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…

In Turkish, Relative Clause (RC) attachment ambiguity arises when two noun phrases (NPs) in a genitive construction follow the (RC). The present paper studies Turkish RC attachment preferences of Turkish native speakers in two experiments through off-line comprehension tasks. While in the first experiment the main verb immediately follows the NP…

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…

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,…

This piece of work proposes to descriptively investigate the structures of complex verbs in Meiteilon. The categorization of such verbs is based on the nature of semantic and syntactic functions of a lexeme or verbal lexeme. A lexeme or verbal lexeme in Meiteilon may have multifunctional properties in the nature of occurrence. Such lexical items…

In two sentence repetition experiments, we investigated whether four- and five-year-olds master distinct representations for intransitive verb classes by testing two syntactic analyses of unaccusatives (Burzio, 1986; Belletti, 1988). Under the assumption that, with unaccusatives, the partitive case of the postverbal argument is realized only on…

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…

This dissertation is a typological study of verb-final languages, the purpose of which is to examine various grammatical phenomena in verb-final languages to discover whether there are correlations between the final position of the verb and other aspects of grammar. It examines how finality of the verb interacts with argument coding in simple…

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…

A number of previous studies showed that comprehenders make use of lexically based constraints such as subcategorization frequency in processing structurally ambiguous sentences. One piece of such evidence is lexically specific syntactic priming in comprehension; following the costly processing of a temporarily ambiguous sentence, comprehenders…

It follows from the ordering principles that are applied in Functional Discourse Grammar that the positional possibilities of markers of agreement and those of cross-reference are different. Markers of cross reference are predicted to occur closer to the verb stem, while markers of agreement would occupy peripheral positions. This paper tests…

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…

This thesis is a theoretical investigation of the status of "phases" within the phase theory with a particular emphasis on several constructions in Japanese and other languages that involve Case. I argue for a contextual approach to phases, where Case determines the relevant context for phasehood. In chapter 2 I argue that phases are determined…

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…

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…