Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationKơho, a Mon-Khmer (Austroasiatic) language, is spoken by an indigenous population of more than 207,000 people located in Lâm Đồng province in the highland region of Vietnam. There are also several thousand additional members of this ethnic group who live in France and the United States (primarily North Carolina). The goal of this dissertation is to describe the Kơho-Sre language in such a manner that it is accessible both to linguists and also to those in the Kơho-speaking community interested in their own language. This grammar-based on a linguistic analysis that is informed by current linguistic theory and best practices in the field-includes phonological, morphological, and syntactic data. A grammatical description of Kơho is needed, in spite of the fact that a literature of the language does exist. This is because (1) adequate documentation is not achieved by the extant literature; (2) materials are dated and do not reflect recent advances in typology and linguistic analysis; (3) many materials are published in Russian and Vietnamese or are not readily available to most researchers; and (4) earlier descriptions are cast in frameworks that are not amenable to contemporary documentary linguistic analysis. This dissertation, based on data collected during fieldwork in Vietnam and North Carolina, supplemented with previously published syntactic and lexicographic materials, provides an overview of the grammatical structure of Sre. Sre is a polysyllabic (usually dissyllabic) language with a synchronic tendency towards reduction of the presyllable (the weaker or minor syllable) and development in the remaining (main or major) syllable of contrastive pitch characteristics associated with vowel length. Vowel length, in turn, is influenced by the main syllable coda. A formerly complex system of nominal classifiers (operating in the pattern: numeral + classifier + noun) has been reduced to three generally used classifiers. Sentence structure is subject + verb + object with a fairly rigid word order with some phrase or clause movement to indicate certain syntactic functions

Local prepositions and serial verb constructions in Thai

The present paper is an attempt to describe a particular semantic domain in Thai, that of local relations, in terms of a gradual interconnection of what traditional descriptions usually regard as distinct and isolated categories. It is based on the well-known observation that isolating languages like Thai typically display a high degree of 'multifunctionality', or else of syntactic 'versatility' of very many lexical items. […] The semantic area studied in the following pages yields a clear systematic interconnection of three different categories, viz. that of nouns – as the focal instance of maximum syntactic independence –, that of verbs – as, conversely, the focal instance of maximally relational concepts –, and, as an intermediary category between these two, that of prepositions which the system lexically feeds from both these opposite ends. The examples given in the course of this paper have been obtained from published grammatical literature, from Thai texts, and from informants

A grammar of Munya

This is a reference grammar of Munya, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the western part of Sichuan province in China. The data that this thesis draws from were collected during a one-year immersion fieldwork and are analyzed within the framework of Basic Linguistic Theory. This study covers the core aspects of the language, including phonetics and phonology, morphology, word classes, grammatical categories, clause structures, and discourse and pragmatics. Munya has a fairly large phoneme inventory, with forty consonants and thirteen vowels. The language has a binary tonal contrast, a high tone and a low tone, and the two tones constitute a range of patterns. Morphological processes in Munya include cliticization, affixation, reduplication and vowel alternation. The language has a wide variety of vowel harmonies. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are open word classes and there are in addition eight closed classes. The major syntactic function of nouns is to function as arguments. They can take numeral classifiers and plural markers. The major syntactic function of verbs is to act as predicates. Most verbs can be morphologically analyzed as consisting of a root and a directional prefix. There are altogether seven directional prefixes in Munya. Verbs show person-number inflection and derivations of causative and pluractionality. The predominant person-number inflectional paradigm is first person singular, second person singular, and first or second person non-singular. Adjectives can modify nouns and function as predicates, and tend to be inherently reduplicated. There are ten cases in Munya. Core syntactic functions can be marked by the ergative case i, the absolutive case (in zero form), the genitive case ɣɛ, the dative case le and the experiential case ɣɛ. The patterns of alignment are different for different types of verbs. For control verbs, the pattern is basically ergative-absolutive, and for non-control verbs, the pattern is consistently nominative-accusative. There are three aspects, which are the stative aspect, the perfective aspect and the imperfective aspect. There are also three evidential markers, which are the direct evidential, the indirect evidential and the reported evidential. There are two egophorics in Munya. ŋo can only be used in context of first or second person subject and control predicate. nyi can occur with all persons and all types of predicates. Copula verbs in Munya can denote IDENTITY, LOCATION, EXISTENCE, and POSSESSION. The senses of LOCATION, EXISTENCE and POSSESSION can be expressed with one copula. Munya has multiple copula verbs of existence, the choice of which is determined by the semantics of the Copula Determining Referent (CDR), which can be realized as copula subject or copula complement. Some copulas have extended functions. When attached to copulas, the directional prefix tʰo - 'away from the speaker' can mark perfectiveness. Polar interrogatives and negations are expressed with prefixes on verbs or auxiliaries. Imperatives can be categorized into second-person imperative clauses and first person imperative clauses, and the former can be further classified into immediate imperative, future imperative and polite imperative. Munya has relative clauses and complement clauses, and the two types of structures are closely related to nominalization. Munya has indirect, direct, and semi-direct speech reports. In semi-direct speech report, the subject in the matrix clause and the embedded clause are co-referential, and the subject in the embedded clause needs to shift to the reflexive form. Meanwhile, the verb or auxiliary in the embedded clause inflects for the person-number of the subject before it is shifted. The narrative genre of Munya discourse features prevalent bridging constructions, including recapitulative linkage and summary linkage. In the first type of linkage, a dependent clause is used to recapitulate in verbatim or in close paraphrase the preceding clause, and in the second type, a clause containing a demonstrative anaphorically summarizes the content of a discourse unit, typically a paragraph. At the end of the thesis there is an appendix of a long story and a vocabulary of around 2,800 words

