Esta investigacion se centra en la conformacion de nuevas identidades femeninas y nacionales en el cine de Maria Novaro, a partir del papel preponderante de la madre, la reconfiguracion de la familia mexicana y el desplazamiento del padre en los procesos de identidad. Se enfoca en un cine de mujer EN EL NOMBRE DE LA MADRE, un cine que reacciona contra la cultura patriarcal y el nacionalismo oficial del Estado mexicano. Este examen expone que las historias privadas de las peliculas de Novaro revelan simbolicamente el "inconsciente nacional", desplazan al Estado patriarcal y realzan a la nacion de la sociedad civil, en el marco de un cine de autora y de un cine de mujeres. En el examen, se entrevera historia y cultura, ideologia y estetica, contexto y texto, para explorar cuatro areas basicas: (1) los discursos hegemonicos de occidente en torno a la mujer; (2) las identidades hegemonicas en el cine mexicano; (3) el contexto social, politico, cultural y cinematografico de Mexico durante los ochenta y los noventa; (4) la narrativa e imagen visual de los tres primeros largometrajes industriales de la directora mexicana: Lola (1989), Danzon (1991) y El jardin del Eden (1993). La base teorica del examen son el analisis textual feminista y los conceptos de inconsciente politico, mediacion y alegoria nacional de Fredric Jameson. Asimismo, se utilizan las definiciones de meganarrador y de relato cinematografico de Francois Jost y Andre Gaudreault, para analizar las peliculas.

Fray Luis de Leon was incarcerated for nearly five years by the Spanish Inquisition, on the basis of charges brought against him by antagonistic colleagues who disagreed with his scholarly approach. Through a systematic consideration of his writings in light of the sociohistorical climate that gave rise to disputes between him and his detractors, it is evident that a number of themes run through Fray Luis' prose production which can be related directly to his experience as an inmate in the Inquisition's cells. These topoi, found throughout the Salmantine friar's prose, are present also in his poetry. Therefore, by analyzing those prose passages that have a direct bearing on his trial before the Inquisition and by relating those passages to his poetry, we shall gain access to unique avenues of interpretation. The results will offer new insights into Fray Luis' poetry that are not readily apparent through other methods of analysis. This study will afford us an opportunity to see Fray Luis and his works in great detail from a perspective that has not yet been explored.

This study examines whether grammar instruction treatment, input processing, facilitates in learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) a distinction among sets of phrasal verbs containing prepositions. Input processing emphasizes difficult grammatical forms and provides a model for the behavior of the varying roles of phrasal verb prepositions. Such instruction follows three steps: (i) explaining the relation between a grammatical form and its meaning, (ii) informing learners of language processes that adversely influence the form-meaning relation, and (iii) implementing "structured input" activities that target the form in linguistic input, facilitating form-meaning relations. Prepositions in phrasal verbs perform specific roles for exclusive purposes, for instance in verb-particle constructions eat up, clean out, send on where prepositions mark aspectual properties for "completion-of-activity" (telicity) as well as "affectedness" of phrasal verb objects. ESL students were selected for the control and treatment groups. Each group participated in a pretest and posttest. Each test included three tasks: one comprehension (yes/no multiple choice) and two production (sentence completion and written narration). Time (pretest/posttest) and instruction (informal IP/formal explanation) were independent variables. Scores were the dependent variable. Preposition use is difficult for ESL learners, yet no generalizations explain learning difficulty nor has instruction addressed this difficulty. Input Processing furnishes needed instruction and is consonant with current linguistic theory (Minimalism): Word-order phenomena obey "frame alternations" that shift meaning by varying syntactic configuration (movement to alternate sites in phrase structure). Language acquisition centers on mapping functions linking semantics with syntax; thus, pedagogical practice and linguistic theory are united. Structured input activities are likened to natural input that children are exposed to when they acquire language. Acquisition processes link meaningful items in a mental lexicon to grammatical patterns constructed by a mental computer. Second language learners create links between meaning and form because they make decisions about meaning in input structured to highlight the form in which meaning is conveyed. Statistical analyses show treatment effect for input processing instruction on the comprehension task, so subjects' ability is improved through attention to mapping. Production task data were inconclusive yet revealed significance of frequency of prepositions' functions.

