clauses) are below the VP, in the nuclear scope. Under this new analysis of complementation in Turkish, accusative-marked subjects that may occur in ERCs receive a natural explanation: when presuppositional/referential, the subject of the ERC has to move out of the ERC (i.e. the nuclear scope) into the matrix clause (i.e. the restriction clause), where it receives accusative marking, just like any other presuppositional/referential object in Turkish. This movement of the ERC subject into the matrix clause is shown to be due to reasons of information structure. Thus, contra George and Kornfilt (1981), agreement is not seen as the primary factor of finiteness in Turkish. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Ellipsis plays a key role in the understanding of the relationship between what is uttered and what is understood. In elliptical utterances, less is said than is understood. How is it that a mere fragment of a sentence can be understood as something more? This dissertation explores the syntax of one type of elliptical phenomena, Stripping. A speaker, Alexi, might utter (1), to which Tim might reply with a Stripping continuation, as in (1a). Tim's reply, apparently just a "no" along with a single word correction, is nonetheless understood as if it were a complete sentence, that in (1b). Does this interpretation arise as a result of some process which does not rely on syntactic structure within the ellipsis site, or is there hidden syntactic structure associated with the remnant "Ardbeg"? (1) Alexi: James likes "Glenlivet". 1a. Tim: No, "Ardbeg". 1b. Tim: No, James likes "Ardbeg".. I argue in this dissertation that Stripping remnants are indeed associated with silent syntactic structure, and that this structure is "isomorphic" to the structure associated with the antecedent. Evidence for this analysis comes from two empirical domains: Islands and Binding Condition C Effects. In Chapter 2, I present the results of four large scale acceptability judgment experiments which reveal that Stripping is insensitive to island constraints. That is, examples like (2b) are grammatical, contrary to various claims in the literature. I argue in this dissertation that Stripping remnants are indeed associated with silent syntactic structure, and that this structure is isomorphic to the structure associated with the antecedent. Evidence for this analysis comes from two empirical domains: Islands and Binding Condition C Effects. In Chapter 2, I present the results of four large scale acceptability judgment experiments which reveal that Stripping is insensitive to island constraints. That is, examples like (2b) are grammatical, contrary to various claims in the literature. 2a. Tim met [subscript island] the researcher who likes "Glenlivet"]. 2b. No, "Ardbeg". The acceptability of these examples leads us to examine just how much structure is contained within the ellipsis site, if any. If there is no structure within the ellipsis site (3a), or if the structure is non-isomorphic to the antecedent (3b), we would expect such examples to be acceptable, as they contain no island. If the ellipsis site contains structure isormorphic to the antecedent, such examples would only be expected to be acceptable if it were possible to repair island constraints through ellipsis. 3a. No, "Ardbeg". 3b. No, "Ardbeg" it was e [line through it was e.] 3c. No, "Ardbeg" Tim met [subscript island] the researcher who likes e [line through Tim met [subscript island] the researcher who likes e]. These three approaches are evaluated in Chapter 3 on the basis of two large scale plausibility judgment experiments. These experiments concern examples like (4), which were found to be as implausible under the given indexations as typical Binding Condition C violations. This is to be expected only there is structure within the ellipsis that contains material isomorphic to the antecedent, including the island and material outside it. If the ellipsis site contains no hidden material (4a), or some non-isomorphic material (4b), the pronoun of the antecedent would not be recovered within the ellipsis site. If the full isomorphic structure were recovered, that pronoun would appear within the ellipsis site, yielding a Binding Condition C violation. The implausibility of (4) reflects this violation. 4 a. He[subscript i] met the researcher who likes Mary. 4b. *No, James[subscript i].. 5a. No, "James[subscript i.] 5b. No, James [subscript i] it was e [line through it was e.] 5c. No, "James [subscript i] he[subscript i] met [[subscript island] the researcher who likes e [line through [subscript island] the researcher who likes e]. In Chapter 4, I argue that the sum of this evidence implicates that, even in instances of island-violating Stripping, the ellipsis site contains isomorphic structure. In turn, I argue that various alternative mechanisms by which the remnant might escape the ellipsis site, without also incurring an island violation, are inadequate, and instead argue that the remnant overtly moves out of the island to escape the ellipsis site. The ill-effects of this island-violating movement, I argue, take the form of an unlinearizable structure, a structure, and the violation associated with it, which is subsequently elided. Thus, the island insensitivity of Stripping is due to island repair. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This thesis is a study of the syntax of multi-verb constructions, in which a single clause contains more than one verbal element. Multi-verb constructions are of special interest in light of the hypothesis that clausal structure is headed by a verb. Implemented in terms of extended projections, this hypothesis states that clausal functional structure is the extended projection of a verb. A full understanding of multi-verbal constructions, in which there is no one-to-one verb-clause mapping, relies on refinements of the intimate relation between clause structure and the verbal category. Analyzing various types of multi-verb constructions in Ndebele, a Bantu language of Zimbabwe, I propose a theory multi-verbal syntax which makes explicit the ways in which a single extended projection may contain more than one verb. I propose a basic distinction within the verbal category into "projecting verbs" and "non-projecting verbs". Projecting verbs have the ability to head a full clause and are what we typically think of as lexical verbs. Non-projecting verbs, on the other hand, are inherently unable to project full clausal structure. There are two types of non-projecting verbs in Ndebele. "Aspectual auxiliaries" are lexical items whose category feature has mixed properties: it has properties of both a lexical verb and some functional head in the clausal spine. The mixed properties are detected by different aspects of their syntax. The second type of non-projecting verb is the default auxiliary (be, in Ndebele), used in compound tenses. The default auxiliary is a verbal expletive, which becomes part of the derivation via last-resort selection. Any multi-verbal construction with more than one lexical (projecting) verb necessarily contains more than one extended projection. Additionally, the thesis is concerned with the role of two syntactic dependencies in the inflectional domain: agreement and selection. Both relations are involved in determining the morphological shape of multi-verb constructions by posing restrictions on the form, category and size of the main lexical verb. Depending on the light/auxiliary verb, it can be a participle (imperfective, past or future), have a subjunctive form (present or past), or be infinitival/clausal. It is argued that such cooccurrence patterns are largely predictable from clause structure and agreement. Selection is involved only in a small set of idiosyncratic cases of complement selection. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This is a study of processes of structural and functional diversification of the uses of three cognate verbs across the Indo-Iranian language family: "do/make", "be/become", and "give". First, this study identifies over sixty distinct construction types in which these verbs are used, including complex predicate constructions, nominal predication constructions, serial verb constructions, and several distinct auxiliary constructions. Since the sets of verbs studied here are cognates, and share a common source, crosslinguistic differences in their uses are the result of grammatical change, and especially shared and parallel innovations of similar uses. Then, this study presents a taxonomy of different complex predication types with "do/make", and shows that there are general patterns in the deployment of different types of complex predication to express different types of situations. These patterns exhibit "transitivity prominence" previously identified by typologists with "heavy" or "lexical" verbs. This study then shows that these patterns are the result of several distinct pathways of grammatical change, often motivated by analogy to existing constructions, giving raise to different types of N-V complex predication constructions. Then, this study shows that despite the fact that Indo-Iranian speakers can potentially deploy distinct constructions to encode each of the six nominal predication functions, sets of such functions are often co-expressed by the same structural coding means, especially clauses with cognate "be/become" verbs. This study uses a novel method, based on bipartite network graphs, to compare of the degree to which nominal predication functions are co-expressed in different languages. Finally, this study shows that the three sets of cognate verbs are more likely to be used similarity within branches and subbranches of Indo-Iranian than across branches. The scope of this branches, however, is different for different verbs: "do/make" and "give" behave more similarly in languages which belong to the same major branch, Iranian or Indo-Aryan, but "be/become" clusters are at different levels of subbranching. This is the result of the different types of innovations attested with these verbs: reanalysis and actualization motivated by analogy with "do/make" and "give", and metaphorical and metonymy extensions with "be/become". [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This thesis examines the role of the African substrate languages in the emergence of Atlantic Creole grammatical structures. Alleyne (1980) and Faraclas (1990) have convincingly demonstrated that a survey of the grammatical features that typify the Colonial Era English-Lexifier Creoles of the Atlantic reveals remarkable similarities with those found in the Benue-Kwa languages of the Niger-Congo family, which are spoken along the coast of West Africa from Ghana to the Cape of Good Hope. I use a corpus that consists of carefully transcribed natural speech in basilectal and mesolectal Crucian Creole that I obtained in 2006 during a fieldwork course in St. Croix. My work is based on Alleyne's thesis (1980) that the Atlantic Creoles arose naturally in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from bilingual and multilingual contacts between Europeans and West Africans, who spoke languages belonging to the Benue-Kwa and other branches of the Niger-Congo language family. Alleyne acknowledges that English contributed to the new systems, but the evidence presented by him suggests that important structural continuities from West Africa persist in present-day Afro-American varieties. Alleyne's continuity model uses the comparative method to establish the African roots of the grammars of the Atlantic Creoles. Alleyne discusses extensively the African syntactic and phonological base from which Afro-American languages descended and also argues that African and European languages were part of the socio-cultural matrix in contact areas in Africa, and that the proto-language(s) from which the Atlantic Creoles emerged had more African Niger-Congo linguistic characteristics than European features. Through his continuity model, he is able to show that the changes undergone by Atlantic Creoles in phonology and in grammar are what would be expected from normal processes of linguistic acculturation. These changes, even though significant, have left intact many of the African prosodic and syntactic features of the original proto-Creole reconstructed in part by Alleyne. For him, the notion held by many creolists that Creoles result from a process of "expansion" from "simplified" or "restricted" pidgins is not based on facts or reliable evidence, since the grammars of the Atlantic Creoles have not changed significantly throughout time. Parting from Alleyne's thesis, I searched in my data for the features and constructions identified by Faraclas (1990) as commonly occurring both in the Atlantic Creoles and in his sample of Niger-Congo languages, which are among the most widely spoken in Southern Nigeria. My findings strongly suggests that the grammars of the Atlantic Creoles were indeed influenced by the grammars of the Niger-Congo languages and that Crucian retains a considerable amount of these African influenced grammatical features. I provide a detailed discussion of some of these features, with examples from both Crucian and the Niger-Congo sample languages. These features are discussed more holistically and analytically, in terms of the grammatical systems within which they function in Niger-Congo languages and in the Atlantic Creoles. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Wh-questions have been widely discussed in different languages such as English, Mandarin Chinese, Italian, and Russian, but little attention has been paid to the structure of wh-questions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Thus, this dissertation attempts to analyze the structure of wh-questions using the current frameworks: "Minimalism and Cartography." In the late 1990s, Chomsky established the Minimalist Program which aims to describe the clause structure in as simple and economic mechanism as possible, and he advanced his famous research program to include phase theory, which aims to restrict the syntactic operations. On the other side, Rizzi (1997, 2001) proposed the Cartographic approach. In this approach, Rizzi attempted to analyze the left periphery domain in detail, and suggested the split CP hypothesis. Following those two approaches, Ginsburg (2009) and Totsuka (2015) unified them into one approach and suggested that ForceP, TopicP, and IntP are phasal domain while FocusP, FinP, and WhP are not. An overview of the Chomskyan model and Rizzi's approach has been provided in Chapter 2. Also, this dissertation discussed the unified approach by Ginsburg (2009) and Totsuka (2015). In addition to the overview of the general frameworks, this dissertation discussed the clause structure such as the word order, left periphery domain (i.e., CP), and resumption in MSA. Furthermore, Chapter 2 presented the earlier studies on the wh-questions in MSA and highlighted the major gap which this dissertation attempts to fill. In these studies the structure of wh-questions in MSA were mis-analyzed because the surface structure of the nine wh-questions might look the same, but, in fact, they are not. Therefore, this dissertation attempts to (re)study the structure of wh-questions with taking into consideration the resumption and [definiteness]. In Chapter 3, the methodology and corpus analysis, which is used in collecting the wh-questions in MSA, are discussed. Finally, Chapter 4 analyzed the corpus findings based on the unified approach by Ginsburg (2009) and Totsuka (2015) and showed some evidence that man "who" and "ayy" "which" questions in MSA are in phasal phrase (i.e., IntP) while the rest of wh-questions are not. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The syntax of Arabic elliptical constructions is unsettled, as there are few studies that have been done in the Arabic descriptive literature, as well as in Jordanian Arabic (henceforth, JA) specifically. Therefore, this paper will investigate some elliptical constructions in JA in particular to figure out the analysis of these constructions. In order to pursue this research, it is crucial to determine how JA elliptical data behave inasmuch as some examples are diagnosed as gapping constructions, while others are sluicing constructions. The research questions are: "What are the properties of JA elliptical constructions including gapping and (pseudo)-sluicing?," "what is the syntax of these constructions in JA?," "how do the facts of JA structure contribute to the literature of ellipsis?," "does JA violate or salvage the Preposition Stranding Generalization?," and " how does the availability of wh-clefting in JA salvages PSG?" [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

We still know surprisingly little about how grammatical structures are selected for use in sentence production. A major debate concerns whether structural selection is competitive or noncompetitive. Competitive accounts propose that alternative structures or structural components actively suppress one another's activation until one option reaches the threshold for selection, whereas noncompetitive accounts propose that grammatical structures emerge as a result of incremental processes that generate an utterance in a piece-by-piece fashion, without direct competition between syntactic components. In this dissertation, I test the hypothesis that a competitive structural selection mechanism may function in tandem with more general incremental processes. Most importantly, I manipulated the structure of prime sentences (active and passive), and also included an unrelated control prime condition (intransitive structure) in order to clearly segregate facilitatory and competitive effects. Syntactic flexibility was manipulated by constraining structural choices or leaving them open. To fully explore syntactic and lexical processes, experiments also manipulated two kinds of verbs (normal agentive verbs and theme-experiencer verbs), verb repetition, and lexical priming of sentence arguments. Dependent measures included structural choices for the unconstrained conditions and initiation latency for all conditions. Across five experiments, results did not consistently show effects of structural priming on syntactic choices for unconstrained targets, or on reaction time. Consequently, there was also no evidence of competition in terms of reversals of choice rates or slower initiation of unprimed structures. Despite this, there was some evidence of increasing passive use within experiments. Given the weak priming effects, the patterns of errors and reaction times were assessed outside of the priming manipulations. The results of these comparisons generally indicated that production was faster and less error-prone in the unconstrained conditions, consistent with a noncompetitive account, and largely replicating Ferreira (1996). The experiments also demonstrated dramatic differences of flexibility for the two different sub-types of verbs. As a whole, this dissertation provides little evidence for syntactic competition during structural selection in sentence production. However, a definitive test of competition in grammatical formulation must await a more successful manipulation of immediate structural choices. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

In this dissertation I set out to solve a series of puzzles related to the notion of a DP periphery, defined as an area around the edge of a given domain targeted by operations such as movement and agreement. In solving these puzzles, I argue for a peripheral area in the nominal domain. Early arguments for a peripheral boundary in the nominal domain are found in the justifications for a functional D as the head of the noun phrase (Abney, 1987; Szabolcsi, 1987, 1994; Horrocks & Stavrou, 1985). More recently, the nominal domain has been argued to contain a peripheral area on the basis of CP/DP parallelisms (Giusti, 1996; Aboh, 2004). Here I am minimally concerned with proposing functional projections as parallels to other domains; rather, I make use of DP-particular projections--such as DP and NumP--to account for the three puzzles I present. I present the first puzzle in chapter 2: the licensing conditions for nominal ellipsis and nominal gapping in English and in French (Lobeck, 1995; Sleeman, 1996; Jackendoff, 1971; Yoshida, Wang, & Potter, 2012). I argue for a unified analysis of these phenomena, the mechanics of which serve as the functional basis for the remaining arguments in this dissertation. I propose a system of feature agreement, which I call Mutual Agree, in which nominal ellipsis is licensed when a higher, licensing head agrees with a lower, ellipsis head. Mutual Agree not only accounts for all instances of nominal ellipsis and gapping in English and French, but it also restricts the ellipsis mechanism to only license ellipsis in appropriate contexts. The second puzzle I consider (chapter 3) is the functional structure of phrases that undergo degree inversion (Matushansky, 2002; Den Dikken, 2006; Troseth, 2009). The main goals of the chapter are twofold. First I argue for an analysis of degree inversions that derives the interpretive parallels between simple degree inversion constructions and those with complex post-degree structure. I follow Troseth's (2009) proposal that degree inversions are derived via predicate inversion and then propose that the degree phrase predicates of these inversion constructions are complex, relative-like clauses. Second I argue that the variable ordering patterns found in degree inversions can be given a simple syntactic account if we assume that some degree words can take a null complement as opposed to an overt adjectival complement. The features that are involved in Mutual Agree also play a role in degree inversion; I specifically argue that the feature of contrastive focus is what causes the movement of a predicative degree phrase out of the small clause configuration and to a prenominal position. The final puzzle I present (chapter 4) explores the possibility of island "repair" under nominal ellipsis (for discussions of repair in the clausal domain, see Ross, 1967, and Merchant, 2001). I first show that the system of Mutual Agree accounts for why certain elements, but not others, may escape nominal ellipsis in order to be candidates for island repair. I demonstrate that apparent repair of DP-internal island violations occurs in certain nominal ellipsis scenarios. I argue that this occasional repair is due to the fact that repair is only an illusion (Barros, Elliot, & Thoms, 2014, 2015). Repair effects are the result of the ellipsis site potentially containing a non-island-violating construction; this ambiguity results in acceptance of the ellipsis-containing structure. I conclude in chapter 5 by returning to what the three preceding chapters reveal about the function of projections in DP. I argue that the combination of (i) evidence from ellipses, (ii) evidence from ellipsis escape, and (iii) evidence from non-elliptical movement reveal what appears to be an articulated, albeit small, periphery of sorts. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The purpose of this dissertation is to offer a multifaceted overview of stand-alone literature reviews. These texts, literature reviews published unattached to research articles, have existed for centuries but remained largely unstudied by linguists. Thus, the goal of this project is to present these reviews' situational, grammatical, and structural characteristics over time and across disciplines to allow for comparisons with other registers of academic prose. The study presented here is based a corpus of 417 stand-alone literature reviews in three disciplines: medicine, education, and psychology. Reviews within each discipline are also divided by time period (i.e., 1940-1964, 1965-1989, and 1990-2014), with reviews for the corpus selected from the years around 1950, 1980, and 2010. Two other distinctions are also made: review type, operationalized as qualitative with methods, qualitative without methods, or quantitative with methods, and review status, operationalized as peer reviewed or invited. Four different analyses are undertaken with discipline, time period, review type, and review status functioning as independent variables in each analysis. A preliminary investigation of the discourse domain (i.e., frequency and types of reviews present) and context (e.g., authorship, audience) for literature reviews in existence during the seventy-five years between 1940 and 2014 undergirds the structural and linguistic analyses. The second analysis undertaken is a genre analysis of both organizational structures (e.g., sections present), and moves (e.g., establish a research gap) within introductory, methods and concluding sections in reviews from 1950 and 2010. Subsequent analyses then expand to cover all sections and reviews from 1950, 1980, and 2010 with a register analysis of forty-five individual grammatical features and a multidimensional analysis based on the first five dimensions established by Biber (1988). Statistical analyses offer a portrait of the differences between groups of stand-alone literature reviews while textual excerpts further exemplify linguistic and structural characteristics. The results show that reviews have changed dramatically over the last seventy-five years. Review types have evolved and new review sections have appeared since 1940. By 2014, quantitative reviews (i.e., meta-analyses) are common and respected in the journals studied, and methods sections are included in qualitative stand-alone literature reviews in many journals. Individually, grammatical features within reviews were found to differ significantly by three out of four independent variables--disciplines, time period, and review type--revealing changes in stance, narrativity, colloquialization, and elaborated vs. compressed sentence structure. Finally, multidimensional analysis revealed that stand-alone literature reviews are elaborated, non-narrative, non-evaluative texts. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

