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This thesis investigates the functional categories in the vP domain, including aspect, modality, and focus. For this research initiative, five constructions were examined: the Mandarin temporal adverbial, the Mandarin excessive ta, the Mandarin de/bu, the Turkish question particle –mI, and the Armenian auxiliary constructions. These constructions involve functional categories that are expected to appear at the C/IP periphery; however, they surface inside the vP domain. The existence of these low grammatical elements raises non-trivial questions such as how functional categories should be mapped out in the structure, and whether a unified structure can be proposed to account for the cross-linguistic phenomena examined in this thesis. The investigation of these constructions showed that there are cross-domain interactions between low and high functional categories. While Mandarin temporal adverbial constructions showed interactions between viewpoint aspect and lexical aspect via the distributions of the temporal adverbials and various co-occurrence restrictions, the other four constructions demonstrated interactions between the low and the high categories via intervention effects. I argue that low functional categories must be licensed by their counterparts in the C/IP domain, and that the licensing relation and the structural conditions imposed on this relation can be captured if an Agree relation is established between the functional categories in these two domains. The analysis also reveals that low functional categories are the result of feature lowering from v* to some functional projection below it, and the formal features of the low functional categories must assign their values to their counterparts in the C/IP domain via Agree to provide a meaningful input to LF. I propose a parallel analysis between CP and vP to account for the existence of the low grammatical elements in two respects: (1) C and *v, as phase heads, have an edge feature (EPP) and Agree features that need to be valued and/or checked at a functional projection lower than the each phase head; (2) the formal features of C can appear at *v if they are licensed by an associate feature present in the C/T domain for the purpose of Full Interpretation (Chomsky 1995, 2000).

This thesis investigates the functional categories in the vP domain, including aspect, modality, and focus. For this research initiative, five constructions were examined: the Mandarin temporal adverbial, the Mandarin excessive ta, the Mandarin de/bu, the Turkish question particle –mI, and the Armenian auxiliary constructions. These constructions involve functional categories that are expected to appear at the C/IP periphery; however, they surface inside the vP domain. The existence of these low grammatical elements raises non-trivial questions such as how functional categories should be mapped out in the structure, and whether a unified structure can be proposed to account for the cross-linguistic phenomena examined in this thesis. The investigation of these constructions showed that there are cross-domain interactions between low and high functional categories. While Mandarin temporal adverbial constructions showed interactions between viewpoint aspect and lexical aspect via the distributions of the temporal adverbials and various co-occurrence restrictions, the other four constructions demonstrated interactions between the low and the high categories via intervention effects. I argue that low functional categories must be licensed by their counterparts in the C/IP domain, and that the licensing relation and the structural conditions imposed on this relation can be captured if an Agree relation is established between the functional categories in these two domains. The analysis also reveals that low functional categories are the result of feature lowering from v* to some functional projection below it, and the formal features of the low functional categories must assign their values to their counterparts in the C/IP domain via Agree to provide a meaningful input to LF. I propose a parallel analysis between CP and vP to account for the existence of the low grammatical elements in two respects: (1) C and *v, as phase heads, have an edge feature (EPP) and Agree features that need to be valued and/or checked at a functional projection lower than the each phase head; (2) the formal features of C can appear at *v if they are licensed by an associate feature present in the C/T domain for the purpose of Full Interpretation (Chomsky 1995, 2000).

