The corpus callosum (CC) is the largest fiber¹ tract in the brain and connects homological regions of the two cerebral hemispheres. Research with split-brain patients, whose CC has been surgically severed, and neurologically intact groups has shown that the CC is important for sustained and divided attention. Due to its role in attention, the CC is of interest to clinical conditions in which attention is affected, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Although the size of the CC has been examined in children and adolescents with ADHD, the results have been inconsistent. Therefore, the first of three studies in this thesis synthesized the current research in a metaanalysis, which analyzed the data from 13 studies that examined CC area in children and adolescents with ADHD, when compared to healthy controls. This study found that the splenium, the most posterior region of the CC, was smaller in ADHD and the rostral body, an anterior region, was smaller in boys with ADHD compared with controls. Thus, there is evidence for differences in area in both the anterior and posterior regions of the CC in ADHD. It was not known whether these differences persist into adulthood, however, because CC size had not been examined in adults with ADHD. Therefore, the second study examined CC area and structural integrity in young adults with ADHD compared with healthy controls using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), respectively. The difference in the size of the splenium was not present in this adult sample, although the genu (an anterior region of the CC) was smaller and two midposterior regions were larger in adults with ADHD when compared with controls. In addition, a reduction in the integrity of the genu and greater integrity in the splenium was found in ADHD. The relationship between CC morphology and measures of attention and IQ was also examined in young adults with ADHD and controls in order to assess the functional significance of differences in the CC. The integrity of the splenium was correlated with performance on the Stroop task, which requires attentional control. Hence, this study indicated that the morphology of the CC is atypical in young adults with ADHD and that these differences in the CC may impact on cognitive functioning. Interestingly, an estimate of performance IQ was negatively correlated with CC area in controls. This result conflicts with previous research on the relationship between IQ and the CC in healthy adults although the literature has yielded inconsistent findings. The third study, therefore, examined the relationship between IQ and both CC area and integrity in more detail in a larger sample of young adults. A negative correlation was found between the area of posterior regions of the CC and an estimate of performance IQ, while an estimate of verbal IQ was associated with decreased structural integrity in the genu. This study supports the hypothesis that differences in CC size and or integrity may have cognitive consequences. In summary, this thesis confirms the view that the development of the CC is atypical in children and young adults with ADHD. In addition, differences in CC integrity were associated with cognitive functioning in young adults with ADHD. Finally, the morphology of the CC is related to cognitive performance in healthy adults. ¹ American spelling is used throughout the thesis in order to be consistent with the published papers which have been published or prepared using American spelling. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1367349 / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 2009

L'objet d'étude de la présente recherche est la notion de « collocation fondamentale ». Nous calquons ce terme sur celui de « vocabulaire fondamental », issu de la dénomination Français fondamental utilisée par Gougenheim et al. (1964) pour désigner le vocabulaire de base de la langue française. Dans la thèse, les collocations fondamentales sont envisagées comme des unités polylexicales significatives (unies par des liens collocationnels) fréquentes (dans l'usage) ou non fréquentes (lorsqu'elles sont pertinentes pour la communication) qui représentent pour les locuteurs natifs les contextes de cooccurrence les plus essentiels et les plus typiques d'un mot pivot donné. Les études descriptives ou acquisitionnelles sur les collocations sont assez récentes et, à notre connaissance, ne se sont pas encore intéressées à cette notion, qui devrait pourtant constituer une étape préliminaire cruciale dans toute approche didactique destinée aux apprenants de langue étrangère. La présente étude se veut une recherche qualitative et quantitative d'un échantillon de collocations fondamentales constitué à partir de dix substantifs pivots représentant