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Temporal references in natural language include tenses and other time relations, references to specific times, and a variety of phrases such as "present", "later", "when", "how often", and "never". Their high frequency of occurrence reflects the importance of time to the users of natural language. Although the structure underlying temporal references may appear complicated, it is a working assumption of this thesis that a sound logical explanation of its characteristics can be made. The frequent use of temporal references makes a correct exhibition of their underlying structure vital to a full understanding of natural language. Such an understanding is important in teaching and translating, indeed in all uses of natural language. In addition, understanding language better should aid in the design of computer programs which process natural languages. Chapter 2 of this thesis surveys some relevant work on temporal references, both to show what has been done and to show the scope of the problem. Despite the divergence in terminology and viewpoint, a unified theory can be derived which relates and extends the previous work. The new theory is presented in Chapter 3. It is a formal system which models the intuitive meaning of tenses, time relations, and other references to the time of events. The system precisely defines and shows the interrelationships of concepts which are often only vaguely defined. By its generality and its logical foundation, the system is able to serve as a skeleton for further studies of time in language. To illustrate some of the features of the system a question answering computer program, called Chronos, was written which accepts information in the form of tensed sentences and answers questions about the time of events. This program is discussed in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 discusses a problem which arises when we consider assigning truth values to statements about events occurring at times other than the present. The problem is to define a logic for unknown outcomes which retains the two valued tautologies. A logic is presented which has two kinds of implication: a material implication for which all the classical tautologies hold, and a strict implication defined in terms of logical necessity. The strict implication fragment of this logic is shown to be slightly stronger than the Lewis (1959) system S5, although it avoids many of the so-called paradoxes of material implication. The logic of Chapter 5 is a useful extension of the system for tenses (Chapter 3) to situations in which future (and perhaps past) events may have the truth value "unknown". Chapter 6 is a discussion section which evaluates the tense system, the logic for unknown outcomes, and the program Chronos. Several possibilities for extending the thesis are discussed. / text

This study examines the forms and meanings of tensed and non-tensed clauses in English, and proposes an analysis of them that is 'Reichenbachian' in spirit and syntactic in orientation. The study considers tensed verb forms in simple sentences, focussing on 'present', 'future', and 'perfect' forms and their interaction with adverbials of temporal location; and those in complement, relative, and temporal clause constructions. It also considers three types of non-tensed verb forms--infinitives, gerunds, and 'bare infinitives'--in verb complements. / The study demonstrates that the interpretation of tensed and non-tensed forms can be described in terms of Reichenbach's (1947) temporal schemata, which express relations between 'S' ('speech time'), 'R' ('reference time'), and 'E' ('situation time'). However, its central claim is that the tensed forms themselves are 'temporally underspecified', encoding relations between 'S' and 'R', and leaving the relation between 'R' and 'E' and the location and duration of both of these intervals to be determined by lexical properties of the verb and its arguments, temporal adverbials, and context. Non-tensed verbs forms have a similar syntactic representation, differing primarily in not fully encoding a relation between 'S' and 'R'. This claim is cashed out in terms of two devices: a feature system that expresses tenses as particular values of the feature matrix (Anterior, Posterior); and a device of 'tense linking', based on Higginbotham's (e.g. 1983) proposal for binding theory, which associates verbs with temporal adverbials or tensed Infl, and one (tensed or non-tensed) Infl with a higher one.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

The purpose of this research is to further investigate the ongoing debate between the Dual Mechanism Model and the Connectionist Model of language processing by investigating how knowledge of second language (L2) inflectional morphology is represented and processed by learners of English. Specifically, do second language learners of English use the same Dual Mechanism Model that Prasada and Pinker (1993) have argued is a universally applicable model, or does the Connectionist Model of language processing better explain L2 learning and language processing? / The participants in this study were students in a Montreal area CEGEP. The instrument used to gather data was the Prasada and Pinker pseudo-verb list, with modifications suggested by Lee (1994) to create a revised list. Participants were asked to create past tense forms of pseudo verbs. In addition to this task, four participants were asked to do a simultaneous verbal think aloud, orally explaining their responses to the stimulus presented in the study. / The results of the studies indicate that English second language learners used both a rule based mechanism and an associative mechanism in the formation of both regular and irregular English verbs. This result provides support for the claims of the Connectionist model of past tense formation of English verbs, but also supports some of the claims of the Dual Mechanism Model. There are possible implications for the teaching and learning of English as a Second Language (ESL). This study also raises further research questions involving rule vs. associative learning in the teaching and learning of language. