Esta dissertação funda-se em princípios da História das ideias linguísticas (Auroux, 2008, 2009) e trata da gramatização dos idiotismos ou particularidades do português. A metodologia utilizada para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa, de acordo com o fazer historiográfico, é analítico-interpretativa, com o objetivo de apresentar e examinar as particularidades do português, descritas nas duas edições da gramática de D. Jeronymo Contador de Argote, intitulada Regras da lingua portugueza, espelho da lingua latina, ou disposiçaõ para facilitar o ensino da lingua Latina pelas regras da Portugueza, publicadas em 1721 e 1725. Partimos da hipótese de que é Argote que sistematiza a gramatização das especificidades da língua portuguesa, por meio do capítulo dedicado aos idiotismos. Assim, para entendermos como Contador de Argote formulou a ideia acerca dos idiotismos, investigamos o horizonte de retrospecção nas obras portuguesas de Oliveira (1536), Barros (1540) e Roboredo (1619), assim como o horizonte de prospecção, com o propósito de percebermos a repercussão das ideias linguísticas de Argote nas obras portuguesas de Lobato (1770), Fonseca (1799), Barbosa (1822) e Vasconcelos (1901). As duas edições da gramática foram importantes para a compreensão da construção do saber linguístico porque gramatizaram pontos específicos do português. Enquanto na primeira edição Contador de Argote apresenta concisamente as características do português, na segunda edição, o gramático explora, com mais clareza, os idiotismos, pois trata da morfologia, da sintaxe, e da semântica da língua portuguesa. Dos idiotismos apresentados por Contador de Argote, alguns já haviam sido gramatizados, e outros foram gramatizados nas Regras, pelo próprio autor. Quanto à repercussão das ideias do autor em gramáticas posteriores, verificamos que alguns idiotismos permaneceram e foram referidos como tais, outros foram incorporados à língua, e outros ainda desapareceram, haja vista a dinamicidade da língua. / This dissertation is based on principles of História das ideias linguísticas (History of linguistic ideas) (Auroux, 2008, 2009) and deals with the grammatization of idioms or peculiarities of the Portuguese language. The metodology used in order to develop the research, in accordance to the historiographic procedure, is analytical and interpretative, aiming at presenting and investigating the Portuguese language particularities described in the two editions of D. Jeronymo Contador de Argote, named Regras da lingua portugueza espelho da lingua latina, ou disposição para facilitar o ensino da lingua Latina pelas regras da Portugueza (Rules of the Portuguese language: a mirror of the Latin language, or the disposition to facilitate teaching the Latin language through the rules of the Portuguese language ), published in 1721 and 1725. We start from the assumption that it is Argote that systematizes the grammatization of the specificities of the Portuguese language, by means of the chapter dedicated to idioms. Therefore, in order to understand how Contador de Argote developed the idea about the idioms, we have investigated the horizon of retrospection in the Portuguese works of Oliveira (1536), Barros (1540) and Roboredo (1619), as well as the horizon of prospection to realize the impact of Argote\'s linguistic ideas upon the Portuguese works of the Lobato (1770), Fonseca (1799), Barbosa (1822) and Vasconcelos (1901). The two editions of this grammar were important in order to understand the construction of linguistic knowledge, once they have organized specific matters of the Portuguese language. While the first edition of Contador de Argote concisely presents the characteristics of the Portuguese language, on its second edition the grammarian explores the idioms more clearly, once it deals with the morphology, syntax and semantics of the Portuguese language. From the idioms presented by Contador de Argote, some had already been organized in the grammar, and others have been organized in the Regras by the author himself. As for the impact of the author\'s ideas in later grammars, we have found that some idioms remained and were referred to as such; others have been incorporated into the language, and still others have disappeared, given the dynamics of all languages.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

This thesis is concerned with the connection between syntax and semantics regarding the construction of special meaning in English. To investigate this construction I have taken a selection of English idioms, modified them in structured ways and then presented them to a group of English mother tongue speakers to test whether, although modified, these idioms retain their idiomaticity. These modifications took the form of two specific operations, those of mobility and transferability (the latter operation was created for the purpose of this thesis). An idiom’s parts are considered mobile if its parts can undergo movement and retain an idiomatic reading. In this thesis, the movement operation that I was concerned with was passivisation. An idiom’s parts are considered transferable if one of its parts can be replaced (e.g. the verb with another verb or the object determiner phrase with another determiner phrase) and idiomaticity is retained. I hypothesise that whether an idiom’s parts are transferable and mobile is dependent on whether the idiom is compositional or not. I will discuss the above hypothesis against previous work of both Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist Program and Jackendoff’s (1997) representational modularity. The results gained in this study show that idioms cannot be categorised neatly as compositional or non-compositional, but rather exist on a continuum of idiomaticity. On the one end of the continuum exist idioms that are completely inflexible and the rate of flexibility increases the further the continuum extends. Therefore on the one side of the scale is an idiom such as “trip the light fantastic” which is inflexible and on the other side is an idiom such as “I lift my hat to you” which is flexible but in restrained ways. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