des « événements sociaux ». Le corpus que nous avons analysé est frWac (Baroni et al., 2010), un très vaste corpus écrit issu du Web analysé à l'aide de scripts Perl développés par Olivier Kraif (2011). A partir des pivots choisis, nous avons extrait de ce corpus les associations candidates au statut de collocations fondamentales ; puis nous avons demandé à 90 locuteurs natifs du français de sélectionner celles qui leur apparaissaient essentielles pour la communication. L'objectif a été d'évaluer, à l'aide de l'intuition de locuteurs natifs, la validité de l'échantillon automatiquement constitué, et de comprendre de quoi dépendait l'assignation du caractère fondamental de la part des enquêtés. Nous avons obtenu deux résultats principaux : - En premier lieu, nous avons constaté l'existence d'une corrélation faiblement positive, mais non systématique, entre la fréquence des associations dans le corpus et le score obtenu pour les associations sélectionnées par les locuteurs natifs. - En second lieu, nous avons constaté que lorsque la fréquence ne jouait pas de rôle, pour les enquêtés, dans l'attribution du caractère fondamental, alors la cause était à chercher dans le figement. En effet, dans des cas singuliers, les associations peu fréquentes sont sélectionnées parce qu'elles comportent un certain degré de figement ; à l'inverse, les associations les plus fréquentes sont exclues parce qu'elles sont perçues comme libres. Enfin, nous avons présenté la notion de collocation fondamentale en vue d'une exploitation didactique : à travers l'analyse de la structuration du domaine sémantique des « événements sociaux » qui nous a servi d'exemple, nous avons montré l'importance du repérage des « collocations fondamentales » afin d'opérer la sélection du vocabulaire à enseigner en classe de FLE. / The focus of the present study is the concept of core collocation. This term is defined with reference to the core vocabulary list produced by Gougenheim et al. (1964), Le Français Fondamental. Despite the fact that the importance of this list is broadly acknowledged, a critical point is that the analysis of the syntagmatic level was neglected. From this awareness, we develop the main focus of the present research and our basic assumption that the criteria applied to define core vocabulary, mainly frequency and availability, should be equally applied to define core collocations, a key concept in L2 teaching. We define core collocations as significative (the collocational relation), frequent (the usage) or available (essential for accomplishing basic communicative tasks) units representing the most basic co-occurrences of a word. This study aims to define core collocations through the investigation of a sample of collocations associated with ten basic nouns in a lexical area of interest for second language learners, the one of social relations. The corpus that we investigated is frWaC (Baroni et al., 2010), a lemmatized web-derived corpus assembled through automated procedures crawling the Web. The corpus was analyzed using a tool based on programming scripts Perl developed by Olivier Kraif (2011). The extraction tool makes use of frequency, dispersion and four associative measures (mutual information, log likelihood, t-score and z-score) and produces concordance lines. We chose the ten pivot nouns, we extracted the most frequent and available collocations and we evaluated the extracted sample through a comparison between 90 native speakers' intuitions about core collocations with statistical data. The results of the present research can be summarized as follows: - Since the most frequent collocations also received the highest number of votes by the tested subjects, we claim that frequency is a crucial feature in dictating the lexical choices made by speakers. However, some associations represent outliers: they are deviating points from the normal distribution of correlation between frequency and coreness attributed by native speakers. We might conclude that there is a certain linear correlation between the two variables but that this correlation is not systematic. - What is core is not only a matter of frequency, but it also depends on units' fixedness. Native speakers sometimes ignore frequent associations since they have a loose degree of fixedness, being rather free combinations; whereas other times they chose low frequent associations that they perceive as being very fixed. This study finally draws important pedagogical implications. The analysis of core collocations in the semantic area of “social relations” served us to explain which criteria can be adopted to run a filter across the wide set of phraseological units a given word produces, helping L2 teachers to find criteria to select the essential items to be taught first.

