<p>This thesis deals with the polyphonic and argumentative functions of the French negation marker, ne, in editorial texts from the daily press. The concept ‘polyphony’ relates to the presence of multiple voices within one and the same utterance. According to this view, negation triggers a subdivision of an utterance in two points of view. Thus the sentence Sweden will not be a part of the monetary union can be divided in two points of view, the underlying ‘Sweden will be a part of the monetary union’, and the explicit ‘Sweden will not be a part of the monetary union’.</p><p>First, I study the polyphonic structure of negative utterances, notably their division in two points of view, by taking into account their specific linguistic features. This is done so as to identify the relevant linguistic criteria that determine the polyphonic interpretation of the negation. The study demonstrates that contextual elements, including pragmatic connectors, presuppositions contrastive elements, and several other devices constitute the primary source of polyphonic markers.</p><p>Negation is furthermore approached from a textual perspective. I explore how the two opposite points of view that are associated with negation form polyphonic sequences with other points of view carrying the same semantic content, and how these dynamic points of view are associated to the different discourse beings that are found in the newspaper article. I found that these sequences often embrace the central polemic theme of the article and, also, that the polyphonic function is not restricted to the negative utterance but constitutes an element that ensures textual and argumentative coherence. These two analyses are carried out within Jean-Claude Anscombre’s and Oswald Ducrot’s Theory of Structural Argumentation, which has recently been formalised by Kjersti Fløttum, Coco Norén and Henning Nølke.</p><p>Finally in this thesis, I analyse the relation between the discourse beings associated with the negative utterance and real beings that exist outside the text, and then consider what rhetorical implications that correspondence or no correspondence has on the polyphonic interpretation of the negation. I also examine whether polyphonic negation can be considered to be a feature of newspaper editorials that identifies these texts as a genre. This study shows that the locuteur, the discourse being responsible for the enunciation of the negative utterance on a textual level, links to the real being, the editorial writer, who then refutes points of view associated to other discourse beings, often by use of nominalizations that refer to community voices. The locuteur also intrudes into an argument or claim, and refutes it in the name of a community or an authority.</p><p>By defining genre, as does the media researcher Patrick Charaudeau, as a correspondence between the constraints imposed by the discursive situation and the constraints imposed by the discursive features, and by considering that one of the editorial’s constraints is to persuade its readers, this study shows that the phrasal negation ne in its polyphonic function, constitutes a distinguishing feature in the genre of editorials. The refutations that are made by an editor constitute a distinctive argumentative strategy since it permits the editorial writer to present external points of view in order to refute them and thereby impose his or her own, subjective point of view.</p>

<p>This study investigates the use of formulaic language in spoken French produced by native and non-native speakers. It aims at describing the development of formulaic sequences in learners ranging from beginners to very advanced users. It draws on data from the InterFra corpus, which includes both formal and semi-formal learners. Four measures are used to characterize this development: extent of formulaic language used, category distribution, type / token ratio and frequency of types. </p><p>It has been shown that a user’s knowledge of formulaic sequences impacts heavily on language proficiency and idiomaticity. Because these sequences follow neither grammatical nor lexical rules, they constitute the last threshold for advanced L2 learners. In second language acquisition, the term formulaic sequence not only applies to strict idiomatic constructions, but it is also used to refer to sequences that appear to be acquired in a holistic manner during the first phases of acquisition. A categorization is therefore proposed that can account for native and non-native usage of formulaic sequences (prefabs). Five categories of prefabs are included: Lexical, Grammatical, Discourse, Situational and Idiosyncratic. </p><p>The extent of a learner’s use of formulaic language increases as the learner progresses, the largest amount found in the production of native speakers and very advanced learners. The learner’s distribution of categories moves towards native speaker distribution, albeit slowly. Situational and Idiosyncratic prefabs are found to characterize the early phases of acquisition, while Lexical prefabs are mastered later and are a major difficulty for L2 learners. Only very advanced learners who have spent considerable time in France produce the same proportion of Lexical prefabs as native speakers. Discourse prefabs constitute the most important category for all groups, including natives and non-natives. It can therefore be postulated that the main function of formulaic sequences in spoken French is that of discourse structuring and speech management. The development and use of formulaic language is explained within a framework of Frequency Effects. Coupled with other factors, frequency can account for why Lexical prefabs are hard to acquire and why formulaic sequences take a long time to master.</p> / The thesis is published and can be purchased by Peter Lang http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?vID=11369&vLang=E&vHR=1&vUR=1&vUUR=38