From a usage-based approach, this dissertation explores the relationship between structural variability and discourse subjectivity in a series of interviews from the "New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish Survey" (Bills and Vigil 2008). Focusing on the use of cognitive and speech verbs, the analysis will demonstrate that a) structural patterns arising from said interaction form a continuum ranging from schematic to fixed constructions; b) the degree of morpho-syntactic variability of these constructions correlates to the speaker's stance towards the information being communicated; and c) in actual interaction, speakers frequently introduce subjective nuances, even if the topic of the discourse may be associated with mere transmission of propositional information. To address the aforementioned goals, a set of features is proposed to determine whether frequent subject-tense combinations are becoming prefabs or formulaic expressions, or whether they are schematic constructions merely transmitting propositional information. Previous studies have explored structural patterns of subjectivity in conversation, either examining a wide range of verbal classes (Scheibman 2002) or focusing on specific verbs and their relation to other items in the semantic class (Tao 2001; Weber and Bentivoglio 1991), as well as the subjectification of specific verbs (Company Company 2006a; Company Company 2006b; Travis 2005; Travis 2006a; Travis 2006b). This study contributes to the understanding of emergent grammar, subjectivity, and subjectification across languages by addressing the patterning of frequently used semantic classes and verbs in a context of language and sociocultural contact. The study aims to contribute as well to the revalorization of New Mexican Spanish by demonstrating that structural patterns emerging from the discourse of its speakers are as systematic as those arising from the discourse of speakers of more prestigious dialects of the language. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation first addresses various shortcomings in definitions of "applicative" when compared to what is actually found across languages. It then proposes a four-way distinction among applicative constructions, relevant at least to Bantu, a large family of languages spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa. Because of the gradual nature of historical change, differences among construction types may be somewhat graded. In what are called Type A applicative constructions, the applicative morpheme expands the argument structure of its root by introducing an obligatorily present applied phrase. This expansion might result, but need not, in increased syntactic valence of the derived verb stem. Type A includes cases where the applicative on a lexicalized applicative stem still has the ability to introduce an applied phrase. In Type B applicative constructions, the applicative expands the argument structure of its root by introducing an obligatorily present applied phrase and performs other semantic/pragmatic functions on the applied phrase or on the whole clause (e.g. the applied phrase becomes the narrow-focused constituent in the clause). As in Type A, syntactic valence might be increased, but need not be. In Type C applicative constructions, the applicative does not introduce an applied phrase. Instead, it provides semantic nuances to the lexical meaning of its root (e.g. the action described by the root is performed to completion, repetitively, in excess, etc.). Unlike Type A and Type B, Type C constructions are not fully productive and may undergo lexicalization. Fourthly, in Pseudo-applicative constructions, the applicative morpheme found on a lexicalized stem does not introduce an applied phrase and does not perform semantic and/or pragmatic functions described for Type B and Type C. Because the last type, especially, has not been acknowledged in prior literature, the dissertation presents a historically informed case study of 78 pseudo-applicative forms in Tswana (S31), a southern Bantu language spoken in Botswana and South Africa. Finally, this study argues that both the synchronic functions of the Bantu applicative suffix *-id and the lexicalization paths emerging from the study of Tswana pseudo-applicative forms support an original Location/Goal function of *-id in Proto-Bantu, rather than an original Beneficiary function. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

A class of Modern Standard Arabic complementizers known as "'?inna' and its sisters" demonstrate unique case and word order restrictions. While CPs in Arabic allow both Subject-Verb (SV) and Verb-Subject (VS) word order and their subjects show nominative morphology, CPs introduced by "?inna" ban a verb from directly following the complementizer. Preverbal subjects in "?inna" clauses show accusative case marking, while postverbal subjects show nominative morphology. Previous research explains these restrictions as default case or Multiple Case Assignment, both problematic for Case Theory as they violate the Activation Principle. This dissertation explains word order and case effects of "?inna" within the framework of Phase Theory and Feature Inheritance (FI). Morphological, historical, and usage evidence point out that "?inna"-type complementizers have verbal properties similar to illocutionary verbs. Taking Case to be a reflection of phi features that T heads receive from higher heads (e.g. Complementizers) via Feature Inheritance, the nominative-accusative alternation on preverbal subjects can be attributed to the selection of C heads: phi features on null complementizers and conditionals reflect as NOM, while phi features on Verbal Complementizers (VCs) reflect as ACC. VCs show similar Case behavior to the English Prepositional Complementizer for. They differ in distribution; while for only introduces a subordinate clause, and takes infinitival TP complements, VCs introduce a matrix clause and require finite TP complements, lending stronger support to Feature Inheritance theory than English for. Nominative postverbal subjects in "?inna" clauses are explained as an effect of antiagreement at Spell-Out. Postverbal subjects and the Case probe on T are PF local, allowing for impoverished case agreement. Preverbal subjects and the Case licenser belong to different Phonological Phrases. To satisfy the Recoverability Condition, full case agreement is required between T and the subject, resulting in accusative morphology on the subject. Finally, the requirement that "?inna"-clauses have an intervener between "?inna" and the verb is explained by associating the full phi features of "?inna" with the EPP. As the phi set is inherited from "?inna" to T, the EPP property is satisfied by the preverbal subject or by adverbial intervening between "?inna" and the verb. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Accurate recovery of predicate-argument dependencies is vital for interpretation tasks like information extraction and question answering, and unbounded dependencies may account for a significant portion of the dependencies in any given text. This thesis describes a Generalized Categorial Grammar (GCG) which, like other categorial grammars, imposes a small, uniform, and easily learnable set of semantic composition operations based on functor-argument relations, but like HPSG, is generalized to limit the number of categories used to those needed to enforce grammatical constraints. The thesis also describes a system for automatically reannotating syntactically-annotated corpora for the purpose of refining linguistically-informed phrase structure analyses of various phenomena. In particular, it describes a method for implementing syntactic analyses of various phenomena through automatic reannotation rules, which operate deterministically on a corpus like the Penn Treebank (Marcus et al., 1993) to produce a corpus with desired syntactic analyses. This reannotated corpus is then used to define a probabilistic grammar which is automatically annotated with additional latent variable values (Petrov and Klein, 2007) and used to parse the constituent and syntactic dependencies from input sentences of the Wall Street Journal and from a minimal but special corpus introduced by (Rimell et al., 2009) that contains only sentences having Object extraction from a relative clause, Object extraction from a reduced relative clause, Subject extraction from a relative clause, Free relatives, Object wh-questions, Right node raising, and Subject extraction from an embedded clause. This corpus was designed specifically to test various parsers on their capability to recover these unbounded dependencies as studied by (Rimell et al., 2009, Nivre et al., 2010). Our system achieves the best result with noticeable margin on unbounded dependency recovery task compared to the results of all 7 other major systems studied by (Rimell et al., 2009, Nivre et al., 2010). The first paper describing this system earned the attention from the NLP research community after it won the Best Paper Award at the international conference COLING 2012. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

"Reclaiming Ga?" is a curious title for readers oblivious to the fact that the meaning of "?a?" has been lost. Indeed, "?a?" is but one of several linguistic signals of Koine Greek that allude the grasp of the modern scholar. This has created an environment within NT studies described here as conjunctive irrelevance--i.e., the state in which the semantic distinctives of these markers have been lost so that their communicative signal is ignored or misconstrued. Due to the increased emphasis among NT scholars regarding the importance of structural analysis for exegesis and the potential role of intersentential markers in these debates, a re-examination of the meaning and structural significance of "?a?" is warranted. The thesis of this study is simply this: "?a?" serves as a discourse marker alerting the recipient of the author's (or speaker's) response to a perceived (but inescapable) question or objection--i.e., a response to factors perceived to be inhibiting (or that have inhibited) receptivity to the intended message. While various disciplines are considered in the discussion of this thesis, the argument (and thus the evidence) presented here is ultimately historical. Five centuries of lexicography are surveyed in order to understand the root, growth, and extent of this problem (chapter one). This survey uncovers the testimony of the most credible witness to the meaning of "?a?" (i.e., Apollonius Dyscolus) and exposes a scholarly error in the representation of this evidence. The discussion of Apollonius highlights the difficult task of defining such markers, suggests a solution to the perceived ambiguity surrounding "?a?" (a semantic distinction that is still evident in modern Greek), and presents strong evidence in support of the stated thesis. Further evidence is drawn first, from the field of linguistics (chapter two), demonstrating why scholars have neither recognized nor resolved this issue, and second, from the field of pragmatics, specifically, Relevance Theory (chapter three), suggesting a more productive approach. Finally, the current coherence-based methodology is contrasted with the relevance-theoretic perspective in an examination of both extra-biblical (chapter three) and biblical texts, including a limited consideration of text critical issues (chapter four). [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation concerns the interaction of syntax and information structure in Mandarin Chinese and puts the theoretical assumption of parallelism between clauses and noun phrases to the test. It examines and validates the information structural status of the object phrases preposed to clause-internal positions. I argue that Rizzi's (1997) "fine structure of the left periphery" proposed for Indo-European languages can be extended from the analysis of phrases that appear at the clause periphery to the analysis of phrases appearing in the sentence-internal domain in Chinese. This proposal is attested through the examination of the interaction between the preposed objects and other constructions, such as "wh"-questions, the "ba"-construction, modals, the "lian"-construction and the cleft-construction. Moreover, I argue that the so-called verb-copying structure and the fixed ordering of Topic and Focus elements in Chinese are better accounted for under the proposed analysis. The result of this study then explains the compatibility and the restriction of the co-occurrence of CP and TP Foci. The study also attempts to clarify the internal syntactic structure and its semantic effects of nominal expressions in Mandarin Chinese comparing them with those in other languages (Giusti 1996 and Aboh 2004). It is argued that the occurrence of measure words in Chinese represents the notion of "unit" that defines and quantifies over the noun phrase, independent of projections of demonstratives and nouns. Finally, I argue that nominals in Chinese are parallel to clauses in encoding the information structural properties to the elements appearing at the left periphery and the internal domain. This proposal accounts for the semantics and the specific discourse functions expressed by various types of nominal expressions. It also accounts for the non-canonical distribution of adjectives, ellipses of various sizes of nominal phrases, and the phenomenon of internal reordering of words within nominal expressions. The dissertation introduces a wide range of new data which makes it possible to reevaluate previous proposals, and to propose a new perspective to examine the parallelisms between clauses and noun phrases in regard to the interaction between syntax and information structure. