This study presents new insights into the esthetic universe of Albert Camus. It demonstrates that Camus, through a transcendent and metamorphic understanding of esthetics, uses his fictional art as a means of correcting a civilization which has progessively declined into decadence due to a pervasive "paradox of reason" principle emerging from the Enlightenment tradition of reasoned doubt. / This study shows that a critical and dynamic parallelism of thematic variation evidences itself in L'Etranger, La Peste and La Chute. The primary parameters of this parallelism are set out by Camus in Le Mythe de Sisyphe. The fictional works are themselves "expressions" growing out of the "impressions" inherent to an absurd reasoning. / To demonstrate how Camus' novels encompass the essential dialectic of un raisonnement absurde evolving into la creation absurde, exile and revolte are examined in relation to the author's esthetic trinity or man/world/absurdity. Using suicide as a point of departure, Camus shows how thanatos haunts the human psyche and brings about both an impulse to philosophical suicide and the construction of systems of irrational hope based on nostalgie for primal innocence. / This study consists of an Introduction and the following five divisions: (1) Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Nostalgia for the Soul; (2) L'Etranger: The Exile at Zero-Point; (3) La Peste: The Collective Passion; (4) La Chute: The Transpersonal Consciousness of the Appointed Suicide; (5) The Gift of Self: A Passionate Dialect or Creation Corrected. The critical approach of the study concentrates on the narration, character and theme of each of Camus' novels and culminates with the recognition of a twentieth century Romantic response to Nietzschean nihilism. The absurd man accepts the reality of le desert and through art itself discovers a means of surviving therein. / Drawing extensively on Camus' Carnets (1942-1951) as a resource to deciphering the novels' apparent ambiguities and enigmas, a primary and comprehensive sense of limites emerges as the artist's duty in correcting creation and mythically resurrecting beauty from the tragic douleur characteristic of the human condition. It is shown how such a mythic undercurrent forms the essential narrative tension within each novel and gives evidence to Camus' appreciation and understanding of ancient Greek tragedy and thought. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-09, Section: A, page: 3988. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

Government and Binding Theory dictates that the case features of noun phrases are assigned structurally under government. On this basis the claim by Ibn Mada'al-Qurtubi, in The Refutation of the Grammarians, that case is assigned solely by the language user on strictly semantic grounds, is rejected; also untenable, however, is the position of traditional Arab grammarians that case can, in some contexts, be assigned by "concealed" governors, as the Projection and Structure-Preserving Principles require that material having semantic content be visible at all levels of representation. Government and Binding principles are adequate to account for case-assignment in the issues raised by Ibn Mada'; they cannot, however, offer a clear solution to the apparent violation of Principle C of the Binding Theory found in some examples of bab al-tanazuᶜ, the category of "contention in government".

Abstract Not Available.

First language attrition is the temporary or permanent loss of first language competence as reflected in the incorrect use of native grammatical principles or in the speaker's inability to make grammaticality judgments that would be consistent with that of monolingual native speakers (Seliger y Vago, 1991; De Bot y Weltens, 1991; Seliger, 1996). Our study centers on L1 (Spanish) attrition of four constructions related to three syntactic issues: (1) the so-called 'Compounding Parameter' (resultative constructions and Noun-Noun compound formation); (2) the "Verb Movement Parameter" as it determines the position of subjects in Spanish and English interrogative constructions; (3) the speck characteristics of Spanish clitic pronouns. We analyze the influence of linguistic as well as sociolinguistic factors in the erosion of these grammatical structures among Spanish immigrants. The data reveal, among other things, that the age of contact with the second language is a determining factor in the process of language attrition, as it is in the process of language acquisition. We also argue that the process of attrition of the native's morphosyntax occurs locally and is not generalized across all morphosyntactic structures. As in the case of second language acquisition, there is no dramatic change of native parameters.

