Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Verbs of change of possession'

This thesis investigates how the strong verb system inherited from Old English evolved in the regional dialects of Middle English (ca. 1100-1500). Old English texts preserve a relatively complex system of strong verbs, in which traditionally seven different ablaut classes are distinguished. This system becomes seriously disrupted from the Late Old English and Early Middle English periods onwards. As a result, many strong verbs die out, or have their ablaut patterns affected by sound change and morphological analogy, or transfer to the weak conjugation. In my thesis, I study the beginnings of two of these developments in two strong verb classes to find out what the evidence from Middle English regional dialects can tell us about their origins and diffusion. Chapter 2 concentrates on the strong-to-weak shift in Class III verbs, and investigates to what extent strong, mixed and weak past tense and participle forms vary in Middle English dialects, and whether the variation is more pronounced in the paradigms of specific verbs or sub-classes. Chapter 3 analyses the regional distribution of ablaut levelling in strong Class IV verbs throughout the Middle English period. The Class III and IV data for the Early Middle English period are drawn from A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, and the data for the Late Middle English period from a sub-corpus of files from The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English and The Middle English Grammar Corpus. Furthermore, The English Dialect Dictionary and Grammar are consulted as an additional reference point to find out to what extent the Middle English developments are reflected in Late Modern English dialects. Finally, referring to modern insights into language variation and change and linguistic interference, Chapter 4 discusses to what extent intra- and extra-linguistc factors, such as token and type frequency, stem structure and language contact, might correlate with the strong-to-weak shift and ablaut levelling in Class III and IV verbs in the Middle English period. The thesis is accompanied by six appendices that contain further information about my distinction of Middle English dialect areas (Appendix A), historical Class III and IV verbs (B and C) and the text samples and linguistic data from the Middle English text corpora (D, E and F).

Descriptive perception verbs have failed to receive a uniform analysis in previous verb classifications (cf. Chomsky 1965, Rogers 1974, Hengeveld 1992, Levin 1993, Van Eynde et al. 2014). This thesis argues that the descriptive perception verbs in Dutch (i.e. eruitzien 'look', klinken 'sound', voelen 'feel', ruiken 'smell', and smaken 'taste') should be classified as copular verbs, much like lijken 'seem' and schijnen 'seem'. This classification is supported by both the synchronic and diachronic behaviour of these verbs in Dutch. Synchronically, proposing that Germanic copular verbs (as opposed to copulas) are defined by their syntax rather than their (empty) semantics, I discuss that the Dutch descriptive perception verbs behave like stereotypical copular verbs: they require a predicative complement, usually in the form of an adjective. Semantically, the Dutch descriptive perception verbs are much like the copular verbs blijken 'turn out', lijken 'seem' and schijnen 'seem' in terms of epistemicity and evidentiality. Diachronically, I hypothesize that the Dutch descriptive perception verbs have evolved from one of the following two origins: either from intransitive verbs (as is the case for klinken and ruiken), much like English remain, through grammaticalization processes of semantic bleaching and reanalysis; or from cognitive perception verbs (as is the case of eruitzien and voelen), as found in Latin, Japanese and Zulu, through the process of argument reordering. The origin of smaken is not clear, and is left for future research. I show that other Germanic evidential copular verbs (i.e. lijken, schijnen 'seem', scheinen 'seem', seem) have developed diachronically in a uniform fashion, suggesting the following grammaticalization path: from a lexical verb to a copular verb, to taking a that-complement, an infinitival complement or a like-complement, and eventually being used in parenthetical constructions. The results of this thesis indicate that the Dutch descriptive perception verbs are only at the beginning of this grammaticalization path, but are on their way to becoming grammaticalized evidential copular verbs.

This thesis is a socio-historical study of semantic innovation and change of a contemporary dialect spoken in north-eastern Arabia known as Kuwaiti Arabic. I analyse the structure of polysemy of verbs and their uses by native speakers in Kuwait City. I particularly report on qualitative and ethnographic analyses of four motion verbs: dašš ‘enter’, xalla ‘leave’, miša ‘walk’, and rikað̣ ‘run’, with the aim of establishing whether and to what extent linguistic and social factors condition and constrain the emergence and development of new senses. The overarching research question is: How do we account for the patterns of polysemy of verbs in Kuwaiti Arabic? Local social gatherings generate more evidence of semantic innovation and change with respect to the key verbs than other kinds of contexts. The results of the semantic analysis indicate that meaning is both contextually and collocationally bound and that a verb’s meaning is activated in different contexts. In order to uncover the more local social meanings of this change, I also report that the use of innovative or well-attested senses relates to the community of practice of the speakers. The qualitative and ethnographic analyses demonstrate a number of differences between friendship communities of practice and familial communities of practice. The groups of people in these communities of practice can be distinguished in terms of their habits of speech, which are conditioned by the situation of use. The data for this research project are based primarily on field notes and more than twenty hours of audio recordings made between 2012 and 2013 and taken from the speech of thirty-one Kuwaitis representing two sets of social groups based on a particular set of tribal and sectarian allegiances. The overall findings of this research project lead to the conclusion that the factors responsible for semantic innovation and change are reflected in the social structure of a speech community. In summary, this thesis (i) contributes to the theoretical and empirical treatment of the relationship between polysemy and semantic change; (ii) examines the historical semantic treatment of the key verbs within Kuwait; and (iii) proposes that both the semantics and sociolinguistics disciplines can greatly benefit from using each other’s methodologies.