[pt] Este trabalho consiste em uma caracterização inicial das habilidades de processamento presentes nas crianças que adquirem o sistema de número gramatical em português. Foi realizada uma coleta longitudinal de dados de produção durante 4 meses com 2 crianças de 24-28 meses e 21-25 meses, cujo objetivo foi obter dados de produção lingüística semi-espontânea que permitissem identificar exemplos de produção de formas flexionadas em número. Realizaram-se também 3 experimentos de reconhecimento de imagens, com crianças de 18 a 28 meses e 30 a 42 meses, os quais visavam a verificar (i) se a criança distingue nome flexionado em número de nome não-flexionado; (ii) se a criança percebe onde se localiza a marca de número no português em palavras de seu vocabulário e em pseudo- palavras que remetem a objetos inventados; e, por fim, contrastar dados de experimentos semelhantes relativos a gênero gramatical, de modo a averiguar se crianças processam concordância de número no DP. A hipótese de trabalho que orienta esta dissertação é a de que a informação relativa a número contida nos elementos que formam a categoria funcional Determinante (D) é crucial para a identificação do sistema de número no português. Os valores relativos a número identificados nos elementos da categoria D como marcado/não marcado são interpretados semanticamente como singular e plural por meio do mecanismo da concordância, sendo a identificação do número gramatical mais custosa do que a do gênero gramatical em virtude de o número ser um traço opcional e de este traço veicular informação semântica a ser associada a classes morfofonológicas identificadas no Det e no Nome. O modelo de língua assumido nesse estudo é o sugerido pelo Programa Minimalista (Chomsky, 1995). / [en] This work is concerned with the acquisition of the Portuguese number system. Longitudinal production data of two children (24-28 months and 21-25 months) were collected for 4 months in order to verify whether there is evidence of the use of number inflected forms. 3 picture- identification experiments were carried out with children ranging from 18 to 28 months and 30 to 42 months, whose aim was to verify (i) whether children would distinguish number inflected from number uninflected nouns (ii) whether they would process number agreement in the DP and the extent to which they would perceive number incongruence and ungrammaticality as far as number agreement in the DP is concerned. Both nouns from children`s vocabulary and pseudo- nouns were used. The latter was indented to constraint semantic information to the number affix. These data were contrasted with the results on gender (Name, 2002), which suggest that young children (mean age 24 months) perceive gender incongruence between D and N in the processing of a DP. The working hypothesis of this study is that children identify morphological information concerning number and gender within the closed class of determiners. The fact that number is basically an optional feature, which can be expressed in the Noun, would nevertheless, make the acquisition of grammatical number to be relatively more demanding than the identification of grammatical gender. The linguistic framework assumed here is the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995).

Ce travail offre une nouvelle perspective sur l’analyse de l’imperfectivité dans la presse espagnole. Le point de départ pour cette analyse est la catégorie sémantico-fonctionnelle de l’aspectualité qui peut être exprimée en espagnol par l’aspect, aktionsart, des adverbes, des périphrases verbales, etc. Sur la base de l’imperfectivité comme une catégorie sémantico-fonctionnelle, qui comprend tous les moyens possibles pour exprimer l’indétermination sémantique comme l’imparfait(cantaba), le présent (canta), ESTAR+GERUNDIO, etc., il est possible d’établir un lien sémantique avec d’autres catégories sémantiques comme la temporalité, la modalité et l’évidentialité où le point central de ce chevauchement est constitué par la perspective du locuteur, à partir de laquelle il formule son énoncé, ce qui est associé à sa subjectivité dans le choix, par exemple, d’une forme verbale imperfective(cantaba) dans des contextes où devrait apparaître une forme verbale perfective(cantó) : El valor total […] ascendía a unos 5.950 euros.Bien que, dans certains contextes, cette décision puisse être expliquée de façon grammaticale, dans d’autres contextes (textes journalistiques) cela ne semble pas être le cas parce que le locuteur se sert de l’indétermination sémantique exprimée par le pretérito imperfecto pour exprimer ses énoncés avec une intention,par exemple, pour signaler une distanciation, une reprise d’énoncés, etc.