Aspect and subjectivity in modal constructions This thesis investigates the interaction of aspect and subjectivity in modal constructions. In the linguistic literature dealing with the connection... Show moreAspect and subjectivity in modal constructions This thesis investigates the interaction of aspect and subjectivity in modal constructions. In the linguistic literature dealing with the connection between aspect and modality, a link has often been observed between imperfective aspect and modal readings. However, as is shown in this study, both aspect prominent languages, such as Slavic languages, and tense prominent languages, such as Germanic languages, present exceptions to this hypothesized rule, since perfective aspect can appear with modal readings in both types of languages. The following two questions concerning the interaction between aspect and modality are discussed in this thesis: (1) Can the hypothesis about a link between imperfective aspect and modality be confirmed or rejected? (2) Is imperfective aspect attracted to more ‘subjective’ modal readings? The data which are the focus of the thesis comprise modal infinitive constructions in Russian, German and Dutch, imperative constructions in Russian and Dutch, and modal uses of tenses in Russian and Serbian. In order to compare the interaction of aspect and subjectivity in modal constructions, the data are classified according to a parameter of modality. For that purpose, the semantic map approach to modality proposed by Van der Auwera & Plungian (1998) is used. The notion of subjectivity adopted in the thesis is based on the definition of Langacker (1985). The thesis proposes three tests for determining degrees of subjectivity in modal uses of the different constructions. The tests relate to the following factors: (1) The nature of the modal source; (2) The role of the modal target participant; (3) The nature of the subject. The book shows that modal meanings can actually be expressed with both imperfectives and perfectives, both in aspect and in tense prominent languages. However, modal readings that are more subjective do most often correlate with imperfective aspect. Show less
The main topic of the book is the nature of inner aspect of the Verb Phrase, and the relation between the decompositional and the quantificational approaches to this problem. Decompositional... Show moreThe main topic of the book is the nature of inner aspect of the Verb Phrase, and the relation between the decompositional and the quantificational approaches to this problem. Decompositional approaches analyze eventualities into simpler components, organized by some kind of structure. In this view, an eventuality is telic if, in decomposition, it can be shown to involve a result component (also referred to as the culmination or termination component, or as the telos). Quantificational approaches see telicity as a property of the predicate of an eventuality, usually described as boundedness, lack of the subinterval property, or a specified quantity. The major advantage of the decompositional approaches is that they directly match the syntax-semantics interface of the VP with the conceptual image of an eventuality. Quantificational approaches blur the picture in this respect, because they involve effects like distributive readings, which are not a typical interpretational component of the VP domain. On the other hand, the major advantage of the quantificational approaches is that they assign similar or identical properties to (the predicates of) eventualities and nominal expressions. This enables them to capture the phenomenon of incremental themes (participants that appear to measure out the eventuality in which they take part), by relating the predicates of eventualities and those of their arguments. The dissertation presents a new approach, which not only combines the two approaches above, but also shows how they are directly mutually related, and how some quantificational properties can be derived from the domain of decomposition. Show less
This thesis attempts to motivate a syntactic analysis of final particles in Chinese. The proposal conforms essentially to the recent hypotheses on the split CP system. It suggests that Chinese... Show moreThis thesis attempts to motivate a syntactic analysis of final particles in Chinese. The proposal conforms essentially to the recent hypotheses on the split CP system. It suggests that Chinese final particles are heads of functional projections in the C-domain. The investigation is implemented by two steps. The first step is examining the semantic function of final particles. It argues that every final particle expresses a semantic core despite its various uses in different contexts. According to its core meaning, each final particle is related to a functional projection in the C-domain. The second step involves the structural mapping of final particles to the sentence structure. Crucial evidence comes from the observation that different final particles can enter a rigidly ordered sequence. On the basis of the linear order, a hierarchy of the corresponding functional projections is established. The languages of interest are Mandarin, Cantonese, and Wenzhou. In this thesis, a detailed description as well as systematic and comparative analysis of the final particle system in the three Chinese languages are provided. This research expands the existing cross-linguistic evidence, showing that Chinese has a rich functional makeup of the C-domain. Show less
Modification and reference in the Chinese nominal investigates the encoding of referential properties in the Chinese nominal. This study argues that even though Chinese does not have articles, the... Show moreModification and reference in the Chinese nominal investigates the encoding of referential properties in the Chinese nominal. This study argues that even though Chinese does not have articles, the encoding of referential properties can still be detected by looking at modified noun phrases. This study proposes a theory for the encoding of specificity and definiteness in the Chinese nominal based on Cantonese, Mandarin and Wenzhou data. By manipulating the positions of modifiers, it is shown that in Chinese, some structure to the left of the Numeral Phrase is responsible for the encoding of specificity, an observation that is obscured in unmodified noun phrases. This motivates the existence of a projection called the Specificity Phrase in Chinese. The Specificity Phrase is present in all specific noun phrases but absent in non-specific ones. The tie between specificity and definiteness is captured by an AGREE relation between the Specificity Phrase and the Classifier Phrase. The latter is where definiteness is encoded. The interplay between the two projections determines the overall referential properties of a noun phrase. Modifiers in Chinese come in two types. They appear either bare or with a modification marker element. The two types of modifiers interact differently with the referential property of the noun phrase and deserve different structural status. This study argues that bare modifiers are specifiers and marker modifiers are adjuncts, motivated by their distinct distributions and licensing requirements. The theory proposed here has been extended to non-Chinese languages like Miao and Zhuang. This thesis is of relevance to anyone interested in the study of the referential properties of noun phrases, nominal modification, or in the study of different languages in China. Show less