Even though it is an intuitive and perhaps obvious idea that composition leads to non-trivial semantic interactions between words, and these interactions affect the contents of predication, there has still been little work done on how verbs restrict their arguments and how flexible these restrictions are. This dissertation thus starts out with the observation that verbs have very rich combinatorial paradigms and raises the question of what this wide combinatorial capacity of verbs means for the semantics of the verb and the process of composition. Distributed in three case studies, a rich data set of the Spanish change of state verbs congelar ‘freeze’, romper ‘break’ and cortar ‘cut’ is analysed and further discussed against the background of studies from theoretical linguistics. Tackling the question of the rich combinatorial paradigm of verbs leads to taking a position on the theoretical horizon of theories of predication as well as theories of lexicon, for which I turn to Modern Type Theories and an underspecified lexical meaning
Aunque es intuitiva y quizás obvia la idea de que la composición conduce a interacciones semánticas no triviales entre las palabras que afectan al contenido de una predicación, hay todavía pocos trabajos que analicen el modo como los verbos restringen sus argumentos y examinen si sus restricciones son muy amplias o más bien limitadas. Esta tesis parte de la observación de que los verbos tienen unos paradigmas combinatorios muy ricos, para plantear la pregunta acerca del papel que desempeña la combinatoria predicado-argumento tanto en el significado de los verbos como en el proceso de construcción del significado composicional. Se llevan a cabo tres estudios de caso correspondientes a otros tantos verbos de cambio de estado, congelar, romper y cortar, en los que se presenta una rica colección de datos que se discute a la luz del conocimiento que proporcionan los estudios de lingüística teórica. Abordar la cuestión del rico paradigma de combinatoria de los verbos conduce a tomar una posición en el horizonte de las teorías de la predicación, así como también en el de las teorías del léxico. La presente tesis se decanta en este sentido por la teoría de tipos moderna (Modern Type Theory) y un significado léxico subespecificado.

Pillow & Flavell (1985) argue that the phrase 'look like' increases the tendency of young children to commit intellectual realism errors. The present study followed their procedures with the Block Arrays (which includes the Hidden Block task) and, in addition, included the identity task from a previous appearance-reality study by Flavell, Flavell & Green (1983). Forty-two three- and four-year-old preschoolers were presented with a variety of block arrays (Block Arrays task) and realistic-looking fake objects (Identity task) to observe. The subjects were tested on all of the stimulus items in one task before being tested on the second one. Half the subjects received the Block Arrays task first, half received the Identity task first. After the presentation of each array or object, the subject was asked a test question about its appearance while looking at it through a viewing tube. In the Look Like Condition, the test question included the words 'look like' and in the See Condition, the verb 'see' was used instead of 'look like'. If the subjects made any errors in the first condition (Look Like), they then received the second condition (See). No difference was found in the childrens' performance in the Hidden Block task but there was a difference in their performance in the Identity task. However, this difference cannot be attributed solely to the two wordings but rather to some interaction of task type and condition. Further analysis of the Look Like Condition revealed an Age-by-Task interaction in which the threes and fours performed differently in each task. A significant main effect for each of Task and Gender was also found in the Look Like Condition.
Education, Faculty of
Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of
Graduate

The dissertation investigates verbs of (change of) state in Tamazight (Berber) from the perspective of their internal structure and its syntactic corollary, which corresponds to predicate-argument structure. The verbs investigated include verbs of quality, unaccusatives, spatial configuration verbs, and causatives. Verbs of quality refer to a special class of intransitive verbs occurring with accusative clitics when they indicate a pure state, and with nominative clitics when they indicate change of state. In the latter situation verbs of quality are undistinguished from unaccusatives. I argue that while nominative clitics associated with verbs of quality surface in the subject position for EPP reasons, accusative clitics surfaces in the object position because the category T involved is defective, following an idea proposed by Chomsky (2001). This contradicts the view in Government and Binding Theory that intransitive verbs do not assign unaccusative Case. I sustain that the pure state form has a monadic structure of the type [VBE[√ROOT]], while the inchoative form, like unaccusatives, is associated with the dyadic structure of the type [VCOME[V BE[√ROOT]]]. To account for the two different interpretations associated with the inchoative form I argue that its syntactic structure contains a scope operator with two different positions. When the operator has scope over VCOME, it yields change of state interpretation; when the operator has scope over VBE, the interpretation is stative (resultative). Verbs of quality and unaccusatives are contrasted with verbs of spatial configuration which are analyzed as disguised reflexives, with a triadic structure of the type [VACT[VCOME[VBE([√ROOT])]]]. The reflexive interpretation results from the association of the internal argument with two thematic positions [Spec,VACT] and [Spec,V COME]. The structure postulated for causatives is of the type [VCAUSE [COME[VBE([√ROOT])]]]. I argue that lexical causatives have a basic structure while morphological causatives are derived by augmenting their unaccusative counterpart. Lexical causatives are of two types. I argue that those lacking the unaccusative alternate have their lexical root conflated with the verb CAUSE, while unaccusative-alternating causatives have their lexical root conflated with the lower verbs (BE)COME. This idea is extended to account for the difference between unaccusative-alternating and non-alternating languages.