À cause de son indétermination sémantique, l’imperfectivité se rapproche d’autres fonctions sémantiques comme la modalité épistémique et l’évidentialité indirecte qui permettent de donner à une situation un caractère ‘ouvert’ ou ‘indéterminé’ pour exprimer par exemple une supposition, la reprise d’une citation ou la distanciation du locuteur face à ce qui a dit. / The aim of this study is to analyse the use of imperfectivity in the Spanishpress. The point of departure for this analysis is the semantic-functional category ofaspectuality which can be expressed in Spanish by diverse linguistic means likegrammatical aspect, Aktionsarten, adverbs, verbal periphrases, etc. By consideringimperfectivity as a semantic-functional category, which comprises all the possiblelinguistic means to express semantic indeterminacy like the Spanish imperfecto(cantaba), presente (canta), ESTAR+GERUNDIO, etc., a semantic relation to othercategories such as temporality, modality and evidentiality can be made. Thesecategories interplay with the speaker’s stance in expressing an utterance, which isassociated with subjectivity. For example, an imperfective verb form (cantaba) maybe chosen in contexts where the perfective verb form (cantó) is expected to appear:El valor total […] ascendía a unos 5.950 euros (‘The total value […] rose (imperfecto)to some 5.950 euros’).Although in some contexts the use of the imperfective verb form isgrammatically motivated, there are other contexts where this is not the case, e.g. injournalistic texts. The speaker takes advantage of the semantic indeterminacy of theSpanish imperfecto cantaba with a specific intention like showing distance from theutterance or reproducing an utterance made by third parties, etc.Thus imperfectivity, due to its semantic indeterminacy, relates to othersemantic functions like epistemic modality and indirect evidentiality by which asituation is presented as open and undetermined, e.g. the expression of asupposition, or a quotation, or a speaker’s distance from his utterance.

[pt] Este trabalho se caracteriza como um estudo experimental, cujo foco é a delimitação da categoria adjetivo por crianças adquirindo o Português Brasileiro (PB) como língua materna. Adota-se uma perspectiva psicolingüística de aquisição da linguagem, aliada a uma concepção minimalista de língua (Chomsky, 1995-2001). Assume-se que a criança é sensível às propriedades fônicas de elementos de classes fechadas, como determinantes e afixos, conforme a hipótese do bootstrapping fonológico (Morgan & Demuth, 1996; Christophe et al., 1997). Considera-se que a representação da Categoria funcional D é fundamental na distinção entre nomes e adjetivos e que sufixos derivacionais contribuem para a representação do traço categorial desses últimos no léxico. Com base na hipótese do bootstrapping sintático (Gleitman, 1990), assume-se que a análise de adjetivos no contexto sintático de DPs ou de small clauses, aliada ao pressuposto de que DPs fazem referência a objetos/entidades, possibilita a representação de adjetivos como categoria que apresenta uma propriedade ou atributo de um referente. Avalia-se, ainda, o papel da ordem canônica, na distinção entre adjetivos e nomes, na ausência de informação de natureza morfológica. Neste trabalho, uma ampla revisão da literatura lingüística acerca da categoria adjetivo é apresentada de modo a que se identifique o que é demandado da criança na delimitação dessa categoria lexical, levando-se em conta propriedades do português. Foram conduzidos quatro experimentos: três com crianças, usando-se a técnica de seleção de objetos com pseudopalavras, e um com adultos falantes do PB. Para este último, foi concebida uma tarefa de atribuição de propriedades a objetos e pessoas a serem imaginadas a partir de pseudo-adjetivos denominais, de modo a avaliar em que medida as propriedades semânticas atribuídas a sufixos derivacionais formadores de adjetivos em análises lingüísticas correspondem ao conhecimento lingüístico intuitivo do falante da língua. Os dois primeiros experimentos foram conduzidos com crianças de 12-22 meses; o último, com crianças de 2-3 anos e 4-5 anos No Experimento 1, avalia-se o papel de determinantes e sufixos derivacionais, formadores de adjetivos, na delimitação desta categoria lexical em estruturas predicativas, independentemente das propriedades semânticas dos afixos. No Experimento 2, investiga-se o papel da ordem canônica aliada ao do sufixo derivacional como desencadeadores do processo de delimitação de nomes e adjetivos no âmbito do DP. No Experimento 3, explora-se o conhecimento por parte de falantes adultos do PB acerca dos traços semânticos dos