Abby Spears (MA, 2006): Nasal coarticulation in the French vowel /i/: A phonetic and phonological study (dir. Elliott Moreton).

"In this thesis, I use acoustic phonetic data to examine the phenomenon of nasal coarticulation in French. Previous work describes French as a language with very little vowel-nasal (VN) coarticulation, presumably due to the oral/nasal contrast in vowels (Cohn 1990). However, I found that the high vowel /i/, which has no nasal counterpart in French, exhibits a high degree of coarticulation. This finding supports the proposal that contrast and coarticulation are inversely correlated (Manuel 1990), adding the insight that this correlation is observable even within a language. Based on this finding and a typological survey of VN coarticulation, I propose an underspecification account in an Optimality Theoretic framework to capture the patterns of VN coarticulation. In this OT account, the interaction of markedness constraints driving orality and minimizing effort and a faithfulness constraint protecting the feature [+ nasal] provides an explanation for the French data and produces the attested typology."

Abby is now working on her PhD in the Department.

Claire Lampp (MA, 2006): Negation in modern Hindi-Urdu: The development of nahII (dir. Craig Melchert).

"There are three negative particles used for sentential negation in Hindi-Urdu-mat, na, and nahII. The particles mat and na are generally of restricted distribution in the modern language, and their origins are relatively straightforward. The status of the modern general negative particle nahII is more problematic. There are two common explanations for modern Hindi-Urdu nahII: (1) nahII results from the Old Indo-Aryan (OIA) general negative particle na combining with a substantive/existential verb form; (2) nahII results from na combining with the OIA emphatic particle hi. In a recent account Elena Bashir offers support for both explanations. Based on evidence from a modern Hindi corpus and a reexamination of Bashir's work, I conclude that modern Hindi-Urdu nahII likely has its origin only in the existential, thus providing another example in support of William Croft's negation cycle."

Amie Kraus (MA, 2006): Language attitudes of Québécois students towards le français québécois standard and le franco-québécois (dir. D. Mora-Marín).

"The many language attitude studies which have been conducted in the province of Québec over the past fifty years have revealed that the linguistic attitudes and beliefs of the Québécois towards both English and specific varieties of French have changed considerably. The purpose of the present study was to determine the current language attitudes of Québécois students towards standard Québec French and towards a colloquial variety of Québec French, le franco-québécois. In spite of the significant shift in language attitudes in Québec's recent history, the results of this study were comparable to those of a similar study conducted three decades ago by Méar-Crine and Leclerc. In both studies, the majority of Québécois participants indicated a preference for the standard variety of Québec French."

Melissa Frazier (MA, 2006): Accent in Proto-Indo-European athematic nouns: Antifaithfulness in inflectional paradigms (dir. Jennifer Smith).

"This thesis examines four accent patterns displayed by athematic nouns in Proto-Indo-European. Each accent pattern is distinguished by either alternating stress or vowel quality between 'weak' forms (nominative, accusative, vocative) and 'strong' forms. I argue that surface stress is the result of the interplay of the lexical accent specifications of the morphemes that compose the stem. The strong endings are classified as dominant and are thus responsible for the accent/ablaut alternations. Optimality Theory is used to provide a synchronic phonological analysis of athematic noun accent. The weak forms are accounted for with a ranking of faithfulness and alignment constraints, including a positional faithfulness ranking in which faithfulness to roots is preferred over faithfulness to derivational affixes. The strong endings, which are dominant, trigger antifaithfulness constraints (Alderete 1999), and so a new type of antifaithfulness constraint is introduced that works within inflectional paradigms, based on the Optimal Paradigms model (McCarthy 2005)."

Melissa is now working on her PhD in the Department.

Melissa Damann (MA, 2006): ESL learners' perceptions of American dialects (dir. David Mora-Marín).

