Una gramática descriptiva del chabacano de Ternate

This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of Ternate Chabacano, a Spanish-lexifier Creole spoken by 3.000 people in the town of Ternate, Philippines. The dissertation offers an analysis of the phonological, morphological, and syntactic system of the language. It includes an overview of the historical background, the current situation of the speech community and a collection of annotated texts. Ternate Chabacano shares many characteristics with its main adstrate language Tagalog as well as the dialectal varieties of Spanish. At present, English also exerts an influence, nevertheless mainly affecting its lexicon. The description offered is based on fieldwork conducted in Ternate. Spoken language collected through thematic interviews forms the main type of the material analysed. Information regarding the informants and text types is included in the examples. Ternate Chabacano has a five-vowel system and 17 consonant phonemes. The morphology of the language is largely isolating. Clitics are used extensively for expressing adverbial relations. The verbal system is based on the preverbal markers that express the category of tense, modality and aspect, among which aspect is the main dimension. Complex predicates and verbal chains are used in order to further distinguish aspect and modality, as well as changes of voice and valency. Intransitive verbs express motion, states, and reflexive actions, even though the majority of verbs can occur in both intransitive and transitive clauses. Ternate Chabacano is a nominative-accusative type language but the typological configuration of the Philippine languages influences the marking of its constituents. A case in point is constituted by the nominal determination system. The basic constituent order in a clause is VSO. Equative and attibutive clauses are formed by juxtaposition while the locative clauses feature a copula. Indefinite terms are expressed through existential constructions. The negation of existential clauses differs from standard negation but both are intensified in the same way. In spoken discourse, tag-questions are common. Pragmatic elements and social formulas reflect largely the corresponding Tagalog expressions. Coordination and subordination occur typically without overt markers but a variety of markers exists for expressing different relations, especially those made explicit by adverbial clauses. Verbal chains form a continuum from serial verbs to complementation and ultimately to coordination.

Cohésion modale et subordination : Le conditionnel et le jussif finnois au miroir de la valeur sémantique et discursive du subjonctif français

Modal cohesion and subordination. The Finnish conditional and jussive moods in comparison to the French subjunctive This study examines verb moods in subordinate clauses in French and Finnish. The first part of the analysis deals with the syntax and semantics of the French subjunctive, mood occurring mostly in subordinate positions. The second part investigates Finnish verb moods. Although subordinate positions in Finnish grammar have no special finite verb form, certain uses of Finnish verb moods have been compared to those of subjunctives and conjunctives in other languages. The present study focuses on the subordinate uses of the Finnish conditional and jussive (i.e. the third person singular and plural of the imperative mood). The third part of the analysis discusses the functions of subordinate moods in contexts beyond complex sentences. The data used for the analysis include 1834 complex sentences gathered from newspapers, online discussion groups and blog texts, as well as audio-recorded interviews and conversations. The data thus consist of both written and oral texts as well as standard and non-standard variants. The analysis shows that the French subjunctive codes theoretical modality. The subjunctive does not determine the temporal and modal meaning of the event, but displays the event as virtual. In a complex sentence, the main clause determines the temporal and modal space within which the event coded by the subjunctive clause is interpreted. The subjunctive explicitly indicates that the space constructed in the main clause extends its scope over the subordinate clause. The subjunctive can therefore serve as a means for creating modal cohesion in the discourse. The Finnish conditional shares the function of making explicit the modal link between the components of a complex construction with the French subjunctive, but the two moods differ in their semantics. The conditional codes future time and can therefore occur only in non-factual or counterfactual contexts, whereas the event expressed by French subjunctive clauses can also be interpreted as realized. Such is the case when, for instance, generic and habitual meaning is involved. The Finnish jussive mood is used in a relatively limited number of subordinate clause types, but in these contexts its modal meaning is strikingly close to that of the French subjunctive. The permissive meaning, typical of the jussive in main clause positions, is modified in complex sentences so that it entails inter-clausal relation, namely concession. Like the French subjunctive, the jussive codes theoretical modal meaning with no implication of the truth value of the proposition. Finally, the analysis shows that verb moods mark modal cohesion, not only on the syntagmatic level (namely in complexe sentences), but also on the paradigmatic axis of discourse in order to create semantic links over entire segments of talk. In this study, the subjunctive thus appears, not as an empty category without function, as it is sometimes described, but as an open form that conveys the temporal and modal meanings emerging from the context.

