Thesis (doctoral)--University of Lund, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [363]-378).

Thesis Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

A crucial component of child language acquisition is successful generalization. First, a speaker must acquire abstract knowledge of how a particular linguistic-structure conveys meaning, and use this knowledge to generalize the structure to new lexical-items. For example, a speaker can use abstract knowledge of a SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT structure to produce a sentence such as The man rolled the ball, even if the verb roll has never been encountered in this structure before. Second, a learner must appropriately restrict ‘overgeneralizations’ whereby a structure is used with an unsuitable verb (e.g. *The man fell the boy). The most prominent theories regarding restriction of overgeneralizations are based on frequency of use and (semantic, phonological or pragmatic) compatibility between the item and construction. Since developmental evidence for these accounts is mostly limited to the judgment paradigm, which is unsuitable for testing children aged 5 and under, the aim of this thesis was to examine whether these restriction mechanisms are used by children as young as 3 or 4 – whose generalization mechanisms are at an earlier stage of development - and to develop new paradigms for doing so. Study 1 used a production priming paradigm to examine children’s (aged 3-4; 5-6) restrictions of verbal un- prefixation (e.g., *unbend). Children’s production probability of verbs in un- form (e.g., *unbend) was negatively predicted by the frequency of the target verb in bare form (i.e., bend/s/ed/ing) and by the frequency of synonyms to a verb’s un- form (e.g., straighten for *unbend). Additionally, grammaticality judgments from older children (aged 5-6) revealed that preferences for un- forms were positively related to the extent to which the verb’s semantics overlapped with a covert, probabilistic semantic “cryptotype” of meanings thought to be shared by verbs that are grammatical in un- form (e.g., tie, pack, twist, screw, cover). Study 2 investigated whether overgeneralization errors in the domain of English past-tense (i.e., when ‘regular’ inflections are applied to verbs that require ‘irregular’ inflection; e.g., *sleeped, *throwed) are best attributed to analogy across exemplars, or to a default, “add –ed” rule applied regardless of a verb’s memorized associations. Past-tense forms of novel verbs were elicited by showing children (aged 3-4; 5-6; 6-7; 9-10) animations of an animal performing a novel action described with a novel verb (e.g., gezz; chake) and asking what the animal ‘did yesterday’. A verb’s likelihood of receiving regular inflection (e.g., gezzed, chaked) was positively associated with its phonological similarity to existing regular verbs, consistent with the analogy-based approach. Study 3 investigated the suitability of an online measure of sentence processing, namely Event Related Potentials (ERP), to investigate the role of verb-frequency in restricting transitive overgeneralizations. In line with previous studies, ‘P600’ and ‘LAN’ components were evoked in response to overgeneralization errors. However, the magnitudes of these components were not sensitive to a manipulation of verb-frequency (e.g., *The clown laughed the boy vs. *The clown giggled the boy), raising doubt toward the suitability of ERP for examining the relative acceptability of overgeneralization errors. Overall, the research indicates that even young children’s generalizations are sensitive to the linguistic input (i.e., statistical regularities and generalized semantic or phonological patterns of use) and are not well explained by a system of abstract rules that act on discrete categories, whether this applies to syntactic categories (e.g., add -ed to any instance of the category “VERB”) or discrete verb classes (e.g., a narrow-range rule that acts invariably on any verb that is part of an ‘alternating’ verb-class).

Ces travaux approchent la question de la diversité dans la Francophonie sur la base de constructions verbales en Côte d’Ivoire. L’étude du sous-corpus écrit montre ainsi que le fait que 232 sur 400 étudiants soient concernés par des « écarts » de constructions verbales relève essentiellement d’une « connaissance approximative de la valence du verbe employé ». Quant à l’interférence du français ivoirien ordinaire, elle diminue progressivement jusqu’à la Licence (Licence 3) avant de présenter une chute significative en Maîtrise (Master 1). L’analyse du sous-corpus oral souligne ensuite des constructions verbales typiques du français ivoirien ordinaire. Nous en déduisons que les étudiants des années supérieures manient mieux le français standard, et la variation en général, que ceux des premières années. Nous proposons dès lors une didactique du français de Côte d’Ivoire jetant les bases pédagogiques de la variation du français en Côte d’Ivoire tout en insistant sur l’intérêt d’une norme grammaticale pour l’ensemble du monde francophone. / These studies approach the issue of diversity in the Francophonie on the basis of verbal constructions in Côte d'Ivoire. The study of written sub-corpus shows that the fact that 232 out of 400 students are involved with "gaps" in verbal constructions is essentially an "approximate knowledge of the valence of the verb used." As for the interference of the standard ivorian french, it gradually decreases to the License (Licence 3) before presenting a significant drop in Master (Master 1). The analysis of oral sub-corpus then highlights typical verbal constructions of standard ivorian french. We conclude that students in senior years handle better the standard french and the change in general, than those of early years. We therefore propose a didactics of french in Côte d’Ivoire laying the educational foundation of the change in french in Côte d’Ivoire while emphasizing the importance of a grammatical standard for the entire french-speaking world.