"This study was conducted to determine how ESL (English as a Second Language) learners' perception of American dialects differs from the perception of native American English speakers. 39 ESL students and 18 native speakers listened to and rated eight different speakers, representing four different dialects (i.e. Standard American English, Southern American English, African American English and Latino English). These speakers were rated on status, solidarity and language proficiency-related characteristics. The ESL and native speaker groups ranked the dialect groups similarly on status-related features (i.e. successful, smart, confident). However, the test groups had markedly different rankings of the dialect groups for solidarity-related features (i.e. dependable, funny, friendly). The ESL and native speaker groups had similar rankings concerning the speakers' language proficiency (i.e. speaking English well). However, with the exception of the Standard dialect, the ESL group generally viewed each dialect's proficiency more positively than the native speaker group."

Donna Salisbury (PhD, 2005): Local Adverbs in Neo-Hittite (dir. Craig Melchert).

"This dissertation systematically and exhaustively evaluates the functions of the local adverbs in Neo-Hittite as determined by their use in assured Neo-Hittite compositions. The primary finding is that the Old Hittite synchronic system of contrasting directional and locatival pairs as established by Starke (1977) remains fundamentally intact in Neo-Hittite. There are a limited number of specific cases of overlap. The triple distinction in function of preverb, postposition, and freestanding adverb likewise continues throughout the history of the language. This study accounts for each Neo-Hittite occurrence of a local adverb, assesses its functional role, and presents a justification for its inclusion in a given class. Where possible, it provides an explanation of the likely path by which evolved meanings of a preverb have arisen. An analysis of instances of consecutive adverbs evaluates whether the two coincidentally co-occur or have developed a specialized function as a combination. Those established as unitary combinations are categorized as preverb, postposition, or freestanding adverb compounds. Lastly, a reconsideration of the relationship of local adverbs to Hittite word order takes into account the three functional roles. This preliminary analysis identified a basic word order with numerous possible deviations, certain of which may be considered preferred for each specific function. A process of fronting of the local adverbs to positions before the subject in a sentence accounts for some but certainly not all non-standard configurations."

Donna is now teaching linguistics part-time at UNC-Greensboro.

Susannah Kirby (MA, 2005): Semantics or Sub-cases? The Acquisition of Referential vs. Expletive It (dir. Misha Becker):

"This study was conducted to determine the natural order of acquisition among deictic pronoun it, anaphoric pronoun it, and expletive it. Files from 4 children (Adam, Eve, Nina, and Peter) ages 1;6 - 3;0 in the CHILDES database were coded for occurrences of NP it (here it is), and expletive it (it's raining). Occurrences of NP it were coded for whether they followed an overt discourse anaphor (anaphoric it) or not (deictic it). All children examined produce deictic and anaphoric pronoun it from the very first files examined, but do not produce expletive it until 2-7 months later. Following Inoue's (1991) lexical-semantic reanalysis account of the acquisition of expletive there after locative there, it is proposed that children acquire expletive it by reanalyzing referential pronoun it to include an expletive subtype. This reanalysis takes place when children realize that expletive it never co-occurs with a deictic or anaphoric referent."

Susannah is now working on her PhD in the Department.

Becky Butler Thompson (MA, 2005): Cross-Dialectal Tendencies of Emphasis Spread in Arabic: An Optimality Theoretic Account Based in Experimental Phonetics (dir. J. Smith):

"Emphasis refers to a secondary pharyngeal constriction in the pharynx. In Arabic, this constriction affects (spreads to) neighboring sounds. In this thesis, I consider two cross-dialectal tendencies of spread: (i) directionality, which I show is a phonological parameter not grounded in universal phonetics and (ii) the identity of segments that block spread. I propose that all segments can be ranked hierarchically according to their incompatibility with emphasis, thereby explaining the tendency for certain segments to be blockers. I explore these ideas in terms of Optimality Theory and use them as metrics to compare two OT theories: Traditional Approach and Span Theory (McCarthy 2004). I show that Span Theory accounts for the data presented equally as well as the Traditional Approach."

Becky is now teaching Spanish part-time at UNCG and plans to return to graduate school next fall.