La coordination et les phrases juxtaposées en français

Coordination and juxtaposed sentences The object of this study is the examination of the relations between juxtaposed clauses in contemporary French. The matter in question is sentences which are composed of several clauses adjoined without a conjunction or other connector, as in: Je détournai les yeux, mon c ur se mit à battre. The aim of the study is to determine, which quality is the relation in these sentences and, on the other hand, what is the part of the coordination there. Furthermore, what is this relation of coordination, which, according to some grammars, manifests through a conjunction of coordination, but which, according to some others is marked in juxtaposed sentences through different features. The study is based on a corpus of written French from literary and journalistic text sources. Syntactic, semantic and textual properties in the clauses are discussed. The analysis points to differences so, it has been noted, in each case, if one of the clauses is affirmative and the other negative and if in the second clause, the subject has not been repeated. Also, an analysis has been made on the ground of the tense, mode, phrase structure type, and thematic structure, taking into account, in each case, if the clauses are identical or different. Punctuation has been one of the properties considered. The final aim has been to eliminate gradually, based on the partition of properties, subordinate sentences, so that only the hard core of coordinate sentences remains. In this way, the coordination could be defined similarly as the phoneme is defined as a group of distinctive features. The quantitative analyses have led to the conclusion that the sentences which, from a semantic point of view, are interpreted as coordinating, contain the least of these differences, while the sentences which can be considered as subordinating present the most of these differences. The conditions of coordination are, in that sense, hierarchical, so that the syntactic constraints have to make room for semantic, textual and cognitive factors. It is interesting to notice that everyone has the ability to produce correct coordinating structures and recognize incorrect coordinating structures. This can be explained by the human ability to categorize which has been widely researched in the semantic of prototype. The study suggests that coordination and subordination could be considered as prototypical cognitive categories based on different linguistic and pragmatic features.

Mauwake reference grammar

This dissertation provides a synchronic grammatical description of Mauwake, a Papuan (Trans-New Guinea) language of about 2000 speakers on the North Coast of the Madang Province in Papua New Guinea. The theoretical background is that of Basic Linguistic Theory (BLT), used extensively in analysing and writing descriptive grammars. The chapters from morphology to clause level are described from form to function; in the later chapters the function is taken more often as the starting point. Any theory-specific terminology is kept to the minimum and formalisms have been avoided in accordance with BLT principles. Mauwake has a classic 5-vowel system and 14 consonant phonemes. With its simple phonology it is a typical representative of the Madang North Coast languages. For a Papuan language there are relatively few morphophonological alternations. Nouns are either alienably or inalienably possessed. There is no obligatory number marking in nouns or noun phrases. Pronouns have several different forms: five for case and three for other functions. The dative pronouns are treated as [+human] locatives, and they have also grammaticalised as possessives. The verbal morphology is agglutinative and mainly suffixal. Unusual features include two distributive suffixes, and the interaction of the derivational benefactive and the inflectional beneficiary suffixes. The applicative suffix has either transitivising or causative but not benefactive function. The switch-reference system distinguishes between simultaneous and sequential action, as well as same or different subject in relation to the following clause. There are several verbs denoting coming and going, and they may combine with one of three prefixes to indicate bringing and taking. Mauwake is a nominative-accusative type language, and the basic constituent order in a clause is SOV. Subject and object are the only syntactic arguments. There is no indirect object, but a clause can have two or even three objects. A nominalised clause with a finite verb functions as a relative clause or a complement clause; one with a nominalised verb has several different functions. Functional domains described include modality, negation, deixis, quantification, possession and comparison. As there are four negators, Mauwake has more variation in negative expressions than is usual in Papuan languages. Clause chaining is the preferred strategy for joining clauses into sentences, but coordination and subordination of finite clauses are also common. The form of a complement clause depends on whether it is of the fact, action or potential type. Tail-head linkage is used as a cohesive device between sentences. The discourse-level features described are topic and focus.