Cette recherche a pour objectif la description outillée de la pratique actuelle de l’alternance codique dans l’interaction orale en classe bilingue au Burkina Faso et de la problématique didactique liée à cette pratique dans une perspective d’amélioration. Dans une démarche de la linguistique de corpus, les outils linguistiques CLAN et Praat sont réadaptés aux investigations en contexte bilingue sur la base des théories formelle et fonctionnelle de la linguistique. Sur trois ans, 20h 36mn de films constitués de séquences de classes et d’entretiens ont été collectées. Le corpus a pris en compte des séquences des cours de disciplines linguistiques et de disciplines non linguistiques dans toutes les classes des écoles visitées. Après une transcription standardisée avec le logiciel CLAN, des codages spécifiques à notre orientation théorique ont été ajoutés à ce logiciel. Le logiciel Praat d’analyse phonétique et acoustique a été associé pour cerner les difficultés phoniques des élèves. De façon générale, au niveau quantitatif, l’emploi de L1 et de L2 tend à suivre les orientations globales officielles du pourcentage d’utilisation du français et des langues locales. Au niveau qualitatif, les résultats font ressortir, de l’analyse de l’alternance codique en interphrastique, en intraphrastique et en extraphrastique, les fonctions linguistiques, discursives, didactiques (chez les enseignants) et acquisitionnelles (chez les élèves). Des propositions d’amélioration des pratiques de classe ont été apportées. Toutes les hypothèses, sur le discours des élèves, des enseignants et sur les logiciels, ont été mises à l’épreuve. / This research aims at describing the current practice of code-switching in oral interaction in bilingual classes of Burkina Faso and didactical problems linked to this practice in a perspective of improvement. By a process of corpus linguistics, language tools, CLAN and Praat, are adapted to our bilingual context investigations on the basis of formal and functional theories of linguistics. For three years, 20h 36mn of movies of classroom activities and interviews were collected. The corpus has considered sequences of language arts classes and non-language subjects in all school classes we visited. After a standardized transcription with the CLAN software, specific codings suited to our theoretical orientation have been added to the software. Praat, a phonetic and acoustic analysis software, was associated to analyse pupils phonic difficulties. Quantitatively, the use of L1 and L2 tends to adhere to the official guidelines of the overall percentages of use of French and local languages. Qualitatively, the results of the analysis of inter-sentential, intra-sentential and extra-sentential code-switching highlight the linguistic, discursive, and didactic (for teachers) and acquisitional (for pupils) functions. Proposals for improvements were made. All hypotheses on pupils and teachers discourse, and on the software, have been tested.

The diploma thesis deals with anglicisms in the contemporary German. The theoretical part concerns the linguistic aspects of the anglicisms in the phonetic, grammatical and lexicological field. The empirical part contains the corpus of anglicisms, which is created by the means of excerption of the internet magazine for young people YAEZ. It is followed by the corpus analysis of the chosen anglicisms. These results are incorporated into the didactic material at the end of the thesis. The aim of the thesis is to carry out the corpus-based analysis of the anglicisms and to discover the possible use of the anglicisms in the teaching German as a foreign language. The author applies the methods of corpus linguistic corpus DeReKo und its program COSMAS II in order to verify the lexical and grammatical features of the chosen words.

Esta tese propõe um recurso léxico de verbos com anotação de papéis semânticos, denominado VerbLexPor, baseado em recursos como VerbNet, PropBank e FrameNet. As bases teóricas da proposta são interdisciplinares e retiradas da Linguística de Corpus e do Processamento de Linguagem Natural (PLN), visando-se a contribuir para a Linguística e para a Computação. As hipóteses de pesquisa são: a) um mesmo conjunto de papéis semânticos pode ser aplicado a diferentes gêneros textuais; e b) as diferenças entre esses gêneros se destacam no ranqueamento dos papéis semânticos. O desenvolvimento do VerbLexPor se apoia em dois corpora: um especializado, com mais de 1,6 milhão de palavras, composto por artigos científicos de Cardiologia de três periódicos brasileiros; e um não especializado, com mais de 1 milhão de palavras composto por artigos do jornal popular Diário Gaúcho. Os corpora foram anotados com o parser PALAVRAS, e as informações de sentenças, verbos e argumentos foram extraídas e armazenadas em um banco de dados. O VerbLexPor tem 192 verbos e mais de 15 mil argumentos anotados distribuídos em mais de 6 mil sentenças. Observou-se que o corpus do Diário Gaúcho privilegia uma sintaxe direta e pouco uso de voz passiva e adjuntos, enquanto o corpus de Cardiologia apresenta mais voz passiva e um maior uso de INSTRUMENTOS na posição de sujeito, além de uma menor incidência de AGENTES. Foram realizados também alguns experimentos paralelos, como a anotação de papéis semânticos por vários anotadores e o agrupamento automático de verbos. Na tarefa de múltiplos anotadores, cada um anotou exatamente as mesmas 25 orações. Os anotadores receberam um manual de anotação e um treinamento básico (explicação sobre a tarefa e dois exemplos de anotação). Usou-se o cálculo de multi-π para avaliar a concordância entre os anotadores, e o resultado foi de π = 0,25. Os motivos para essa concordância baixa podem estar na falta de um treinamento mais completo. A tarefa de agrupamento de verbos mostrou que a sintaxe e a semântica são igualmente importantes para o agrupamento. Este estudo contribui para a área de Linguística, com um léxico de verbos anotados semanticamente, e também para a