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Description:: Human language processing is incremental. In this dissertation, I explore how an incremental perspective can help us clarify our understanding of transformational syntax, which typically proceeds bottom-up. As part of our exploration, I develop an incremental head-driven parsing algorithm for Minimalist Grammars. The two main innovations of this parsing algorithm...
Keyword:: semantics, minimalist grammars, incremental, parsing, movement chains, and syntax
Subject:: Logic, Linguistics, and Computer science
Creator:: Baumann, Peter
Owner:: Scholarly Digital Publishing
Language:: en
Date Uploaded:: 10/06/2021
Date Created:: 2021-01-01
Resource Type:: Dissertation
Alternate Identifier:: etdadmin_upload_843180 and http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15711

Description:: The philosophical literature on modals is dominated by the following paradigm: modals are modeled as quantifiers over sets of possible worlds. The diversity of modal “fla- vors” (e.g., epistemic, deontic, teleological interpretations of modals) is accommodated within the paradigm by logical mechanisms that allow extralinguistic factors to restrict the quantificational...
Keyword:: epistemic modality, deontic modality, context-sensitity, modals, aspect, and semantics
Subject:: Philosophy and Linguistics
Creator:: Skibra, Daniel
Owner:: Scholarly Digital Publishing
Language:: en
Date Uploaded:: 02/01/2021
Date Created:: 2020-01-01
Resource Type:: Dissertation
Alternate Identifier:: http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15323 and etdadmin_upload_770188

Description:: This dissertation examines the behavior of bare singular noun phrases, a set of English nominals showing no formal indication of either definiteness or mass/ count status. Although they appear to be count nouns, I show that these nominals represent maximal projections.
Keyword:: semantics, noun phrases, activity implicature, familiarity implicature, and maximal projections
Subject:: Linguistics
Creator:: Laurel Smith Stvan
Owner:: Chris Diaz
Date Uploaded:: 06/12/2020
Date Modified:: 06/12/2020
Date Created:: 1998
Resource Type:: Dissertation

Description:: This work investigates children's early semantic representations of gradable adjectives (GAs) and proposes that infants perform a probabilistic analysis of the input to learn about abstract differences within this category. I first demonstrate that children as young as age three distinguish between relative (e.g., 'big', 'long'), maximum standard absolute (e.g.,...
Keyword:: semantics, word learning, comparison, language acquisition, adjectives, and adverbs
Subject:: Linguistics
Creator:: Kristen L Syrett
Owner:: Scholarly Digital Publishing
Date Uploaded:: 08/14/2018
Date Modified:: 08/14/2018
Date Created:: 2007-08-22
Resource Type:: Dissertation

Description:: Languages provide expressions that allow its users to indicate their source of information for a given claim, which can have an effect of attenuating how committed they appear to be to the truth of their claims (e.g., ame-ga futteiru-sooda ‘It is raining, I hear’). This linguistic notion has been termed...
Keyword:: semantics, pragmatics, experimental, Japanese, context, and evidentiality
Subject:: Linguistics
Creator:: Julie Matsubara
Owner:: Scholarly Digital Publishing
Date Uploaded:: 03/29/2018
Date Modified:: 03/29/2018
Date Created:: 2017-01-01
Resource Type:: Dissertation

Description:: In the past few decades, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research has shown that nouns and verbs are processed differently in cognitively healthy individuals, and can be selectively impaired in aphasic individuals. However, this noun-verb dichotomy is poorly understood. This dissertation investigated cognitive and neural distinctions between nouns and verbs by studying...
Keyword:: semantics, word-class processing , aphasia, morphology, and zero-derivation
Subject:: Communication Sciences and Disorders
Creator:: Sladjana Lukic
Owner:: Scholarly Digital Publishing
Date Uploaded:: 02/13/2018
Date Modified:: 02/13/2018
Date Created:: 2016-01-01
Resource Type:: Dissertation

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