Linguistics

The study of polysemy, understood as the coexistence of several related meanings within a single word, provides a window into the cognitive mechanisms that structure and generate meaning. Polysemy is not defined solely by the multiplicity of senses, but by the processes that create and link them, making it both a lexical and a conceptual phenomenon. Although linguistic and psycholinguistic research has extensively examined how speakers select the appropriate sense of polysemous words, one questi

This study is a preliminary investigation into the syntax of South African Sign Language. Utilising narrative data within a case study approach, signing is observed and analysed in terms of Radical Construction Grammar. An emphasis is placed on signs as form-meaning pairings, in which information of form is drawn from previous research on the phonology and morpho-syntax of signed languages. Meaning is explained within the same sphere, drawing on established literature regarding meaning in signed

The development of international proficiency tests such as IELTS, which entail important decision making about people’s academic lives, requires complex processes to ensure item discrimination. Previous research has indicated that IELTS has been ineffective in omitting distractor components, which may offer limitations in differentiating among the candidates. Among all the sections, particular attention has been paid to the reading comprehension component and it is considered as a criterion for

This dissertation investigates the following central question: What is the internal structure of pronouns? I propose and investigate the hypothesis that contextual allomorphy is a key tool for (a) accessing the inventory of morphemes that make up a pronoun across languages and (b) tracking the patterns of their interactions. Namely, allomorphic alternations involve an interaction of two morphemes, the trigger and the target of allomorphy. Identifying the trigger and the target in pronominal form

This thesis studies the syntax and semantics of null objects in Spanish. Null objects are grammatical elements that, despite not being uttered, are interpreted and display syntactic structure (e.g., En esta escuela castigan Ø con dureza ‘In this school they punish harshly’; Buscaban defectos de forma, pero no encontraron Ø ‘They were looking for formal defects, but found none’). Despite the interest aroused by null objects in Romance languages, null objects of Spanish have gone almost unnoticed

Toponymy is the branch of Onomastics that studies place names. From among the subfields in Toponymy, in this work we focus on standardized toponymic repositories: toponymic lexical data bases. An adequate standardization of the major toponymy in the CPLP area assumes special relevance, as it embodies a normalizing function and is characterized by its enlarged scope. The Vocabulário Toponímico (VT – toponymic wordlist), studied here, is a digital toponymic resource, a specialized vocabulary that