Thesiss

This dissertation provides the first description and analysis of focus in Caquinte, an indigenous Arawak language of Peruvian Amazonia. It investigates the expression of a fundamental distinction in types of focus, namely between information focus and contrastive focus, which I …

The overarching topic of this dissertation is the semantics and pragmatics of definite descriptions. It focuses on the question whether sentences such as ‘the king of France is bald’ literally assert the existence of a unique king (and therefore are false) or simply presuppose t…

Studies of polarity-sensitive items (PSIs) such as English any have long focused on characterizing the contexts in which PSIs appear ('the licensing problem'). Recently, the focus has shifted to examining the lexical content of PSIs and deriving their limited distribution from t…

In this paper, I propose that focused elements in Hindi must scramble to the specifier of a Focus Phrase projected immediately above the vP, which is the default position for focus (Kidwai 1999). A focus phrase in the immediately preverbal position has also been proposed by Jaya…

This study explored the Media Focus in Afghanistan News Coverage to examine what categories of Afghanistan-related news received the largest amount of coverage during periods from 2010 to 2012. This study covered reports in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and…