The aim of this dissertation is to give a detailed analysis of the Dutch verb komen ‘come’ and the Swedish verb komma ‘come’ based on a systematic comparison. Focus has been placed on grammatical polysemy and the study is written within the framework of cognitive linguistics. Both verbs can be defined as corresponding to a complex category consisting of a prototypical meaning and other meanings which can be central or peripheral in relation to the prototype. Two monolingual corpora consisting of newspaper texts were used as sources of data: INL 27 Miljoen Woorden Krantencorpus 1995 and Press 95, 96, 97 Concordances in Göteborg University’s Bank of Swedish. A sample of 1,490 tokens of komen and 1,518 tokens of komma was taken from the two corpora. When analyzing the two verbs and their context the following ten variables were taken into consideration: 1) physical movement, 2) animate or inanimate subject, 3) adverbial, 4) future reference 5) bounded or unbounded aktionsart, 6) ingressive meaning, 7) accidentality, 8) infinitive marker, 9) predictive and/or intentional meaning, and 10) causativity. The results indicate that komen and komma have the same prototypical meaning. However, the semantic extensions from the prototype differ between the two verbs. If we consider the two verbs in a network, the meanings of komen and komma occupy different positions relative to the prototype. On the one hand, when Dutch komen is a copulative verb and/or occurs in lexicalized verb phrases, the resultative meaning is more central, while the aspectual meaning is peripheral. On the other hand, the temporal meaning of Swedish komma, as a future auxiliary verb, holds a more central position than the resultative meaning which is more peripheral. Nevertheless, Dutch komen, which is not considered a future auxiliary verb, but is rather an aspectual auxiliary verb shows similarities in the present tense (komen te + V2) with the Swedish kommer att construction (a true future auxiliary verb). That is, Dutch komen can have clear future reference, but in a limited context. Whereas Dutch komen is categorized as a copulative verb, the Swedish komma is not considered a copulative verb. Nevertheless, it is clear from the corpus that Swedish komma has a copula-like function, but in a limited context. Finally, it has become clear that komen and komma have undergone somewhat different grammaticalization processes even though both verbs contain similar meanings.

The aim of this dissertation is to give a detailed analysis of the Dutch verb komen ‘come' and the Swedish verb komma ‘come' based on a systematic comparison. Focus has been placed on grammatical polysemy and the study is written within the framework of cognitive linguistics. Both verbs can be defined as corresponding to a complex category consisting of a prototypical meaning and other meanings which can be central or peripheral in relation to the prototype. Two monolingual corpora consisting of newspaper texts were used as sources of data: INL 27 Miljoen Woorden Krantencorpus 1995 and Press 95, 96, 97 Concordances in Göteborg University's Bank of Swedish. A sample of 1,490 tokens of komen and 1,518 tokens of komma was taken from the two corpora. When analyzing the two verbs and their context the following ten variables were taken into consideration: 1) physical movement, 2) animate or inanimate subject, 3) adverbial, 4) future reference 5) bounded or unbounded aktionsart, 6) ingressive meaning, 7) accidentality, 8) infinitive marker, 9) predictive and/or intentional meaning, and 10) causativity. The results indicate that komen and komma have the same prototypical meaning. However, the semantic extensions from the prototype differ between the two verbs. If we consider the two verbs in a network, the meanings of komen and komma occupy different positions relative to the prototype. On the one hand, when Dutch komen is a copulative verb and/or occurs in lexicalized verb phrases, the resultative meaning is more central, while the aspectual meaning is peripheral. On the other hand, the temporal meaning of Swedish komma, as a future auxiliary verb, holds a more central position than the resultative meaning which is more peripheral. Nevertheless, Dutch komen, which is not considered a future auxiliary verb, but is rather an aspectual auxiliary verb shows similarities in the present tense (komen te + V2) with the Swedish kommer att construction (a true future auxiliary verb). That is, Dutch komen can have clear future reference, but in a limited context. Whereas Dutch komen is categorized as a copulative verb, the Swedish komma is not considered a copulative verb. Nevertheless, it is clear from the corpus that Swedish komma has a copula-like function, but in a limited context. Finally, it has become clear that komen and komma have undergone somewhat different grammaticalization processes even though both verbs contain similar meanings.

