This study aims to analyze the syntax of serial verbs in the Punjabi language. The serial verb construction (SVC) is a widespread phenomenon across the world languages and in Punjabi as well. The SVC in Punjabi specifically is used as a full event described by two sub-events, with each event described by a separate verb coming together in a…

This dissertation is an investigation of serial verb constructions in Lao (Tai-Kadai, SVO) and the events that they encode. Serial verb constructions (SVCs), structures where multiple verbs appear in a single clause, raise several important questions for syntactic theory. One issue is how the verbs are related; proposals involving coordination…

The present study investigated children's early use of verb inflection in Japanese by comparing a generativist account, which predicts that the past tense will have a special default-like status for the child during the early stages, with a constructivist input-driven account, which assumes that children's acquisition and use of inflectional forms…

We study the learnability problem concerning the dative alternations in English (Baker, 1979; Pinker, 1989). We consider how first language learners productively apply the double-object and to-dative constructions ("give the book to library"/"give the library the book"), while excluding negative exceptions ("donate the…

Children must acquire multiple language dimensions to ultimately achieve adult levels of language competence. Two such language dimensions, finiteness marking and the verb lexicon, are considered areas of weakness in specific language impairment (SLI). Given these weaknesses, the question arises of whether these two dimensions are related in…

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the nature of word order variation in declarative and interrogative clauses in Turkish within the framework of the generative syntax. The specific issue that will be examined in this dissertation concerns the role of discourse-pragmatics in word order variation. I will argue that all movement…

Homophony refers to sameness in sound but not in meaning. (DD)

An analysis of the derivation of "why" and other interrogative adverbs shows that they do not involve the movement of NP's, and therefore do not present counter-examples to the NP Ecology Constraint. (Author/HP)

The assumption that the active/passive relation is structural in nature and therefore best expressed by a transformation is debated. The relation can be captured in the lexicon without a passive transformation. An interpretive rule is proposed to handle the problem. Passives are shown as generated by phrase structure rules. (SC)

An analysis of some of the historical rules of consonant deletion, vowel deletion, nasalization, and initial h-deletion--all recapitulated synchronically within the transformational generative accounts of French linking--showing that they have undergone morphologization in the form of inversion, and that h-aspire words have been assigned the…

There is a class of verbs in French which require that their complement verb be in the indicative. However, if the matrix clause contains a negative or an interrogative, the complement verb is usually in the subjunctive, but sometimes in the indicative. Examples are the verbs "penser" and "croire" in sentences such as: 1) Elle…

The Lexicalist-interpretive approach to inalienable possession adopted in this paper proposes that body parts are generated with either the article (the unmarked determiner) or the possessive adjective (the marked determiner). The unmarked body part is codesignate with the indirect object; in the case of pseudo-transitives--a clearly delimited…

Describes a study using transformational generative grammar to demonstrate that the frequently used structure "verb a verb" in Spanish is to be interpreted in three ways. Conclusions are drawn for the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. (AMH)