The distribution and reference of Chinese anaphors are not predetermined by their inherent binding features or by a set of rules from one particular module; rather they are determined by the discourse context in which the anaphor in question occurs. The two most important parameters of discourse context are the discourse topic NP and discourse relations. The discourse topic NP is a unique discourse entity in that it is the only accessible antecedent for such anaphors as exempt reflexives, null subjects and null objects. A discourse topic NP derives its discourse dynamics (i.e., its ability to bind an anaphor beyond its syntactic binding domain) from the structural prominence accorded to it by its syntactic position. The relevance of discourse relations is two-fold. On one hand, the status of an NP as discourse topic is determined relative to the discourse relation underlying the discourse context in which this NP occurs. On the other, discourse relations are a decisive factor in defining the domain of discourse binding. More specifically, a discourse topic NP alpha is accessible to an anaphor beta only when alpha and beta are within a discourse of Continuation. The dynamics of the discourse topic NP and the effect of discourse relations on binding can be satisfactorily treated by Dynamic Montague Grammar with its two formal features: dynamic conjunction and the state switcher. The application of dynamic conjunction to the constituent sentences of a discourse of Continuation reveals associative nature of such a discourse while the state switcher provides a formal means of making a discourse topic NP an available antecedent for the appropriate anaphors within the desired domain of dynamic binding.

The importance of 'deixis' is that it is anchored to the immediate interactive context and resists a pre-given formulation of truth-value without taking into account such factors as when, where, to whom and even how it is said. This fact serves as an acute reminder for linguists that language use fundamentally concerns face-to-face communication and is not solely based upon the biological construals of the linguistic faculty. In this study, I will exclusively focus on spatial deixis and also closely examine spatial expressions such as coordinate terms, locative phrases, and (deictic) motion verbs. The selection of these elements largely depends on the current interest among cognitive linguists/anthropologists in preferred 'lexicalization' patterns and spatial motions/configurations, which promote image-schematic projection of the source concept. These phenomenological extensions of space will most palpably be embodied in stretches of discourse which particularly incorporate somatic descriptions and mental imageries. The novelty of the research is thus characterized by exclusive attention to 'vertical' space realized in 'on-going discourse' about spatial experience. The data types are mainly audio-(and occasionally video-)taped conversation and narration. I look at the utterance by the people who are experientially familiar with the concepts of verticality, rock climbers. They routinely and intensively exploit spatial notions for various purposes such as body-movement instructions, negotiation of geographic locations, and narration of 'danger-of-death' experience. There, multiple frames of reference and coordinate systems emerge and compete for the most suitable perspective which the speaker prefers to assume in accordance with cognitive, linguistic, and experiential constraints. I specifically ask the following questions: (1) is the vertical dimension conceptualized as the source or target domain for the image-schematic projection of the horizontal plane?, (2) are the orders of spatial descriptions constrained by language-specific 'lexicalization' patterns and/or habitualized cognitive styles?, (3) how are experientially salient portions in 'danger-of-death' narratives (e.g., Climax/Peak) related to particular modes of perspective-taking (e.g., intrinsic or extrinsic)?, and finally, (4) what is the role of 'experience' in achieving spatial coherence in the 'way-finding' negotiation? I conclude that verticality may be a more complex concept than has been previously conceptualized and has covert but influential consequences on cognitive processes and linguistic representations.

