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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

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