Conditionals, or if-then sentences, form a crucial ingredient of everyday reasoning and argumentation, as they enable us to express our thoughts about possible states of the world. They are used in... Show moreConditionals, or if-then sentences, form a crucial ingredient of everyday reasoning and argumentation, as they enable us to express our thoughts about possible states of the world. They are used in very different ways, and the main aim of this dissertation is to investigate to what extent these different uses of conditionals are connected to one another and to their grammatical features.The first part of this dissertation presents an analysis of conditionals in terms of implicatures of 'unassertiveness' and 'connectedness'. Insights from semantics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and neighbouring fields are combined. In the second part, the analysis is tested on a corpus of spoken and written Dutch discourse. To investigate the relation between the meaning and grammar of conditionals, several cluster analyses are conducted. The results show that grammatical features such as verb tense and modal marking do not, or only weakly, license generalised implicatures of unassertiveness and connectedness. This outcome sheds light on difficulties in applying general categories of conditionals to language use data, and it suggests that the fundamentals of categorising conditional constructions need revision.The dissertation shows the benefits of combining semantic and pragmatic analyses of conditionals. It provides an extensive discussion of classifications of conditionals, an overview of the grammatical features of Dutch conditionals, and it presents cluster analyses using state-of-the-art machine-learning techniques. The study should therefore be of interest to anyone concerned with the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of conditionals, and to anyone working on Dutch grammar, corpus linguistics, theories of argumentation, and the interface between semantics and pragmatics. Show less
Attested in cuneiform, hieroglyphic and alphabetic texts dating to the first two millennia BCE, the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family is intriguing already by itself. But... Show moreAttested in cuneiform, hieroglyphic and alphabetic texts dating to the first two millennia BCE, the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family is intriguing already by itself. But Anatolian is also of central importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, the last common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Not only is it the earliest attested branch, it has also long been suspected that Anatolian reflects an earlier stage of the proto-language than that underlying the rest of the family.Focusing on the three best-attested Anatolian languages, Hittite, Luwian and Lycian, this book aims to further our understanding of Anatolian, and by extension Proto-Indo-European, by offering in-depth analyses of essential issues in Anatolian historical morphology and semantics. Various well-known as well as several newly adduced topics are scrutinized to determine whether the innovations leading to the discrepancies with the rest of Indo-European took place on the Anatolian or on the non-Anatolian side.The present study suggests that Anatolian is in many respects closer to the ancestor of the other Indo-European languages than is often claimed. Nevertheless, the investigation has also led to new evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Anatolian was the first branch to split off from the family. Show less
In this work, I attempt to inventorise the various positions -ing forms can take in English sentences from a semiotactic perspective, focusing on the elusive semantics of the clausal gerund (e... Show moreIn this work, I attempt to inventorise the various positions -ing forms can take in English sentences from a semiotactic perspective, focusing on the elusive semantics of the clausal gerund (e.g. Reading books is fun). It is hoped that this work will be a useful contribution to the active debate that still surrounds the clausal gerund, and that it will convince the reader of the versatility and usefulness of the semiotactic framework in analysing linguistic data. Show less
This thesis tapped into the details of speech production in Mandarin Chinese in the framework of current psycholinguistic models of speech production. The findings in this thesis not only... Show moreThis thesis tapped into the details of speech production in Mandarin Chinese in the framework of current psycholinguistic models of speech production. The findings in this thesis not only contribute to the understanding of the underlying neuropsychological mechanisms of speech production in Mandarin Chinese, but also provides insights into the understanding of the accountability of current models of speech production that are mostly based on evidence from West Germanic languages. Show less