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Comparative correlatives, like "the longer you stay out in the rain, the colder you'll get," are prolific in the world's languages (i.e., there is no evidence of a language that lacks comparative correlatives). Despite this observation, the data do not present a readily apparent syntax. What is the relationship between the two clauses? What is the main verb? What is English's "the" which obligatorily appears at the start of each clause? This thesis reviews prior analyses of comparative correlatives, both syntactic and semantic (Fillmore, 1987; McCawley, 1988; McCawley, 1998; Beck, 1997; Culicover & Jackendoff, 1999; Borsley, 2003; Borsley, 2004; den Dikken, 2005; Abeille, Borsley & Espinal, 2007; Lin, 2007). A formal syntactic analysis of comparative correlatives is presented which accounts for its syntactic behaviors across several languages. Most notably, it challenges the assumption that constructions are essential primitives for the successful derivation and interpretation of the data (Fillmore, 1987; McCawley, 1988; Culicover & Jackendoff, 1999; Borsley, 2003; Borsley, 2004; Abeille, Borsley & Espinal, 2007). The analysis is framed within the goals of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993, 1995a), specifically with respect to endocentricity and Bare Phrase Structure (Chomsky 1995b). Crosslingustically, the first clause is subordinate to the second clause, the main clause. A'-movement (e.g., Topicalization, "wh"-movement, Focus) out of each clause proceeds successive-cyclically and, in the case of the subordinate clause, via sideward movement (Nunes 1995, 2004; Hornstein, 2001). In English, the word "the" which obligatorily appears at the start of each clause in English is a Force[superscript 0]. This provides an explanation for the ban on Subject-Aux Inversion (SAI) in the entire expression. The degree phrases which are present in each clause of a comparative correlative crosslinguistically contain a quantifier phrase in Spec,DegP; this quantifier is phonetically null in English. This thesis concludes by presenting conceptual arguments against constructions as primitives in the grammar. Bare Phrase Structure (BPS) (Chomsky, 1995b) is included in the system by virtue of virtual conceptual necessity (VCN). Since constructions do not meet the criteria of (VCN), their existence would compromise the principles of BPS. Further, when applied carefully, BPS renders constructions unable to be defined. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Ho, an under-documented North Munda language of India, is known for its complex verb forms. This dissertation focuses on analysis of several features of those complex verbs, using data from original fieldwork undertaken by the author. By way of background, an analysis of the phonetics, phonology and morphophonology of Ho is first presented. Ho has vowel harmony based on height, and like other Munda languages, the phonological word is restricted to two moras. There has been a long-standing debate over whether Ho and the other North Munda languages have word classes, including verbs as distinct from nouns. Looking at the distribution of object, property and action concepts, this study argues that Ho does, in fact, have word classes, including a small class of adjectives. Several new morphological analyses are given; for example, what has previously been called "passive" is here analyzed as "middle". The uses of the middle -od in Ho overlap with uses documented for other middle-marking languages, suggesting that this is a better label than "passive". Ho traditionally marks aspect in the verb rather than tense, especially for transitive verb constructions. Several aspect suffixes follow the verb root. Ho is developing a periphrastic past tense construction with the past tense copula form "taikena". Also, the combination of perfect(ive) aspect suffixes and the transitivity suffix -d always gives a past tense interpretation, to the extent that -d may be re- grammaticalizing to past tense. Three types of complex clauses are discussed in the dissertation: complement clauses; relative clauses and serial verb constructions. Like many South Asian languages, Ho has productive serial verbs and several serialized verbs are grammaticalizing to become more like auxiliary verb constructions. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation investigates the Mandarin Chinese nominals [Numeral-Classifier-("de")-Noun] and their functions as preverbal and post-verbal subjects and topics. It starts with a close analysis of the internal structure of the Chinese nominals. I propose a set of syntactic structures that capture the behaviors and distinctions between the canonical [Num(eral)-Cl(assifier)-N(oun)] and the non-canonical [Num(eral)-Cl(assifier)-"de"-N(oun)] expressions. Upon close examinations of the extensive data, Chapter 2 concludes that the canonical [Num-Cl-N] has a right-branching structure (Tang 1990, 2005; Li 1998, 1999), while the non-canonical [Num-Cl-"de"-N] has two left-branching structures, which correspond to the amount reading and the attributive reading respectively. I also explore two issues related to the Chinese nominal structures, the classifier modification case [Num-A(djective)-Cl-N] and the null "yi" "one" case [(yi)-Cl-N]. For the former issue, I suggest that the combination of the adjective and the CL/M is decided by the semantic compatibility among the gradable adjective, the CL/M, and the head noun. As for the latter, I propose that Mandarin [Cl-N] and ["yi"-Cl-N] have the same structure, and "yi" "one" is subject to PF deletion in destressed contexts (Li 1998). From the internal nominal structures, I go on to explore the Chinese nominals in preverbal positions, that is, the canonical subject positions and topic positions. Specifically, I seek to permute the DP-internal account (Li 1998, 1999) with a more refined predicational distinction that incorporates the primacy of location (McNally 1992) in the thetic/categorical distinction (Kuroda 1992, 2005). I suggest that only location-dependent Stage-level predicates (LD SLP) express thetic judgment. Individual-level predicates (ILP), which are location-independent (unless coerced), must be categorical. Location-independent Stage-level predicates (LI SLP) are also categorical; however, when [Num-Cl-N], particularly ["yi" "one"-Cl-N], is acceptable, it is a type of quantificational sentence (Kuroda 1995, Shyu 2012). What this proposal translates into subject definiteness/specificity is that ILP must have definite or generic subjects, LI SLP may have specific subjects, and the LD SLP can have non-specific subjects. I continue the discussion of Chinese subjects by looking at the post-verbal subjects in the Existential Construction (EC) you "have"-sentences, particularly the EC with secondary predicates, called the Existential Coda Construction (ECC). I argue against the adjunct and the NP/DP analyses in the literature, and proposed a V-complement analysis which is functionally a topic-comment structure. The proposed structure is able to account for the essential properties of the ECC as well as the lack of the Coda restriction in Mandarin, that is, Mandarin ECC allows ILP. In addition, Chapter 4 examines the Definiteness Effect (DE). Echoing many others, I suggest that the DE is an epiphenomenon of the discourse function of the EC--to introduce new information. Finally, I claim that the Specific Effect (Huang 1987; Tsai 1994, 1999) does not hold in Chinese, and suggest that the compatibility between the post-verbal NP (be it a bare noun or a [Num-Cl-N]) and the Coda (be it SLP or ILP) decides the acceptability of the ECC. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The main purpose of this study is to depict Nagarjuna's implication on how he redefined the Four Conditions ("atvarah pratyaya") as the cognitive linguistic structure by allocating 32 functional metadata throughout the texts of Mulamadhyamakakarika (MMK). Following subtle traces of "okasamvrtisatya" (the conventional truth) in the text of MMK, the integrated framework of a cognitive linguistic structure can be detected. Nagarjuna did not negate nor degrade the conventional truth in the context of MMK. The Four Conditions conceal their cognitive variations underneath language, yet they can be consolidated as a structure of knowledge that has capacity of preservability, in a sense of linear consistency of unchanging combinational conditions, as well as recognizability, in a sense of circular transition of changing between two combinational conditions. Such an algorithm of cognition as well as communication are possible because one is able to detect the conditional changes when the stream of cognitive process evolves from one cognitive entity to another with a paradigm of "pratityasamutpada" that is described as ""imasmim sati idam hoti (Because this exists that exists.)" of the Early Buddhism. The Four Conditions and their relevant 32 metadata are the foundational platform that Nagarjuna developed in MMK which mutually interlock and capture the cognitive stream in the structure of language. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The Pacific Coast Athabaskan (PCA) languages are part of the Athabaskan language family, one of the most geographically widespread in North America. Over a millennium ago Athabaskan-speaking groups migrated into northwestern California and southwestern Oregon from a northern point of origin several hundred miles away, but even after several centuries separated from other languages in the family and in contact with neighboring non-Athabaskan populations their languages changed only incrementally and maintained an essentially Athabaskan character. Beginning in the mid-19th century, disruptions associated with colonization brought closely-related PCA varieties into intimate contact both with each other and with English, leading eventually to their current state of critical endangerment. This dissertation explores these diachronic developments and seeks to understand (a) how the PCA languages are related to each other and to the rest of the Athabaskan language family, (b) the social and structural dynamics of dialect contact between Athabaskan varieties from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, and (c) the linguistic consequences of bilingualism as Athabaskan communities shifted from their heritage languages to English. Chapter 1 situates the research in a theoretical and methodological context that informs subsequent chapters. Special attention is paid to outlining competing modes of explanation for diachronic outcomes observed in dialect contact situations, comparing demographic approaches that make reference to population size or density versus indexical approaches that invoke people's strategic deployment of linguistic resources to achieve social aims. Chapter 2 addresses questions related to linguistic phylogenesis that took place over a relatively long timespan, focusing specifically on the question of whether or not the PCA languages