This book investigates the effects of brain lesions in the left hemisphere (Broca’s area) on the production and perception of vowels, word tones and the linguistic use of sentence melody. We aimed... Show moreThis book investigates the effects of brain lesions in the left hemisphere (Broca’s area) on the production and perception of vowels, word tones and the linguistic use of sentence melody. We aimed to test how and to what extent Beijing aphasic patients process Chinese word tones and sentence melody relative to healthy Beijing speakers and relative to learners of Beijing dialect with and without a tone language as their mother tongue. The main question is whether in the architecture of the brain word tones are closer to the segmental structure of the words – given that both segments and word tones are lexical properties – or to the sentence melody – on the strength of the argument that word tones and sentence melody share a tonal representation. A subsidiary question is to what extent the mental representation of the word tones in a tone language in the brain of Broca’s aphasic patients is comparable to that of speakers of Beijing dialect as a second language. The results indicate that word tones are represented separately from the segmental structure and from sentence melody. Moreover, the mental representation in the patients is defective in a way that resembles the deficit of a second-language speaker. Show less
This study describes the effects of prominence and boundary on the temporal and melodic structures of two Indonesian languages, viz. Toba Batak, a stress language and Betawi Malay, a non-stress... Show moreThis study describes the effects of prominence and boundary on the temporal and melodic structures of two Indonesian languages, viz. Toba Batak, a stress language and Betawi Malay, a non-stress language. Experimental evidence shows that lengthening effects were more than twice as strong in the non-stress Betawi Malay as in Toba Batak. Durational prominence effects in Toba Batak are comparable to those found in western stress language at the word level, but not at the lower levels: stress syllables, especially consonants are hardly affected. Arguably, the use of duration as a stress correlate is restricted by the phonemic consonant contrast in the language. To compensate for this, prominence-related pitch movements, which are connected to the stressed syllable, occur in non-prominent as well as prominent words in Toba Batak. In Betawi Malay, prominence-related pitch movements are larger but vary considerably in shape and position; they serve to cue accents and boundaries, but not stress position. To determine the audible consequences of the native language for the production of Dutch stress, three perception experiments were run. The native language clearly affects the prosody of second-language speech. Toba Batak speakers of Dutch sound more acceptable to Dutch listeners than Betawi Malay speakers do. Show less
This thesis presents a thorough survey of the central aspects of the phonology of Shaoxing Chinese from a synchronic perspective and on the basis of recent theoretical phonological developments,... Show moreThis thesis presents a thorough survey of the central aspects of the phonology of Shaoxing Chinese from a synchronic perspective and on the basis of recent theoretical phonological developments, with the secondary goal of casting some light on current issues in Modern Chinese (Mandarin). In particular, the thesis presents an analysis of syllable structure, focusing on the syllabic status of the prenuclear glide in Shaoxing, contributing a multiple-specifier X-bar syllable structure, which allows a syllable to be parsed into Onset and Final, instead of Onset and Rhyme. It argues that the prenuclear glide in Shaoxing is neither in the Onset nor in the Rhyme, but located in the specifier position of N''. This thesis claims that both voiced initial obstruents and low-register tones, though in complementary distribution, occur in the underlying representation in Shaoxing. It assumes that there are 'filler' onsets in the surface representation to satisfy the consonant-tone correlation and that there are also onsetless syllables which are toneless when unstressed, enabling liaison in Chinese. The thesis also presents a systematic and explicit formulation of the intricacies of tone sandhi in SX. It assumes that tone sandhi in Shaoxing is realized by tone feature spreading and delinking, and does not involve register features. It presents a metrically-based analysis with a hierarchical constraint ranking that precisely captures the tonal sandhi behaviour and accounts for all the sandhi rules in Shaoxing disyllabic structures. Show less
The Italian ‘mobile diphthongs’ sheds light on the complexity of one of the salient analogical changes that occurred in the Italian language, viz. the elimination of the alternation between the... Show moreThe Italian ‘mobile diphthongs’ sheds light on the complexity of one of the salient analogical changes that occurred in the Italian language, viz. the elimination of the alternation between the stressed diphthongs [jE] and [wO] and the unstressed monophthongs [e] and [o], respectively, within a limited group of inflectional and derivational paradigms. Historically, the monophthong–diphthong alternation was the consequence of a pan-Romance diphthongization process that affected the Late Latin low mid vowels in stressed positions. The relatively recent levelling of this alternation has led to a great deal of variation: in some cases the alternations are maintained while in others they have been eliminated. The first aim of the present study was to scrutinize durational aspects of Italian diphthongs and monophthongs in general. The second aim was to examine to what extent the variation caused by analogical levelling of the monophthong–diphthong alternation, attested in written sources, also occurs in the spoken language. To investigate these issues, a series of production experiments was carried out with native speakers of Italian. The final aim was to provide a coherent phonological treatment of the insights provided by the experiments within the framework of Optimality Theory.The book is intended as a contribution to experimental phonetics and phonology. It introduces an exciting tool for language-variation research, the speech-shadowing technique, and discusses recent phonological approaches to phenomena such as glide formation, analogy and paradigm uniformity. Therefore, this study is of interest to both phoneticians and phonologists, as well as to linguists with a special interest in Italian. Show less