<p>This thesis investigates acquisition of negation and focus particles in oral L2 French. It concerns adverbs of addition (aussi, encore), restriction (seulement) and temporal contrast (déjà, encore). These items all lack independent referential value i.e. they depend on other constituents in an utterance for their interpretation, they are not structurally obligatory and they variably affect other constituents in an utterance. The learner has to capture the significance of each item, its syntactic position and its pragmatic function in a given context.</p><p>The study aims at describing the development in oral production of 24 Swedish learners, beginners to very advanced, and 6 native speakers, in all together 80 interviews, in order to postulate an acquisitional itinerary.</p><p>The analysis consists of two parts. The first one concerns negation types such as non in various functions, constituent negation (pas X), phrasal negation (ne…pas) and semi-negations (ne…aucun/jamais/personne/rien). The results show, inter alia, that non is used in different pragmatic functions at different levels of acquisition. At the initial stage, non is also used idiosyncratically as a constituent negation and as a preverbal phrasal negation. At the post-initial stage, where also the verbs are mainly finite, phrasal negation (ne) pas is post-verbal. Furthermore, the analysis showed that jamais and rien appear prior to the other semi-negations. In the second part, the use of focus particles is analyzed. The study revealed that the additive particle aussi appears first, in an initial or final position of an utterance, followed by additive encore and restrictive seulement at the post-initial stage and that the temporal adverbs encore and déjà are almost solely used by advanced learners. An acquisitional sequence was postulated, with idiosyncratic negation and additive focus particles appearing previous to post-verbal negation and restrictive particles. The temporal adverbs of contrast appear at the advanced stages.</p>

<p>This dissertation investigates translation strategies and translation principles in technical translation. Five translation students and 5 professional translators from German-speaking Switzerland and 4 translation students and 6 professional translators from Sweden were asked to think aloud while translating a user guide from French into German and from French into Swedish, respectively. The focus of the analysis was on the strategies that could be observed by comparing the translation products with the source text; and on the principles underlying these strategies as revealed by the think-aloud protocols of the translation processes. In order to evaluate the extent to which the translation products complied with the fictitious translation brief given to the participants, 2 reviewers per language pair proofread the translation products. The analysis also included contrastive analyses of certain linguistic features of technical texts in French-German and French-Swedish. The results show that experience of translation does play a role in the choice of translation strategy. It is, however, an even more important factor with respect to knowing and applying translation principles in the translation process. Also, students more often display uncertainty regarding translation principles, and conflict between the principles verbalised and those actually followed. Language-pair specific differences were mostly found in connection with translation strategies. Comments about future directions include the need for clearer definitions and more systematic manipulations of the variables involved in translation, and the potential interest in investigating the principles governing how translations are revised through the use of think-aloud protocols.</p>

<p>Swedish learners of French often experience large difficulties in understanding spoken French. Words that the learners know very well when written or when pronounced separately are often hard to recognize in the speech flow. The aim of this study is to examine Swedish learners’ perception of French speech in order to identify the problems.</p><p>The thesis consists of two parts. The first part provides an introduction to the perception of a second language. It also describes the phonological structures of Swedish and French and gives an overview of studies of the perception of spoken French.</p><p>The second part of the thesis contains a presentation and an analysis of four perception experiments conducted with Swedish learners of French. The results show that the learners often confuse phonological contrasts that do not exist in Swedish. It is furthermore found that the phonological processes of <i>schwa deletion</i>, <i>liaison</i>, <i>enchaînement</i> and <i>voicing assimilation</i> contribute to the perception problems. However, although <i>liaison</i> may complicate word recognition the results indicate that the so-called <i>potential liaison</i> does so to an even greater extent. In a listening test using nonsense words, the learners seem actually to expect liaison when perceiving a word that can be linked to a following nonsense word. In fact, sequences like <i>un navas</i> and <i>un avas</i> are both perceived as <i>un avas</i>. Paradoxically, liaison thus seems to be most problematic when it does not occur.</p><p>As to schwa deletion, the results show that word recognition is delayed when the schwa in the first syllable is deleted, as in <i>la s’maine</i>. In addition, the learners make a large number of errors due to schwa deletion. This phonological process sometimes completely prevents word recognition, especially when combined with a voicing assimilation. Schwa deletion thus seems to strongly complicate Swedish learners’ word recognition in spoken French.</p>