in English This thesis focuses on the spatial and temporal prepositional phrases (PP) and their positioning in French and Dutch. Both languages have different sentence structures, and it was therefore presumed that the positions of the PPs would vary in both languages. The purpose of this thesis was to do an analysis in this field, to describe the possible positions of spatial and temporal PPs and to compare them. The research was done within the functionalist theory of André Martinet. This theory is based on the fact that the main objective of language is communication and that people use various strategies to interpret messages on different levels. It also must be taken into account that various principles influence word order. Sentence structure, strategies and principles are factors that create a complex word order system must be considered when forming each sentence. On this basis, the purpose of this thesis is to describe these factors and demonstrate their usage through analysis of concrete, practical examples.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 sergio.pdf: 2431367 bytes, checksum: 49d6c74ea903d9d0c045da08226f295b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-02-11 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This dissertation aims at investigating the prosodic patterns in the speech of bilingual American and Brazilian speakers. By means of acoustic phonetic analysis, the manner by which speakers structure the prosodic groups was investigated in light of models that underscore the discoursal and attitudinal functions of intonation. Analyses were carried out on various strands: pitch configurations in idioms, distribution of pitch accents within an utterance whether it be for contrastive or emphatic reasons, and loss of accentual prominence in words that are no longer part of the common ground between speaker and listener. The study involved 4 female subjects, two Brazilians and two Americans, in the 20-40 age group. The corpus is comprised of 7 sentences in English and in Portuguese, four of which were uttered in the declarative modality, one in the exclamative modality and two in the interrogative modality. The sentences were extracted from a dialogue so constructed as to allow for the expression of attitudes and emotions. The dialogue was read and interpreted in three repetitions. The recordings of the readings were carried out at PUC-SP´s Radio and TV studio. The acoustic analysis of the data was done by means of the PRAAT software program, whereby utterances were segmented into units of varying sizes: GIPC, vowels, syllables and consonants. Results point to the use of language-specific strategies by Brazilian and American speakers: (a) Brazilians seem to favor a greater number of prosodic groups in order to maintain sentence focus at terminals; (b) speakers of both languages are heavily influenced by L1 intonational patterns in YES/N0 questions; (c) idioms as produced by non-natives present pitch configurations which convey attitudes incongruent with their meanings in the target language; (d) there are major distributional differences in the two languages as regards nucleus focus; (e) shared information is not a strong enough reason for deaccenting in Portuguese / Esta dissertação tem como objetivo investigar os padrões entoacionais de produções de falantes bilíngües norte-americanos e brasileiros. Por meio de instrumentais de análise fonético-acústica, foi investigado o modo pelo qual os falantes estruturam os grupos prosódicos, à luz de modelos de descrição da entoação que privilegiem o discurso e as atitudes. Foram analisadas as configurações de pitch em expressões idiomáticas, a distribuição do acento principal de pitch em enunciados em que ocorra contrastividade ou ênfase, e a perda (ou não) de proeminência acentual de palavras que já façam parte do conhecimento mútuo entre falante e ouvinte. O trabalho envolveu quatro sujeitos do sexo feminino na faixa etária entre 20 e 40 anos, sendo duas brasileiras e duas norte-americanas. O corpus é composto de 7 sentenças em inglês e em português, sendo 4 na modalidade declarativa, uma na exclamativa e 2 na interrogativa. As sentenças foram extraídas de um diálogo construído de modo a contemplar a expressão de atitudes e emoções. O diálogo foi lido e interpretado em três repetições. A gravação das leituras foi feita no Estúdio de Rádio e TV da PUC-SP. A análise acústica dos dados foi feita por meio do programa PRAAT, a partir da segmentação dos enunciados em unidades de tamanhos variados: unidades V-V, vogais, sílabas e consoantes. Os resultados obtidos apontam para o uso de estratégias diferenciadas por parte dos falantes brasileiros e norte-americanos: (a) falantes brasileiros tendem a fazer um maior número de fronteiras prosódicas, de modo a manter o acento frasal em fronteira final; (b) falantes de ambas as línguas tendem a sofrer influência dos padrões entoacionais de L1 nas questões totais; (c) A produção de expressões idiomáticas por falantes não nativos apresenta configurações de pitch que carreiam atitudes incompatíveis com seu significado em L2; (d) há diferenças nas duas línguas em relação à posição do acento frasal; (e) nem sempre informação já compartilhada pelos participantes do discurso perde a proeminência acentual no português