This thesis offers a description of the Bouakako Sign Language (LaSiBo, Langues des Signes de Bouakako in French), that has emerged within a community comprising a majority of hearing members.... Show moreThis thesis offers a description of the Bouakako Sign Language (LaSiBo, Langues des Signes de Bouakako in French), that has emerged within a community comprising a majority of hearing members. LaSiBo is a young language that has developed within a group of hearing-impaired community members to fulfill their communication needs, but is also used by other members of the village. The aspects studied here are firstly the formal properties of LaSiBo and inter-personal variation in sign usage; as well as semantic domains such as kinship, colors and time. The size of the community, the age of the language, the influence of the spoken language and the absence of use in education are among the factors that influence the formation of LaSiBo. The comparisons carried out in this work highlight similarities and differences not only between sign languages (used in small communities in particular) – which, however different they may be, share the same modality (visio-gestural) –, but also between languages that are in contact with each other (the Dida language and LaSiBo) but use different modality (respectively audio-oral and visio-gestural). Show less
This thesis covers a wide range of topics from historical to computational and corpus linguistics as well as synchronic and diachronic syntax and information structure. The latest insights in each... Show moreThis thesis covers a wide range of topics from historical to computational and corpus linguistics as well as synchronic and diachronic syntax and information structure. The latest insights in each of these sub-fields of linguistics are necessary to address what has been a vexed problem in the study of Middle Welsh for a long time. Middle Welsh word order is particularly puzzling, because there is a wide range of verb-second patterns and the distribution of those is not at all clear. Secondly, these so-called 'Abnormal Orders' are only found in the Middle Welsh period; Old and Modern Welsh mainly exhibit verb-initial patterns. Verb-second orders are shown to have developed from earlier patterns with hanging topics and focussed cleft constructions by carefully reconstructing their syntactic history in Old Welsh and related Celtic languages. A detailed analysis of a syntactically and pragmatically annotated corpus, built especially for this thesis, reveals that a combination of these features explains which word-order pattern appears in which particular context. From a diachronic syntactic point of view, Middle Welsh shares some crucial developments in the rise of V2 with Early Romance, but it differs in others. Show less
Although Latin displays many characteristics of nominative/accusative alignment, it also exhibits a number of properties that are typical of active/inactive linguistic systems. More... Show more Although Latin displays many characteristics of nominative/accusative alignment, it also exhibits a number of properties that are typical of active/inactive linguistic systems. More specifically, the Latin verbal clause displays an active/inactive distinction, as it regularly marks, through the occurrence of dedicated morphological strategies, the presence of non-agentive as opposed to agentive contexts. This dissertation explores the syntactic motivations behind this opposition, addressing the crucial question about the relationship between syntax and morphology. The claim is made that verbal morphology in Latin is always syntactically motivated, since it directly reflects the difference between active and inactive structures. In particular, deponent verbs are shown not to be a case of syntax-morphology mismatch: these verbs exhibit inactive morphology because of their non-agentive properties. Moreover, it will be argued that syntax and semantics are closely related to each other within the syntactic computation. From this perspective, this thesis also provides an account of the development of a number of analytic constructions in Romance: perfective, possessive and deontic periphrases. Substantial attention is devoted to the diachronic study of the Romance auxiliation patterns occurring in these constructions and to their relationship with alignment and argument structure. The main claim is that the Romance outcomes of these periphrases are closely related to the active/inactive opposition characterizing the Latin system and to the alignment changes that characterized the passage from Latin to Romance. Therefore, these developments cannot be seen as isolated phenomena, but must be understood as the various manifestations of a systematic change affecting the whole linguistic system. Finally, the analysis and investigation of these diachronic facts confirms that syntactic reanalysis is one of the major forces at the basis of language change. This study will be of relevance to anyone interested in diachronic syntax, historical linguistics, classical philology and Italian dialectology. Show less
This book presents a comprehensive description and analysis of verbal derivation in Citumbuka (N21), a Bantu language spoken in northern Malawi and north eastern Zambia, with an estimated... Show moreThis book presents a comprehensive description and analysis of verbal derivation in Citumbuka (N21), a Bantu language spoken in northern Malawi and north eastern Zambia, with an estimated population of more than 2,000,000 speakers. The book consists of 10 chapters and is based on a corpus generated by the Centre for Language Studies under the MaLEX Citumbuka dictionary project supplemented by data from Citumbuka literature and consultations with native speaker. This work describes functions of common Citumbuka extension suffixes: passive, reciprocal, applicative, causative. Verbal suffixes are typical of Bantu languages, and basic information about the use of these extensions can be found in most grammars of Bantu languages. The analysis of the more common functions is a central topic of Bantu linguistics. What sets this thesis apart is that both Bantuist and general typological literature has informed the study of each suffix. An exceptionally wide range of semantic functions is discussed for each of the suffixes. The passive/stative polysemy, the reciprocal/anticausative/antipassive polysemy, diverse semantic functions of applicatives such as substitutive beneficiaries, judger applicative, possessor applicative and diverse semantic functions of causative suffixes such as conversive, autobenefactive, associative causative, are carefully discussed. Verbal derivation and valency in Citumbuka is a must read for anyone interested in Bantu linguistics, linguistic typology, African linguistics and general linguistics. It contains valuable information on the connection between linguistic typology and Bantu linguistics and forms a basis for comparative studies concerning verbal derivation in Bantu languages. Show less
