THETICITY IN TIRIYÓ: An Empirical Reevaluation
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Date
2014-06
Authors
Hatch, Rebecca A.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
My thesis explores the concept oftheticity, both in general and in a specific
language: Tiriy6. This language is a member of the Cariban language family and its
speakers live in Suriname and Brazil. Theticity is a type of utterance that allows a
speaker to present all of the information in a clause as a single information structure
unit with the value of"non-presupposed". This theoretical definition oftheticity is
widely agreed upon in the subfield. However, it is not clear how you take this definition
oftheticity and use it to find thetic utterances in your own language of study. What is
missing is an operational definition.
This thesis analyzes a research article by Eithne Carlin about a proposed thetic
construction in Tiriy6: the 1-V-se construction. In particular, I analyze Carlin's research
methodology to discover how she acquired evidence to support her claim that the 1-V-se
construction is the thetic construction in Tiriy6. I found that she did not provide an
operational definition of theticity in her article, which prompted me to reevaluate
theticity in Tiriy6 with my own operational definition. I found that the 1-V-se
construction can code theticity, however it is not the only clause type that can do so, and
it has several other functions. Ultimately, I found that without an operational definition,
there is no reliable way to find evidence to support a scientific claim.
Description
57 pages. A thesis presented to the Department of Linguistics and the Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Bachelor of Arts, Spring 2014.
Keywords
Cariban languages, Focus, Thetic Construction, Linguistics, Brazilian Language, Discourse Study