Research shows that L2 learners' communicative problems are often pragmatic in nature. Pragmatic competence has been defined as the ability to recognize the force and the intended meaning of an utterance by making judgments about its appropriateness (Thomas 1983). Studies on interlanguage pragmatics have provided evidence that conversational strategies differ cross-linguistically and cross-culturally. Also, recent studies on the way native and nonnative speakers of English comprehend and understand conversational implicatures (Bouton 1988, 1989, 1990) have revealed that non-native speakers of English do not interpret implicatures the way native speakers do and that this is due to cultural differences.This study investigated the way native speakers of Arabic and (American) English interpret and comprehend implicatures. It was hypothesized that, as a part of their communicative competence, the Arab speakers' ability to interpret implicatures in English may be influenced by four variables: 1) overall proficiency level in English (measured by standardized ESL tests); 2) length of exposure to American culture; 3) level of motivation to learn English andattitudes toward Americans and American culture; and 4) strategic interference due to the differences in pragmatic functions between Arabic and English.136 subjects (61 Arabs and 75 Americans) participated in this study, which employed three empirical instruments: 1) an implicature questionnaire designed in the form of a multiple-choice test to test the native and nonnative subjects' comprehension of implicatures; 2) a motivation/attitudes questionnaire to measure the non-native subjects' motivational levels for learning English and their attitudes towards American culture and people; and 3) the Michigan Proficiency Test, a standardized test of grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. In addition, a post-test interview was used to gather information from non-native speakers regarding the choices made on each implicature question.Statistical analyses of the results revealed significant differences between native and nonnative speakers in their comprehension and interpretation of implicatures. In a multiple-regression, length of stay was found to be a significant predictor of non-native speakers' comprehension of implicatures. / Department of English

This research analyses some of the slang expressions with the meaning ‘to die’ found in Dictionary of Modern Slang with regard to metaphor and metonymy and whether they have been active when creating the identified slang expressions. It further examines the frequency of these expressions in a large language corpus, and identifies the processes involved in the most frequent expressions. The main findings show that the domain ‘departure’ is the most frequent domain for metaphorical conceptualizations of dying, which suggests that death, like life, can be viewed as a journey. One can speculate that this metaphorical mapping could go back to religious origin, where death is not seen as the end. Several of the expressions are still used within the English language, and the most frequent expressions in the corpus were metonymic in nature and have developed into idiomatic phrases, which are frozen in form.

This study aims at investigating teaching of idioms by means of illustrations and teaching of idioms by means of definitions. The informants of the experiment are learners of English in a Swedish high school. The 58 informants of this experiment were tested on a total of 19 idioms. These idioms were carefully chosen in order to make sure that they would not already be known by the informants. Another key factor while choosing the idioms was the possibility to find appropriate illustrations for these idioms. The chosen illustrations depict either the literal or the metaphorical meaning of the idioms. The informants were administered one pre-test and two post-tests (short- and long-term retention tests) to measure the retention rate. The pre-test was used to check if both groups had similar knowledge of the selected idioms and therefore could be comparable. The results of this experiment show that students taught by the use of illustrations had a better short- and long-term retention rate than students taught only by the use of definitions. In both the short- and long-term retention test, informants taught by the use of illustrations outperformed informants taught through definition by more than 10%. This study therefore indicates that the use of illustrations while teaching should not be neglected by teachers and can be a powerful tool to enhance students’ retention of chosen items such as vocabulary or idioms.

