<p>The aim of this study is to analyse the variation between infinitive and finite verb adverbial clauses in European Portuguese. In order to understand this variation, three central questions are raised: (1) What determines the use of the uninflected vs. the inflected infinitive in same-subject adverbial clauses? (2) What does the pronoun SE signal in these adverbial clauses? (3) What difference is there between the use of the inflected infinitives vs. finite verbs in different subject adverbial clauses?</p><p>Earlier investigations about these three questions are discussed. One conclusion of this review is that former research almost exclusively has been conducted from a traditional or formalistic point of view that has given priority to structural descriptions instead of semantic or conceptual explanations. In contrast to this, the present study endeavours to examine these issues from a cognitive linguistic perspective.</p><p>It is claimed that the use of the inflected infinitive in adverbial same-subject clauses may be explained by contextual factors which create a cognitive need to highlight the subject of the adverbial clause. Further, an analysis about how the grammatical micro-context can determine the interpretation of the clitic pronoun SE as a marker for a generic trajector is conducted. It is also argued that the difference between infinitive and finite adverbial clauses can bee explained by means of theories of subjectification and mental spaces.</p><p>The conclusion is drawn that a cognitive approach to grammar can, indeed, shed light on the issues considered. In particular, it is shown that different adverbial constructions can express different conceptual meaning. In the light of this fact, other issues concerned with finite and infinite verb forms are raised.</p>

Neben der Frequenz eines cues ist es dessen Zuverlässigkeit, die Kindern hilft, die an sie gerichtete Sprache zu segmentieren, Worteinheiten zu erkennen sowie diese syntaktisch zu kategorisieren. Im Deutschen weist die Subsilbe „Langvokal+Konsonant+/t/“ (z.B. in fehlt, wohnt) zuverlässig auf eine -t-flektierte Verbform hin. Die in kindgerichteter Sprache höher frequente Subsilbe „Kurzvokal+Konsonant+/t/“ (z.B. in Feld, Hemd, fällt, rund) gibt hingegen keinen derartig eindeutigen Hinweis. Es wurde der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern diese unterschiedlichen Zuverlässigkeiten und Frequenzen der Subsilben auf die Nomen-, Verb- und Verbflexionsverarbeitung einwirken. Drei Altersgruppen wurden untersucht: achtzehn Monate alte Kinder, drei- bis fünfjährige sprachunauffällige und -auffällige Kinder sowie erwachsene Sprecher. Einflüsse der unterschiedlichen Zuverlässigkeiten und Frequenzen der ausgewählten Subsilben konnten für alle Probandengruppen gefunden werden. Die Subsilbe stellt damit eine linguistische Größe dar, die in der frühen Sprachwahrnehmung als cue dienen sowie die Sprachverarbeitung Erwachsener lenken kann und auch für die Sprachdiagnostik und -therapie sprachauffälliger Kinder berücksichtigt werden sollte. / Frequency and reliability have an impact on children’s reliance on cues for the segmentation and syntactic categorization of words. In German, the subsyllable “long vowel+consonant+/t/” reliably indicates that a word containing this type of subsyllable is an inflected verb form, e.g. “fehlt” (to lack, 3rd pers. sing.) or “wohnt” (to live, 3rd pers. sing.) In contrast, the more frequent subsyllable “short vowel+consonant+/t/” is not a reliable cue to word class as it occurs not only in inflected verb forms but in monomorphemic nouns and adjectives as well, e.g. “fällt” (to fall, 3rd pers. sing.), “Hemd” (shirt), “Feld” (field) or “rund” (round). This study addresses the question to what extent the different cue properties of subsyllables (i.e. reliability and frequency) have an impact on the processing of nouns, verbs and verb inflection. Participants of three different age groups were recruited: eighteen-month-old children, three- to five-year-old children with typical and atypical language acquisition and adults. Impacts of the different subsyllabic reliabilities and frequencies were found for all groups. This indicates that the subsyllable is a linguistic unit that provides relevant cues for early language acquisition and for language processing in adults. Therefore, it should also be considered for assessment and treatment of children with atypical language acquisition.

