The issue of dative alternation construction has long been a debated topic in the linguistics field. This thesis especially focuses on the grammatical weight interpretation. Quirk et al. (1972) stated the end-weight rule, which predicted that people tended to put the NP which is heavier at the final position of a sentence. However, how to define the heaviness of NP is still in debate. Ross (1967) claimed that an NP is heavy if it dominates ¡§a sentence¡¨. Emonds (1976: 112) argued that an NP is called as heavy in the complex NP shift is that the NP dominates an S or PP. On the other hand, Hawkins (1990, 1994) proposed the idea that the heaviness is determined by the number of words dominated by a NP. Therefore, this thesis tries to shed some light on the precise definition of grammatical weight for Chinese native speakers. Secondly, Chang (2001) argued that the echo effect was prominent for Chinese native speakers to determing the dative word order variation. The subjects tended to echo the question pattern when they responded to that question. Hence, this thesis also tries to investigate the phenomenon when the echo effect issue meets with the grammatical weight interpretation. Judgment task, contextual questions task and corpus analysis are adopted in this study. Contextual questions task tries to investigate the subjects¡¦ response to a contextual question which contains dative verbs. The purpose of this contextual questions task is to know when the complexity effect meets with the echo effect, what is more determining. The judgment task tests the participants¡¦ judgment on the grammaticality of sentences which contains dative alternation. The purpose of this questionnaire is to see if the complexity of a NP contributes to the determining of a dative alternation construction. The corpus used is Chinese Word Sketch corpus developed by Academia Sinica. There are 253 sentences in total. I try to consider the length of the constituents and the complexity of constituents in dative alternation. In the first section of the questionnaire, the result shows that the Chinese native speakers are both sensitive to the echo effect and the complexity effect. Besides, the preference for the dative sentence type is also found based on the result. In the second section of the questionnaire, the result indicates that the Chinese native speakers are indeed sensitive to the complexity of a NP. The subjects tend to rate the sentences which contains a more complex NP at the final position of a sentence more acceptable than that at the middle of a sentence. In addition, the preference of the dative sentence type is also found in the result. In the corpus study, the results show that subjects are both sensitive to the complexity of constituents and length of constituents. In conclusion, the Chinese native speakers in this study shows sensitivity to both the complexity effect, length effect and echo effect. Furthermore, in both questionnaires, the preference for the dative sentence type is identified. This preference can be explained through the unmarked property of the dative sentence type in Chinese.

The subject of the present study is an analysis of five ditransitive verbs: give, lend, send, offer and show. The study focuses on the position of the two objects and on the factors that have an impact on the object ordering. An attempt is here made to provide a systematic overview of the position of the two objects with respect to their realization (i.e. substantival or pronominal). As regards the realization of the two objects, four types are distinguished: i. both Oi /Oprep and Od realized by nouns; ii. both Oi /Oprep and Od realized by pronouns; iii. Oi /Oprep realized by a noun and Od by a pronoun; iv. Oi /Oprep realized by a pronoun and Od by a noun. The position of the objects is assumed to be associated with the distribution of communicative dynamism or in other words with the principle of end-focus, i.e. that given information tends to precede new information. The second principle that operates in the ordering the two objects is the principle of end-weight. Of the three (or four, including intonation) factors whose interplay determines the FSP function of a clause element, in the case of ditransitive complementation the most important role is played by the contextual factor. Therefore, particular attention is paid to the context-dependence / independence of the two objects. The present...