Denna studie undersöker samspelet mellan de semantiska kategorierna inkoativitet, futurum och modalitet i få/får/fick/fått + perceptionsverbskonstruktioner i skriven svenska , samt om det går att systematiskt skilja mellan dessa kategorier i form av frekvens och kontext. Enligt Åke Viberg framstår få som rätt språkspecifikt i sitt polysema omfång jämfört med andra europeiska språk, såsom engelska, finska, tyska och franska (Viberg 2009: 105, 119, 2012: 1413). Vidare påstår han att perceptionsverben se, höra och veta i samband med få som hjälpverb (få + perceptionsverb) uttrycker inkoativitet och även att den inkoativa betydelsen är semantiskt nära besläktad med futurum (Viberg 2002: 123, 2012: 1444). Inkoativitet innebär ett predikats uttryck för övergång (Bybee et al., 1994), ofta utan någon som helst hänvisning till vad som orsakar det övergående skedet (Viberg 2002: s.129). Studien är en korpusundersökning baserad på skönlitterära texter och pressmaterial från 70- till 90-talet, där 50 meningar per perceptionsverb analyseras utifrån de semantiska kategorier de anses uttrycka. Resultaten tyder på att det inte går att semantiskt kategorisera konstruktionerna få + perceptionsverb som en kategori för sig, som uttrycker inkoativitet och futurum. Konstruktionerna uppvisar en viss semantisk relation till futurum och inkoativa betydelser men är även i stor utsträckning kopplade till andra funktioner av få + verb i infinitiv, särskilt modalitet. Undersökningen tillför en ökad förståelse för få:s polysema grammatiska beteende samt bidrar till den allmänna förståelsen för tempus, aspekt och modalitet i svenska.
This paper studies the interplay between inchoative, future and modal meanings in constructions containing the verb of possession få (in all of its four conjugations) + verbs of perception in written Swedish, and seeks to find out if it is possible to systematically differentiate these categories from each other in terms of frequency and context. According to Åke Viberg, the Swedish verb of possession få appears to be quite language specific with its polysemic characteristics compared to other European languages, such as English, Finnish, German and French (Viberg 2009: s.105, 119, 2012: s.1413). Viberg also suggests that få in combination with either of the three verbs of perception se ‘see’, höra ‘hear’, veta ‘know’ expresses inchoative sense, to which he further states the future sense is closely related to (Viberg 2002: 123, 2012: 1444). The inchoative sense is when a predicate expresses transition (Bybee et al., 1994), often with a lack of explicit reference to the cause of the transition (Viberg 2002: s.129). The study is a corpus investigation, which includes a selection of fiction and newspaper material ranging from the 1970s to the 1990s. 50 sentences per perception verb are analysed based on the semantic categories that they are considered being an expression of. The results show that the få + perception verb constructions are not semantically classifiable as a category which expresses the inchoative and future sense. Apart from displaying some connection with the inchoative and future meanings, these constructions appear to be well integrated with other functions expressed by få + infinitive verbs, primarily modality. In addition to provide an increased understanding of the polysemic grammatical behaviour of få as an auxiliary verb, this investigation also contributes to the overall knowledge of tense, aspect and modality in Swedish.

