Research on dubbing has traditionally focused on the description of the dubbing process, its relation to subtitling and the different dubbing constraints. Few authors have undertaken the study of the language used in dubbing and even less have tackled the issue of its naturalness, often regarded as the main potential loss in this type of translation (Gottlieb 2006) and the most important parameter to assess its quality (Chaume forthcoming). With a view to start filling this gap, if only partially, the present thesis aims to investigate whether or not there is lack of naturalness in the use of discourse markers in the Spanish dubbed script of the American sitcom Friends. The choice of discourse markers as objects of study is justified by their condition as key units in the achievement of naturalness in both fictional (Fox Tree and Schrock 1999) and spontaneous dialogue (Gregori-Signes 1996). The naturalness of the dubbed dialogue is analysed by comparing the use of these markers in the dubbing script (parallel corpus) to their use in non-translated fictional dialogue (comparable corpus) and especially in naturally-occurring conversation (reference corpus). The study has been conducted both quantitatively and qualitatively, which includes the application of a specific model for the analysis of audiovisual texts from a translational viewpoint. The results obtained suggest that even though discourse markers seem to be used by the dubbing translator to provide the dubbing script with naturalness, they often add formality to the dialogues, creating a distance between the on-screen characters that was not present in the ST and making the already predictable script more predictable and monotonous, even in instances where there is spontaneity and absolute freedom from a translational viewpoint.

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Grammar is more than just order and hierarchy; it is a way of expressing complex multidimensional schemas in one dimension. The need to communicate these schemas is the concern of language, but how they are communicated is the concern of grammar. Because grammar does not necessarily rely on the preexistence of language, it is possible for the elements of grammar to be prototyped as features of other mental systems before language appears. These elements can then be exapted as needed for language. So the genesis of language and the genesis of grammar do not necessarily need to be considered as a single process. In this dissertation, the continuity of language with other forms of signalling is reviewed. Language as a communicative act has the same structure as nonhuman signalling: the components in both cases are sender, receiver, message and referent. The sender is always me, the first person, and the receiver is always you, the second person. These roles are invariant in all signalling, including language, and there is no need for them to be explicit in the signal. The nonhuman signal has to express only the referent or context - a single unsegmented call will suffice. The specific action to be undertaken by the receiver in the presence of this signal is also implicit, but where the referent is significant only to the sender, the action is significant only to the receiver. A single unsegmented call does both jobs simultaneously. This view of signalling, however, relies on a disinterested viewpoint. It incorporates the individual views of the sender (the context in which the call is made), the receiver (the reaction the call produces) and the third party (the effect the call has on the third party). These three approaches to the signal are all available to the disinterested observer, here referred to as the fourth person. Being able to adopt this fourth-person viewpoint is, however, something very unusual in nature, and it may be that only humans can do it. This dissertation also looks at both the structure and process of grammar. In linguistics these two aspects of grammar are often seen as difficult to reconcile: the structural approach of Formalist linguistics is contrasted, rather than combined, with the process descriptions of Functionalist linguistics, producing a separation of methodologies and even philosophies. The two approaches are complementary, however, and they need to be combined if the origins of grammar are to be fully understood. Language, unlike most nonhuman signalling, is segmented. Formalist linguistics shows us that there are distinct forms involved in this segmentation (Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, Prepositional Phrase, etc); but the fact that some roles can contain others creates a recursive hierarchy in language that is missing from nonhuman signalling. The segmented nature of language is dictated by the various forms, and by the recursive capacity that this hierarchy of forms needs. However, language also differs from nonhuman signalling in that it is multistratal: what is passed in a language message is not a single unambiguous value but a set of interrelated meanings. The meanings involve the relation between sender and receiver, the relation between the message and the coding structure, and the relation between the message and the conceptualised world. This transfer of meaning on three levels is the Functionalist view of language. An important cognitive difference between humans and nonhumans is the ability to make models of the self. It is shown that this ability is problematic in evolutionary terms. Self-modelling requires the capacity to be dispassionate about the self and see the other party's point of view; but how can accommodating the needs of reproductive rivals become a successful strategy? In this dissertation it is shown that the ability to model others is probably quite ancient, while the ability to model the self can only come about in a cooperative linguistic environment. Yet both self-modelling and other-modelling are deeply implicated in the grammar of language: modelling is the mechanism that powers social calculus, and social calculus is behind the two-argument instigator-action-recipient form which has clear relationships with the three argument instigator-action-recipient-context form of language grammar. The dissertation proposes that the development of grammar structures is explicable in terms of social calculus, but the transition from internal social calculus to external language is only explicable in terms of a cultural revolution. Enhanced social modelling creates the conditions for advanced social calculus, and the syntax of social calculus corresponds to the form of simple language grammar. However, social calculus alone did not create the environment in which syntactic language appeared; it required a cultural revolution to create the necessary conditions for co-operation and sharing of the social calculus.

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A large amount of evidence for regularities of tonal alignment in various languages has been accumulated recently. However, there is still much disagreement on the characterisation and modelling of these alignment regularities. This thesis investigates tonal alignment in Tokyo Japanese with two objectives. One is to provide a thorough description of tonal alignment in Tokyo Japanese, including a well-known phenomenon, ososagari ('peak delay'); the other is to contribute to the current understanding of tonal alignment, based on empirical data of tonal alignment in Tokyo Japanese. Three speech production experiments were performed. The first experiment examined the alignment of the F0 targets at the beginning of initial-accented words, varying the syllable/mora structures of the accented syllable. The results showed that both the F0 valley and peak were consistently aligned with specific segmental landmarks, and that the alignment of the F0 peak depended on the syllable/mora structure of the accented syllable. The second experiment explored how the alignment patterns found in the first experiment were influenced in different speaking modes; the speaking modes of interest were fast speech rate, raised voice, and local emphasis. The results showed that the orderly alignment behaviour found in the first experiment remained intact irrespective of different speaking modes, although different kinds of small effects were found. The third experiment compared the F0 peak alignment of unaccented and non-initial-accented words to those of initial-accented words. The results of unaccented words demonstrated consistent alignment of the F0 peak with a specific landmark, which is comparable to those of initial-accented words. On the other hand, the results of non-initial-accented words showed earlier alignment of the F0 peak for the pitch accent than those of initial-accented words. The results of the current study as a whole demonstrate consistent alignment of the F0 targets with specific places in the prosodic structure in a language-specific way, which are rather resistant to changes caused by differences of speaking mode. Further durational analyses, together with the alignment data, also suggest that segments and tones are mutually synchronised with each other. These findings provide further evidence that segmental anchoring is a necessary concept in accounting for alignment regularities.

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