過去漢語與格研究多圍繞在給字句的分析上，包括給字句的類別，以及不同類別中的「給」應為何種詞類。本文以當代與格結構的核心問題為起點，主張介詞與格和雙賓與格並不具備衍生關係，而是動詞的兩個面向──中心語PLoc／轉移性質（allative）或中心語PHave／所屬性質（possessive），所決定的兩種不同的論元結構和句法形式。以其觀點而論，漢語的介詞與格由前者形成，而雙賓與格由後者形成，而漢語與格的不對稱性，即所謂巴克詭題（Baker’s Paradox），亦可從前述兩個動詞面向加以解釋。本文認為漢語的給字句和把字句的語法形式，亦是前述兩個動詞面向的展現。並且，相關的分析不止適用於漢語與格類動詞，非與格類動詞亦能獲得闡述。

Orientador: Linda Gentry El-Dash / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-06T06:03:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sousa_DenilsonAmade_M.pdf: 683113 bytes, checksum: b56e92e2cf7ccf5d2606b65b00c15c99 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: Este estudo realizou uma descrição de um fenômeno lingüístico chamado alternância das formas dativas em inglês (dative alternation) e verificou, através de um teste de julgamento de gramaticalidade, se professores e alunos brasileiros de inglês têm conhecimento implícito ou explícito acerca deste fenômeno. Comparando a intuição de nativos americanos com a intuição de alunos e professores brasileiros, chegou-se à conclusão de que nem os professores nem os alunos possuem esse conhecimento. A partir desses resultados foram realizadas intervenções em sala de aula com o intuito de fazer com que aprendizes de inglês de nível intermediário adquirissem a alternância das formas dativas. Essas intervenções foram baseadas em processamento de insumo e instrução para processamento (como formulados por VanPatten, 1993,1996) e tiveram um design de pré-teste/pós-teste. As análises estatísticas desse segundo experimento ¿ intervenção ¿ mostraram, com uma diferença significativa ao nível de 5%, que o grupo que sofreu o tratamento baseado em instrução para processamento de insumo aprendeu a alternância das formas dativas apenas no nível imediato, já que essa aprendizagem se perdeu depois de passado um mês. As análises estatísticas referentes ao grupo que sofreu um tratamento baseado numa abordagem tradicional indicaram que não houve aprendizagem imediata estatisticamente relevante. Essas análises também apontaram, com uma diferença significativa ao nível de 10%, para a perda do conhecimento, estatisticamente não significativo, adquirido na intervenção. O conhecimento do grupo de controle ¿ aquele que não sofreu nenhum tipo de tratamento ¿ se manteve o mesmo durante o período da pesquisa. Evidenciou-se, assim, que, pelo menos para esse tipo de estrutura, a Instrução para Processamento de Insumo surtiu um efeito apenas imediato, que não durou muito tempo. Essa descoberta é interessante, pois se pode imaginar o motivo pelo qual isso tenha ocorrido e conseqüentemente se especular acerca daquilo que pode ser feito para se evitar a perda do conhecimento adquirido na intervenção / Abstract: This study was designed to describe a linguistic phenomenon in English known as dative alternation. A grammaticality judgment task was used to ascertain whether Brazilian teachers and learners of English have any knowledge of that phenomenon, either implicit or explicit. When the intuition of native Americans was compared with that of Brazilian teachers and learners, it was attested that neither the teachers nor the students possess that kind of knowledge. Based on these results, two kinds of classroom intervention were carried out in an attempt to investigate the acquisition of the possession constraint underlying dative alternation by intermediate level English students. These interventions, based on input processing and processing instruction (as formulated by VanPatten, 1993, 1996), involved a pre-test/post-test design. The statistical analysis of this experiment showed, with a level of significance of 5%, that the group submitted to processing instruction learned the restriction underlying dative alternation, but only in the short term, since this learning was lost after a month. The statistical analysis of the group submitted to a treatment involving a traditional approach did not reveal any statistically significant kind of short term learning. Although the analysis suggested, with a level of significance of 10%, that any knowledge acquired during intervention was lost. The knowledge of dative alternation of the control group ¿ a group which did not undergo any kind of treatment ¿ remained unaltered. Thus, it was demonstrated that, at least for this kind of structure, processing instruction had only a short term effect, which did not last as long as a month. These findings are interesting because one may wonder why this happened and, consequently, speculate about what can be done in order to avoid the loss of the knowledge acquired through the processing instruction intervention / Mestrado / Mestre em Linguística Aplicada