afixos derivacionais -oso e -ento, formadores de adjetivos. No Experimento 4, verifica-se se os traços semânticos desses afixos são representados pela criança de modo a ser capaz de interpretá-los na interface semântica, à semelhança do que fazem os falantes adultos da língua. Os resultados dos experimentos aqui relatados são compatíveis com a hipótese de trabalho que orienta esta tese, qual seja, a de que a criança faz uso de informação sintática e morfológica na delimitação de adjetivos, e revelam que já aos dois anos de idade propriedades semânticas de sufixos formadores de adjetivos são representadas pela criança. Este trabalho contribui para uma teoria da aquisição da linguagem fundada no processamento de informação das interfaces da língua com sistemas perceptuais e conceptuais, na qual se enfatiza o papel de categorias funcionais e de elementos de classe fechada em geral (incluindo-se os afixos derivacionais) na identificação do que há de específico na língua. Este estudo também introduz uma metodologia experimental que permite complementar o resultado de análises lingüísticas pertinentes à morfologia no que concerne o conhecimento intuitivo do falante acerca dos traços semânticos de afixos. / [en] This dissertation presents an experimental study of the delimitation of adjectives as a lexical category in the acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese. It reconciles a psycholinguistic approach to language acquisition with a minimalist conception of language (Chomsky, 1995-2001). According to the phonological bootstrapping hypothesis (Morgan & Demuth, 1996; Christophe et al., 1997), it is assumed that infants are sensitive to closed class elements (as determiners and affixes) in the processing of the phonetic interface. The functional category D is considered to be fundamental to the distinction between nouns and adjectives, and derivational suffixes are viewed as contributing to the representation of the adjective as a categorical feature in the lexicon. According to the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis (Gleitman, 1990), it is assumed that the parsing of adjectives in DP and small clause contexts, together with the assumption that DPs refer to objects/entities, allow the representation of the adjectives as words that present a property or an attribute of a given referent. And the role of the canonical word order in the distinction between nouns and adjectives, in the absence of specific morphological information, is evaluated. In this study, the linguistic literature on adjectives is extensively reviewed. This review contributes to the identification of the demands that the delimitation of adjectives present to children, taking into account the specific properties of Portuguese. Four experiments were conducted: three with children, making use of the object selection with pseudo-words paradigm, and one with adult speakers of BP. In the latter, a task was envisaged in which pseudo-adjectives were presented in order for the property of a hidden object/character to be guessed. The speaker’s intuitive knowledge of the meaning of derivational suffixes was expected to guide the accomplishment of this task. The two first experiments were conducted with 12- 22 month old children, and the last one, with 2-3 and 4-5 year olds. In Experiment 1, the role of determiners and derivational affixes (forming adjectives) in the parsing of adjectives in predicative structures was evaluated, independently of the semantic properties of those affixes. In Experiment 2, the role of the canonical word order within the DP and derivational affixes in the bootstrapping of the representation of adjectives in Portuguese was investigated. Experiment 3 explores the native speaker knowledge of the semantic features of the adjective forming derivational affixes -oso e -ento. In Experiment 4, children’s representation of these very features is assessed. The results of the experiments reported here are compatible with the working hypothesis, namely, that children make use of syntactic and morphological information in the delimitation of adjectives as a lexical category. They also reveal that the semantic properties of derivation affixes forming adjectives are already available by the age of two. This work contributes to a theory of language acquisition that explores early processing at the language interfaces with perceptual and conceptual systems, and in which the role of closed class elements (including derivational affixes) and functional categories is emphasized. It also introduces an experimental methodology that enables to access the adult speaker’s intuitive knowledge of derivational morphology.