This study concerns simultaneous bilingual acquisition (2L1) of Swedish-Brazilian children growing up in mixed-lingual families in Stockholm, with Swedish as their dominant language. Earlier studies on this language combination were not found. Not even were there any studies considering 2L1 children of the same age group as our main subjects (Anna 7;7,3–9;1,30, Maria 6;1,16–6;11,11). An analysis of their acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as a weaker language (WL) was carried out in a Generative Grammar approach, mainly through the selective theory of language acquisition. The corpus consists of interviews with 2L1 children in a semi-longitudinal registration of their production. The focus of this analysis lies on the observation of three domains of BP grammar that differ morpho-syntactically from Swedish: verb inflection; VP as minimal responses; NP number and gender agreement. Three main research questions were formulated: 1) Are the simple and robust structures, provided by domestic input enough for triggering the functional categories (FC) of their WL? 2) If the FCs are activated, do they develop in the same sequence as a WL as they would in BPL1? 3) If the 2L1 children show any deviations in acquiring the grammar of their WL, is it possible to distinguish any influence from Swedish? To answer these questions a contrastive study was carried out, comparing the acquisition of BPWL with studies on 2L1 and BPL1 acquisition. The results show that the domestic input is enough for triggering the grammar of the WL, and that it was triggered and developed through a similar procedure to that of BPL1, although delayed. Contact with BPL1 input in Brazil was necessary to activate the children’s oral production. When using VPs for minimal responses it requires more than domestic input, and the influence of Swedish was reflected in the subjects’ use of sim ‘yes’ instead of VPs, as in this case grammar enters the domain of discourse at the syntax/pragmatics interface.

This thesis investigates the use of word order variation, in particular the variable use of subject-verb inversion and non-inversion in main declarative clauses, among adolescents in contemporary multilingual settings in Sweden. The use of non-inversion in contexts that in standard Swedish require inversion is sometimes claimed to be characteristic of varieties of Swedish spoken among adolescents in multilingual urban areas. The present study includes a wide range of data, both spontaneous and elicited, and explores how common the use of non-inversion is among a relatively large group of participants in different contexts, and how the use of non-inversion is influenced by different demographic, linguistic and socio-pragmatic factors. The results show that non-inversions are used to a limited extent in all types of data in the studied population. Only certain individuals frequently employ non-inversions in some contexts. Further, no direct link is found between second language acquisition and the use of non-inversion in this study. Factors related to the issue of nativeness, for example participants’ reported age of onset of Swedish acquisition, only marginally explain the results. In general, examples of non-inversion are employed more extensively, and by more participants, in peer-peer interaction than with adults. The use of non-inversion appears to be part of some adolescents’ spontaneous language use in certain contexts. More importantly, however, the results suggest that some adolescents employ non-inversions as an active linguistic resource to express their identification with the multilingual environment and the different varieties of Swedish spoken there, to show solidarity with peers, to contest official school discourses, and to play around with linguistic stereotypes.

Verbbenämning innebär förmågan att benämna en bild utifrån den aktivitet som bilden illustrerar. I tidigare studier har det visat sig att barn tidigt i språkutvecklingen har svårare för verbbenämning än substantivbenämning (Gentner, 1982; Kauschke, Lee &amp; Pae, 2007). Detta förklaras delvis av att verb är mer lingvistiskt komplexa än vad som är fallet för substantiv (Gentner &amp; Boroditsky, 2001), samt att de är svårare att illustrera (Masterson, Druks &amp; Gallienne, 2008). För att undersöka benämningsförmåga används oftast bildbenämningstest och för verb saknas ett svenskt test för barn. Föreliggande studie syftade till att undersöka verbbenämningsförmågan hos svenska barn samt att utröna om den svenska översättningen av Action Naming Test (ANT) är tillämplig på svenska barn. Deltagarna testades både med ANT samt Boston Naming test (BNT), för att få ett mått på de deltagande barnens benämningsförmåga av såväl verb som substantiv, och för att möjliggöra en jämförelse dem emellan. I den föreliggande studien deltog 116 barn i åldern 3;6 till 5;5 år uppdelade i fyra åldersgrupper. Resultaten på ANT visade att barnen fick högre testpoäng med stigande ålder. En felsvarsansalys visade att de vanligaste felsvaren var semantiskt relaterade (ord tillhörande samma eller en överordnad semantisk kategori) eller perceptuellt relaterade (visuell feltolkning) till målordet. En jämförelse av resultaten på ANT och BNT visade genomgående högre andel rätta svar på ANT. Det finns flera tänkbara förklaringar till detta. En förklaring är att barnen har passerat den ålder då substantiv är lättare att benämna än verb. En annan förklaring är att de helt enkelt har lättare att benämna verb än substantiv. Mer troligt är att testresultaten inte är jämförbara med varandra. Med några ändringar kan ANT bli ett användbart verbbenämningstest för svenska förskolebarn. / Verb naming comprises the ability to name an activity illustrated in a picture. Previous studies have shown that pre-school children have more difficulties in the naming of verbs than in naming of nouns (Gentner, 1982; Kauschke, Lee &amp; Pae, 2007). This is explained as being partly due to the greater linguistical complexity of verbs compared to nouns (Gentner &amp; Boroditsky, 2001) and that verbs are more difficult to illustrate (Masterson, Druks &amp; Gallienne, 2008). Picture naming tests are frequently used in order to investigate naming ability but today a verb naming test is not available for Swedish children. The present study aimed to investigate naming ability of verbs in Swedish children, and to evaluate if the Swedish translation of the Action Naming Test (ANT) is applicable on children. In addition, all participants were tested with both ANT and the Boston Naming Test (BNT) in order to evaluate the participating children’s naming ability of verbs and nouns in order to make a comparison between the two of them. In the present study 116 children aged 3;6 to 5;5 years divided into four age groups participated. The results on the ANT showed continuously higher scores with increasing age. The error analysis showed that the most frequently occurring error categories were either semantically related (words within the same or superordinate category) or perceptually related (misinterpretation of the picture). When comparing the results between the ANT and the BNT higher scores were shown on the ANT in all age groups. This could imply that the participating children are beyond the age when nouns are easier to name than verbs, or that unlike previous studies, verbs are easier to learn. More likely, the test results are not comparable with each other. With some adjustments, the ANT is considered applicable for Swedish pre-school children.

