The spray/load and dative alternations : aligning VP structure and contextual effects
The theoretical and experimental work presented in this thesis investigates the spray/load and dative alternations. The purpose is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the alternations in terms of their syntactic structures and to account for how contextual information drives differences in the linear order of their VP arguments. This analysis shows that the syntactic structures of the spray/load and dative alternations are identical; each variant in an alternation is characterised by one of two available structures proposed in Janke and Neeleman (2012). Each structure is shown to respect a novel thematic hierarchy that is based on the value of binary feature clusters (Reinhart, 2000) rather than by direct reference to semantic labels. The choice of a particular structure is demonstrated to be affected by the non-semantic context in which the spray/load or dative sentence is generated. This is a consequence of the limited processing capacity of Working Memory and the allocation of attentional resources to a stimulus. Experimental data from an as yet untested variable of the visual context â the egocentric perception of distance â is found to interact with word order preferences of the alternations. I
D'Elia, Samuel C.
P Philology. Linguistics
The spray/load and dative alternations : aligning VP structure and contextual effects. The theoretical and experimental work presented in this thesis investigates the spray/load and dative alternations. The purpose is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the alternations in terms of their syntactic structures and to account for how contextual information drives differences in the linear order of their VP arguments. This analysis shows that the syntactic structures of the spray/load and dative alternations are identical; each variant in an alternation is characterised by one of two available structures proposed in Janke and Neeleman (2012). Each structure is shown to respect a novel thematic hierarchy that is based on the value of binary feature clusters (Reinhart, 2000) rather than by direct reference to semantic labels. The choice of a particular structure is demonstrated to be affected by the non-semantic context in which the spray/load or dative sentence is generated. This is a consequence of the limited processing capacity of Working Memory and the allocation of attentional resources to a stimulus. Experimental data from an as yet untested variable of the visual context â the egocentric perception of distance â is found to interact with word order preferences of the alternations. I
load dative alternation align structure contextual effect theoretical_experimental work present_investigates load dative alternation purpose_provide comprehensive_analysis alternation term syntactic_structure account contextual_information drive difference linear_order argument analysis_show syntactic_structure load dative alternation identical variant alternation characterise available structure propose structure show respect novel thematic hierarchy base value binary feature cluster rather direct_reference semantic label choice particular structure demonstrate affected non semantic context load dative sentence generate consequence limit processing capacity working memory allocation attentional resource stimulus experimental_data yet variable visual context perception distance find interact word_order preference alternation