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Typescript. / Bibliography: leaves 159-165. / vi, 165 l tables

Orientador: Linda Gentry El-Dash / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T13:29:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sousa_DenilsonAmade_D.pdf: 59937903 bytes, checksum: 962fee9a430238e73752cd20bad8caae (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Esta tese tem como objetivo apresentar e discutir alguns referenciais teóricos e metodológicos na área de Ensino/Aprendizagem de inglês como língua estrangeira (L2). O trabalho consiste em verificar a eficácia de um modelo indutivo de ensino gramatical chamado PACE - Presentation, Attention, Co-Construction, Extension (Donato e Adair- Hauck, 1994), comparando-o a um ensino gramatical mais tradicional, que chamamos de Dedutivo. A estrutura ensinada é o Present Perfect. Há tempo atesta-se a grande dificuldade que aprendizes e professores brasileiros de inglês encontram na aquisição e utilização do Present Perfect, pois, em sua língua materna, não precisam fazer, gramaticalmente, a distinção entre estado, ação e estado limitado, que, em inglês, é essencial para se fazer uso do aspecto perfect. El-Dash (2001, 2005) afirma que quando se limita explicitamente (através de advérbios ou locuções adverbiais) o estado atual resultante de uma ação no passado, o tempo verbal obrigatório em inglês é o Present Perfect. Quando esse limite não é de alguma forma explicitado, depende do falante querer ou não focar no estado atual; se esse for o foco, ele utilizará o Present Perfect; caso o foco seja somente a ação em si no passado, o falante utilizará o Simple Past. O modelo PACE é uma abordagem de ensino de gramática que tem como objetivo promover o desenvolvimento lingüístico na L2 através da co-construção de conhecimento entre professor e aluno e entre os alunos. Os proponentes desse modelo tentam fazer com que o ensino de gramática se dê num ambiente de sala de aula cuja ênfase é a comunicação. A principal proposta do modelo é expor os aprendizes, de modo contextualizado, a estruturas e seus significados, utilizando, para tal, estórias/narrativas, lendas, poemas, músicas, textos orais, tirinhas, receitas, entre outros. Essa exposição deve sempre, primeiramente, concentrar-se no significado, para então chamar a atenção dos aprendizes à(s) forma(s) que deseja ensinar. Os gêneros textuais utilizados e as atividades propostas pelo PACE enfatizam a autenticidade linguística e encorajam os aprendizes a compreender amostras mais longas e significativas desde as primeiras aulas; mostrando aos alunos, dentre outras coisas, a relevância funcional da estrutura gramatical antes de convidálos a prestar atenção à forma. Assim, depois de utilizar vários recursos para levar os aprendizes a compreender o texto, o professor deve chamar a atenção dos mesmos a vários elementos lingüísticos do texto e, juntamente com os alunos, construir explicações para aquela forma em questão. Em relação à metodologia utilizada nesta pesquisa, optou-se por coletar dados através de tarefas de julgamento de gramaticalidade e de descrição de figuras; além de gravações de aulas em áudio para servirem como evidência confirmatória de nossa hipótese. Três turmas de inglês de nível intermediário participaram da pesquisa e formaram os três grupos que receberam intervenção pedagógica baseada em PACE, intervenção pedagógica dedutiva e nenhum tratamento (Controle). O desenho dos testes se caracteriza por um pré-teste antes das intervenções; um pós-teste realizado imediatamente após o tratamento e outro depois de passadas 4 semanas. Os resultados apontam para a superioridade do modelo PACE, no sentido de ter refinado tanto o julgamento intuitivo dos aprendizes quanto a capacidade de produção linguística dos mesmos. O grupo Dedutivo também se beneficiou da intervenção, mas não tão profundamente quanto o grupo PACE. O desempenho do grupo Controle se manteve o mesmo / Abstract: This dissertation aims at presenting and discussing some theoretical and methodological frameworks within the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). It consists in ascertaining the efficiency of a guided-induction approach to grammar instruction called PACE - Presentation, Attention, Co-Construction, Extension (Donato e Adair-Hauck, 1994). We do so by comparing this model to a more traditional approach to teaching grammar, which we call Deductive. The structure taught is the Present Perfect. This verb tense has long been a known difficulty for both Brazilian learners and teachers. This is due to the fact that Brazilian Portuguese does not grammatically distinguish states from actions from limited states, which are crucial distinctions when