comprise a well-defined subgroup within the Athabaskan family. This chapter uses recent computational methods that have been adapted from the study of biological evolution to address analogous issues in historical linguistics. Using a combination of lexical, phonological, and morphological characters, the chapter considers how results obtained with this computational approach compare with findings from traditional historical-comparative methods, where it has been suggested that tree-like branching structures are inappropriate models of Athabaskan linguistic relationships. The main empirical finding of this chapter is that the PCA languages emerge as a well-supported subgroup of Athabaskan under a variety of conditions: with lexical or non-lexical characters or a combination of both, and with different model assumptions about rates of evolution across lineages. Other findings of interest include topological differences obtained using multi-state versus binary coding schemes and the extent to which lexical, phonological, and morphological characters give convergent results in phylogenetic analysis. Chapters 3 and 4 address the linguistic effects of contact between Athabaskan populations that resulted when indigenous people of California and Oregon were dispossessed and consolidated on a small number of reservations in the mid-19th century. Some current approaches to dialect contact predict that koineization leading to leveling of structural differences between input dialects is virtually inevitable, and that the direction of leveling will favor majority variants. Other theories emphasize speakers' agency in selecting the linguistic variables in their environment and allow for a wider variety of outcomes. A close examination of parameters of variation in Hoopa Valley, California (chapter 3), and Siletz, Oregon (chapter 4) shows overall that structural leveling of dialect differences did occur in this period. However, leveling applied unevenly, with some parameters of regional variation persisting into the last generation of speakers to acquire native fluency in the PCA languages, in some cases even for dialects that were a tiny minority. These results suggest that a theory allowing for the maintenance of dialect differences via social-indexical considerations does a better job of explaining the full range of observed outcomes than one relying on deterministic majority-rule demographic principles alone. Chapter 5 considers the linguistic consequences of contact between English and Hupa, the best-documented PCA language. The chapter focuses on lexical innovations in Hupa introduced to refer to the plethora of new technologies that became part of everyday life in Hoopa Valley in the 19th century. The main finding is that Hupa speakers borrowed very few lexical items from English, preferring instead to adapt existing Hupa words or to coin new ones using productive morphological resources. In non-lexical domains, an examination of main clause constituent order reveals that younger generations of Hupa speakers tended to use a postverbal nominal position less frequently than earlier generations had. However, it is argued that this is due not to direct bilingual interference from English, but rather to pragmatic contraction disfavoring the use of marked word orders. Chapter 6 concludes, summarizing the main findings of the dissertation and outlining directions for future research. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

A key debate in the psycholinguistic study of grammatical language production is whether the process is a syntactocentric one, driven by grammatical information and grammatical rules, or a dynamic, interactive one, involving both semantic and syntactic information. Examining how speakers produce subject-verb number agreement has been useful in addressing this debate. Verb agreement is widely considered to be primarily a syntactic process in which grammatical number features of the subject are copied onto the verb. Variation in verb agreement patterns can, however, reflect the construal of the subject number. Such variation suggests that speakers are sensitive to both syntactic and semantic information about the subject during the production of agreement. However, psycholinguistic accounts of how speakers integrate these two types of information cannot yet account for the full range of variation seen in agreement in spontaneous, natural speech. This dissertation concerns a subject-verb number agreement pattern that cannot be explained either in terms of grammatical form or semantic construal of the subject, exemplified by the utterance ["One thing I thought about the other day"]-SG were-PL "batteries." The research presented here examines how verb agreement is affected by grammatical and semantic features outside of the subject noun phrase: the number of the post-verbal nominal, the concreteness of the post-verbal noun relative to the subject, and the semantics of the construction in which agreement is produced. I used a corpus study and three elicited production experiments to investigate how these features correlated with speakers' likelihood of producing verb agreement that did not match the grammatical number of the subject. Results demonstrate that speakers are sensitive to both grammatical and semantic information outside of the subject when producing verb number agreement. Specifically, the grammatical number of the post-verbal nominal affects speakers' production of verb agreement. Furthermore, the effects of post-verbal number are modulated by constructional semantics. These findings cannot be accounted for by syntactocentric models of language production, in which grammatical forms are processed in isolation from semantic information. Rather, they suggest that grammatical language production is an interactive process in which semantic information can modulate the effects of activated syntactic features. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation establishes the syntactic representation and derivation of relative clause (RC) constructions in Bizkaiera Basque. Using native speaker introspection, grammaticality judgment under direct elicitation and formal experiments, I show that Bizkaiera follows the Head raising strategy in RC construction. Evidence for this comes from idioms, scope interaction and quantifier binding. These tests focus on the existence of a local relationship, internal to the RC, between the Head and the elements in the RC. Detecting such local relation, I conclude that the Head of the RC was inside the RC. A problem for the Head Raising Analysis is that morphologically rich languages show that the Head share the Case of the external D and not that of the internal D, which would be expected if there were Head raising (Borsley 1997). I propose the "[subscript D]Case Valued u-Feature Precariousness Condition," which establishes that a DCase (the one assigned by T or v) valued u-feature is "precarious" until it is sent to Spell-Out and therefore, the value is visible for further targeting by a c-commanding Probe. In a RC with a DP Head, the external D copies the DCase and phi-features of the internal D. Since the DCase valued u-feature of the external D is precarious because it has not been spelled-out yet, it is targetable by a c-commanding Probe (T, v, P in the main clause). When a Probe Agrees with the external D, the Goal obtains a new Case value, which is the Case value that is spelled-out for being the last one that the external D has received. The DCase Valued u-Feature "Precariousness" Condition is supported by the observation that the DP extracted out of an [-Q] embedded clause gets its DCase valued u-feature re-valued when it Agrees with a higher nu in the Spec-nuP configuration. Furthermore, I identify two micro-dialects within Bizkaiera Basque: A PP Headed RC under a matrix ergative or absolutive Case is grammatical in micro-dialect A and ungrammatical in micro-dialect B. I claim that the difference between the two micro-dialects relies on the status of their P: in micro-dialect A the P is a Probe with unvalued D and phi-features, while in micro-dialect B the P is a Probe with just an unvalued D-feature. In a PP Headed RC, in micro-dialect A the external D copies the PCase and phi-features values of the internal P allowing it to value the phi-features of the Probe T/nu. In micro-dialect B, due to the lack of phi-features in P, the external D only copies the PCase of the internal P, which makes it not capable of valuing the unvalued phi-features of the Probe T/nu, therefore, the derivation crashes. The presence of phi-features in the P of micro-dialect A as well as the lack of them in the P of micro-dialect B can be observed in a long distance extraction: in micro-dialect A a higher nu can obtain its unvalued phi-features valued by Agreeing with the extracted PP, whereas in micro-dialect B it cannot do so. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation examines the syntactic positions of nominal arguments in Turkish, looking at Turkish clausal structure based on Aktionsart (aspectual) properties (e.g. Vendler 1967) of (dynamic) predicates from the perspective of Antisymmetry (Kayne 1994). It has been argued that indefinite/non-specific arguments appear syntactically in lower positions than definite/specific arguments in some languages. While definite/specific arguments can be scrambled away from their base positions, indefinite/non-specific ones stay in situ (e.g. de Hoop 1992; Diesing 1992; Kornfilt 1984). Even though previous studies have shown that in Turkish specific arguments appear syntactically higher than non-specific arguments (e.g. Kennelly 1994; Zidani-Erothlu 1997; Kelepir 2001), the question of where exactly they appear within a particular syntactic domain has not been clearly addressed. Based on the syntactic position and the behavior of Turkish nominals and (low) adverbs, I argue that a bare internal argument does not occur in the complement position of a verb; rather, it occurs in the specifier position of VP (cf. Larson 1988). The current proposal has important implications for Turkish clausal architecture: (i) Aktionsart (aspectual) properties of predicates play a crucial role in determining their syntactic structures, (ii) there is an aspectual projection (AspP) in accomplishments/activities, but not in achievements; this study thus provides evidence that the Vendlerian/Dowtian distinction between accomplishments and achievements is syntactically real, and (iii) clause structure obeys (a weak version of) Antisymmetry. This study also provides implications for the relation between syntax and information structure. I show that the syntax-prosody boundary is associated with the semantic boundary between the presuppositional and the non-presuppositional interpretations, which is (at) the edge of vP. Crucially, the edge of vP serves as the boundary for both prosody and presuppositionality (at least in Turkish). This syntactic boundary/domain interacts with the information structure where topic/focus elements in discourse contexts are placed in particular syntactic position/domains. Languages use different linguistic cues/strategies in the realization of topic/focus. Such linguistic signals are typically the same as the signals for marking grammatical functions (e.g. case morphology, agreement, word order, and so on). In the case of Turkish, definite/specific DPs (and topics) occur above TP (SpecTP/SpecTopP) and indefinite/non-specifics (foci) occur within vP (SpecvP and SpecVP) (or a immediately pre-verbal position). Those particular syntactic specifier positions are clearly associated with the role of topic-comment/information structure, not just grammatical functions. It has been shown from Turkish data that syntactic positions of nominals (scrambling/word order) and prosodic prominence interplay in order to signal and maintain the topic-comment/information structure, which can also be observed across languages (such as German and Russian). Both word order and prosody are necessary to realize the information structure in Turkish; thus, neither syntax nor prosody should be reduced. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The thesis of this dissertation is that, in the New Testament Pauline letters, the article is used with a noun only if the writer assumes identifiability on the part of the reader, and does not wish to give prominence to the constituent concerned. Otherwise, the anarthrousness of a constituent that is assumed by the author to be known and identifiable marks its focal (or, less frequently, thematic) prominence. The understanding of this principle brings clarity to the presence or absence of the article in a number of puzzling circumstances, and therefore aids in the exegesis of many passages in the literature. The body of the dissertation first surveys important literature in the traditional study of the Greek article. It also looks at the theories of a number of well-known and prominent modern linguists as regards identifiability, and its relation to article use for languages that have articles. The principle of identifiability is here asserted as the key principle for article use with individual nouns in Greek. Next, the dissertation proposes constituent order in functional linguistics as an alternative to statistically based studies. Also, of importance here is the discussion of topic and topicalization, focus and dominant focal element, and prominence. All this provides a context for the subsequent consideration of the article in terms of non-identifiability, identifiability and focal (and thematic) prominence. These principles are then applied to a number of passages from the literature to demonstrate their veracity. Finally, recommendations are made for a number of categories of traditional grammar of the Greek article, some of which need modification or significant change, while others could be eliminated altogether. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation provides a syntactic account for the Jarai noun phrase and for the three regions of the Jarai clause: the operator domain, the inflectional domain, and the theta domain. Within the noun phrase, I argue that demonstrative-final word order involves phrasal movement of the demonstrative's complement into Spec,D, where it identifies null definite D. Jarai classifiers, rather than being heads in the functional spine of the DP, are shown to form a constituent with numerals, and this classifier-numeral phrase merges as the specifier of a number (plurality) head. In the operator domain, three head positions can be identified: a finiteness head, evident in non-finite complement clauses; a focus head, whose specifier position is the landing site of focus-movement (which subsumes "wh"-movement); and a force head, which in questions is spelled out as a question particle. In addition to having standard "wh"-movement (or, as I argue, focus-movement of "wh"-phrases) and "wh"-in-situ, Jarai also has a pseudocleft strategy for forming "wh"-questions; variations in the word order of "wh"-pseudoclefts arise from different combinations of topic-movement to Spec,T and focus-movement to Spec.Foc. In the inflectional domain, I analyze the variable position of negation in terms of optional Aux-to-T raising. I also put forward two arguments that surface subjects in Jarai sit in Spec,T at spellout. In the theta domain, I show that the verb phrase comprises three head positions: "v," sometimes overtly realized by a causative prefix; iAsp, an inner aspect head position sometimes realized by the telicity-related particle "hi"; and V, where the verbal root usually merges. Additionally, Jarai distinguishes between unaccusatives and unergatives, correlating to a difference between state-denoting roots and manner-denoting roots. Finally, Jarai has various types of serial verb constructions (SVCs). I examine four classes of SVCs, focusing on the status of shared arguments. I argue that SVCs in Jarai involve (i) the merging of a verbal root directly into "v"[subscript CAUSE], the first verb of the construction, and (ii) the merging of a VP or "v" P, containing the second verb, with the higher "v." Apparent agent sharing is mediated by a controlled PRO in the specifier of the lower "v." Apparent theme sharing is merely an interpretive effect of the causal relation between the two verbs; in fact, the higher verb, because it is a light verb, does not assign a theme theta role. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

In Contemporary Standard Russian (CSR) and Contemporary Standard Polish (CSP) nominal possession is conveyed by means of the adnominal genitive. In this construction the dependent follows the noun it modifies and is marked morphologically for possession in the genitive case. The head noun is marked morphologically for any one of the six grammatical cases it assumes in the syntax. Examples of standard adnominal genitives, with head nouns in the nominative case, are seen in 1 and 2 below. Often, however, the dependent precedes the head as seen in examples 3 and 4 below. The pre-posed dependent remains marked in the genitive case indicating possession. Additionally, CSR has innovated another pre-posed genitive construction, separate from the adnominal genitive but achieving the same function. This is the "u"-possessive construction and is seen below in example 5. According to Polish and Russian grammars, the "rare" pre-posed adnominal genitive exceptions, if even permissible, are marked for emphasis or described as (seemingly unmotivated) tendencies in substandard colloquial forms of these languages. Given the abundance of pre-posed possessive constructions, it would seem that the prescriptive explanation is insufficient, or, at least, should be modified. Pre-posed possessive constructions are in fact quite common in the idiolects of some speakers of Russian and Polish with usage corresponding not only to emphasis but also to such factors as education, exposure to other languages, and level of register. The fact that the two languages make use of Pre-posed Possessive Constructions, however limited, does not immediately correlate to parallel usage. The Russian pre-posed possessive construction exists in two different forms: the pre-posed adnominal genitive and the "u"-possessive construction. In both forms the pre-posed possessor can be a noun (Ivan's wife or brother's wife, with an implied 3rd party possessor) or an explicit 3rd party possessor conveyed by means of a possessive adjective + noun (my brother's wife). The difference between usage and non-usage of the preposition is based primarily on education. That is, the pre-posed adnominal genitive is more characteristic of prosmoriechtsie; (colloquial language) while the "u"-possessive construction, though not prescriptive, is used or at least equally acceptable to some speakers with higher education. If not used to respond directly to contextual demands, it too is characteristic of a more colloquial register. The Polish pre-posed possessive construction exists in only one form: the pre-posed adnominal genitive, parallel in structure to the Russian form. As in Russian, the Polish pre-posed possessor is a single noun or a 3rd party possessor adjective + noun. Usage is characteristic of a lower linguistic register. However, data illustrate that the construction is used by or acceptable to Poles on both ends of the education spectrum. *Please refer to dissertation for tables. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This experiment measured teachers' attitudes towards African American English and Academic English. Participants were graduate students of Education at a college in New York City. They completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire that assessed their explicit attitudes towards the two varieties, as well as a Psycholinguistic Experiment that was designed to capture their implicit attitudes. They completed these measures at the beginning of the semester and again at the end. In between the Pre- and Post-Tests they participated in six lessons that gave an overview of the syntax, phonology, and social issues surrounding African American English. After the six lessons the participants completed the same attitudinal measures as before, and the change in attitudes was measured. Participants' attitudes changed significantly from originally thinking that African American English was a slang, lazy manner of speaking, to believing that it is a rule-governed variety that has social value. The Psycholinguistic Experiment was designed within the matched-guise methodology, such that participants heard four speech samples ostensibly from four different speakers, yet there were in fact only two speakers who each gave two separate samples. One speaker was an African American woman and the other was a White woman. Each speaker told a story in African American English and another story in Academic English, for a total of four different stories. Participants heard one story and then completed an adjective discrimination task in which they assigned eleven sets of opposing adjectives to the speaker they just heard, using a response box that timed their responses down to the millisecond. They completed this activity for all four speech samples. After the Pre-Psycholinguistic Experiment the participants strongly preferred the speech of the White speaker, regardless of what variety she was using. By the Post-Psycholinguistic Experiment, however, the only significant interaction was that participants strongly preferred the White speaker using African American English over the African American speaker using that same variety. The results are considered positive in keeping with the goals of the experiment, which included increasing the participants' positive attitudes towards African American English. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation explores a longstanding challenge in work on gapping through the empirical lens of gapping in Farsi (the Tehrani variant of Modern Persian). While gapping has much in common with more uncontroversial elliptical constructions such as VPE and sluicing, it also differs from ellipsis in ways that accounts combining TP or CP coordination and constituent deletion fail to explain. Johnson (1994/2004, 2009), and extensions of Johnson's work in Coppock (2001) and Lin (2000,2001), among others, propose a solution to this dilemma for gapping in English that relies on "low coordination" and, consequently, on the assumption that VP, or upsilonP, is the verbal constituent targeted in gapping. I argue that the same kind of solution cannot be extended to Farsi because there is not evidence of low coordination structures in gapping and, crucially, VPE does not exist independently in the language. It is shown that while gapping in Farsi exhibits the same core characteristics that distinguish it from ellipsis in English and other languages (restriction to coordinations, forward only directionality), it does not exhibit those that motivate the low-coordination structure. I propose an alternative "movement plus deletion" account that addresses the first set of differences while retaining (i) TP, as opposed to VP, coordination and (ii) ellipsis as the source of the gap. This is achieved by designating the coordinate head itself the syntactic licensor, and by requiring that the gapped TP must move to a specifier position of the coordinate head in order for ellipsis to be licensed via an agreement relationship between it and the licensing head. The necessity of movement in establishing the ellipsis-licensing agreement relationship is argued to account for the contrast between the acceptability of gapping in embedded clauses and the ungrammaticality of gapping inside islands. Thus this account, while it derives the gap from ellipsis, also has affinities with accounts, particularly that of Johnson (1994/2004), which seek to explain the distinctive properties of gapping by invoking movement. In addition to contributing a study of gapping in Farsi, in which gapping has not been previously studied, to the cross-linguistic data on gapping, a major empirical contribution of this work is the finding that the restriction against embedded gapping observed in English is likely not a definitional property of gapping across languages. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation presents a novel theory of tense and tense-like constructions. It is named after a key theoretical component of the theory, the event restriction interval. In Event Restriction Interval (ERI) Theory, sentences are semantically evaluated relative to an index which contains two key intervals, the evaluation interval and the event restriction interval. The evaluation interval marks the present relative to context, and the event restriction interval defines temporal boundaries on events. Various constituents, called R-modifiers, operate on these two intervals compositionally, such that each verb is evaluated relative to values which yield correct temporal restrictions. This dissertation develops ERI Theory to present an analysis of independent clauses as well as embedded clauses of various types. One of the positive aspects of ERI Theory is that it offers a purely semantic analysis of the sequence of tense phenomena which occur in the latter. Also, a pragmatic component is presented which accounts for a number of intuitions regarding the usage of tense, while simultaneously providing a solution to some problems related to tense and quantification over times. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