Computação, com dados que podem ser consultados e processados para diversas aplicações do PLN, principalmente por estarem disponíveis nos formatos XML e SQL. / This dissertation aims at developing a lexical resource of verbs annotated with semantic roles, called VerbLexPor, and based on other resources, such as VerbNet, PropBank, and FrameNet. The theoretical bases of this study lies in Corpus Linguistics and Natural Language Processing (NLP), so that it aims at contributing to both Linguistics and Computer Science. The hypotheses are: a) one set of semantic roles can be applied to different genres; and b) the differences among genres are shown by the ranking of semantic roles. The development of VerbLexPor has two corpora at the basis: a specialized one, with more than 1.6 million words, composed by scientific papers in the field of Cardiology from three Brazilian journals; and a non-specialized one, with more than 1 million words, composed by newspaper articles from Diário Gaúcho. The corpora were analyzed with the parser PALAVRAS, and sentence, verb and argument information was extracted and stored in a database. VerbLexPor has 192 verbs and more than 15 thousand arguments annotated with semantic roles, distributed among more than 6 thousand sentences. We observed that Diário Gaúcho has a more direct syntax, with less passive voice and adjuncts, while Cardiology has more passive voice and more INSTRUMENTS for subjects, and fewer AGENTS. We also conducted some parallel experiments, such as semantic role labeling with multiple annotators and automatic verbal clustering. In the multiple annotators task, each of them annotated exactly the same 25 sentences. They received an annotation manual and basic training (explanation on the task and two annotation examples). We used multi-π to evaluate agreement among annotators, and results were π = 0,25. Reasons for this low agreement may be a lack of a thoroughly developed training. The verbal clustering task showed that syntax and semantics are equally important for verbal clustering. This study contributes to Linguistics, with a verbal lexicon annotated with semantic roles, and also to Computer Science, with data that can be assessed and processed for various NLP applications, especially because the data are available in both XML and SQL formats.

La littérature scientifique dédiée à l’accentuation en anglais australien standard contemporain (SAusE) est, contrairement à celle qui concerne la prononciation de ses voyelles, peu étendue. Après un chapitre introductif proposant le contexte historique dans lequel le SAusE est né et a été décrit, sa définition actuelle ainsi que sa description phonologique, notre étude est consacrée à un examen systémique de l’accentuation lexicale en SAusE. Un corpus test a été mis en place spécifiquement, qui comporte la quasi-totalité des verbes dissyllabiques, des préfixés pluricatégoriels et des exceptions aux règles d’accentuation des mots de deux syllabes et plus, ainsi qu’un large échantillon d’emprunts aux langues aborigènes. Ces quelques 3500 items ont été choisis précisément parce qu’ils font partie des mots les plus susceptibles de connaître une variation accentuelle en anglais contemporain. Notre approche se situe dans la lignée de Lionel Guierre et propose un traitement dictionnairique dans lequel les éléments du corpus sont tous étudiés au travers des données de chacune des éditions les plus récentes des Longman Pronouncing Dictionary, Cambridge English Pronunciation Dictionary et Macquarie Dictionary qui constituent les dictionnaires de références dans le domaine de la prononciation de l’anglais. Ces données ont été complétées, lorsque cela était nécessaire, par des données fréquentielles issues du Corpus of Contemporary American English et par des données orales enregistrées spécialement pour cette étude, selon une démarche similaire à la première partie du protocole du projet Phonologie de l’Anglais Contemporain. Notre analyse met en évidence une grande stabilité accentuelle intervariétale entre le SAusE, l’anglais britannique standard et l’anglais américain standard et propose un relevé étayé et détaillé des spécificités accentuelles lexicales du SAusE contenues dans le corpus étudié. / The scientific literature dedicated to word stress in contemporary standard Australian English (SAusE) is not very extensive contrary to the one dealing with the pronunciation of vowels in this variety of English. We will introduce the historical context in which SAusE first emerged and was described, its current definition as well as its phonological description. Our study is then devoted to the systemic study of lexical word stress in SAusE. A corpus was specifically put together for this particular research : it includes most of the dissyllabic verbs, of the prefixed multicategorial words and of the words that are exceptions to the rules of word-stress assignment in English, as well as a large sample of borrowings from Aboriginal languages. These 3500 items were not chosen randomly : they are words which specifically tend to show word-stress variation in contemporary English. Our approach follows Lionel Guierre’s and offers a dictionary treatment in which all the elements of our corpus are studied using the data of each of the most recent editions of the Longman Pronouncing Dictionary, the Cambridge English Pronunciation Dictionary and the Macquarie Dictionary, all reference books on English pronunciation. Frequency data extracted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and oral data recorded for this study (following a protocol similar to that which is applied in the first part of the project Phonologie de l’Anglais Contemporain) were added to the dictionary data when necessary. Our analysis brings to the fore a great accentual intervarietal stability between SAusE, standard British English and standard American English, and offers a detailed and complete list of the lexical accentual specificities of SAusE ascertained through our study.