Heidi Angel (MA, 2005): Classifier Predicate Acquisition by a Deaf Child with Delayed Linguistic Input (dir. Misha Becker):

"This study focuses on the acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) classifier predicate constructions, specifically observing the use of handshape by an eight-year-old deaf child with delayed linguistic input. The findings are compared with other cases of delayed or impoverished input and research into a critical period for language acquisition. While the subject shows delayed ASL acquisition, his innovations and possible 'home signs' demonstrate an innate bias to create productive and natural language features similar to ASL and other natural sign languages. A distinction is made between natural sign languages and artificial sign languages, such as Manually Coded English (MCE), which makes up a significant portion of the child's language input but is not reflected in his output. This supports nativist claims of an innate language-learning mechanism. In particular, a focus on handshape configurations in classifier predicate constructions was chosen because the use of classifiers is acquired relatively late in children acquiring ASL natively and the handshape parameter is a particularly fragile component of signs in general, often found in 'slips of the hand' even in adult native signers. Analysis of these complex constructions in a subject with delayed input may corroborate evidence for Universal Grammar (UG) which claims a language-specific domain for acquisition. In this thesis I will discuss the overall results of the classifier handshape analysis, the relationship to UG as well as specific results in which conceptual, physiological and perceptual complexity seem to contribute to the production of handshape errors in the acquisition of ASL classifier predicate constructions."

Hayden Stack (MA, 2004): Analysis of Output Opportunities in a First-Grade Spanish-English Dual Language Program (dir. Larry King):

"Although students receive much comprehensible input in dual language programs, their opportunities to produce comprehensible output that allows for hypothesis testing, feedback, automaticity, and syntactic processing are severely restricted even at the first grade level, thus hindering improvement in oral proficiency. The current pilot study focused upon native English-speaking students in a first grade dual language class. The main goals included collecting evidence concerning the role of output in second language acquisition in the dual language environment and characterizing the input that fostered this output. An analysis of the data revealed a predominance of one-word output on the part of students and reliance on close-ended questions on the part of teachers. It was found that complexity of output improves when more output hypotheses-whether correct or erroneous-are made and feedback applied to subsequent efforts. Dual language educators are thus encouraged to pro-vide students with more opportunities to interact conversationally in the tar-get language in order to foster second language development."

Hayden now teaches composition at Southeastern College in Wake Forest NC.

Julia B. St. John (PhD, 2004): The Semantics of English Manner Adverbs (dir. Gert Webelhuth):

"This dissertation details an empirical study investigating the semantic properties of English manner adverbs and subject modifiers and the verbs they modify. The purpose of the study is to determine which of these semantic properties are relevant to manner adverb modification and to enable a comparison of those properties to the semantic properties relevant to the syntactic phenomenon of argument realization and to other semantic phenomena such as the temporal and aspectual properties of verbs. In order to make this comparison, it was necessary to systematize the data to determine which adverb and verb combinations were acceptable and which were unacceptable. This sys-tematization of the data serves as the groundwork for a preliminary hierarchy of the types of semantic relations that play a role in adverbial modification. The hierarchy is expressed as a multiple inheritance hierarchy in which more specific types inherit information from more general supertypes. The semantic properties elucidated in this study are expressed in the formalism developed in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG; Pollard and Sag: 1987, 1994). The comparison of this hierarchy to a hierarchy of semantic relations derived from semantic properties identified by Dowty (1989; 1991) and Davis (2001) as important to an adequate account of argument realization reveals a number of differences. Among those, two important distinctions are (1) the fact that, although some of the semantic properties relevant for argument realization also are identified as significant for describing the interactions of manner adverbs and verbs, the former are a small subset of the latter, and (2) the fact that semantic clashes between manner adverbs and verbs are much more easily overridden by contextual factors than is the linking of semantic role and argument."