Morphology and syllable weight have both been shown to affect stress patterns, but these effects are analyzed in different ways. The theoretical goal of this dissertation is to propose a Optimality Theoretic model to account for how morphology influences stress, and to do this in a way that parallels the influence of weight upon stress. Prince (1990) lays out the W scEIGHT- scTO-S scTRESS P scRINCIPLE, formalizing the principle by which heavy syllables attract stress in quantity-sensitive systems. I argue for the M scORPHEME- scTO-S scTRESS P scRINCIPLE, a constraint that forces morphemes to attract stress in morphological stress systems. The W scEIGHT- scTO-S scTRESS P scRINCIPLE has a counterpart, the S scTRESS- scTO-W scEIGHT P scRINCIPLE, which forces stressed syllables to be heavy. The counterpart of the M scORPHEME- scTO-S scTRESS P scRINCIPLE is the S scTRESS- scTO-M scORPHEME P scRINCIPLE, which forces stressed syllables to belong to morphemes. This accounts for systems where epenthetic vowels resist stress assignment.

En esta disertacion mostramos que Ramon Perez de Ayala es un autor humoristico, es decir, un autor que se aproxima al mundo tanto criticamente como de modo tolerante y afectivo. El impetu critico lo impulsa a escudrinar su entorno y a desvelar lo que se halla tras lo aparente. Su postura tolerante lo ayuda a comprender las contradicciones que percibe y a preconizar que todo y todos tienen algo que aportar al mundo, donde el observa la armonia caudalosa, concepto que explica la presencia de todas las ideas y las personalidades, infinitamente enfrentadas entre si. Su arte constituye un intento de recrear este estado de "armonia desarmonica", como se aprecia en la riqueza de personajes conflictivos, incongruentes e imprevisibles que crea. Para explicar la manera en que Ayala se aproxima al mundo y al arte, en base a sus ideas y a las que Luigi Pirandello vierte en L'umorismo , configuramos la nocion de acercamiento humoristico . Esta se apuntala en la distincion entre dos conceptos: lo comico, que se refiere a las discrepancias que se revelan a raiz del escudrinamiento critico del mundo y el humorismo, que es la tolerancia de las discrepancias, nacida de la observacion critica. Nuestra nocion consta de dos fases. En la primera, dominada por lo comico, se escudrina a las personas. Surge la risa. El humorismo predomina en la segunda fase, en que se llega a comprender el origen de las contradicciones que se percibe. La risa da paso a una sonrisa cervantina--confortadora y comprensiva. Mediante el estudio del acercamiento humoristico intentamos ofrecer una imagen de Perez de Ayala diferente a la del rigido moralizador que predomina en la critica.

En el espanol, existe una distincion en la expresion de la temporalidad, el tiempo y el aspecto. Tal distincion suele ser una caracteristica muy dificil para su ensenanza, especialmente en estudiantes con ingles, donde no aparece esta distincion, como su lengua materna. Recientemente, la adquisicion de la temporalidad de lenguas extranjeras ha sido la base para muchas investigaciones linguisticas. Han surgido varias hipotesis pero la presente investigacion se basa en dos; la Hipotesis del Aspecto y la Hipotesis del Discurso. Compara los resultados de estudiantes de un ambiente academico con los de otro grupo que ha aprendido la lengua en un ambiente natural. Mas especificamente, se analizan los relatos de los estudiantes de espanol como segunda lengua solo en un ambiente academico y se compara con un grupo de estudiantes del mismo idioma con contacto con un ambiente natural en cuanto al desarrollo de la distincion aspectual en el pasado.

Linguistic knowledge implies the ability to identify and manipulate phonological segments of various sizes. Such "chunks" are often, although not always, demarcated by phonetic clues to phonological organization. The American Structuralists in the 1930's-1950's posited a demarcative phoneme called "juncture," which raised questions about the legitimacy of phonological analyses which rely on grammatical information about the language. Data from language games, diachronic resegmentation, and phonological reduction all show that a competent speaker can "chunk" phonological material in a variety of ways. The field linguist, the armchair analyst, and the ordinary listener are all playing the same segmentation game, listening for phonetic clues to linguistic structure.

Gestures are studied as part of the communicative strategies pertaining to a language. This study focuses strictly on the gestures observed in the city of Seville, Spain. The inventory includes the emblems most frequently used by native speakers under 35. The scope of the inventory reaches all the social classes and educational levels currently occurring in the city of Seville.