As formações x-inho são descritas, na maioria das gramáticas de Língua Portuguesa como contendo noções dimensiva e afetiva. Entretanto, essas mesmas gramáticas não incluem os fatores extraligüísticos e contextuais nos quais os anunciadores estão inseridos quando optam por uma formação em x-inho. Sob esta perspectiva, tem-se no presente trabalho, o objetivo de investigar a produtividade das formações x-inho em dois corpora eletrônicos: um oral, subdividido em dois subcorpora contendo respectivamente narrativas e descrições e um escrito, oriundo exclusivamente das variadas seções e cadernos de um jornal de grande circulação e qualidade. A dissertação quantifica as ocorrências das formações x-inho em cada um dos corpora. Em seguida cada uma dessas ocorrências é analisada para se verificar que tipo de noção (dimensiva, afetiva positiva ou negativa, intensificadora, etc) ela contem. Por fim são contrastados os dados de freqüência e dispersão de cada uma das noções encontradas para cada um dos corpora. A metodologia de nossa análise está centrada na área de investigação lingüística denominada Lingüística de corpus, que serve de base para que os dados colhidos sejam analisados e interpretados. / The items ending in -inho are described in the majority of grammars of Portuguese as conveying two notions, namely affect and dimension. However, the same grammars do not seem to include either the extralinguistic or contextual factors in which speakers are inserted when they opt for a word ending in -inho. The aim of the present work thus is to investigate the productivity of such items in two electronic corpora: one of an oral nature which is further subdivided into two sub-corpora containing narratives and descriptions and a second one compiled exclusively from the various sections of a widely read quality newspaper. The dissertation quantifies the various instances of items ending in inho in each of the corpora. Next, each of these occurrences is analysed and classified to check which notion (dimentio,positive affect, negative affect, intensification) they convey. Last the results of both frequency and dispension counts are contrasted for each of the corpora. The methodology of our analyses is centered on the area known as Corpus Linguistics, which provides a basis for the data to be compiled and interpreted.

Este trabalho apresenta um estudo que aplica a teoria de gramaticalização a um corpus eletrônico diacrônico a fim de dar conta das mudanças ocorridas em estruturas da língua portuguesa normalmente denominadas Preposições Complexas. O estudo teve como objetivos: 1) investigar as preposições complexas em face de, em face a, face a, em vista de, em frente de, em frente a e frente a com vistas a compreender seu funcionamento em termos sintáticos e semânticos a fim de verificar se elas estão se gramaticalizando; 2) examinar textos de períodos históricos diferentes de modo que se compreenda a possível trajetória empreendida por tais formas entre os séculos XIV e XX; 3) averiguar se os itens frente a e face a podem ser considerados reduções das formas em frente a e em face a, respectivamente. A teoria da gramaticalização forneceu um arcabouço teórico para explicar os fenômenos de mudança que afetam os itens lingüísticos. O processo de gramaticalização consiste na passagem de uma construção de um status lexical para um status gramatical ou de um status menos gramatical para um mais gramatical. Um dos fatores desencadeantes desse processo é a freqüência de uso que leva o item a ser mais previsível e estável. A Lingüística de Corpus entra nesta pesquisa fornecendo a metodologia de compilação, extração e observação dos dados, pois à semelhança dos estudos de Hoffman (2005) foi realizada uma investigação baseada em corpora eletrônicos. O corpus base foi o Corpus do Português, composto por textos em língua portuguesa escritos a partir do século XIV até o século XX, disponível online em http://www.corpusdoportugues.org/. Verificou-se que as preposições complexas analisadas ascenderam a escala de gramaticalidade, pois se expandiram suas possibilidades de uso através do desenvolvimento de polissemias de semântica abstrata. Constatou-se, ainda, que, em muitos sentidos, elas coexistem como camadas, mas que pode haver uma tendência que conduzirá a escolha de uma forma para expressar cada sentido evidenciado / The present dissertation introduces a study which applies the theory of Grammaticalization to a digital diachronic corpus, with a view to mapping some of the changes which have taken place in certain structures of Portuguese, the so-called prepositional phrases. The objectives of the research were threefold. First, the study aimed at investigating the complex prepositions em face de, em face a, face a, em vista de, em frente de, em frente a e frente a, in order to understand their syntactic and semantic development and, in turn, to evaluate whether they are undergoing a process of