Performances of solo keyboard repertoire can sound more or less polyphonic depending on the performer’s use of divergence in expression. Rather than being a purely cerebral experience, this... Show morePerformances of solo keyboard repertoire can sound more or less polyphonic depending on the performer’s use of divergence in expression. Rather than being a purely cerebral experience, this expressive divergence is situated in an ecological relationship between keyboard and player where the gestural dynamics of technique and musicianship overlap. Specific body schemata relating to expressive divergence are therefore foundational to the interpretive freedom of the performer in creating polyphonic expression, and feature transparently in the musical result. This dissertation theorises expressive divergence by examining the embodiment of single voices through the hierarchical structuring of coarticulation, and by showing how these multi-layered gestures combine in the polyphony of expression. This performative view of polyphony is contextualised not only in musical practice, but also in the wider interdisciplinary use of polyphony as a metaphor. Single-player polyphonic expression is shown to enact or demonstrate an inner experience of the plurality of subjective agency, an experience made possible by its embodied dimension. Besides verbalising and theorising polyphonic expression, this dissertation provides experiments and exercises useful for developing such a practice, as well as examples of its application in concert 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