Patrick M. Murphy (PhD, 2004): Passive Prototypes, Topicality, and Conceptual Space (dir. Laura Janda):

"Passive constructions are perhaps the most widely studied grammatical phenomenon within generative grammar. Typological studies describe the wide variety of features of passive constructions cross-linguistically, and both typolological and acquisition studies offer insight into the relative markedness of these constructions. This dissertation has the goal of investigating the nature of membership within the category 'passive' and cross-linguistic comparison of constructions, 'passive' and otherwise. A model of universal passive types within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is presented. This is accomplished by proposing a set of type definitions, characterizing both the relatively unmarked and relatively marked features of passive constructions. This provides some granularity in the passive's characterization, but does not model the markedness of these features with respect to each other. To that end, preference principles in the construction of passive type matrices in HPSG are introduced: a metagrammar provided by Universal Grammar describing the markedness of each type with respect to its supertype. The resulting system models a passive prototype within HPSG. Topicality measures were collected from the Uppsala Corpus of Russian for the Russian verbs pisat'/napisat' 'to write', davat'/ dat' 'to give', and zabyvat'/zabyt' 'to forget'. [...]Examining the conceptual space of various voice constructions with these Russian verbs, Croft's (2001) notion of plotting constructions in 'conceptual space' is exploited as a means of cross-linguistic comparison using these topicality measures. Examining the conceptual space of various voice constructions with these Russian verbs, Croft's generalizations are upheld, their position being consistent whether Referential Distance or Topic Persistence is used as a measure. Finally, data from other typological discourse studies is plotted, noting where various voice constructions pattern, and how this data fits into Croft's model."

Patrick now works as a Scientific Linguist for the Department of Defense.

Elaine Ferreira Abousalh (MA, 2004): The Phonetic Implementation of Tonal Downtrends in Coatzospan Mixtec (dir. Jennifer Smith):

"This thesis compares the phone-tic implementation of downstepped high tones (^!H)and low (L) tones in Coatzospan Mixtec, an Otomanguean language spoken in San Juan Coatzospan, Mexico. Two-word phrases where the second element consists of a bimoraic monotonic word associated to a ^!H or L were examined. It is shown that F₀ means for ^!H and L at the initial mora of target words are not different from each other, while F₀ means for the two tones at the second mora of target words are always significantly different. This is interpreted as resulting from the assignment of the same F₀ target to ^!H and L. The difference between the tones would be caused by tone-specific declination, which makes the F₀ of L decay more than the F₀ of ^!H. If the TBU bearing ^!H or L is placed before a pause, the tones are further affected by final lowering."

Elaine is now working on her PhD in the Department.

Kimberly Thomas (MA, 2003): Issues Concerning Divergence/Convergence in the Southern Vernacular: Postvocalic /r/ and the Time-Depth Contingency (dir. Walt Wolfram):

"Many sociolinguistic studies have been done regarding the apparent structural divergence of African American Vernacular English from white vernacular varieties (Labov, 1985, 1987; Fasold et al., 1987; Bailey and Maynor, 1989). At issue is the admissibility of the evidence regarding the 'increasing divergence' of AAVE from other vernacular varieties, and particularly, the underlying theoretical and methodological suppositions upon which the hypothesis is based (Wolfram, 1987). Wolfram (1987) addressed the linguistic and time-depth issues by proposing a set of criteria regarding the admissibility of language change among vernacular varieties. In this thesis, I examine the admissibility of the evidence regarding divergent and convergent linguistic change in white and black vernacular varieties, concluding that the changes in the pronunciation of postvocalic /r/ (i.e., etymological /r/ before consonants or pause) are both divergent and convergent for black and white Southern speakers."

Jenny Palmer (MA, 2002): The Role of /s/ Duration as a Perceptual Cue for Gay-sounding Male Speech.

"This thesis is an experimental analysis of the role that /s/ duration plays in how listeners perceive male sexual orientation based on speech. With listener responses measured as both a categorical (forced choice) response and a continual mean 'gayness' score, listeners' perception of a man as gay increased substantially with the longer /s/ durations in word-initial, stressed /skV/ and /spV/ environments. Listener participants heard one of 3 /s/ durations of a man whose sexual orientation had been perceived as neutral. ANOVA analysis showed that listeners who heard the longer /s/ durations perceived the man as sounding 'gayer'. In addition, multiple regression analysis showed that listeners who heard the longer /s/ durations were significantly more likely to judge the speaker as sounding 'gay'."

