In this dissertation I investigate the Mandarin "you"-existential sentence. My focus is on its syntax. I also discuss in less detail some semantic peculiarity of the "you"-existential. I begin my investigation of the syntax of "you"-existentials by first looking into what they are not. To this end, I present five…

Research over the past two decades has reported a robust relationship between relative social status and first-person singular (FPS) pronoun use in English. For my dissertation study, I wanted to test the replicability of those findings using American Sign Language (ASL) data that I collected for this purpose. In alignment with previous work, I…

The first stage of combinatorial speech is better described as variable than uniform. Talk of variants obscures two different aspects of language (knowledge and use) and two different aspects of language development -- acquisition of the grammar (competence) and deployment of the grammar in speaking and listening (performance). Null subjects and…

This article introduces a novel, holistic framework--named Dr. Mosaik--that encompasses explanations of the entire tense-aspect system, while highlighting eight comprehensive rules that explain the main workings of the system. In turn, this provides a limited number of "anchor points" on which to time-efficiently address instruction and…

Two distinctive types of complex predicates found in English are separable verb-particle combinations ("particles") and adjectival resultatives ("ARs"). Snyder ties both to the positive setting of the Compounding Parameter ("TCP"). This predicts that during the acquisition of a [+TCP] language, any child who has…

This study concerns the development of the determiners MINE/MY and THINE/THY in the Early Modern English period. The -N forms had essentially been ousted before words starting with consonants over the Middle English period, and over the subsequent centuries, these forms also fell into disuse before words starting with initial vowels and…

Intensifiers have been the focus of a number of studies over the past decade, with considerable interest in their meaning and variability. Several scholars have discussed the use of such forms, particularly in English (Ito and Tagliamonte 2003, Tagliamonte 2008) and Spanish (Brown and Cortés-Torres 2013; Kanwit et al. 2017), exploring their…

Scholars of language development have long been challenged to understand the development of functional categories. Traditionally, it was assumed that children's language development initially relies on lexical elements, while functional elements become accessible only at later periods; and that it is lexical growth which bootstraps grammatical…

This article examines children's comprehension of the "get"-passive relative to the "be"-passive in an attempt to systematically compare the acquisition of both types of passives. It discusses the findings of two experiments (a picture-matching task and an act-out task) with children ages 36. Results from the picture-matching…

This study has two goals. First, we present much-needed empirical linguistic data and systematic analyses on the spatial semantic systems in English and Korean, two languages that have been extensively compared to date in the debate on spatial language and spatial cognition. We conduct our linguistic investigation comprehensively, encompassing the…

This study investigates whether repeating a prime sentence aloud strengthens short-term and longer-term priming of adverb-first word order among adult intermediate L1 English-German L2 learners (N = 30). Compared to an earlier study (Jackson & Ruf, 2017), in which similarly proficient L1 English-German L2 learners heard, but did not repeat,…

An epicene pronoun is a gender-neutral singular pronoun used in sentences when the gender of the subject is unknown or unspecified. In English, "he" and "they" are commonly-used epicene pronouns. Until recently, "he" has been widely accepted as being grammatically correct. However, many have argued that he is sexist…

This paper investigates English-speaking children's acquisition of raising constructions (e.g. "John seems to Mary to be happy") and fnds an asymmetric effect of NP type on their comprehension: an improvement in performance is observed when a lexical NP is raised across a pronominal experiencer (e.g. "John seems to her to be…

Children's development of the functional category of articles can be explained in two ways. One approach assumes that children are equipped with innate knowledge of the category, while the other assumes that children's early articles are limited-scope formulae. Using Eisenbeiss's (2000) criteria for determining the status of DPs, developed for a…

The paper titled "Nominal Group as Qualifier to 'Someone'" investigated types of qualifiers which are embedded to the head "someone" in a nominal group. This research was conducted in the light of Systemic Functional Linguistics analysis. The data was analyzed, classified then described using descriptive qualitative method.…