`Kinds of objects and their meanings´ deals with objecthood in Kiswahili. From a syntactic point of view, there is but one kind of object: the distinction between `direct´ and `indirect´ object has no syntactic properties, and one verb can have only one object. Of course, objects can have different semantic roles. This raises questions about the syntactic and semantic functions of `naked´ non-objects, and some of these are approached by inspecting fifty examples of the verb kutia `to put [sth] [into]´ from Sacleux´s dictionary. Three syntactic and semantic frames are distinguished and the respective roles of the arguments are described. Finally, there is a brief discussion about the meaning of the object as such and how it is influenced by the presence of the applicative extension.

In this work, the primary goal will be to construct the most descriptively and explanatorily adequate analysis possible to account for the complementary distribution of the Spanish copula verbs ser and estar. Over the past several decades, numerous theoretical accounts have been put forth in an attempt to accomplish this goal. Though such accounts accurately predict most types of stative sentences with the two copulas, they often fall short of predicting a significant number of them that are used in everyday speech. The first chapters of this dissertation will be devoted to reviewing a number of existing approaches that have been taken to account for the uses of ser and estar by testing their theoretical viability and descriptive adequacy. Among these are traditional conventions such as the inherent qualities vs. current condition distinction and the analysis of estar as an indicator of change. Those of a more recent theoretical framework, which will receive the most attention, include the application of Kratzer's (1995) individual-level vs. stage-level distinction to stative predicates and Maienborn's (2005) discourse-based interpretation of Spanish copulative predication. Schmitt's (2005) compositionally-based analysis of Portuguese ser and estar, which treats only estar as an aspectual copula, will be of special interest. After testing each of these analyses, it will be shown that the least costly and most accurate course to take for analyzing ser and estar is to treat both verbs as aspectual morphemes along the lines of Luján (1981). As aspectual copulas, ser and estar denote the aspectual distinction [±Perfective]. In my proposed analysis, I will argue that aspect applies to both events and states, but does so internally and externally respectively. By adapting Verkuyl's (2004) feature algebra to states, I will posit that aspect for stative predication is compositionally calculated, and the individual aspectual values for ser and estar remain constant in co-composition. In light of its descriptive adequacy for Spanish stative sentences and universality in natural language, it will also be shown that the [±Perfective] aspectual distinction is very strong in terms of explanatory adequacy as well. / text

