ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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- Creators: Shen, Wei
- Creators: Gelderen, Elly van
Grammaticalization theory provides a framework for analyzing language change. This thesis uses the concepts relevant to grammaticalization theory in an examination of ‘only’ and ‘just’ to determine how changes in their usage conform to the theory. After an introduction providing a sampling of the myriad ways ‘only’ and ‘just’ are used in Modern English, I provide an overview of grammaticalization theory in Chapter 2. Included in this chapter are a history of the major concepts of grammaticalization theory, an explanation of the commonly-accepted parameters and tools used to test and demonstrate grammaticalization, and a brief discussion of current arguments against grammaticalization theory. Chapter 3 presents my analysis of ‘only’ and ‘just’. I show that ‘only’ has grammaticalized from an adjective to a more grammatical adjective, from an adjective to an adverb, and from an adjective to a complementizer. I then show that ‘just’ has grammaticalized from an adjective to a more grammatical adjective and from an adjective to an adverb. Although some proponents of grammaticalization theory question the grammaticalization pathways leading from adjective to adverb and from adjective to complementizer, I argue that in the cases of ‘only’ and ‘just’ these pathways do indeed exist. I use the Oxford English Dictionary and corpora to support and demonstrate the validity of my argument.
Using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis, I further find that financing costs, service value-added, and products diversity are the three most important competitive factors for the auto financial leasing service providers. This is the case for both the corporate and individual customers in the sample. By contrast, the factors of sales channel and government relationship are found to be much less important. Finally, through an in-depth case study of the leasing company Shanghai Auto Financial Leasing, I find that the key factors determining the customers’ credit default risk are interest rate and automobile type. I also investigate factors that influence business risk during the automobile procurement stage, at the selling stage, and toward the disposition stage. The managerial implications of the above results are discussed throughout the thesis.