The aim of this investigation is to analyze texts by women composers of popular songs, in particular those by Maria Grever, Consuelo Velazquez and Emma Elena Valdelamar, written between 1930 and 1950 in Mexico. In the first chapter we discuss the way these women conceive love as a gender subject. We first define the concept of gender as well as some aspects of the language they use in relation to gender. Then we focus on the role of the women composers in Western tradition music, particularly Mexican women composers of popular songs. In the second chapter, we analyze the concept of popular song, discussing its origins and influences. We attempt a classification by theme. This allows us to establish the cultural historic framework delimited as the urban song of love. In the third chapter, we discuss the concepts of metaphor, metonymy and synecdoque (following Lakoff and Johnson understanding of this concept), to arrive at a definition of a general metaphor, i.e the way the three women composers understand the concept of love. To achieve this goal we allude to the body conception, the concrete action of love-making, the kiss, the opposition between love and reason, jealousy and destiny. To conclude, we explore the differences in language used by women composers and men composers of this period.

Esta tesis se centra en dos aspectos de la causacion. Por una parte, se analizan desde un punto de vista comparado las propiedades lexicas y mortosintacticas de las construcciones causativas analiticas (El director hizo trabajar a sus empleados), morfologicas (Mtsikana anaugw-ets-a mtsuko: "La chica hizo caer el cantaro") y lexicas (Juan rompio el vaso) en dos lenguas romance (frances y espanol) y una lengua germanica (ingles). Por otra parte, se estudian dos tipos de derivaciones que tienen lugar en la formacion de las causativas: la causafivizacion (la formacion de construcciones causativas a partir de construcciones no causativas) y la anticausativizacion (la formacion de construcciones no causativas a partir de construcciones causativas), que presentan propiedades y estan sometidas a restricciones diferentes. A partir del analisis de las construcciones causativas, este estudio tiene como objetivo encontrar pruebas para confirmar la hipotesis de que hay algunos tipos de causativas que estan sujetas no solo a restricciones de tipo sintactico, sino tambien de tipo lexico, aunque, como afirman Hale y Keyser (1999) en el marco de la Teoria Argumental, no estan sometidas a restricciones de tipo lexico-argumental.

Le but de notre etude est de degager les caracteristiques du vocabulaire de Guy de Maupassant. En partant de l'outil de base de l'ecrivain, le mot, nous avons effectue une analyse statistique et stylistique du vocabulaire tire de quatre contes: "Farce normande", "Le vieux", "Aux champs" et "La veillee". Afin d'enrichir notre analyse, nous avons choisi quatre contes d'Alphonse Daudet a titre de comparaison: "Les etoiles", "Les vieux", "Les trois messes basses" et "Le sous-prefet aux champs". Notre recherche se divise en deux volets: une etude quantitative et une analyse stylistique. En premier lieu, nous avons traite le vocabulaire dans son ensemble. Afin de degager certaines tendances, nous avons soumis les resultats de nos depouillements a des operations statistiques et determine la signification de la distribution par ordre de frequence du vocabulaire de Maupassant et de Daudet. Puis nous avons elabore les listes des vingt mots les plus frequents dans les categories grammaticales suivantes: noms communs, noms propres, adjectifs, verbes, adverbes, mots grammaticaux et interjections. Dans l'etude qualitative, nous avons etudie de pres les mots caracteristiques de Maupassant. Afin d'etablir les parametres de l'univers romanesque de l'auteur, nous avons regroupe son vocabulaire sous divers champs semantiques. Enfin, l'impact des noms propres et des interjections a ete evalue dans la section intitulee "L'evocation du cadre". (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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This thesis is divided into two parts, the first consisting of a French to English translation of excerpts from the novel Cher Hugo, chere Catherine. The second part comprises a commentary of the difficulties encountered in the translation. Although the novel is a record of correspondence between four characters over a 43-year period, this work deals only with the letters exchanged between father and daughter, Hugo and Catherine. Literary translation is often a very difficult endeavour and we discuss the challenging task of translating a rich literary text by studying the concrete textual features in which are rooted the themes of the source text. The textual features also contribute to the text's impact on the reader. The problems involved in rendering these textual features are in turn discussed. Throughout this work, the issue of acquiring additional information from the author of the novel is addressed in relation to its effect on the translation; in order to emphasize the need for a carefully balanced translation, this thesis closes by examining the repercussions of abusing this "privileged" information. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Abstract Not Available.