Aquesta tesi pretén analitzar el comportament sintàctic dels verbs de canvi d'estat en llengua catalana respecte de la participació en l'alternança causativa i oferir una proposta teòrica de les representacions sintàctiques de la variant causativa i de l'anticausativa, així com de les construccions que s'hi relacionen (passiva perifràstica, passiva pronominal i mitjana). La tesi pretén, doncs, donar resposta a diferents preguntes com ara, per exemple, quins són els verbs que participen de l'alternança causativa en català i quins són els factors que determinen que un verb de canvi d'estat alterni, si és que n'hi ha cap; quina és la relació estructural entre les dues construccions alternants, si és que una deriva de l'altra; quina és la relació amb les construccions de passiva i mitjana; quin és el paper del clític pronominal se que prenen les variants anticausatives de l'alternança en català, i quina és la representació sintàctica corresponent a les construccions analitzades i si aquestes mantenen un component de CAUSA en aquesta representació. El marc teòric adoptat és el de la Morfologia Distribuïda, i concretament partim de la proposta neoconstruccional, i no derivacional, d'Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer (2015) per revisar-la lleugerament i fer una proposta que doni compte del comportament empíric dels verbs de canvi d'estat en català pel que fa a l'alternança. Així doncs, en primer lloc analitzem la participació en l'alternança dels verbs de canvi d'estat, a partir de les classificacions que s'han proposat per a aquest tipus de verbs. En l'anàlisi proposem que les construccions causatives amb un subjecte agentiu no alternen i que la corresponent construcció intransitiva s'ha d'entendre com de passiva pronominal. Així mateix, i de manera important, demostrem que els verbs de canvi de causa interna, contràriament al que s'ha mantingut tradicionalment, també alternen en català, tot i que amb restriccions pel que fa al subjecte de la variant causativa, fenomen que analitzem a partir de la Direct Causation Condition de Rappaport Hovav & Levin (2012) i Rappaport Hovav (2014). Posteriorment analitzem els tipus d'anticausatius en català: els que prenen sempre el clític pronominal en la variant anticausativa, el que no el prenen mai i els que el poden prendre o no. La conclusió és que hi ha molt pocs verbs en català que no prenen el clític o que el prenen opcionalment, i que la hipòtesi segons la qual és el grau d''espontaneïtat amb què el parlant concep un esdeveniment el que determina la participació en l'alternança i si es pren o no el clític (Alexiadou, 2014c; Haspelmath, 1993; Haspelmath et al., 2014; Heidinger, 2015, o Schäfer, 2008) només es pot adoptar com a tendència. A continuació analitzem el comportament dels verbs alternants respecte de la legitimació d'adjunts que indiquen causa, especialment de la legitimació de l'adjunt per si sol, i de les construccions anticausatives amb un datiu lliure. Totes dues anàlisis ens permeten concloure que tant la variant anticausativa com la causativa no tenen un component de CAUSA en la seva estructura sintàctica i que el significat causatiu és estructural. Pel que fa a la proposta teòrica indiquem sis estructures sintàctiques per donar compte de les construccions de l'alternança i de les que s'hi relacionen, a partir de la combinació dels nuclis Voice, Middle i Passive amb el nucli esdevenimental v i l'arrel. En aquest sentit, postulem que les arrels s'incrusten lliurement en aquestes estructures i que és postsintàcticament que el component enciclopèdic determina si les construccions són acceptables o fracassen. En aquest sentit indiquem la necessitat d'un principi cognitiu que doni compte de la legitimació de les construccions causatives amb verbs de canvi de causa interna.
This thesis intends basically to analyse the syntactic performance of the change of state verbs in Catalan language regarding the involvement in the causative alternation, and moreover to offer a theoretical approach of the syntactic representations of both the causative and the anticausative variation, as well as of their implicated constructions (periphrastic passive, pronominal passive, and middle). The thesis intends, then, to answer different questions such as which verbs take part in the causative alternation in Catalan, and which factors, if any, may determine that a change of state verb may alternate; which structural relation may exist between both alternative constructions, if one derives from the other one; what relation may be with the passive and middle constructions; what role may have the pronominal clitic se, and last but not least which is the syntactic representation related to the analysed constructions and whether these ones maintain a CAUSE component in this representation. The theoretical framework used is that of Distributed Morphology, and we take the neoconstructional proposal as the starting point, not the derivational one, by Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer (2015), in order to slightly revise it and make a proposal which may consider the empirical behaviour of change of state verbs in Catalan in regards of alternation. Therefore, we will firstly analyse the participation in alternation of change of state verbs, from the classifications being proposed for this kind of verbs. In the analysis we propose that the causative constructions with an agent subject do not alternate, and that the corresponding intransitive construction has to be understood as a pronominal passive. Contrarily to what has been traditionally claimed, it is strongly demonstrated that change of state verbs of internal cause also alternate in Catalan, even though with some restrictions when it comes to the subject of the causative variation, a phenomena that we analyse from the Direct Causation Condition by Rappaprot Hovav & Levin (2012) and Rappaport Hovav (2014). Later on, we analyse the kinds of anticausatives in Catalan: those which always take the pronominal clitic in thecausative variant, those which mat take it ornot. The conclusion is that there are very few verbs in Catalan which do not take the clitic or take it optionally, and that the hypothesis according to which it is the degree of spontaneity with which the speaker conceives an event which determines the participation in the alternation and if it takes the clitic or not (Alexiadou, 2014c; Haspelmath, 1993; Haspelmath et al., 2014; Heidinger, 2015; Schäfer, 2008) can only be adopted as a trend. Next, we analyse the behaviour of the alternanting verbs in relation with the license of adjuncts which show cause; especially the license of the adjunct per si sol, and the anticausative construction with a free dative. Both analyses allow us to conclude that as the anticausative variant as the causative one do not have a CAUSE component in its structures, and that the causative meaning is in fact structural. As regards the theoretical approach, we point out six syntactic structures to account for the constructions of alternation and those related to them, from the combination of the nucleus Voice, Middle, and Passive with a little v and the root. In this sense, we postulate that the roots are freely embedded in these structures, and that that it is postsyntactically the fact that the encyclopaedic component determines if the constructions are accepted or fail. As a result, we show the need of a cognitive principle which accounts for license of the causative constructions with change of state verbs of internal cause.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2001.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The subject of this study is Break and Bend verbs in isiZulu, which can be classified as verbs of change of state. This study examines the semantic as well as the syntactic analysis of these verbs of change of state in Zulu. Semantically Bend verbs are divided into verbs denoting the bending of body parts, e.g: thoba, khothema, qomfa, bhena, guqa, vosho, and verbs that denote the bending of body parts as well as physical objects, e.g. goba, qethuka/qethula as shown in the sentences below: Indoda igobe ucingo The man bent the wire. Indoda ithe qethu ikhanda The man bent the head backwards. Inkosikazi igobe amadolo The woman bent the knees. Uthe qethu isigxobo He made the pole bend backwards. The study will demonstrate that Break verbs are semantically divided into verbs denoting break or fracture, e.g. aphula/aphuka; those denoting "break off" e.g. nqamuka/nqamula; a verb denoting "to smash", e.g. fahlaza/fahlaka; those denoting " crack", e.g. chachamba, verbs meaning "to tear", e.g. dabula/dabuka; verbs denoting "to demolish", e.g. bhidliza/bhidlika and verbs denoting "to break open", e.g. havuka I havula. Syntactically, Break predicates may occur as ideophones, which are ergative with transitive/intransitive alternation, e.g. aphulaj aphuka, In addition, Break predicates may consist of ideophones with verbal suffixes: [-k-] is the suffix of intransitive ideophone [-I-] or [-z-] is the suffix of transitive ideophone Intransitive ideophone: Intambo ithe nqamu The rope broke Intransitive verb with [-k-]: Intambo inqamukile The rope broke Transitive ideophone: Indoda ithe nqamu intambo The man broke the rope Transitive verb with [-1-]: Indoda inqamule intambo. The man broke a rope Transitive verb with [-z-]: Indoda iphoqoze intambo. The man broke a bone The study demonstrates that with Bend verbs there are two ergative verbs, namely thoba and goba. -- The study further demonstrates that Bend verbs are mostly intransitive with a shadow argument; there is an ideophone qethu, which takes the transitive / intransitive alternation with the suffix [-k-] for the intransitive and [-1-] for the transitive alternation, respectively. The study provides evidence that Break and Bend verbs are characterised by specific selection restrictions as well as event structures. Some alternations were also investigated in the study, such as the Possessive alternation and Instrument-Subject alternation. Lastly, the Lexical conceptual paradigm and the Lexical Inheritance Structure of each verb were examined.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die onderwerp van hierdie studie is Breek en Buig werkwoorde in isiZulu, wat geklassifiseerword as werkwoorde van toestandverandering. Hierdie studie ondersoek die semantiese en die sintaktiese analise van die werkwoordtipe van toestandverandering in isizulu. Buigwerkwoorde word semanties ingedeel in werkwoorde wat die buig van liggaamsdeleaandui, byvoorbeeld: thoba, khothema, qomfa, bhena, guqa, vosho, en werkwoorde wat die buig van liggaamsdele sowel as die fisiese objekte aandui, byvoorbeeld: goba, qethuka/qethula, soos aangedui word in die sinne hieronder: Indoda igobe ucingo Die man het die draad gebuig Indoda ithe qethu ikhanda Die man het sy kop agteroor gebuig Inkosikazi igobe amadolo Die vrou het (haar) knieë gebuig Uthe qethu isigxobo Hy het die paal agtertoe gebuig. Hierdie studie toon aan dat Breek-werkwoorde semanties ingedeel kan word in werkwoorde wat "breek" aandui, bv. aphula/aphuka: werkwoorde wat "afbreek" aandui, bv. nqamuka/nqamula; werkwoorde wat "flenters breek" aandui, bv. fahlaza/fahlaka; werkwoorde wat "bars" aandui, bv. chachamba, werkwoorde wat "skeur" aandui, bv. dabula/dabuka; werkwoorde wat "ruineer" aandui, bv. bhidliza/bhidlika en werkwoorde wat "oopbreek" aandui, bv. havuka/havula. Breek-predikate kan sintakties as ideofone verskyn, wat ergatief (ergative) is met 'n transitief/intransitief alternasie, bv.. aphula/aphuka. Voorts kan Breek-predikate ook verskyn as ideofone met werkwoordagtervoegsels: [-k-] is die suffiks van die intransitiewe ideofoon [-1-] of [-z-] is die suffiks van die transitiewe ideofoon Intransitiewe ideofoon: Intambo ithe nqamu Die tou het gebreek Intransitiewe werkwoord met [-k-]: Intambo inqamukile Die tou het gebreek Transitiewe ideofoon: Indoda ithe nqamu intambo Die man het die tou gebreek Transitiewe werkwoord met [-1-]: Indoda inqamule intambo. Die man het die tou gebreek Transitiewe werkwoord met l-e-l: Indoda iphoqoze umlenze Die man het die been gebreek Die studie toon aan dat met Buigwerkwoorde, twee ergatiewe werkwoorde gevind is, naamlik thoba en goba. Die studie toon ook aan dat Buigwerkwoorde meestal intransitiewe werkwoorde is wat met 'n skadu-argument verskyn. Daar is 'n ideofoon qethu, wat die transitief/intransitief alternasie vertoon met die suffiks [-k-] vir die intransitief en [-I-] vir die transitief alternasie, respektiewelik Die studie bied bewys daarvoor dat Breek- en Buigwerkwoorde gekenmerk word deur seleksiebeperkings en gebeure ('event') strukture. Sommige alternasies is ook ondersoek in die studie, byvoorbeeld die Possessief alternasie en Instrument-Subjek alternasie. Laastens, is die leksikaal-konseptuele paradigma en die Leksikale-erwingstruktuur van elke werkwoord ondersoek.