Swedish learners of French often experience large difficulties in understanding spoken French. Words that the learners know very well when written or when pronounced separately are often hard to recognize in the speech flow. The aim of this study is to examine Swedish learners’ perception of French speech in order to identify the problems. The thesis consists of two parts. The first part provides an introduction to the perception of a second language. It also describes the phonological structures of Swedish and French and gives an overview of studies of the perception of spoken French. The second part of the thesis contains a presentation and an analysis of four perception experiments conducted with Swedish learners of French. The results show that the learners often confuse phonological contrasts that do not exist in Swedish. It is furthermore found that the phonological processes of schwa deletion, liaison, enchaînement and voicing assimilation contribute to the perception problems. However, although liaison may complicate word recognition the results indicate that the so-called potential liaison does so to an even greater extent. In a listening test using nonsense words, the learners seem actually to expect liaison when perceiving a word that can be linked to a following nonsense word. In fact, sequences like un navas and un avas are both perceived as un avas. Paradoxically, liaison thus seems to be most problematic when it does not occur. As to schwa deletion, the results show that word recognition is delayed when the schwa in the first syllable is deleted, as in la s’maine. In addition, the learners make a large number of errors due to schwa deletion. This phonological process sometimes completely prevents word recognition, especially when combined with a voicing assimilation. Schwa deletion thus seems to strongly complicate Swedish learners’ word recognition in spoken French.

This dissertation investigates translation strategies and translation principles in technical translation. Five translation students and 5 professional translators from German-speaking Switzerland and 4 translation students and 6 professional translators from Sweden were asked to think aloud while translating a user guide from French into German and from French into Swedish, respectively. The focus of the analysis was on the strategies that could be observed by comparing the translation products with the source text; and on the principles underlying these strategies as revealed by the think-aloud protocols of the translation processes. In order to evaluate the extent to which the translation products complied with the fictitious translation brief given to the participants, 2 reviewers per language pair proofread the translation products. The analysis also included contrastive analyses of certain linguistic features of technical texts in French-German and French-Swedish. The results show that experience of translation does play a role in the choice of translation strategy. It is, however, an even more important factor with respect to knowing and applying translation principles in the translation process. Also, students more often display uncertainty regarding translation principles, and conflict between the principles verbalised and those actually followed. Language-pair specific differences were mostly found in connection with translation strategies. Comments about future directions include the need for clearer definitions and more systematic manipulations of the variables involved in translation, and the potential interest in investigating the principles governing how translations are revised through the use of think-aloud protocols.

This thesis deals with the polyphonic and argumentative functions of the French negation marker, ne, in editorial texts from the daily press. The concept ‘polyphony’ relates to the presence of multiple voices within one and the same utterance. According to this view, negation triggers a subdivision of an utterance in two points of view. Thus the sentence Sweden will not be a part of the monetary union can be divided in two points of view, the underlying ‘Sweden will be a part of the monetary union’, and the explicit ‘Sweden will not be a part of the monetary union’. First, I study the polyphonic structure of negative utterances, notably their division in two points of view, by taking into account their specific linguistic features. This is done so as to identify the relevant linguistic criteria that determine the polyphonic interpretation of the negation. The study demonstrates that contextual elements, including pragmatic connectors, presuppositions contrastive elements, and several other devices constitute the primary source of polyphonic markers. Negation is furthermore approached from a textual perspective. I explore how the two opposite points of view that are associated with negation form polyphonic sequences with other points of view carrying the same semantic content, and how these dynamic points of view are associated to the different discourse beings that are found in the newspaper article. I found that these sequences often embrace the central polemic theme of the article and, also, that the polyphonic function is not restricted to the negative utterance but constitutes an element that ensures textual and argumentative coherence. These two analyses are carried out within Jean-Claude Anscombre’s and Oswald Ducrot’s Theory of Structural Argumentation, which has recently been formalised by Kjersti Fløttum, Coco Norén and Henning Nølke. Finally in this thesis, I analyse the relation between the discourse beings associated with the negative utterance and real beings that exist outside the text, and then consider what rhetorical implications that correspondence or no correspondence has on the polyphonic interpretation of the negation. I also examine whether polyphonic negation can be considered to be a feature of newspaper editorials that identifies these texts as a genre. This study shows that the locuteur, the discourse being responsible for the enunciation of the negative utterance on a textual level, links to the real being, the editorial writer, who then refutes points of view associated to other discourse beings, often by use of nominalizations that refer to community voices. The locuteur also intrudes into an argument or claim, and refutes it in the name of a community or an authority. By defining genre, as does the media researcher Patrick Charaudeau, as a correspondence between the constraints imposed by the discursive situation and the constraints imposed by the discursive features, and by considering that one of the editorial’s constraints is to persuade its readers, this study shows that the phrasal negation ne in its polyphonic function, constitutes a distinguishing feature in the genre of editorials. The refutations that are made by an editor constitute a distinctive argumentative strategy since it permits the editorial writer to present external points of view in order to refute them and thereby impose his or her own, subjective point of view.