Patrick Obregon (MA 2001): An Optimality Theoretic Account of Diphthongization in Spanish (dir. Chip Gerfen):

"In this thesis I propose an Optimality Theoretic analysis of the monophtong-diphthong alternations (primarily [o]~[wé] and [e] ~[jé]) found in etymologically related forms in Spanish, and commonly referred to as diphthongization. This work builds upon the notion of Harris (1985) and Dunlap (1991) that vowels subject to this alternation may be marked in the lexicon by their association with two positions on the melodic tier, which for the purposes of this analysis I am taking to be a segmental skeletal tier. I posit a positional faithfulness constraint Max-Pos(Head), which holds that underlying segmental count must be pre-served in stressed syllables. The high ranking of No Long Vowels prevents diphthongizing vowels from surfacing with two associated skeletal slots (and hence moras), leaving epenthesis (of [e]) as the only means of satisfying Max-Pos (Head). Sonority sequencing constraints preventing mid-mid diphthongs, along with the integrity constraint O-Anchor-Pos, which ensures the tautosyllabicity of the associated skeletal slots, works to produce the high onglide shape of the resulting diphthong."

Sarah Tully Marks (MA 2001): Gender and Computer-Mediated Communication: Why Women Need Their Space (dir. David Herman and Rusty Barrett):

"The interaction of gender and computer-mediated communication (CMC) has become a subject of great research in the last few years. Many researchers have considered the differences between behavioral norms of genders when spoken and when typed as CMC. This thesis considers these differences, taking special consideration of the notions of 'flaming' and 'thanking'. In addition to asserting that differences such as these necessitate separate spaces for women to participate in Inter-net Relay Chat, this thesis considers the possibility that it is not in fact the genders which assign people's behavioral norms online. In reality, the norms of conversational style are deter-mined by the chat systems themselves to be followed by the participant members of the community. Of most interest here is the notion that the effects of gender can be superceded when language is considered to be a function of a community at large and not an individual."

Sarah is now in her first year of medical school.

Scott Halbritter (MA, 2001): Idioms, Metaphors, and Speech Acts: Accounting for and Predicting Idiomatic Flexibility (dir. Gert Webelhuth):

"In this study I will explore the work of Webelhuth and Ackerman (1994), in order to provide a basis for furthering the HPSG approach of handling idioms by Riehemann (1997). I will use the model of W. and A. to test my own corpus of 1000 English idioms to verify the English applicability of their "aboutness" findings. I will show that metaphor is the critical aspect for defining and understanding idioms. I will suggest areas of inquiry that appear to be promising for predic-ting the flexibility and availability of idiomatic expressions. As Riehemann suggests, hierarchies of metaphorical mappings may indeed provide some of the keys to designing algorithms modeled after real +HUMAN speech acts--idioms, metaphors, and all. Regardless, it should be apparent that the traditional categories of context-free grammars hold little promise for being able to account for the intricacies of the key element of idioms: metaphor."

Scott received his PhD in English from UNC-CH in 2004.

Rodney Edwards (MA 2001): The Development of the Southern Double-Object Construction (dir. Gert Webelhuth):

"The Southern Double Object Construction poses a major syntactic problem: how can a sentence like (1) be grammatical alongside (2) and (3)? (1) Mary_i bought her_i a book; (2) Mary_i bought her_j a book; (3) Mary_i bought herself_i a book. Sentence (1) shows that a bare pronoun may stand in place of a reflexive pronoun, although standard varieties of Modern English mandate that such a bare pronoun should not be co-referential with its subject as in (1), but must always show disjoint reference as in (2). This was not the case, however, in Old English. Object pronouns in Southern English are specified as non-anaphoric by default, but the Southern Double Object Construction, preserving the situation that obtained in the ancestral form of English, may continue to license the overriding of this default similar to the way Old English construed its object pronouns. Thus any violations of the principles of Binding Theory are avoided."

Rod is now working on his PhD in Linguistics at the University of Chicago.

