Dissertation Defense Schedule
Academic Excellence
Sharing original dissertation research is a principle to which the University of Delaware is deeply committed. It is the single most important assignment our graduate students undertake and upon completion is met with great pride.
We invite you to celebrate this milestone by attending their dissertation defense. Please review the upcoming dissertation defense schedule below and join us!
PROGRAM | Linguistics
Lexical Decomposition of Predicates and Multidimensional Semantics
By: Lan Kim Chair: Satoshi Tomioka
ABSTRACT
The expression of possessive, benefactive, and adversative meanings is a central part of languages that is generally and universally relevant to the description of languages. The usual means for expressing these meanings in Korean, Japanese, and Thai, the three languages under consideration, is with a verbal morpheme. The primary goal of this dissertation is to examine the different argument structures that encode these meanings, namely ditransitive constructions, benefactive constructions, and adversity (passive) constructions, and provide additional empirical support for the syntactic approach to predicate decomposition using event semantics. I shall propose that each construction can be decomposed into different syntactic verbal heads, each of which contributes a subpart of the meaning of the sentences, an analysis from which the syntactic and the semantic properties follow quite straightforwardly. I shall also show that not all of the meanings that are discussed in this dissertation behave uniformly, such that some elements of meaning are projected as not-at-issue meaning, like an implicature or a presupposition in multidimensional semantics. The thesis shows that the observed syntactic and semantic properties converge neatly with the theory of syntactic decomposition using event semantics, and certain linguistic phenomena such as ditransitives, benefactives, and adversity (passive) constructions can only be explained by making explicit the complex event structure of a verbal predicate at the level of syntax.
The Process
Step-by-Step
Visit our “Step-by-Step Graduation Guide” to take you through the graduation process.From formatting your Dissertation to Doctoral Hooding procedures.
Dissertation Manual
Wondering how to set up the format for your paper. Refer to the “UD Thesis/Dissertation Manual” for formatting requirements and more.
Defense Submission Form
This form must be completed two weeks in advance of a dissertation defense to meet the University of Delaware Graduate and Professional Education’s requirements.