In this dissertation, I examine the interpretation of NP-ellipsis (henceforth, NPE) in Korean. Some unexpected interpretive and grammatical contrasts arise in Korean between pro-forms such as "caki" "self" and "ku" "'3.S.M" (~"he") in object position and their null counterparts in NPE constructions. To be more specific, the NPs that are not expressed (or "elided" NPs) tend to be immune to some interpretive and grammatical constraints which are obligatorily imposed on their overt counterparts. To account for this puzzling phenomenon, I argue that the interpretive flexibility of the elided NPs can be reduced to the selective reproduction of relevant nominal features at LF. I propose what I call the "selective LF-copy approach" to the NPE construction, in which covert computation for NPE involves reproduction of minimally necessary features than total lexical contents of the antecedent NP. Assuming that NPE is a base-generated empty skeletal pro-form, I postulate a new feature system for nominal expressions that makes reference to the semantic referential feature [REF]. I implement a theory in which the interpretive flexibility of NPE is attributed to, first, the feature composition of antecedent nominal expressions and, second, how much of this composition is reproduced at the ellipsis site and then comes to be interpreted. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation is concerned with Chinese speakers' acquisition of telicity in L2 English. Telicity is a semantic notion having to do with whether an event has an inherent endpoint or not. Most existing work on L2 telicity is conceptualized within an L1-transfer framework and examines learning situations where L1 and L2 differ on whether and how the Direct Object plays a role in telicity computation (e.g., Slabakova 2000, 2001, 2005; Gabriele, 2010; Kaku-MacDonald, 2009). This dissertation is inspired by such prior work but explores additional issues by examining not only the role of the Direct Object, but also constructions where other elements in the sentence contribute to telicity, including the Goal PPs, Adjectival Resultatives, and the Locatum construction. A series of three sentence-rating experiments examined these constructions, and the results yield insights into the different factors affecting telicity acquisition: learnability (Chapter 2), transparency in form-meaning mapping (Chapter 3), and the role of underlying syntactic operations (Chapter 4). It was found that for native Mandarin speakers learning English, un-learning an L1-based but L2-incompatible telicity interpretation proved to be comparatively challenging, which can be attributed to the absence of negative evidence. Furthermore, even in situations where L1 and L2 do not differ in their telicity, participants were more likely to arrive at the correct telicity interpretation of a sentence in the L2 in situations where the construction encoding telicity was more transparent--in terms of its form-meaning mapping--than in situations where the construction was less so. Moreover, telicity was easier to learn when it was marked on the verb than when it was marked on the noun. Lastly, unlike what has been found for child learners (Hodgson, 2006, 2009, 2010), the L2 learners in this research did not show sensitivity to the differences between covert versus overt syntactic operations that are responsible for telicity computation. In sum, by investigating a wider range of constructions than has hitherto been examined, this dissertation shows that a multiplicity of factors (and not just the Direct Object) contribute to the acquisition of telicity. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The goal of this dissertation is to explore Hindi verbal complex predicates at the syntax/semantics interface using the lexicalist framework of HPSG. The enduring theoretical interest in complex predicates is undoubtedly due to the fact that in some aspects they pattern with prototypical words, whereas in other aspects they pattern with prototypical phrases. Complex predicates exhibit word-like properties in terms of argument structure, and in sometimes having lexicalized meanings. This dissertation focuses on verbal complex predicate constructions in Hindi, which are defined in terms of the combination of multiple verbs' argument structure and result in a single set of grammatical functions. The discussion in this dissertation is focused on the relationship between the syntactic and semantic properties of Hindi complex predicate constructions. This work describes in detail two types of "aspectual complex predicate constructions": the standard construction where the main verb precedes the light verb and the reverse construction where the main verb follows the light verb. The aspectual complex predicate construction is then compared with the "permissive construction." Empirical data is offered on the the various combinations of auxiliaries with both main verbs and complex predicates as well as on the various possible combinations of aspectual complex predicates. it has been argued that complex predicate formation takes place at the argument structure level and not at the phrase structure level (Butt, 1994). While this view correctly captures complex predicate formation for the standard complex predicate construction, taking phrase structure into account makes it possible to determine whether or not there is complex predicate formation. This is because not all complex predicate formation is equivalent. For example, in the case of the reverse construction, the complex predicate formation does not have the same properties of monoclausality and argument composition that the standard construction displays. Similarly, when the permissive verb selects for a VP-complement instead of a V-complement, it does not form a complex predicate construction. These facts argue for a partial dissociation of phrase structure and argument structure, and are represented here via a formal analysis within HPSG. From a semantic perspective, this work show that the various semantic notions assigned to light verbs are in fact pragmatic inferences. With respect to its aspectual content, light verbs are used in order to convey the notion of boundedness. Additionally, the meaning encoded by the light verbs is affectedness, defined either the "result" or the "consequence" of the event denoted by the main verb. By identifying the core semantic characteristics of Hindi light verbs, we see that not all light verbs encode the same semantics. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Most English adjectives can appear either prenominally or as predicates. (1) a. the red rose b. Roses are red. There are also adjectives that can appear only in one position or the other, but not in both: (2) a. * the awake child b. The child is awake. (3) a. the former president b. * The president is former. The primary goal of this dissertation will be to address two questions that arise from this data. First, what is the relationship between prenominal "red" and predicative "red"? Second, what causes some adjectives, including "awake" and "former," to be ungrammatical in prenominal and predicate positions, respectively? To answer these questions, I will appeal to the theory of semantic types and posit a type-shifting operator that is always present when an adjective appears in predicate position. The vast majority of English adjectives, including "red," can either occur in their basic form prenominally or combine with the operator to produce viable predicates. Adjectives like "awake" cannot occur without the operator and as such are restricted to predicate positions. Adjectives like "former" can combine with the operator but the resulting predicates are ruled out by a constraint on trivial predication. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation uses syntactic, semantic and morphological evidence from English nominalization to probe the interaction of event-structure and syntax, develop a typology of structural complexity within nominalization, and test hypotheses about the strict ordering of functional items. I focus on the widely assumed typology of nominalization found in Chomsky (1970). In particular, I show that derived nominals are structurally more complex than nominal gerunds; this has long been assumed to be the opposite. I provide a structural and morphological account of these forms of nominalization. In doing so, I explore a number of disparate topics such as: the importance of syncretism in apparently unrelated morphological elements for theories like Distributed Morphology; the role of prepositions in allowing or preventing binding relations and NPI-licensing, the exact nature of root-object union that allows idiomatic interpretations; the morphological reflexes of Case in the nominal system; the syntactic structure of verb particle constructions; the nature of events in nominalization; and the role syntactic operations play in determining morphological regularity. The dissertation also explores the nature of the English verb particle construction, arguing that it has (at least) three distinct structural configurations. Using these three distinct structures I am able to explain a number of distinct behaviors from predicate-object relationships, particle modification and argument loss in particle construction. I also discuss the relationship between particles (and results) and the different forms of nominalization. In particular, I show that apparent co-occurrence restrictions between nominal types and particles are not due to event-structure or other semantic restrictions. Rather, these differences are tied solely to the particular, idiosyncratic morphological properties of the constructions. The dissertation shows that certain functional projections may only appear once with a given root, but that there is some freedom of ordering of projections relative to the root in some cases. This work provides a window into the interaction between syntax and event structure as well as the nature of ordering within functional projections. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Speakers of stigmatized varieties are often judged as less educated and less competent than speakers of prestigious varieties. This can have profound effects on speakers' academic achievement and language assessment in schools. Linguists' efforts to destigmatize AAVE have included providing commentary in media outlets, publishing scholarly works, and developing reference materials about AAVE. On a localized level, a dialect awareness course may be suitable in addressing the misrepresentation of AAVE by demonstrating that nonstandard varieties are not ungrammatical or merely slang. However, there is lack of research regarding the effectiveness of such techniques. It remains unclear whether dialect awareness courses are effective in changing attitudes towards a nonstandard variety. The current study is set up to determine attitudes of students towards AAVE by investigating the effect of a dialect awareness course on language attitudes of undergraduate students attending a large Midwestern university. During the 15-week course, the 120 students enrolled learned about the background and structure of AAVE. Topics included discussing what AAVE is, social and ideological factors affecting its representation in the media and within the African American community, distinguishing AAVE from slang, grammatical features and possible origins of AAVE, and educational approaches to teaching children whose home speech is AAVE. In the 2009-10 academic year, a questionnaire was administered to students enrolled in the dialect awareness course, and to students in a general linguistics course and a biology course. The results show that the dialect awareness course is most effective at changing student attitudes towards AAVE as a linguistic variety. Upon completion of the dialect awareness course, students perceive AAVE as a distinct dialect of English rather than as slang or incorrect English. However, the dialect awareness course had minimal effect on students' perceptions of AAVE-speakers and acceptability of AAVE use. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation focuses on the French word "propre" roughly meaning "characteristic-of" and corresponding to English "own" found in "her own thesis." This adjective makes extremely varied and complex contributions to the meaning and properties of sentences it occurs in. The present work addresses the question of how these contributions arise. Parsimoniously assuming a unique lexical entry for "propre," these contributions are compositionally derived by a specific DP-internal structure and different interactions with focus. More precisely, "propre" is analyzed as taking as argument a possessive relation characterized as most specific. Unlike postnominal "propre," prenominal "propre" exhibits three main readings called restrictive, possessor and possessum "propre": restrictive "propre" has a standard intersective truth-conditional effect; possessor and possessum "propre" do not, but induce focus alternatives respectively to the possessor and to the possessum; possessum "propre" moreover gives rise to scalarity effects. These readings are argued to derive from a principle of minimization and different interactions with focus; in particular, the behavior of possessum "propre" shows the presence of a covert focus operator akin to "even." When combined with a pronominal possessor like "son" ("his"), the behavior of "propre" provides probes bearing on binding theoretic issues. First, "son propre" exhibits complex correlations between focus, locality and animacy: possessor "propre" is subject to locality only when it is inanimate, unlike possessum "propre" not so constrained. The difference between possessor and possessum "propre" underscores an interaction between focus and binding. Moreover, the distribution of possessor "son propre" sheds new light on how to formulate condition A supporting the relevance of local binding domain (for non-exempt anaphors) and the need for exemption (from condition A). As inanimate French anaphors like "son propre" are never exempt, they provide a crucial tool for delimiting locality, allowing a reduction of condition A (at least in French) to phase theory based architectural principles. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