Cette recherche vise la description et l’explication des différentes classifications concernant le verbe russe, partie du discours la plus vaste et la plus difficile à organiser dans cette langue, de par ses nombreuses catégories et un système compliqué de conjugaison, ce qui a pour conséquence une multiplicité de propositions, au cours des siècles, tentant de maîtriser cette complexité. Ces tentatives diffèrent selon les idées dominantes de l’époque : par le choix de l’objet (slavon, vieux russe…), le point de vue jugé pertinent (diachronique, synchronique, logique…), le critère linguistique adopté (morphologique, sémantique…) et donc par les méthodologies dépendant de ces options théoriques, chacune révélant des faits nouveaux (telle la découverte de l’aspect) mais du même coup une complication supplémentaire pour le classement, et donc des difficultés accrues dans l'acquisition ou l'apprentissage du système verbal russe. Notre objectif est double : saisir pourquoi les classifications existantes aboutissent à des modèles trop complexes pour être enseignés tels quels, et déterminer le point de vue à adopter pour pallier le problème pédagogique : notre hypothèse est d’intégrer le critère de la fréquence (jamais pris en compte jusqu’ici). / This research concerns the description and explanation of various classifications of Russian verbs, which constitute the largest and most difficult-to-organise part of speech in the Russian language due to the numerous categories and the complicated system of conjugation which have led, over the centuries, to numerous propositions attempting to master this complexity. These attempts differ, according to the dominant ideas of each epoch: in the choice of the objective (Slavonic, Old Russian...), the viewpoint judged pertinent (diachronical, synchronical, logical...), the linguistic criterion adopted (morphological, semantic...) and therefore by the methodologies dependant on these theoretical options, each one revealing new facts (such as the discovery of the aspects), but at the same time becoming an extra complication for a classification and therefore adding more difficulties for acquiring or learning the Russian verb system. Ours is a double objective : to grasp why the existing classifications lead to models that are too complex to be taught as is, and to determine the proper viewpoint from which to remedy the pedagogical problem (which has never been taken into account so far).