Orientador: Maria Luiza Braga
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-06T11:31:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rodrigues_AngelicaTerezinhaCarmo_D.pdf: 984053 bytes, checksum: f94d5eae89d1cdc7fe011f57d04b952c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006
Resumo: Na presente tese, investigo as ¿construções do tipo foi fez¿, doravante CFFs, presentes na modalidade falada do Português do Brasil (PB). Essas construções apresentam propriedades morfossintáticas bem definidas, além de desempenharem um papel particular na situação de fala. Esta tese, desenvolvida sob o paradigma do funcionalismo lingüístico (vertente americana), se baseia em dados oriundos de amostras reais de fala, coletadas a partir do banco de dados constituído por pesquisadores e bolsistas do Projeto PEUL da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Para sustentar minhas hipóteses e examinar alguns fatores tradicionalmente utilizados nas pesquisas sociolingüísticas, trabalhei com 16 grupos de fatores que foram operacionalizados através do pacote VARBRUL, principalmente dos programas MAKECELL e CROSSTAB. As CFFs se formam a partir de uma seqüência mínima de V1 e V2, em que V1 corresponde a um dos verbos ir, chegar e pegar e V2 é relativamente livre. Essas construções podem ocorrer sob a forma de dois tipos distintos. No tipo 1, V1 e V2 são interligados pela conjunção e. No tipo 2, V1 e V2 apenas se justapõem. Ademais, V1 e V2 partilham flexões de tempo e pessoa e têm sujeitos correferenciais. Quanto à sua função, as CFFs atuam no nível discursivo-pragmático, dramatizando ou enfatizando os eventos descritos em V2. Uma vez que, além das propriedades exclusivas de sua categoria, apresentam ainda outras que são compartilhadas por diferentes tipos de construções, as CFFs não se encaixam no modelo clássico de categorização. Propus que apenas um modelo mais flexível, como aquele que prevê a existência de semelhança de famílias e de protótipos, é adequado para dar conta dos dados. Embora as CFFs possam ser concebidas como um membro de um continuum de construções de predicação complexa, com ocorrência em várias línguas, no que se restringe ao PB, as CFFs permanecem distintas de todos os outros tipos de construções. Tendo em vista as mudanças sofridas por ir, chegar e pegar que levaram ao desenvolvimento das CFFs, atesto que esses verbos percorrem os mesmos estágios iniciais previstos nos processos de gramaticalização, sem que, no entanto, tenham adquirido uma função gramatical prototípica, como tempo, aspecto e modo, mas sim uma função pragmática. Ao considerar que os verbos ir, chegar e pegar se gramaticalizaram, dando origem às CFFs, deixo claro que esses verbos exercem, nessas construções, uma função diversa daquelas originalmente previstas nos estudos de gramaticalização
Abstract: The present thesis examines the ¿foi fez constructions¿ (Lit. ¿Went Did constructions¿), henceforth FFCs, in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. FFCs exhibit definite morphosyntactic properties associated to the uses of the verbs ir (go), chegar (arrive) e pegar (take) and they also play a specific role on the speech situation. This thesis is developed under the functionalism paradigm (American version) and is based on data, collected from the PEUL Project database. In order to support my hypothesis and analyze some traditional sociolinguistics features, I adopted the methodological principles from the Theory of Linguistic Variation to make a quantitative analysis, using the VARBRUL, mainly the programs MAKECELL and CROSSTAB. FFCs consist minimally of a sequence of V1 and V2, where V1 and V2 share inflections for verb tense and subject. V1 is one of the verbs ir ¿go¿, chegar ¿arrive¿, and, pegar ¿take¿ and V2 is relatively open. V1 and V2 can be contiguous, type 1, or can be connected by e ¿and¿, type 2. The chief function of V1 in FFCs appears to be a discourse-pragmatic one, dramatizing or emphasizing the events codified by V2. FFCs do not constitute a sharply bounded grammatical category. As they share a number of resemblances with some other major construction, they cannot be analyzed in terms of discrete classical categories. I suggested that only a more flexible kind of categorization, as family resemblance and prototypic approaches, is appropriate to account for the data. Notwithstanding FFCs are understood here as a member of a group of complex predicates crosslinguistically observed, as far as Portuguese is concerned, they remain a distinctive class of grammatical construction. Furthermore I verified that ir, chegar e pegar have undergone changes, which result on the development of FFCs and concur with the first stages of grammaticalization. However, I stress that FFCs do not developed a prototypical grammatical function, like tense, aspect and mood, traditionally used to account for grammaticalization. Rather they developed a pragmatic one. Although I consider the development of FFCs as a result of a grammaticalization process, it is necessary to emphasize that they acquire a function different from those expected for grammaticalized items
Doutorado
Sociolinguistica
Doutor em Linguística