This study investigates the use of formulaic language in spoken French produced by native and non-native speakers. It aims at describing the development of formulaic sequences in learners ranging from beginners to very advanced users. It draws on data from the InterFra corpus, which includes both formal and semi-formal learners. Four measures are used to characterize this development: extent of formulaic language used, category distribution, type / token ratio and frequency of types. It has been shown that a user’s knowledge of formulaic sequences impacts heavily on language proficiency and idiomaticity. Because these sequences follow neither grammatical nor lexical rules, they constitute the last threshold for advanced L2 learners. In second language acquisition, the term formulaic sequence not only applies to strict idiomatic constructions, but it is also used to refer to sequences that appear to be acquired in a holistic manner during the first phases of acquisition. A categorization is therefore proposed that can account for native and non-native usage of formulaic sequences (prefabs). Five categories of prefabs are included: Lexical, Grammatical, Discourse, Situational and Idiosyncratic. The extent of a learner’s use of formulaic language increases as the learner progresses, the largest amount found in the production of native speakers and very advanced learners. The learner’s distribution of categories moves towards native speaker distribution, albeit slowly. Situational and Idiosyncratic prefabs are found to characterize the early phases of acquisition, while Lexical prefabs are mastered later and are a major difficulty for L2 learners. Only very advanced learners who have spent considerable time in France produce the same proportion of Lexical prefabs as native speakers. Discourse prefabs constitute the most important category for all groups, including natives and non-natives. It can therefore be postulated that the main function of formulaic sequences in spoken French is that of discourse structuring and speech management. The development and use of formulaic language is explained within a framework of Frequency Effects. Coupled with other factors, frequency can account for why Lexical prefabs are hard to acquire and why formulaic sequences take a long time to master. / The thesis is published and can be purchased by Peter Lang http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?vID=11369&vLang=E&vHR=1&vUR=1&vUUR=38

This thesis investigates acquisition of negation and focus particles in oral L2 French. It concerns adverbs of addition (aussi, encore), restriction (seulement) and temporal contrast (déjà, encore). These items all lack independent referential value i.e. they depend on other constituents in an utterance for their interpretation, they are not structurally obligatory and they variably affect other constituents in an utterance. The learner has to capture the significance of each item, its syntactic position and its pragmatic function in a given context. The study aims at describing the development in oral production of 24 Swedish learners, beginners to very advanced, and 6 native speakers, in all together 80 interviews, in order to postulate an acquisitional itinerary. The analysis consists of two parts. The first one concerns negation types such as non in various functions, constituent negation (pas X), phrasal negation (ne…pas) and semi-negations (ne…aucun/jamais/personne/rien). The results show, inter alia, that non is used in different pragmatic functions at different levels of acquisition. At the initial stage, non is also used idiosyncratically as a constituent negation and as a preverbal phrasal negation. At the post-initial stage, where also the verbs are mainly finite, phrasal negation (ne) pas is post-verbal. Furthermore, the analysis showed that jamais and rien appear prior to the other semi-negations. In the second part, the use of focus particles is analyzed. The study revealed that the additive particle aussi appears first, in an initial or final position of an utterance, followed by additive encore and restrictive seulement at the post-initial stage and that the temporal adverbs encore and déjà are almost solely used by advanced learners. An acquisitional sequence was postulated, with idiosyncratic negation and additive focus particles appearing previous to post-verbal negation and restrictive particles. The temporal adverbs of contrast appear at the advanced stages.