Submitted by Ana Caroline de Lima Parreira (ana_caroline_lima@hotmail.com) on 2018-06-21T19:12:44Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_versãodefinitiva.pdf: 1932805 bytes, checksum: 432d5e1871ea8f55c28a6f207bb0350e (MD5) / Rejected by Elza Mitiko Sato null (elzasato@ibilce.unesp.br), reason: Solicitamos que realize correções na submissão seguindo as orientações abaixo: Problema 01) A LISTA DE QUADROS, TABELAS, GRÁFICOS E ABREVIATURAS deve ser inserida antes do SUMÁRIO. Lembramos que o arquivo depositado no repositório deve ser igual ao impresso, o rigor com o padrão da Universidade se deve ao fato de que o seu trabalho passará a ser visível mundialmente. Agradecemos a compreensão. on 2018-06-21T20:49:59Z (GMT) / Submitted by Ana Caroline de Lima Parreira (ana_caroline_lima@hotmail.com) on 2018-06-21T21:23:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_versãodefinitiva.pdf: 1933203 bytes, checksum: 0b9b34f43d3b9dda5596e8a89375e705 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Elza Mitiko Sato null (elzasato@ibilce.unesp.br) on 2018-06-25T13:16:44Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 parreira_acl_dr_sjrp.pdf: 1933203 bytes, checksum: 0b9b34f43d3b9dda5596e8a89375e705 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-06-25T13:16:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 parreira_acl_dr_sjrp.pdf: 1933203 bytes, checksum: 0b9b34f43d3b9dda5596e8a89375e705 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-05-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Este trabalho investiga dois tipos de predicações não-verbais encaixadas no verbo achar e estruturadas por recurso a predicador de natureza adjetival, o primeiro designado predicação não-verbal encaixada simples (acho (que) a pesquisa (é) interessante) e o segundo, predicação não-verbal encaixada complexa (acho (que é) bom (que) você ir /vá embora). O principal objetivo do trabalho consiste em traçar o percurso de desenvolvimento diacrônico dessas construções na história do português, adotando-se como aparato teórico-metodológico os Modelos Baseados no Uso (KEMMER; BERLOW, 2000; BYBEE, 2010), perspectiva que procura conjugar pressupostos da Linguística Cognitiva e do Funcionalismo, estes representados, especialmente, pelos estudos sobre gramaticalização de orações (HOPPER; TRAUGOTT, 2003; LEHMANN, 1988). A fim de atestar a trajetória de mudança das construções em análise, investigaram-se dois diferentes corpora: um primeiro, composto por amostras do português histórico dos séculos XIII a XX; e um segundo, que inclui amostras de fala representativas do século XXI. A análise dos resultados comprovou que as predicações não-verbais, ao longo da história do português, não resultam de um processo de integração de orações, como propõe Lehmann (1988) para as predicações verbais. Constatou-se que essas construções são resultantes de um processo de gramaticalização que leva à expansão da estrutura e do significado dos argumentos que as constituem, motivada por analogização. As mudanças observadas nas predicações não-verbais encaixadas envolvem três fatores: o primeiro de ordem formal, diz respeito ao tipo morfossintático do argumento sujeito da construção, que, de nominal passa a oracional; o segundo, de ordem funcional, relaciona-se ao tipo semântico da entidade representada pelo argumento sujeito, que de indivíduo passa a permitir a codificação também de estado-de-coisas, episódio e proposição (LYONS, 1977; DIK, 1989; HENGEVELD; MACKENZIE, 2008); o terceiro, também de ordem funcional, refere-se à classe semântica do predicado não-verbal, que se expande da classe dos qualificativos para a classe dos avaliativos e dos modais. Essas mudanças em conjunto, associadas à abstratização do verbo achar, permitiram comprovar a hipótese de que predicações não-verbais simples, mais integradas à construção matriz, submetem-se a um processo histórico de expansão semântica e estrutural, rumo a um complexo oracional menos integrado, e não a processo contrário. Conclui-se, portanto, que essa nova forma de organização do complexo oracional reflete o modo como a língua permite aos falantes avaliar experiências mais abstratas, a partir de experiências mais concretas, utilizando-se, para isso, de estruturas pré-existentes na língua. / This study investigates two kinds of non-verbal constructions embedded in the verb achar and structured using a predicate of adjectival nature, the first one designated as predicação nãoverbal encaixada simples (simple non-verbal embedded construction) (acho (que) a pesquisa (é) interessante) and the second, predicação não-verbal encaixada complexa (complex nonverbal embedded construction) (acho (que é) bom (que) você ir /vá embora). The aim of this work is to trace the course of development of these constructions in the history of Portuguese language, adopting as theoretical-methodological approach Usage Based Models of Language (Kemmer; Berlow, 2000; Bybee, 2010), perspective that seeks to combine Cognitive Linguistics and Functionalism assumptions, especially represented by studies on clauses grammaticalization (Hopper; Traugott, 2003; Lehmann, 1988). In order to attest the path of changing of the constructions in analysis, we investigated two different corpora: the first composed of Portuguese historical samples from 13th to 20th centuries and the second, which includes representative speech samples of the 21st century. The analysis of the results proved that the non-verbal constructions, throughout the history of Portuguese, do not result from a clause integration process, as proposed by Lehmann (1988) for the verbal predications. It was noted that these constructions are result of a grammaticalization process that leads to the expansion of the structure and the meaning of the arguments which compose them motivated by analogy. The observed changes in non-verbal embedded constructions involve three factors: the first, from formal order, concerned to the morphosyntactic type of the construction subject argument, which changes from nominal to clausal; the second, from functional order, relates to the semantic type of the entity represented by the subject argument that from individuals allow the coding also of state of affairs, episode and proposition (LYONS, 1977; DIK, 1989; HENGEVELD; MACKENZIE, 2008); the third, also from functional order, refers to the semantic class of non-verbal predicate, which expands from qualificatives class to evaluation and modal class. These changes together, associated with the abstractization process of the verb achar, allowed to prove the hypothesis that simple non-verbal constructions, more integrated with the matrix construction, undergo a historic process of semantic and structural expansion, towards to a less integrated sentence complex, and not to the opposite process. It is therefore concluded that this new form of organization of complex sentence reflects the way language allows speakers to evaluate more abstract experiences, based on more concrete experiences, using for this, pre-existing structures in language.

The main topic of this thesis is the analytic predicate with event nouns with the suffix -ement in French. It is divided into two parts, the theoretical and the practical one. In the first theoretical part we concentrate on the description of the analytic predicate and we also introduce some test for its identification. The next parts are dedicated to the particular components of this predicate: to the light verb and the predicative noun with a particular emphasis on event nouns, for which we examine their possible typologies. After this we focus on the suffix ement itself, its characteristics as well as the characteristics of nouns, which are created by this suffix. The last topic which we cover is the concurrence between suffixes -ement and age. In the practical part, we begin by describing used methods thanks to which we received needed data as well as our instruments. Then we divided the extracted nouns with the suffix ement according to their meaning into a few groups and we continued by verifying their eventive meaning. Subsequently we concentrated on the collocability of chosen nouns with verbs and we finished by comparing the suffix ement with suffix -age.