Kirk Baker (MA 2001): Crosslinguistic Comparison of the Perception of Glottalization in English and Coatzospan Mixtec (dir. Chip Gerfen):

"This thesis takes a cross-linguistic look at the role that amplitude and fundamental frequency (f0) play in cueing the percept of glottalization in English and Coatzospan Mixtec (CM), an Otomanguean language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico. Although vowel glottalization is contrastive in CM but allophonic in English, two salient acoustic features of glottalization in both languages are concurrent amplitude and f0 declinations. A series of forced-choice perception experiments using synthetic speech stimuli in which amplitude and f0 had been manipulated were conducted with CM listeners. The results of the experiments reported here indicate that, consistent with previous findings for English listeners, either an f0 or an amplitude drop alone can cue the percept of glottalization. However, CM listeners proved to be more highly attuned to slight change along both the f0 and amplitude dimensions than English listeners. This finding is consistent with the fact that glottalized vowels are contrastive in CM, and the expectation that CM speakers are more sensitive than English speakers to the acoustic variables which cue the percept of glottalization. Additionally, this thesis con-tributes to the body of literature per-taining to language-particular effects on speech perception and adds to our knowledge of the phonetics of glottalization in general."

Benito Vil‡ (MA, 2000): The Vocabulary of Self and Other in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Chilean Documents (dir. Craig Melchert):

"Members of every linguistic community possess a set of internal cognitive referents with which they interpret sensory input. These referents are not necessarily uniform within every community, and tend to evolve over time, as a result of innovation, reinterpretations, and borrowings from neighboring communities. However, many elements seem to persist within individual communities over time, elements which often yield distinctive interpretations of the world relative to other communities.

There is much in the patterns of continuity and change that suggest we are dealing with a linguistic mechanism. Changes in interpretations of cause and effect, of social relations and of individual responsibility reflect many of the same characteristics as do phonological, syntactic and semantic changes, as studied in Historical Linguistics.

Representations of Self and Other are among the most fundamental internal referents in any grammar of the universe. A look at this specific element in 16th and 17th Century Chilean documents reveals, on the one hand, commonalities with the grammar of Latin Antiquity, and on the other, borrowings from a very different perception of Self and Other in other European communities. There are, moreover, differences between Chilean documents themselves which seem to trace to the specific location of various authors within their shared culture, and signs of change in representations, within an enduring distinctiveness, as the overall community absorbed outside influences."

Kara VanDam (MA, 2000): The Syntax of Albanian Subordination. The Interaction of Subjects and Complementizers (dir. Randall Hendrick):

"This thesis examines the Albanian complementizer system in the Principles and Parameters syntactic framework, which seeks to establish universal principles of syntactic organization, as well as to define parameters which restrict the variation between languages. The Albanian complementizer system is of interest because it appears to be language-specific and idiosyncratic; further it appears to violate syntactic universals in two respects. First, complementizers precede Wh-phrases in subordinate clauses. Second, the complementizer system interacts with subject pronoun deletion. I argue that these two facets of variation follow from the parametric variation of complementizer systems in Universal Grammar. I show that the idiosyncratic properties of Albanian with respect to Wh-Movement and subject pronoun deletion follow directly from the selection of the parametric value of multiple complementizers in Albanian. This conclusion is supported by detailed discussions of that-trace effects, restrictions on object movement and topicalization, as well as Verb Second effects."

Kara has just defended her PhD dissertation in the Department.