319 p. / Submitted by Santiago Fabio (fabio.ssantiago@hotmail.com) on 2013-01-03T17:36:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 9999999.pdf: 29384806 bytes, checksum: 38058191d60ecbb6088fceb8a55d98c9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-01-03T17:36:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 9999999.pdf: 29384806 bytes, checksum: 38058191d60ecbb6088fceb8a55d98c9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Tendo em mente que os caminhos para a atividade composicional podem permear uma abordagem específica, procura-se neste trabalho direcioná-la pelo viés intertextual para a composição de uma obra para violão e orquestra. A discussão é relevante, tendo em vista o crescente interesse pelo assunto e sua aplicabilidade no meio musical. O recorte bibliográfico na literatura — Bakhtin (2010), Kristeva (2005), Genette (2006), Bloom (2002) e Sant’Anna (2003) — relaciona-se com autores da área de música pelo olhar da teoria intertextual. Foram escolhidas as músicas do compositor brasileiro Guinga (1950), para voz e violão, como “texto de partida”, com o fim de utilizar a produção musical dele como suporte analítico e composicional. Encontrou-se no mundo cancioneiro de Guinga um diálogo com diversas tendências e um acurado senso de utilização idiomática no acompanhamento de violão das suas canções. Analisamos processos em que o idiomatismo pode ser empregado como uma ferramenta composicional viável, especialmente no universo violonístico. Isso possibilitou uma concepção composicional advinda de parâmetros intertextuais e idiomáticos (violonísticos), em que foram tratadas algumas atitudes compositivas. Esse direcionamento apontou para uma intertextualidade idiomática. Concomitantemente, foram desenvolvidos musicalmente alguns dos recursos específicos relacionados à literatura, como epígrafe, citação, paródia, entre outros. Verificou-se também uma aproximação da teoria intertextual com o pós-modernismo, averiguada em discussões sobre o assunto. O resultado do trabalho pode ser conferido na peça Aporia, na qual foram abordadas algumas das questões estéticas, idiomáticas e intertextuais propostas. / Salvador

xiii, 205 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This study examined idiom understanding in 120 neurologically healthy adults, ages 20-29 (20s Group), 40-49 (40s Group), 60-69 (60s Group), and 80-89 (80s Group) years old. Each participant was administered a familiarity task, definition explanation task, mental imagery task, and forced-choice comprehension task. Twenty idioms, 10 transparent and 10 opaque, were used with no supporting contexts. Participants were asked to rate the familiarity of each idiom, to provide a definition of each, to generate a mental image of each, and to select the best definition of each from among four options. It was predicted that younger and older adults would perform equally well on the comprehension task but that older adults would perform poorer than younger adults on the explanation task. Additionally, mental imagery of idioms was expected to become more figurative with advancing age, and participants were expected to perform better on highly familiar and transparent idioms than on less familiar and opaque ones. Participants rated all 20 idioms as highly familiar, with the lowest familiarity rating for participants in the 20s Group. No significant differences were found on the forced-choice comprehension task across the four age groups although the 20s Group scored the lowest among all age groups. The 60s Group performed significantly better than the 20s Group on the definition explanation task, but no significant differences were found between the other age groups. No significant differences were found in generating mental images between transparent and opaque idioms, and mental images tended to be figurative rather than literal for both types of idioms. The present study adds to our knowledge of idiom understanding across adulthood. Familiarity seemed to play a stronger role than transparency in idiom understanding in adults. Once an idiom was learned and stored as a lexical unit, people used the idiomatic meaning and generated figurative mental imagery immediately without accessing the literal meaning or the literal mental image. / Committee in charge: Marilyn Nippold, Chairperson, Special Education and Clinical Sciences; Roland Good, Member, Special Education and Clinical Sciences; Deborah Olson, Member, Special Education and Clinical Sciences; Nathaniel Teich, Outside Member, English

x, 56 p. / This thesis considers the importance of cheng-yu (Chinese language-specific, idiomatic lexical-syntactic units) in second-language acquisition at the intermediate and advanced levels and examines current research in order to formulate an instructional approach. Informed by linguistic and pedagogical research on idioms generally, the study aims to apply research relevant to Chinese language idioms specifically. Main topics to be considered include: the importance of cheng-yu in higher-level discourse including the social significance of cheng-yu use; the patterned structure of cheng-yu; idiom teaching methods and a review of idiom content and presentation in commonly-used Chinese language textbooks; and the significance of corpus data in cheng-yu instruction. Results confirm the importance of cheng-yu in discourse and recommend practicable, research-based classroom strategies. Finally, a sample lesson is provided which encourages the use of corpus data and utilizes research findings on the structure of cheng-yu and on teaching practices thought to foster acquisition. / Committee in charge: Dr. Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, Chairperson; Dr. Yugen Wang, Member