Šis darbas skirtas didžiausių Lietuvos dienraščių – „Lietuvos ryto“ ir „Respublikos“ – dalyvių, pusdalyvių ir padalyvių vartojimo analizei. Norėta išsiaiškinti, ar dalyviai iki šiol yra dažnai tebevartojami, koks jų santykis minėtuose dienraščiuose. Dalyvių vartojimo polinkiai publicistikoje anksčiau beveik nebuvo tirti, tad darbas galėtų būti tolimesnių bei išsamesnių tyrimų pradžia. Pagrindinis darbo tikslas buvo nustatyti visų minėtų dalyvinių formų dažnumą, aptarti rašytinės kalbos dalyvinių konstrukcijų vartojimo ypatumus minėtuose dienraščiuose ir palyginti abiejų laikraščių kalbą. Analizuojant tiriamąją medžiagą buvo keliami šie uždaviniai: 1) apžvelgti lingvistinę literatūrą, susijusią su nagrinėjimo objektu; 2) išrinkti iš minėtų dienraščių analizuojamųjų straipsnių dalyvius, pusdalyvius ir padalyvius, sugrupuoti juos; 3) nustatyti ir aptarti dalyvių vartojimo dėsningumus (ypatumus); 4) palyginti dalyvių, pusdalyvių ir padalyvių vartojimą, t. y. nustatyti jų vartojimo santykį dviejuose populiariausiuose Lietuvos dienraščiuose; 5) statistiškai pateikti gautus rezultatus, analizuoti, apibendrinti. Išanalizavus didžiausių Lietuvos dienraščių „Respublika“ ir „Lietuvos rytas“ 50 straipsnių ir ištyrus juose rastus dalyvius, pusdalyvius bei padalyvius, buvo prieita tam tikrų išvadų. Tyrimas parodė, kad dažniausiai „Respublikos“ ir „Lietuvos ryto“ dienraščiuose vartojami būtojo kartinio laiko veikiamieji ir neveikiamieji dalyviai. Būtojo kartinio laiko neveikiamasis dalyvis... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / This work is aimed at the analysis of usage of participles, half-participles, verbal adverbs in “Lietuvos rytas“ and “Respublika“ newspapers. The purpose was to find out if participles are still often used and what is the frequency of this usage in the magazines. The usage of participles has not been examined yet that is why this work could be the beginning of the further examinations. The main purpose of the work was to assume the frequency of the participles and their forms, discuss the peculiarities of their spelling in the above-mentioned magazines and compare their language. While analyzing the newspapers I set the main goals: 1) examine linguistic literature related to the object of analysis; 2) choose the participles, half-participles and verbal adverbs from the above mentioned newspapers and group them; 3) ascertain and discuss the rules (peculiarities) of the usage of participles; 4) compare the usage of participles, half-participles and verbal adverbs and ascertain the frequency of their usage in the above mentioned magazines; 5) establish the statistics of the results, discuss them and sum up. The results have been made after the analysis and examination of participles, half-participles and verbal adverbs found in 50 articles in the daily newspapers “Respublika“ ir “Lietuvos rytas“. The examination showed that the most frequently used participles are past participles and passive participles. Past passive participles are a little more frequently used in... [to full text]

This thesis investigates the second language acquisition of English psych predicates by Chinese-speaking and French-speaking adult learners of English within the Government and Binding Theory. Two major parts comprise the whole work: a study of psych predicates across Chinese, English and French, including verbs like blame and annoy, adjectives such as annoying and annoyed, and nominals like annoyance; and an experiment on Chinese and French learners' knowledge of English psych predicates. / An account of psych predicates is proposed, under which Experiencer Object (EO) verbs are the causatives of Experiencer Subject (ES) verbs, derived by zero affixation. Different D-structures are suggested for the two classes of verbs, solving the linking problem of psych predicates. The binding problem with EO verbs and corresponding -ing adjectives is resolved by the assumption of anaphoric pro, which enables the anaphor to be bound backwards by the antecedent through the extension of chain-binding theory. The Target/Subject Matter (T/SM) restriction is ruled out by a generalization established on the interaction of the zero CAUS and selectional restrictions. / Given the linguistic analysis that EO verbs are made up of a zero CAUS and a root, and the fact that psych adjectives and psych nominals are derived from these verbs, the central hypothesis for the L2 acquisition of English psych predicates hinges on this zero CAUS. It is predicted that if L2 learners of English have difficulty figuring out the causative nature of EO verbs and -ing adjectives, they should have difficulty recognizing the correct argument structure, the ungrammaticality of T/SM violations and the grammaticality of backwards binding with these predicates. A picture identification task, a multiple choice task and a grammaticality judgment and correction task are designed to test L2 learners' knowledge of these properties. The results obtained through the experiment are discussed with respect to the issues in second language acquisition.

No description available.