It has previously been shown that music features progressively more swear words and profanities per word uttered over time, and that rap music is at the forefront of this change. Therefore, this study explores whether there have been significant changes in swear word usage in rap music between the genre's conception (1970s-1980s), its commercialization (1990s-2000s), and its current black rights and personhood movements (2010s), totaling 50 years from 1970 to 2019. This was studied through a corpus of 300 song lyrics with 100-song sub-corpora per key period. These corpora were analyzed in terms of frequency of swear words and their functional categories based on McEnery and Xiao's (2004) model of swear words. The ten most frequent swear words changed significantly between the 1970s-1980s and 1990s-2000s sub-corpora. These results suggest that rap music initially featured few swear words to facilitate commercialization before normalizing larger frequencies. Furthermore, none of the corpora saw the same combination of most frequent swear words, although the 1990s-2000s and 2010s showed some overlap. Regarding functions, there were significant changes chronologically through the sub-corpora, with particular increase in literal usage.

This study concerns simultaneous bilingual acquisition (2L1) of Swedish-Brazilian children growing up in mixed-lingual families in Stockholm, with Swedish as their dominant language. Earlier studies on this language combination were not found. Not even were there any studies considering 2L1 children of the same age group as our main subjects (Anna 7;7,3–9;1,30, Maria 6;1,16–6;11,11). An analysis of their acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as a weaker language (WL) was carried out in a Generative Grammar approach, mainly through the selective theory of language acquisition. The corpus consists of interviews with 2L1 children in a semi-longitudinal registration of their production. The focus of this analysis lies on the observation of three domains of BP grammar that differ morpho-syntactically from Swedish: verb inflection; VP as minimal responses; NP number and gender agreement. Three main research questions were formulated: 1) Are the simple and robust structures, provided by domestic input enough for triggering the functional categories (FC) of their WL? 2) If the FCs are activated, do they develop in the same sequence as a WL as they would in BPL1? 3) If the 2L1 children show any deviations in acquiring the grammar of their WL, is it possible to distinguish any influence from Swedish? To answer these questions a contrastive study was carried out, comparing the acquisition of BPWL with studies on 2L1 and BPL1 acquisition. The results show that the domestic input is enough for triggering the grammar of the WL, and that it was triggered and developed through a similar procedure to that of BPL1, although delayed. Contact with BPL1 input in Brazil was necessary to activate the children’s oral production. When using VPs for minimal responses it requires more than domestic input, and the influence of Swedish was reflected in the subjects’ use of sim ‘yes’ instead of VPs, as in this case grammar enters the domain of discourse at the syntax/pragmatics interface.

[pt] Este estudo tem como foco a passagem da percepção fônica para a representação morfofonológica de elementos funcionais, mais precisamente os afixos verbais, bem como a realização do parsing linguístico no processo inicial de aquisição da linguagem. Nesta tese a aquisição da linguagem é abordada em uma perspectiva psicolingüística de forma integrada com a Teoria Linguística Gerativa, em sua versão Minimalista (Corrêa, 2006). A hipótese que orienta este trabalho é a de que os elementos de classe fechada são percebidos pela criança de forma diferenciada e que há uma distinção entre a percepção inicial desses elementos no nível fonético/fonológico e a sua posterior representação morfofonológica. Esses elementos, uma vez representados em termos de categorias funcionais do léxico, contribuem para a realização do parsing lingüístico pela criança. Uma análise de histórias infantis demonstrou que determinantes e afixos tendem a ocorrer em fronteiras de frases fonológicas e que propriedades fonéticas, como o acento, podem favorecer a percepção inicial de afixos verbais. Foram conduzidos três experimentos, sendo que os dois primeiros fizeram uso da Técnica de Escuta Preferencial e o terceiro utilizou a Técnica de Fixação Preferencial do Olhar. O primeiro experimento teve como objetivo avaliar a sensibilidade das crianças (de 9 a 15 meses) adquirindo o Português Brasileiro a distinções fônicas que afetam o padrão silábico da língua, independentemente do ambiente morfológico em que estas ocorrem (afixos flexionais e raízes de Nomes). O segundo experimento visou a verificar se o ambiente morfológico (afixos flexionais e