Soo-Jung Kim (PhD, 2000): Accentual Effects on Segmental Phonological Rules in Korean (dir. Chip Gerfen and Megan Crowhurst):

"This dissertation provides empirical support for the intonation-based model (Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986; Pierrehumbert & Beckman 1988; Jun 1993, 1998) of Korean prosodic structure by arguing that this model best characterizes the domains of Lateralization, Delateralization, and N-insertion in Korean. Lateralization refers to the assimilation of a coronal nasal n to the adjacent lateral l. Delateralization is the segmental proscription against laterals in word-initial position. N-insertion is a phenomenon in which n appears stem-initially in stems beginning with i or y that are preceded by a stem or prefix ending in a consonant. Specifically, using nasal airflow data combined with pitch tracks, I show that the accentual phrase serves as a domain for these rules. I demonstrate that lateralization and n-insertion are not utterance-span rules, and that word-initial laterals in loanwords do not trigger lateralization of the preceding consonants. Throughout, I compare predictions of syntax-based and intonation-based models by examining cases where the target sequences (l-n for lateralization, n-l for delateralization and n-i for n-insertion) are projected to be within the same phrase by different models, cases where different models split the sequences by phrase boundaries, and cases where different models disagree regarding the location of phrase boundaries. By doing this, I show that each of the rules is best characterized as an accentual phrase phenomenon. Specifically, lateralization occurs within the accentual phrase and is blocked across the accentual phrase boundary. Regarding delateralization, word-initial /l/s are changed into either an [n] or a geminate [l] within the accentual phrase, or [è] across the accentual phrase. And n-insertion applies across prosodic words within an accentual phrase. This work adds to a body of literature arguing that prosodic structure higher than the word in Korean is best modeled in terms of intonationally based approaches such as developed by Jun (1993, 1998). It further leads us to ask whether this kind of phonetic work will lead to adoption of intonational phrasing approaches for languages in general, or whether some languages employ syntax-based prosodic models, while others are intonation-based."

Soo-jung now teaches at Kyungsung University in Pusan, Korea.

Della Chambless (MA, 2000): Stress in Standard Italian. An Optimality Theoretic Account (dir. Chip Gerfen):

"This thesis provides a comprehensive account of stress in Italian, within the framework of Optimality Theory. It is shown that an extrametricality account of unpredictable primary stress is unnecessary if lexical accent is assumed. High rankings of input-to-output prosodic faithfulness constraints ensure that lexical accent is realized, while secondary stress is accounted for through interaction of these faithfulness constraints with lower-ranked markedness constraints. After accounting for primary and secondary stress in monomorphemic words, I present an analysis of stress in suffixed words. Stress preservation effects (formalized as output-to-output faithfulness constraints) require that the syllable with primary stress in the base of the derived word surface with secondary stress in the suffixed word. Finally, variability is identified in secondary stress in suffixed words, and an attempt is made to capture this variability through constraint rankings."

Della is now working on her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Hans Boas (PhD, 2000): Resultative Constructions in English and German (dir. Gert Webelhuth):

"This dissertation captures the licensing factors that underlie the distribution of resultative constructions in English and German. The usage-based model put forward in this dissertation argues for a constructional approach towards resultatives that regards the multiple conventionalized senses associated with verbs as central to a framework that aims at capturing the full range of resultative constructions. Based on corpus data which show that particular senses of verbs subcategorize for distinct semantic and/or syntactic classes of resultative phrases and distinct semantic classes of postverbal NPs, I argue that resultatives should be grouped into two main classes, namely conventionalized resultative constructions and non-conventionalized resultative constructions. On this view, each particular sense of a verb constitutes a mini-construction represented by an event-frame that captures the semantic/pragmatic and syntactic specifications of the sense of the verb.

Adopting the main ideas of Frame Semantics, I propose that event-frames contain two types of interrelated information, namely linguistically immediately relevant on-stage information that needs to be overtly realized because it is conceptually the most salient type of information, and conceptual off-stage information that may be realized linguistically given the proper contextual conditions. Based on corpus data, I show that it is possible to account for the licensing of conventionalized resultative constructions in terms of the event-frames associated with verbs. Non-conventionalized resultative constructions are licensed by an analogical process by which a verb acquires a new syntactic frame. This associative process is triggered by a semantic overlap with a conventionalized resultative in combination with contextual background information.

The similarities and differences in distribution between resultatives in English and German are shown to be due to the distinct lexical polysemy networks of English and German verbs. I show that historically related verbs show different distributions of resultative because of the differences in conventionalized usage patterns."

Hans is now Associate Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas, Austin.