DRUM Collection: Linguistics Theses and Dissertations

Input and Intake in Language Acquisition

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Input and Intake in Language Acquisition Authors: Gagliardi, Ann C. Abstract: This dissertation presents an approach for a productive way forward in the study of language acquisition, sealing the rift between claims of an innate linguistic hypothesis space and powerful domain general statistical inference. This approach breaks language acquisition into its component parts, distinguishing the input in the environment from the intake encoded by the learner, and looking at how a statistical inference mechanism, coupled with a well defined linguistic hypothesis space could lead a learn to infer the native grammar of their native language. This work draws on experimental work, corpus analyses and computational models of Tsez, Norwegian and English children acquiring word meanings, word classes and syntax to highlight the need for an appropriate encoding of the linguistic input in order to solve any given problem in language acquisition.

Without Specifiers: Phrase Structure and Events

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Without Specifiers: Phrase Structure and Events Authors: Lohndal, Terje Abstract: This dissertation attempts to unify two reductionist hypotheses: that there is no relational difference between specifiers and complements, and that verbs do not have thematic arguments. I argue that these two hypotheses actually bear on each other and that we get a better theory if we pursue both of them. The thesis is centered around the following hypothesis: Each application of Spell-Out corresponds to a conjunct at logical form. In order to create such a system, it is necessary to provide a syntax that is designed such that each Spell-Out domain is mapped into a conjunct. This is done by eliminating the relational difference between specifiers and complements. The conjuncts are then conjoined into Neo-Davidsonian representations that constitute logical forms. The theory is argued to provide a transparent mapping from syntactic structures to logical forms, such that the syntax gives you a logical form where the verb does not have any thematic arguments. In essence, the thesis is therefore an investigation into the structure of verbs. This theory of Spell-Out raises a number of questions and it makes strong predictions about the structure of possible derivations. The thesis discusses a number of these: the nature of linearization and movement, left-branch extractions, serial verb constructions, among others. It is shown how the present theory can capture these phenomena, and sometimes in better ways than previous analyses. The thesis closes by discussing some more foundational issues related to transparency, the syntax-semantics interface, and the nature of basic semantic composition operations.

Reflexives in Japanese

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Reflexives in Japanese Authors: Kishida, Maki Abstract: The purpose of this dissertation is to reconsider reflexives in Japanese through the following three steps: (a) separation of genuine reflexive elements from elements that are confounded as reflexives, (b) classification of reflexive anaphors into subtypes based on their semantic difference, and (c) classification of predicates that occur with anaphors. Many researchers have worked on the reflexive element zibun (self), but Japanese has other reflexive elements as well. These elements including zibun have not only the reflexive anaphor usage but also other ones. All the instances are, however, often lumped together under one category: reflexive. I distinguish genuine reflexive anaphors in Japanese from elements that are confounded as reflexive elements, by scrutinizing their syntactic and semantic properties and behavioral differences. Further, I claim that reflexive anaphors are classified into two subtypes as Pure reflexive anaphors and Near reflexive anaphors (Lidz, 1996, 2001a,b) based on their semantic property. Observing several languages from different language families, I propose that there is a parametric variation with respect to the two-type distinction of reflexive anaphors among languages. In languages like Japanese, anaphors in the form of affix are Pure reflexive anaphors, while non-affixal anaphors are Near reflexive anaphors. On the other hand, in languages like Dutch, the morphological composition (complexity) of anaphor corresponds to the two-type anaphor distinction. What yields this variation is also discussed. In considering reflexives, it is important to know the nature of reflexive anaphors, but it is also essential to understand the nature of predicates that occur with an anaphor. One of the unsolved questions in the research of reflexives in Japanese is that the anaphor zibun cannot take a local antecedent when it occurs with a certain type of verb, although anaphors should be locally bound. Several studies have demonstrated that the availability of local binding of an anaphor depends on the property of its cooccuring predicate (Reinhart and Reuland, 1993, Bergeton, 2004, among others). Discussing how the type of reflexive and the type of predicate relate, I propose a way to categorize predicates in Japanese into subtypes based on the analysis in Bergeton (2004). By going through the three steps, I give an answer to the unsolved question.

Windows into Sensory Integration and Rates in Language Processing: Insights from Signed and Spoken Languages

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Windows into Sensory Integration and Rates in Language Processing: Insights from Signed and Spoken Languages Authors: Hwang, So-One K. Abstract: This dissertation explores the hypothesis that language processing proceeds in "windows" that correspond to representational units, where sensory signals are integrated according to time-scales that correspond to the rate of the input. To investigate universal mechanisms, a comparison of signed and spoken languages is necessary. Underlying the seemingly effortless process of language comprehension is the perceiver's knowledge about the rate at which linguistic form and meaning unfold in time and the ability to adapt to variations in the input. The vast body of work in this area has focused on speech perception, where the goal is to determine how linguistic information is recovered from acoustic signals. Testing some of these theories in the visual processing of American Sign Language (ASL) provides a unique opportunity to better understand how sign languages are processed and which aspects of speech perception models are in fact about language perception across modalities. The first part of the dissertation presents three psychophysical experiments investigating temporal integration windows in sign language perception by testing the intelligibility of locally time-reversed sentences. The findings demonstrate the contribution of modality for the time-scales of these windows, where signing is successively integrated over longer durations (~ 250-300 ms) than in speech (~ 50-60 ms), while also pointing to modality-independent mechanisms, where integration occurs in durations that correspond to the size of linguistic units. The second part of the dissertation focuses on production rates in sentences taken from natural conversations of English, Korean, and ASL. Data from word, sign, morpheme, and syllable rates suggest that while the rate of words and signs can vary from language to language, the relationship between the rate of syllables and morphemes is relatively consistent among these typologically diverse languages. The results from rates in ASL also complement the findings in perception experiments by confirming that time-scales at which phonological units fluctuate in production match the temporal integration windows in perception. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that there are modality-independent time pressures for language processing, and discussions provide a synthesis of converging findings from other domains of research and propose ideas for future investigations.