African American relative clauses are distinct from Standard English relative clauses in allowing zero subject relatives and zero appositive relatives. Pesetsky and Torrego's (2003) (P&T) analysis of the subject-nonsubject asymmetry in relative clauses accounts for zero object relatives while restricting zero subject relatives. P&T propose that the head noun simply topicalizes in zero object relatives; since T cannot probe its own specifier, topicalization cannot occur in subject relatives thus accounting for the subject-nonsubject asymmetry. However, an analysis that restricts zero subject relatives poses a problem for African American English in which zero object relatives and zero subject relatives occur. I argue P&T's analysis can still account for zero subject relatives if we consider other constructions that involve move operations in African American. I argue that a topicalization feature heads its own intermediate node which triggers the movement of the head noun making it possible for African American to have both zero object relatives and zero subject relatives. Assuming that this analysis is correct, I propose that African American relativization differs from Standard English in having its topicalization feature on the intermediate projection, which I call ZP. In Standard English, the topicalization feature is a sub-feature on T. Evidence that ZP exists in African American is seen in negative inversion constructions where the auxiliary moves over the subject. In summary, relativization in African American differs from Standard English in having ZP which triggers movement of the head noun from either the subject or the object position; while in Standard English the topicalization feature on T can only trigger the movement of the head noun from the object position. I also use this argument to account for zero appositive relatives in African American as well. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The study of passives has been instrumental to the development of modern linguistics, and passives are central non-canonical word order constructions (in the sense of Birner and Ward 1998) in most languages. However, while numerous cross-linguistic studies (e.g. Siewierska 1984, Shibatani 1985, Keenan 1985, Abraham 2006) have identified the core characteristics of passives, including demotion of the agent and promotion of the patient, there are passive constructions that exhibit behavior far from this norm. This dissertation examines a number of unusual characteristics of passive and related constructions, in particular in Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese Southern Min, that challenge our common conception of passives. Chapter 2 investigates obligatorily agentive passives: corpus studies (e.g. Xiao et al. 2006) have found that agentive passives are more commonly used in Mandarin than in English, but more importantly, Mandarin and Taiwanese (and a few other languages) have passives that require the presence of the agent, departing from Keenan and Dryer's (2007) generalization that agentive passives must be able to manifest in the agentless form. Chapter 3 deals with completion entailment and passives: compared to English, Mandarin passives are more restricted by tense and aspect, but more interestingly, simple accomplishments in Mandarin do not entail a completive interpretation, however, when they are passivized, the completive interpretation becomes necessary. Chapter 4 explores adversity and passives: it discusses the close link of adversity to passives, and the question of why a marker used in a construction where the valence of a predicate is reduced is also often used in a construction where the valence of a predicate is increased. Syntactic and purely semantic approaches to passives cannot account for these behaviors; this dissertation proposes that an information structure approach, in particular along the lines of Birner and Ward (1998), can provide a more satisfactory account of these issues, and improve our understanding of the phenomenon of passivization. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation presents a formal theory of Serbo-Croatian grammar. The theory predicts acceptable form/meaning pairs for a substantial chunk of Serbo-Croatian. In particular, we analyze Serbo-Croatian declarative and interrogative main clauses, embedded clauses, a couple of different types of nominal modification, control and predication, as well pro- and encliticization. Linguistic expressions are represented as triples of typed terms, with each typed term modeling one of the following sets of properties of a linguistic sign: semantic (i.e. truth-conditional meaning), tectogrammatical (i.e. syntactic combinatorial properties), and, finally, phenogrammatical properties which specify the expression's linearization possibilities. The focus of our work is on word order in Serbo-Croatian, which is very free in some respects but extremely rigid in others. With phenogrammar and tectogrammar as distinct components, we can isolate word order problems from tectogrammatical and semantic combination, and state theory-internal phenogrammatical generalizations. This is particularly important for the analysis of 2P enclitics, whose placement cannot be adequately characterized tectogrammatically. The most elaborate component is phenogrammar. We postulate many different phenogrammatical types and modes of combination. This enables us to create islands of fixed word order, while still allowing free reordering of higher-level phenogrammatical objects. Of special significance are phenogrammatical terms which denote sets of strings. Such terms represent possible pronunciations of expressions which can be linearized multiple ways without a change in meaning. Essentially, we are modeling semantically insignificant reordering as phenogrammatical indeterminacy. Our choice of grammatical architecture is empirically motivated, but methodological in nature. This dissertation purports to show that a decent theory of Serbo-Croatian word order can be given in a framework which does distinguish phenogrammar and tectogrammar; not that a comparable (or superior) theory cannot be given in one which does not. We do, however, believe that this project brings attention to languages with complex word order patterns and their role in delineating a realistic categorial grammar framework for linguistic analysis. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation concerns the distribution of negative polarity items (henceforth, NPIs) in conditionals and conditional-like constructions. NPIs include words such as any and ever and idioms such as "give a damn" and "lift a finger"; these expressions have only a limited distribution. In this dissertation, the distribution of these expressions in the following three types of conditional and conditional-like constructions are investigated: i) conditionals with possibility modals (e.g., "If John has ever been to Paris, he will become a good chef"), ii) because-sentences (e.g., "John is a good chef because he went to Paris"), and iii) if-only constructions (e.g., "If only John had been to Paris, he would have become a good chef"). Since Klima (1964), NPIs have received much attention in the semantic theory; one of the proposals in current semantic research, which can be traced back to Fauconnier (1975, 1979) and Ladusaw (1979), has suggested that the licensing of these items has to do with downward-entailing-ness (henceforth, DE-ness) in the environments where they occur; to license an NPI, an environment must be a DE-context, where an inference from a set to its subset is supported. In this dissertation, I will show that a naive combination of a DE-based approach of NPI licensing (Fauconnier 1975, 1979; Ladusaw 1979; von Fintel 1999; a.o.) and a Lewis-Kratzer-von Fintel style semantics of conditionals (Lewis 1973a, Kratzer 1981, 1986, 1991; von Fintel 1994; a.o.) fail to predict the distribution of NPIs in the three conditional and conditional-like constructions mentioned above. To solve these problems, a new semantics for each of these constructions is proposed; importantly, I will show that the proposals made in this dissertation not only capture the distribution of NPIs but also account for other syntactic and semantic properties of these constructions. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation investigates the syntax of Spanish complementizers, with special attention to double-complementizer constructions and non-high "que" "that" complementizers. The goal is to explore the consequences of the behavior and distribution of such complementizers for the mapping of the Spanish left periphery, the analysis of dislocations and preverbal subjects in Spanish, as well as more general issues concerning locality of movement and ellipsis. Chapter 1 introduces the phenomena to be investigated and provides an outline of the dissertation. Chapter 2 focuses on the phenomenon of recomplementation (i.e. the double-complementatizer construction) in Spanish and provides a number of arguments for analyzing the second instance of "que" as the head of TopicP in Rizzi's (1997 "et seq.") split-CP system. Chapter 3 provides a systematic comparison of recomplementation "que" and "jussive/optative" "que," another non-high complementizer characteristic of subjunctive exhortative and desiderative clauses. The central claim of Chapter 3 is that the two complementizers constitute radically different phenomena and thus should be analyzed differently. I argue that whereas recomplementation "que" heads TopicP, "jussive/optative" "que" heads FinitenessP. Chapter 4 builds on the findings of Chapter 3 and investigates the implications of "jussive/optative"-"que" clauses for the syntax of preverbal subjects in Spanish. I identify a configuration where only a genuine subject can occur, to the exclusion of non-subject preverbal XPs. I claim that this is the canonical subject position (i.e. Spec,TP) and that Spanish preverbal subjects are not always CP-related phenomena; they can also occur in Spec,TP, which is furthermore restricted to true subjects. Chapter 5 investigates the locality of non-high complementizers. I show that movement across recomplementation "que" induces a locality-of-movement effect. I also show that sandwiched Clitic-Left Dislocated (CLLDed) phrases fail to show reconstruction effects, unlike their counterparts without recomplementation que. I therefore argue that sandwiched dislocates must be base-generated (i.e. directly merged) in between complementizers, the movement derivation of sandwiched dislocates being unavailable due to a locality violation. I then pursue the parallelism between the English "that"-t effect and the Spanish recomplementation-"que"-t effect and show that the contrast between the ungrammatical sentences where "que" is crossed and their grammatical counterparts without "que" can be accounted for in a principled way under the Rescue-by-PF-Deletion analysis of the mitigating effect of ellipsis/deletion on island violations. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]