Grammaticalization, polysemy and iterated modality: the case of should.

Cet article aborde le problème de la modalité itérée dans la double perspective de la grammaticalisation et de la polysémie au travers de la description sémantique de divers emplois de should en anglais contemporain, et en particulier celle du “meditative-polemic should”. Des valeurs modales distinctes sont présentes ensemble dans le même emploi. Le possible se combine au nécessaire, et la modalité appréciative est analysée comme stratifiée, ce dont rendent compte les deux principes de stratification et de persistance à l’œuvre au sein d’une même valeur sémantique. La combinaison de valeurs modales distinctes est à l’origine de valeurs modales hybrides appartenant à des catégories modales différentes. L’analyse prend également en compte la dimension de transcatégorialité: should est tantôt un auxiliaire de modalité radicale ou épistémique, tantôt utilisé de façon métalinguistique comme support de subordination et d’appréciation ou comme marqueur d’un “acte de langage radical”.This article addresses the question of iterated modality from the twofold perspective of grammaticalization and polysemy through the semantic description of various uses of should in contemporary English, and more particularly that of “meditative-polemic should”. Distinct modal meanings can be found together within the same use and meaning. Possibility accompanies necessity, and evaluative modality is shown to be multistratal owing to the two principles of layering and persistence at work within the same use and meaning. The combination of distinct modal meanings yields hybrid modal meanings pertaining to different modal categories. The dimension of transcategoriality is also taken into account: should is either an auxiliary of deontic or epistemic modality, or used metalinguistically as a support for subordination and evaluation, or as the marker of a “deontic speech-act”

Pragmaticalization (defined) as grammaticalization of discourse functions

The article discusses definitions of grammaticalization, pragmaticalization and (inter) subjectification in order to clarify the relations between these terms. While grammaticalization is defined as a functionally motivated, complex type of language change, (inter) subjectification is shown to be a specific type of semantic change. Pragmaticalization, finally, is argued to represent a subclass of grammaticalization, which displays essential core features of grammaticalization processes, but is distinguished from other subtypes of grammaticalization processes by specific characteristic traits (concerning function and domain as well as syntactic integration). This is demonstrated by a survey of the diachronic development of several modal particles in German (among them aber, eben, ruhig). The more general theoretical stance taken here is that the notion of grammar and hence grammaticalization has to be conceived broad enough in order to encompass this type of discourse functions

On the Discursive Appropriation of the Antinatalist Ideology in Social Media

Antinatalism, a relatively recent moral philosophical perspective and ideology that avows “it is better not to have ever existed,” has spawned a new social movement with an active presence in social media. This study draws on the discourse historical approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis for offering a firm understanding as to how the collective identity of the Facebook antinatalist NSM is formed. The findings from the analysis of the situated interaction among the NSM’s members demonstrate that collective identity is far from a knitty-gritty concept, but a dynamic schema that includes a plethora of micro-interactions. Individuals constantly negotiate its meaning in context, as they seek to streamline the antinatalist system of ideas with their lifeworld through a web of interlocking schemata, discursive and rhetorical strategies

Uchumataqu: The lost language of the Urus of Bolivia. A grammatical description of the language as documented between 1894 and 1952

Contains fulltext : 68277.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 11 juni 2008Promotor : Muysken, P.C. Co-promotor : Dedenbach-Salazar Sáenz, S.303 p