This corpus based investigation deals with the present-day usage of and the semantic relation between the two verbs rise and arise. Concordance lines containing various forms of the two verbs in question have been taken from six different (sub)corpora and were examined in view of their collocational and semantic characteristics. The basic aims were to investigate the nowadays status of the verbs rise and arise and whether they (still) can be regarded as synonyms. The results show that both verbs can sometimes be used synonymously. Their general semantic relation appeared to be near-synonymy. Furthermore, both verbs seem to have developed a semantic specialisation, which is regarded a counterargument for the thesis that the verb arise is on the verge of dying out.

The purpose of this essay is to identify functional shifts and semantic changes in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game Lord of the Rings Online. The focus is on new uses of established terms in Standard English and the intent is to see how the word formation processes work in an online gaming environment, and identify the possible reasons behind them. Due to the lack of previous studies of language in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, the aim is to provide some insight into some of the language developments that occur in such an environment. A quantitative method has been utilised in order to distinguish patterns, and the material, in the form of chat logs, has been gathered from Lord of the Rings Online. The chat logs have then been used to create a corpus, and, from this point, a qualitative method has been employed. The corpus has been thoroughly analysed for the words which have undergone functional shifts and/or semantic changes, and a selection of these words are presented and discussed based on word formation process. The findings in this study seem to confirm that language changes in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game follow the same patterns as in other environments.

The aim of this study is to investigate how the modal auxiliaries will and shall and the semi-modal BE going to are used to express futurity by individuals whose first language is Swedish. The study is corpus based, and the corpora used in this study consist of Swedish newspapers in English (SWENC) and material from blogs which are written in English by Swedes (BESC). These are compared with the press sub-corpora in F-LOB (the Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English) and Frown (the Freiburg-Brown corpus of American English), which represent British and American varieties of English. The method is quantitative and the results are mainly presented in frequencies. The results show that all of the modals are used in SWENC and BESC. The core modal will is the most frequently used modal in all of the corpora and sub-corpora. The semi-modal BE going to is most frequently used in BESC and the second core modal shall is most frequent in SWENC. However, qualitative examination of shall revealed that the writers in SWENC use the modal differently from how it is used in F-LOB Press. This study shows evidence of variation in use of the modals which express futurity. The fact that the semi-modal BE going to exists in the Swedish material indicates that the process of grammaticalization continues in the Swedish form of English.