grammaticalization. Secondly, the study sought to examine texts from a variety of historical periods, so as to map a possible trajectory taken by the afore mentioned forms between the 14th and the 20th centuries. Thirdly, the study intended to verify whether the items frente a e face a may be considered reductions of em frente a and em face a, respectively. The theoretical framework for the study has been taken from Grammaticalization, a theory which explains phenomena which affect linguistic items. The process of grammaticalization may consists in one item, lexical or grammatical, becoming more grammatical. The triggering factor in this case is said to be the frequency of use. Corpus Linguistics has provided a methodology for the compilation, extraction and treatment of the textual data in this dissertation. Similarly to Hoffman (2005) the investigation here was based on electronic corpora. The study corpus was the Corpus do Português, which consists of texts in Portuguese, written between the 14th and the 20th century, available at http://www.corpusdoportugues.org/. The study suggests that the complex prepositions analysed have become increasingly grammaticalised, because they have acquired additional abstract meanings. It has also been observed that, in many ways, these abstract meanings coexist as layers. However, there seems to be a tendency for one form to become the preferred way of expressing each of these new meanings

O presente estudo tem como objetivo geral traçar um perfil das escolhas léxico-gramaticais da escrita em inglês de um grupo de aprendizes brasileiros na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, ao longo dos anos de 2009 a 2012, através da análise de sua produção de quadrigramas (ou blocos de quatro itens lexicais usados com frequência por vários aprendizes) em composições escritas como parte da avaliação final de curso. Como objetivo específico, a pesquisa pretendeu analisar se os quadrigramas produzidos estavam dentre aqueles que haviam sido previamente ensinados para a execução da redação ou se pertenceriam a alguma outra categoria, isto é, quadrigramas já incorporados ao uso da língua ou quadrigramas errôneos usados com abrangência pela população investigada. Para tal, foram coletadas composições escritas por aprendizes de mesmo nível de proficiência de várias filiais de um mesmo curso livre de inglês na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Em seguida, essas composições foram digitadas e anotadas para constituírem um corpus digital facilmente identificável em termos do tipo e gênero textual, perfil do aprendiz, filial e área de origem do Rio de Janeiro. O estudo faz uso de preceitos e métodos da Linguística de Corpus, área da Linguística que compila grandes quantidades de textos e deles extrai dados com o auxílio de um programa de computador para mapear uso, frequência, distribuição e abrangência de determinados fenômenos linguístico ou discursivo. O resultado demonstra que os aprendizes investigados usaram poucos quadrigramas ensinados e, coletivamente, preferiram usar outros que não haviam sido ensinados nas aulas específicas para o nível cursado. O estudo também demonstrou que quando o gênero textual faz parte de seu mundo pessoal, os aprendizes parecem utilizar mais quadrigramas previamente ensinados. Isto pode querer dizer que o gênero pode influenciar nas escolhas léxico-gramaticais corretas. O estudo abre portas para se compreender a importância de blocos léxico-gramaticais em escrita em L2 como forma de assegurar fluência e acuracidade no idioma e sugere que é preciso proporcionar maiores oportunidades de prática e conscientização dos aprendizes quanto ao uso de tais blocos / This study seeks to trace the profile of lexico-grammatical choices of a group of apprentice writers in the city of Rio de Janeiro, between 2009 and 2012. To this end it analyses the apprentices production of 4-grams (or rather blocks of four lexical items used with relative frequency by a number of apprentices) in written compositions, as part of their final assessment. Specifically, the research aimed to analyse whether the 4-grams produced by the apprentices had been taught previously as part of their composition lessons or whether they belonged to some other category. In other words, namely 4-grams already internalized as part of their language use of erroneous 4-grams used frequently and extensively by the subjects investigated. Thus, compositions written by apprentices at the same proficiency level were collected at various branches of a private English school in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Subsequently, these compositions were typed and tagged in order to compile a digital corpus easily identified in terms of type and textual genre, apprentice profile, branch and area of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The study makes use of precepts and methods of Corpus Linguistics, an area of Linguistics that