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Jennifer Hu – ProQuest LLC, 2023
Language is one of the hallmarks of intelligence, demanding explanation in a theory of human cognition. However, language presents unique practical challenges for quantitative empirical research, making many linguistic theories difficult to test at naturalistic scales. Artificial neural network language models (LMs) provide a new tool for studying…
Descriptors: Linguistic Theory, Computational Linguistics, Models, Language Research
Fowlie, Meaghan – ProQuest LLC, 2017
Adjuncts and arguments exhibit different syntactic behaviours, but modelling this difference in minimalist syntax is challenging: on the one hand, adjuncts differ from arguments in that they are optional, transparent, and iterable, but on the other hand they are often strictly ordered, reflecting the kind of strict selection seen in argument…
Descriptors: Persuasive Discourse, Syntax, Form Classes (Languages), Language Research
Al Bukhari, Juman – ProQuest LLC, 2016
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…
Descriptors: Syntax, Semitic Languages, Language Research, Form Classes (Languages)
Chong, Junxiang Adam – ProQuest LLC, 2017
This dissertation examines the question of how phonological alternations are learnt. In constraint-based models of phonological learning, it is hypothesized that prior learning of phonotactics from the lexicon facilitates the learning of alternations. While this is an influential assumption, the empirical evidence for it is equivocal. In this…
Descriptors: Grammar, Phonology, Morphemes, Korean
Li, Jian – ProQuest LLC, 2013
The history of Chinese language is characterized by a clear shift from monosyllabic to disyllabic words (Wang, 1980). This dissertation aims to provide a new diachronic explanation for the rise of disyllables in the history of Chinese and to demonstrate its significance for Modern Chinese prosody and lexicalization. A corpus of 300 Lianmian words…
Descriptors: Chinese, Diachronic Linguistics, Morphology (Languages), Phonology
Spewak, David Charles, Jr. – ProQuest LLC, 2013
The primary concern of this dissertation is determining the distinction between semantics and pragmatics and how context sensitivity should be accommodated within a semantic theory. I approach the question over how to distinguish semantics from pragmatics from a new angle by investigating what the objects of a semantic theory are, namely…
Descriptors: Semantics, Pragmatics, Linguistic Theory, Ambiguity (Semantics)
Kurniawan, Eri – ProQuest LLC, 2013
The focus of this thesis is the description and analysis of clausal complementation in Sundanese, an Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia. The thesis examined a range of clausal complement types in Sundanese, which consists of (i) "yen/(wi)rehna" "that" complements, (ii) "pikeun" "for" complements,…
Descriptors: Phrase Structure, Language Research, Morphology (Languages), Malayo Polynesian Languages
Mihalicek, Vedrana – ProQuest LLC, 2012
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…
Descriptors: Serbocroatian, Grammar, Semantics, Prediction
Wang, Honglei – ProQuest LLC, 2012
The DP Hypothesis proposes that nominal phrases can be analyzed as consisting of Determiner Phrase (DP) on top of Noun Phrase (NP); however, there is a debate on whether this hypothesis works for all languages. Given that previous studies on Chinese leave this question unresolved, this dissertation investigates new empirical evidence to test…
Descriptors: Syntax, Nouns, Phrase Structure, Chinese
Yamangil, Elif – ProQuest LLC, 2013
The past two decades have shown an unexpected effectiveness of "Web-scale" data in natural language processing. Even the simplest models, when paired with unprecedented amounts of unstructured and unlabeled Web data, have been shown to outperform sophisticated ones. It has been argued that the effectiveness of Web-scale data has…
Descriptors: Models, Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Bayesian Statistics
Grano, Thomas Angelo – ProQuest LLC, 2012
Landau (2000) distinguishes between P(artial) C(ontrol) and E(xhaustive) C(ontrol): PC predicates like hope admit a subset relation between controller and controllee (e.g., "Kim hoped to gather at noon." [controllee = Kim and contextually salient others]); EC predicates like "try" do not (*"Kim tried to gather at…
Descriptors: Syntax, Semantics, Prediction, Form Classes (Languages)
Mendoza, Ray Padilla, Jr. – ProQuest LLC, 2012
Extracting and representing semantic information from large scale corpora is at the crux of computer-assisted knowledge generation. Semantic information depends on collocation extraction methods, mathematical models used to represent distributional information, and weighting functions which transform the space. This dissertation provides a…
Descriptors: Semantics, Computational Linguistics, Syntax, Phrase Structure
Campbell, Amy Melissa – ProQuest LLC, 2012
This thesis offers a systematic treatment of discontinuous exponence, a pattern of inflection in which a single feature or a set of features bundled in syntax is expressed by multiple, distinct morphemes. This pattern is interesting and theoretically relevant because it represents a deviation from the expected one-to-one relationship between…
Descriptors: Morphology (Languages), Syntax, Surveys, Language Classification
Hamrouni, Nadia – ProQuest LLC, 2010
This dissertation presents experimental research on speech errors in Tunisian Arabic. The nonconcatenative morphology of Arabic shows interesting interactions of phrasal and lexical constraints with morphological structure during language production. The central empirical questions revolve around properties of "exchange errors". These…
Descriptors: Semitic Languages, Speech, Morphology (Languages), Language Processing
Gogoi, Divya Verma – ProQuest LLC, 2009
Many factors that contribute towards the perception of second language (L2) sounds and the subsequent establishment of L2 phonetic categories have been the focus of past research. However, learning a third language, unlike SLA, may be influenced by additional factors attributed to the presence of two language systems in a bilingual instead of one…
Descriptors: Phonetics, Metalinguistics, Testing, Multilingualism