Jede lebendige Sprache ist durch ihren Gebrauch ständigem Wandel unterworfen, der jede Ebene der Sprache betreffen kann – von der Phonologie über die Semantik bis hin zur Grammatik. Die vorliegende Arbeit hat es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, den semantischen und lexikalischen Wandel des Ägyptischen zu beleuchten. Das Ägyptische ist in seinen verschiedenen Sprachstufen über mehr als vier Jahrtausende hinweg zu verfolgen, und gehört damit zu den am längsten bezeugten Einzelsprachen der Menschheitsgeschichte. Dies und die gute Quellenlage des Ägyptischen machen es zu einem prädestinierten Gegenstand für diachrone Untersuchungen. Nach einer quantitativen Erhebung der Lexeme eines ausgewählten Textkorpus’, der die Grundlage der Arbeit liefert, wurden im zweiten Teil der Dissertation vier Wortfelder exemplarisch auf ihr Wandelverhalten hin untersucht. Diese Wortfelder, Verwandtschafts- und Körperteilbezeichnungen sowie Wahrnehmungsverben und kognitive Verben, gehören zum Grundvokabular einer jeden Sprache, was die Vergleichbarkeit der Ergebnisse garantieren soll. Neben der Beschreibung konkreter Wandelphänomene wurde dabei Fragen nach dem Ablauf, dem Umfang und den Typen von semantischem und lexikalischem Wandel im Ägyptischen nachgegangen. Ziel war es unter anderem, generalisierbare Aussagen zu treffen, die für die allgemeinen Fragestellungen der Sprachwandelforschung, der Diachronen Semantik und der Historischen Linguistik von Relevanz sind, indem sie mit Ergebnissen früherer Untersuchungen zu den verschiedensten Sprachen verglichen bzw. zu ihrer Überprüfung herangezogen werden können. Als Ergebnis der Untersuchung konnten neben der Beschreibung interessanter Einzelbeobachtungen schließlich einige Regularitäten des semantischen und lexikalischen Wandels des Ägyptischen aufgestellt werden. Diese wurden zum Teil bereits durch andere Sprachen bestätigt und können nach weiterer Überprüfung möglicherweise als universale Tendenzen des semantischen Wandels formuliert werden.
Every spoken language is subject to constant change due to its use. This change can affect every level of the language, from phonology to semantics to grammar. The present dissertation is set out to illuminate the semantic and lexical change of the Egyptian language, which can be followed over four thousand years and is therefore one of the longest attested languages of mankind. This and its excellent state of sources make it the ideal subject of a diachronic study. After a quantitative analysis of the lexemes of a carefully chosen set of texts, which provides the foundation of the study, the main part of the dissertation examines four semantic fields with regard to its mode of change. These semantic fields, kinship terms and terms for body parts as well as verbs for cognition and perception, are part of the basic vocabulary of every language, which guarantees the comparability of the results. In addition to the description of individual processes of change, the paper pursues questions of the course, the range, and the types of semantic and lexical change of the Egyptian language. The intention was to form general statements which are of relevance to questions of the study of language change, the Diachronic Semantics as well as the Historical Linguistics, by serving as comparison as well as verification to studies of other languages. As a result of the present paper, some general regularities of the semantic and lexical change of the Egyptian language were established, in addition to the observation of some interesting individual processes of language change. These regularities were already partially confirmed by observations made in other languages and could, after further examination, turn out to be universal tendencies of semantic change.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:34:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Adriana de Souza Ramacciotti.pdf: 1396567 bytes, checksum: c82efe40839e12a61522536d8a7d9288 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-09-18
The present work examines the grammaticalization of verbs in a Brazilian Portuguese grammar (Nova Gramática do Português Brasileiro), written by Ataliba Teixeira de Castilho. The primary purpose is to verify whether there is grammaticalization of verbs and the second one is to describe its pathway. Grammaticalization is a language change process which turns lexical items into grammatical forms and grammaticalized forms into more grammaticalized ones. It is an interesting subject to be used by Elementaty and High School Portuguese teachers. The research is mainly based on the following researchers: Castilho (1977), Givón (1979), Hopper (1991), Hopper & Traugott (2009), Lehmann (2002), Martelotta (2011) e Martelotta, Votre & Cezario (1996) e Heine (2003). The grammaticalized verbs were analysed according to Lehmann´s parameters (1985) and Hopper´s principles of grammaticalization (1991). Castilho´s grammar has traced that the ser, estar, ter, haver, ir, querer, poder and dever Brazilian Portuguese verbs has undergone grammaticalization from full to auxiliary verbs. Grammaticalization process is also related to the foi fez construction
Esta dissertação tem como tema a gramaticalização de verbos na Nova Gramática do Português Brasileiro, de Ataliba Teixeira de Castilho, e, como dois objetivos, verificar se existem processos de gramaticalização de verbos no corpus selecionado e identificar a sua trajetória. Gramaticalização é, para a maioria dos estudiosos, a passagem de um item lexical a gramatical e, se gramatical, a mais gramatical ainda. Justifica-se o tema pelo fato de a gramaticalização ter sido muito estudada como processo de mudança linguística por pesquisadores que trabalham com a corrente funcionalista da linguagem e ser uma ferramenta preciosa para estimular a reflexão do professor de Português sobre quais gramáticas levar para a sala de aula. Como fundamentação teórica para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho, consideraram-se os autores Castilho (1977), Givón (1979), Hopper (1991), Hopper & Traugott (2009), Lehmann (2002), Martelotta (2011) e Martelotta, Votre & Cezario (1996) e Heine (2003), entre outros, e aplicaram-se os parâmetros de Lehmann (1985) e princípios de Hopper (1991) na análise dos dados, quando possível. Como resultados obtidos, constatou-se que a Nova Gramática do Português Brasileiro aborda a gramaticalização dos verbos ser, estar, ter, haver, ir, querer, poder e dever, além da construção foi fez. O percurso descrito para os verbos citados foi verbo pleno > verbo funcional > verbo auxiliante > verbo auxiliar

This study focuses on the predicate argument structure (PAS) of a sub-class of verbs in Xitsonga - verbs of change of possession: give, contribute, future having, providing, obtaining and verbs of exchange. It is shown that these verbs select various theta roles to form their PAS in the different alternations allowed in this language. The effects of the applicative {-el-} and causative {-is-} verbal affixes on the PAS of such verbs are also considered. The study confirms the fact that the ordering of objects in ditransitive verbs is determined by an interplay of syntactic and semantic factors. Ambiguity arises in the case of two animate objects. In this case the object with a definite reading will appear adjacent to the verb.
African Languages
M. A. (Arican Languages)