using the perfect tenses in English. El-Dash (2001, 2005) states that when the speaker explicitly imposes a limit to the current resulting state of a past action (through an adverbial phrase), the mandatory verbal form is the Present Perfect. When this limit is not explicitly expressed, it is the speaker who will decide whether or not to focus on the current state; if this is the case, he will use the Present Perfect; if he decides to focus on the past action itself, he will employ the Simple Past. The PACE model is an approach to grammar instruction which aims at promoting linguistic development in the L2 through the coconstruction of knowledge between teacher and learners, and among learners. The proponents of this model seek to make grammar teaching take place within a classroom in which the emphasis is communication. The main proposal of the model is to expose learners, in a contextualized way, to structures and their meanings via stories and narratives, legends, poems, lyrics, oral texts, comic strips, recipes, among other genres. This exposure should always initially focus on meaning, and only then should it draw learners' attention to the structure(s) that will be taught. The text genres and activities proposed by PACE emphasize linguistic authenticity and encourage learners to understand longer and significant linguistic samples from the first classes on. It seeks to show learners, among other things, the functional relevance of the structure before inviting them to pay attention to its form. Thus, after making use of several resources to aiding learners to grasp the meaning of the text, the instructor must call their attention to various of its linguistic elements and, along with the learners, construct explanations to that structure. In regard to the methodology used in this research, we chose to collect data through grammaticality judgment and picture description tests. We also recorded a few interactions in order to use them as confirmatory evidence. Three intermediate level groups participated in the research and formed the three groups that received pedagogical intervention based on PACE, a traditional intervention and no treatment (Control). The design of the tests involved a Pre-test before the intervention, an immediate Post-test and a delayed Post-test after four weeks. The results show a superiority of PACE Model in terms of having refined both learners' judgment and production ability. The group treated with the traditional approach also benefited from instruction, but to a lesser extent. The performance of the Control group remained the same / Doutorado / Linguistica Aplicada / Doutor em Linguística Aplicada

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This dissertation has two main purposes: (a) to provide an analysis of the past tenses in Nepali and compare them with those of English from a discourse pragmatic perspective; and (b) to investigate how Nepali learners of English use the English past tenses in terms of forms, meanings, and functions.A major claim of the dissertation is that tenses and aspects play various discourse functions in Nepali. Although Nepali has various past tenses as in English, their actual use is different from those of English. A significant difference between the use of the past tenses in English and Nepali is revealed in the use of the past perfect tense. In Nepali, unlike in English, the past perfect does not always require the existence of the past reference point between the event time and the speech time. Although used in similar as well as different contexts, the past perfect in both languages is found to express background information. In the analysis of the Nepali past tenses, one of the major arguments is that the traditionally termed `unknown past' does not have `past' as part of its basic meaning. The main function of this verb form is to express the speaker's unawareness of a situation at the time of its happening, whether in the past or the future.After the discussion of the Nepali past tenses in comparison with the English past tenses and aspects, an error analysis of Nepali EFL learners' use of the English past tenses in written essays is carried out. It was hypothesized that Nepali learners would make a wide variety of errors in the use of the English past tenses. Because of differences in the use of the past perfect and the past tense in the habitual sense between Nepali and English, it was expected that Nepali ESL learners would make errors in those areas. However, overgeneralization due to difference in the use was found only in a very few cases. Most of these errors cannot be traced to Nepali influence. One area, however, where Nepali has a clear effect on the students' use of English is in indirect speech. I argue that Nepali speakers do not change tenses in English indirect speech appropriately because verb tenses in Nepali are not changed from direct speech to indirect speech as in English.It is hoped that this dissertation will enhance the understanding of grammatical categories such as tense and aspect in general and of Nepali tense and aspect systems in particular. In general, this dissertation showed contribute to several areas of study in discourse analysis, second language acquisition, language transfer and contrastive analysis. A major significance of this dissertation is its demonstration of the role of tense and aspect in Nepali in the expression of various discourse functions. / Department of English