collects large quantities of texts and from them extracts data with the help of a computer programme in order to map use, frequency, distribution and range of a certain linguistic or discursive phenomena. The results demonstrate that the apprentices studied made little use of 4-grams that had been taught them and, collectively, they preferred to use other n-grams that had not been taught in the specific lessons of the level. The study has also shown that when the textual genre is part of ones personal life, the apprentices seem to make use of more previously taught 4-grams. This may lead to believe that the genre may influence the choice of correct lexico-grammatical items. The study creates a research space for the understanding of the importance of lexico-grammatical chunks in L2 writing as a means of ensuring fluency and accuracy in the target language. In addition, it also suggests that more opportunities of practice should be offered to learners so that they become aware of the use of such chunks

Dado o crescente uso da Internet e a importância da linguagem do e-mail no ambiente corporativo, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal analisar as estratégias de polidez e os mecanismos de preservação de face em trocas de e-mails entre um grupo de gerentes de uma instituição privada de ensino de língua inglesa no Brasil. A pesquisa é um estudo de caso e faz uso de uma abordagem interpretativista, assim como, em partes, também usa dados quantitativos. Para tanto, neste estudo foram integradas à Pragmática outras áreas de pesquisa como a Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional e a Linguística de Corpus. O enfoque nos mecanismos de polidez e proteção de face tem o objetivo de estudar de que forma estes elementos da linguagem utilizada nas trocas de e-mails entre o grupo de gerentes envolvido no estudo estão refletidos na cultura organizacional da instituição. Para tal foram usados os conceitos de Brown e Levinson (1987) para polidez, o de Goffman (1998) para footing e enquadre. Na área de categorização de grupos padronizados de palavras achados frequentemente dentro de um corpus foram usados os parâmetros de Hyland (2008), parâmetros esses que são calcados nas três metafunções de Halliday. Por fim tecem-se comentários sobre as trocas escritas dentro da instituição através de e-mails, buscando entender se essas trocas fazem parte de um gênero estabelecido ou de uma forma de comunicação única e com características próprias. As análises realizadas neste estudo estudam formas de polidez e proteção de face nas saudações e fechos de e-mails do corpus de estudo, a linguagem usada em pedidos de ajuda/informações, na resolução de conflitos e em outras situações do cotidiano dos gerentes da instituição alvo. Os resultados das análises da linguagem usada nas mensagens eletrônicas trocadas pelo grupo sugerem uma relação direta entra a cultura organizacional e os típicos mecanismos característicos de proteção de face e polidez adotados nas mensagens dos gerentes da empresa / Given the increasing use of the Internet and the importance of the e-mail language in the corporate environment, this paper aims at analyzing Politeness Strategies and mechanisms to avoid or minimize face-threatening acts in exchanges of e-mails between a group of managers in a private language school in Brazil. The research is a case study and uses an interpretative approach as well as quantitative data. Hence, in this study were integrated into Pragmatics other research areas such as Systemic Functional Linguistics and Corpus Linguistics. The focus on the mechanisms of politeness and face protection aims to investigate how these elements of language, used in the exchange of e-mails among the group of managers involved in the study, are reflected in the Company Culture. To this end, we used the concepts of Brown and Levinson (1987) for politeness and Goffman (1998) for framing and footing. In the area of standardized categorization of groups of words frequently found within a corpus Hyland (2008) parameters were used, those parameters are founded on the three metafunctions by Halliday. Finally, there are some considerations regarding written exchanges through e-mails within the institution, seeking to understand whether these exchanges are part of an established genre or a way of communicating with unique characteristics. The analyses performed in this research investigate ways of politeness and face protection in greetings and closures of e-mails in the study corpus, the language used in requests for help / information, resolving conflicts and other situations of everyday life of managers of the target institution. The results of the analysis of the language used in electronic messages exchanged by the group suggest a direct relationship between the Company Culture the typical and characteristic strategies for protection of face and politeness adopted in the company managers messages