When Chinese language learners reach intermediate level, approximately in the second year of their Chinese study, they start to encounter near-synonyms, words that have the same translations in English, and characters that look alike. These words are often called 易混淆词 yi hunxiao ci “easily confusable words” by Chinese scholars. This lexical acquisition study researches a group of near synonyms about Chinese verbs of ‘change’, which either express a stative change (where an argument which expresses the result of the change is required) or causative change (where an argument which expresses the instigator or cause of the change is required). The study selected seven typical Chinese verbs, which are approximately equivalent to the words ‘to change’ and ‘to become’ in English. This study explores how the seven verbs of ‘change’ are different from each other through both literature review and an analysis of native speakers’ corpus. Among Chinese verbs of ‘change’, the most difficult pairs are 变成 biancheng and 成为 chengwei, 改 gai, 变 bian and 改变 gaibian, because of their morphological, semantic and syntactic similarities. 变成 biancheng and 成为 chengwei are very close in meaning, however, 成为 chengwei indicates a change that has gone through a development, while 变成 biancheng emphasizes on the comparison of status before and after the action. 成为 chengwei is used mainly to describe getting a new job or obtaining a special status, while 变成 biancheng is mostly to describe physical changes. As for 改 gai and 变 bian, under the sense of ‘to change’, 变 bian is more often used as an intransitive verb to express a stative change, 改 gai in contrast, is frequently used to express a causative change. As for collocations, 改 gai, 变 bian and 改变 gaibian collocate with very different nouns and other syntactic structures. This acquisition study then adopts an interlanguage analysis and experiment test as means to determine the effect that these semantic differences have on language learners. Heritage language learners have demonstrated advantages since the first year. Participants in their fourth year of Chinese classes have demonstrated their full knowledges on the verbs’ pronunciation and meaning, including secondary meaning of polysemy, which are comparable to Chinese speakers. Nevertheless, foreign language learners after four years of learning have not yet achieved native level in term of using the verbs correctly in sentences. The most difficult lexical pairs are 改 gai and 变 bian; 变成 biancheng and 成为 chengwei. Even though heritage and foreign language learners have different learning patterns, it is found that as students proceed in studying Chinese, their performance on Chinese verbs of ‘change’ improves in U-shape patterns. With in-depth comparison and analysis, it is determined that the causes of difficulties may come from English and Chinese differences, complexities of Chinese verbs of change, transfer of training.

This dissertation provides an account of an often-noted change in the history of French: the shift in the expression of the internal argument of a small class of dynamic two-place verbs best represented by aider ‘to help’ from “dative”, i.e., as an indirect object with the preposition à, to “accusative”, i.e., as a direct object with no preposition. The change does not appear to be correlated with a change in the meaning of the verbs. Traditional commentators have viewed it as random, affecting only a few lexical items, rather than systematic. One of the central results of this thesis is that the valency change affects a class of some twenty verbs at approximately the same period and it follows the same time course. Moreover, three properties distinguish this class of verbs from all others taking indirect objects in French: following current ideas about the syntactic manifestation of verbs and their arguments, they have a non relational argument structure, they do not possess lexical directionality, and they select for first or third order entities. These facts suggest that a structural change underlies the change in the realization of the internal argument. Adopting Lightfoot’s (1999, 2006) “cue-based” approach to language change, it is proposed that the valency change is a result of the loss of a functional item encoding directionality. Directionality is a derived property in Medieval French, available in particular to prepositions. It is demonstrated that when à was able to encode direction, it was also able to license first and third order complements in a broader range of contexts, namely, with aider-type verbs. The loss of this functional item is also correlated with several other structural changes that occurred in the 16th and 17th century.

Current research into language change and evolution focuses on native varieties of English, Schneider’s (2007) settler strand, but we have little knowledge concerning diachronic changes in non-native varieties of English, Schneider’s (2007) indigenous strand. Such a theory must take into account language contact as well as theories pertaining to Second Language Acquisition. This dissertation describes the diachronic changes which occur in one feature of Black South African English (BSAE), namely the progressive aspect. Current synchronic research on BSAE suggests that the progressive aspect is overextended to include stative verbs. This dissertation aims to evaluate the value of this hypothesis, and determine whether there is evidence of this overextension in diachronic data. In order to observe instances of language change, a diachronic corpus of BSAE was complied. This corpus consisted of data from letters, fiction, and newspapers ranging from the 1870s until the 2000s. Using this corpus, analyses were performed in order to determine the frequency of progressive use, the distribution of aktionsart categories, and which temporal meanings were denoted by stative verbs and activity verbs used in the progressive aspect. These analyses were then repeated for data taken from the historical corpus of White South African English (WSAE), in order to ascertain whether changes in BSAE developed parallel to WSAE, or if it follows its own trajectory of change. One further analysis was conducted on BSAE: the aspectual categories of 71 state verbs were analysed in order to determine whether speakers of BSAE indeed do overextend the –ing progressive form onto stative verbs describing states and qualities. The results indicate that the frequency of verbs used with the progressive aspect increases for BSAE, but decreases for WSAE. The comparison of aktionsart distribution indicates that BSAE has a higher overall frequency of communication verbs and accomplishments, while WSAE has a higher frequency of activity verbs, verbs denoting the future, and stative verbs. Achievements are used as expected by both varieties. The analysis of the temporal meanings of stative verbs indicates that speakers of WSAE denote the prototypical short duration associated with the progressive aspect for 74.83% of the verbs, while BSAE uses an extended temporal meaning for 46.86% of the verbs, indicating that speakers of BSAE more likely to overextend the temporal duration of stative verbs than WSAE speakers. The temporal meanings for activities were the same for both varieties; the prototypical short duration is denoted by 77.83% of the total activities in BSAE, and 77.11% of the activities in WSAE. The extended duration in both varieties may be due to language change in general, while the additional temporal meanings for statives in BSAE are a result of substrate transfer.
MA (English)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2015