A Sketch of the Phonology and Grammar of Rajbanshi

This dissertation is a synchronic description of the phonology and grammar of two dialects of the Rajbanshi language (Eastern Indo-Aryan) as spoken in Jhapa, Nepal. I have primarily confined the analysis to the oral expression, since the emerging literary form is still in its infancy. The grammatical analysis is therefore based, for the most part, on a corpus of oral narrative text which was recorded and transcribed from three informants from north-east Jhapa. An informant, speaking a dialect from south-west Jhapa cross checked this text corpus and provided additional elicited material. I have described the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language, and also one aspect of its discourse structure. For the most part the phonology follows the basic Indo-Aryan pattern. Derivational morphology, compounding, reduplication, echo formation and onomatopoeic constructions are considered, as well as number, noun classes (their assignment and grammatical function), pronouns, and case and postpositions. In verbal morphology I cover causative stems, the copula, primary and secondary agreement, tense, aspect, mood, auxiliary constructions and non-finite forms. The term secondary agreement here refers to genitive agreement, dative-subject agreement and patient (and sometimes patient-agent) agreement. The breaking of default agreement rules has a range of pragmatic inferences. I argue that a distinction, based on formal, semantic and statistical grounds, should be made between conjunct verbs, derivational compound verbs and quasi-aspectual compound verbs. Rajbanshi has an open set of adjectives, and it additionally makes use of a restricted set of nouns which can function as adjectives. Various particles, and the emphatic and conjunctive clitics are also considered. The syntactic structures studied include: non-declarative speech acts, phrase-internal and clause-internal constituent order, negation, subordination, coordination and valence adjustment. I explain how the future, present and past tenses in Rajbanshi oral narratives do not seem to maintain a time reference, but rather to indicate a distinction between background and foreground information. I call this tense neutralisation .

Zur lexikographischen Darstellung der Adjektivsyntax in neueren einsprachigen Wörtbüchern des Deutschen

The main objects of the investigation were the syntactic functions of adjectives. The reason for the interest in these functions are the different modes of use, in which an adjective can occur. All together an adjective can take three different modes of use: attributive (e. g. a fast car), predicative (e. g. the car is fast) and adverbial (e. g. the car drives fast). Since an adjective cannot always take every function, some dictionaries (esp. learner s dictionaries) deliver information within the lexical entry about any restrictions. The purpose of the research consisted of a comparison in relation to the lexical entries of adjectives, which were investigated within four selected monolingual German-speaking dictionaries. The comparison of the syntactical data of adjectives were done to work out the differences and the common characteristics of the lexical entries concerning the different modes of use and to analyse respective to assess them. In the foreground, however, were the differences of the syntactical information. Concerning those differences it had to be worked out, which entry is the grammatically right one respective if one entry is in fact wrong. To find that out an empirical analysis was needed, which based on the question in which way an adjective is used within a context as far as there are no conforming data within the dictionaries. The delivery of the correctness and the homogeneity of lexical entries of German-speaking dictionaries are very important to support people who are learning the German language and to ensure the user friendliness of dictionaries. Throughout the investigations it became clear that in almost half of the cases (over 40 %) syntactical information of adjectives differ from each other within the dictionaries. These differences make it for non-native speakers of course very difficult to understand the correct usage of an adjective. Thus the main aim of the doctoral thesis was it to deliver and to demonstrate the clear syntactical usage of a certain amount of adjectives.

With Good Reputation Size Does not Matter: Issue Frequency and the Determinants of Debt Maturity

This paper examines empirically the effect firm reputation has on the determinants of debt maturity. Utilising data from European primary bond market between 1999 and 2005, I find that the maturity choice of issuers with a higher reputation is less sensitive to macroeconomic conditions, market credit risk-premiums, prevailing firm credit quality and size of the debt issue. The annualised coupon payments are shown to be a significant factor in determining the debt maturity and reveal a monotonously increasing relationship between credit quality and debt maturity once controlled for. Finally, I show that issuers lacking a credit rating have an implied credit quality positioned between investment-grade and speculative-grade debt.