raízes de Nomes) afeta o modo como crianças (de 9 a 18 meses) adquirindo o PB percebem alterações fônicas que não afetam o padrão silábico, o que indicaria que estas percebem afixos verbais como uma classe morfológica. O terceiro experimento pretendeu verificar se as crianças com idades entre 17 e 23 meses realizam o parsing de enunciados linguísticos, diferenciando elementos lexicais homófonos em função da natureza de elementos funcionais. Os resultados sugerem que crianças com média de 11 meses são capazes de perceber alterações fônicas independentemente do ambiente morfofonológico em que estas ocorrem. Também foi constatado que crianças entre 9 a 12 meses percebem alterações fônicas que não afetam o padrão silábico da língua em elementos de classe fechada, sugerindo que esses elementos são percebidos pelas crianças como uma classe morfológica em uma fase inicial no processo de aquisição da linguagem. Além disso, foi verificado que as crianças com média de 21 meses respondem diferencialmente a palavras homófonas em classes gramaticais diferentes (Nome e Verbo), com base na distinção entre projeções mínimas e máximas do Determinante, no parsing linguístico. A marcação do afixo verbal não afeta o reconhecimento do verbo, mas formas marcadas em relação a tempo adicionam dificuldade à condução da tarefa. Os resultados encontrados são compatíveis com as hipóteses testadas e permitem que se reconstrua a passagem da percepção do estímulo linguístico em um nível fônico para a representação morfofonológica de elementos de classe fechada, e finalmente para a representação dos mesmos como elementos de categorias funcionais, os quais são essenciais na condução do parsing linguístico. / [en] This study focuses on the passage from speech perception to the morphophonological representation of functional elements, verbal affixes in particular, and on the early parsing of linguistic utterances in language acquisition. A psycholinguistic perspective to language acquisition is adopted together with a minimalist conception of language (Corrêa, 2006). The working hypothesis is that closed class elements are distinctively perceived by children initially at a phonetic/phonological level and subsequently at a morphophonological one. Their representation as functional elements at a later stage contributes to the parsing of linguistic utterances. An analysis of a set of tales for children has demonstrated that determiners and verbal affixes occur at the edges of phonological phrases and phonetic properties such as the accent may contribute to their early perception by children. Three experiments were conducted, the first two in Head-turn Paradigm and the latter in the Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm. Experiment 1 aimed at assessing 9-15 month infants sensibility to phonetic distinctions in the linguistic stimulus, which affect the syllabic pattern of the language (Brazilian Portuguese), independently of the morphological context in which they occur (verbal affixes and nominal roots). Experiment 2 aimed at verifying whether these morphological contexts affect infants perception of phonetic alterations that do not affect the phonological pattern of the language. The perception of such distinctions in the verbal affixes, but not in the nominal roots, was considered to indicate sensibility to the morphophonological patterns of these closed class elements. The third experiment aimed at verifying the extent to which children by the age of 21 months would rely on functional information in the parsing of linguistic utterances, thereby ascribing different categorical features to homophonous words (nouns and verbs). The results of Experiment 1 suggest that 9-15 month infants do perceive phonetic alterations that affect the syllabic pattern of language, regardless of the morphological context in which they occur. The results of the Experiment 2 suggest that infants are sensitive to phonetic alterations that do not affect the syllabic pattern of the language by the end of their first year of life (9-12 months). The results of Experiment 3 suggest that take into account different syntactic projections of the determiner in ascribing homophonous words to different classes (noun and verb). These results also indicate that verbs are analyzed as such regardless of the type of morphological affix they present (marked or unmarked for Tense). However, tensed marked forms seem to add processing costs in the accomplishment of the task. These results are compatible with the hypotheses that guided the present thesis and enable a theory of language acquisition to reconstruct the passage from the phonetic perception of the linguistic stimulus to the morphophonological representation of closed class elements (verbal affixes) and from this level of representation to children s reliance on functional elements in the parsing of linguistic utterances.