Esta dissertação utiliza simulações computacionais visando investigar a influência de alguns fatores lingüísticos na organização lexical de verbos, analisando os processos de aquisição e uso. Os fatores testados são: freqüência de observação na linguagem, polissemia e complexidade sintática. Os dados utilizados foram obtidos por meio de tarefas psicolingüísticas de nomeação de ações, realizadas por crianças e adultos (falantes do Português brasileiro), posteriormente representados como grafos. Com base nos fatores lingüísticos, foram formuladas hipóteses relativas ao desenvolvimento da língua, testadas por meio de simulações computacionais denominadas ‘involuções’. Os testes incluem métricas da teoria dos grafos e medidas de similaridade de conjuntos (coeficiente de Jaccard e suas componentes). Os resultados obtidos apontam para uma confirmação das hipóteses formuladas. Adicionalmente, permitiram verificar algumas características do desenvolvimento lingüístico, como o aumento do vocabulário e uma progressiva especialização. / This dissertation uses computational simulations designed to investigate the influence of three linguistic factors in the lexical organization of verbs, analyzing the process of acquisition and use. The tested factors are: frequency of observation in the language, polysemy and syntactic complexity. The data used were obtained from psycholinguistic action naming tasks performed by children and adults (speakers of Brazilian Portuguese), and subsequently represented as graphs. Based on linguistic factors, hypotheses were formulated concerning the development of language, tested through simulations called ‘involutions’. Tests include graph theory metrics and set similarity measures (Jaccard’s coefficient and its components). Results suggest a confirmation of the given hypotheses. Additionally, allowed verification of some language development features, such as vocabulary growth and a progressive specialization.

Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-05-13T18:34:15Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Guilhermina de Carvalho.pdf: 1949804 bytes, checksum: f16a6247125289fdaeafe457a4a446f6 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rodrigo Meirelles(rodrigomei@ufba.br) on 2013-05-16T17:15:10Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Guilhermina de Carvalho.pdf: 1949804 bytes, checksum: f16a6247125289fdaeafe457a4a446f6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-16T17:15:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Guilhermina de Carvalho.pdf: 1949804 bytes, checksum: f16a6247125289fdaeafe457a4a446f6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Esta dissertação analisa a variação da ordem SV/VS em construções com verbos inacusativos de 18 (dezoito) entrevistas, extraídas do Corpus Base do Dialeto Rural Afro-Brasileiro, da região da Bahia, procurando conciliar uma abordagem sociolingüística variacionista com um aparato teórico gerativista. O corpus analisado reúne três comunidades localizadas em regiões diferentes do estado da Bahia, em que se fixou mão-de-obra escrava: Helvécia, no extremo-sul do Estado; Cinzento, no semi-árido; e Sapé, no Recôncavo Baiano. Assume-se, como objeto de estudo, a perspectiva de uma das ordens, a ordem VS, procurando caracterizar os fatores lingüísticos e extralingüísticos que a condicionam, estes últimos em função de motivações externas (sócio-históricas), ligadas a essas comunidades rurais afro-brasileiras, vivendo em relativo isolamento. A análise estatística demonstra que há fatores sintáticos e semântico-discursivos relevantes no condicionamento da ordem VS, sobrelevando a natureza do verbo inacusativo em relação com o argumento interno que seleciona. Esta análise conclui que as ordens SV e VS não constituem propriamente um caso de variação, mas sim, um fenômeno de configuração heterogênea, em distribuição complementar. / Salvador

xii, 75 p. / Wintu is a moribund Penutian language once spoken in the Sacramento River Valley in Northern California. Presently unexplored is Wintu expression of movement and location. Several avenues exist for nouns and verbs. Nouns receive optional locative suffixation, or location may be implied in the absence of a noun. Verbs may receive locative prefixes and/or an implied trajectory may be inherent to a verb's semantics; inherent location may also be expressed by nouns. In more complicated cases, nouns appear to receive established verbal morphology, or the nominal locative suffix or verbal locative prefixes occur in unusual contexts. In order to reach primary conclusions, it was necessary to address other difficulties, including nominal aspect, unclear word-class boundaries, inconsistent glossing, lack of native speakers and an overall paucity of information. Primary data consist of texts recorded and transcribed in the 1970s and two English/Wintu dictionaries; analysis was based on forms from these documents. / Committee in charge: Prof. Scott DeLancey, Chairperson; Prof. Spike Gildea, Member