This thesis examines one of the most important areas through which a state can affect the vitality of a minority language community: the use of minority languages in the public administration. The study begins with an examination of the European Union Framework with regard to the protection of minority languages in the light of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Charter of Nice. It analyses the relevant Council of Europe Treaties, and in particular the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in so far as they deal with the protection of minority languages in the public administration and public institutions. The thesis also assesses the CoE and EU Frameworks for the protection of minority languages. The national and regional legislation of Italy (Valle d’Aosta, Trentino Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sardinia and Sicily), Spain (Catalonia, Basque Autonomous Community, Navarra, Galicia, Balearic Islands and Valencia) and UK (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) are scrutinized to compare the different approaches adopted for the protection of minority languages. This analysis is focused on the crucial sectors of the public administration and public institutions which have both a high symbolic value and significant levels of inter-action with the minority language-speaking populations. The similarities and differences between the Italian, Spanish and the UK legislation in this field are examined, such gaps as exist between the aims of the legislation and reality are identified, as are the difficulties in the implementation of this form of legislation in the public administration.

All the words can be classified by their forms, their meanings and their forms. In my work I presented the synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, hyperonyms, hoponyms, paronyms and autonyms and their fonctionement in the text. The synonyms, the antonyms, the homonyms and the others are very important for the language. The synonyms and the antonyms are very closely related to the polysemy of the words. Synonyms are different words with similar or identical meanings. The synonyms are used to describe qualities and defects of English and French peoples, for better express one or other idea, to give more color and details to the text, to convince the reader. Very often the synonyms create ironic situations. The synonyms are also very attractive for the publicity which objective is to persuade that such or such product is better than others. Antonym is the word that means the opposite of another. The writers are using the antonyms in their works to create the antitheses. In the analyzed book we can notice that almost all the text is created at the base of the antithesis, where the author opposes two nations to show their way to live, their characters, their habits and their traditions. Generally the antitheses created contain the ironic character. Homonym is a word that is written and pronounced the same way as another, but which has a different meaning. The homonyms especially the homophons are used in publicity. The homophons are used to make the products more attractive to the... [to full text]

Linguistic Landscape refers to linguistic objects that mark the public space (Gorter, 2006). The focal point of this research project is to examine how the informational and symbolic messages conveyed through the Linguistic Landscape (LL) portray the personality, language attitudes, and culture of a rural town; Carman, Manitoba. Since people play an active role in designing the LL, this research project was designed to accurately describe a rural Manitoba town through analysis of the language and symbols found in the landscape as representative of it as a community. By implementing an ethnographic approach utilizing critical language study (CLS) (Fairclough, 2001) and a communication framework (Hymes, 1972) this paper argues that the language used in the public space cannot be ignored or taken for granted. The language that is used on signs in public spaces is evidence of this. It manifests itself in power of the language used for communication, capitalism, values and lifestyles, and inclusion and exclusion of the population.

Linguistic Landscape refers to linguistic objects that mark the public space (Gorter, 2006). The focal point of this research project is to examine how the informational and symbolic messages conveyed through the Linguistic Landscape (LL) portray the personality, language attitudes, and culture of a rural town; Carman, Manitoba. Since people play an active role in designing the LL, this research project was designed to accurately describe a rural Manitoba town through analysis of the language and symbols found in the landscape as representative of it as a community. By implementing an ethnographic approach utilizing critical language study (CLS) (Fairclough, 2001) and a communication framework (Hymes, 1972) this paper argues that the language used in the public space cannot be ignored or taken for granted. The language that is used on signs in public spaces is evidence of this. It manifests itself in power of the language used for communication, capitalism, values and lifestyles, and inclusion and exclusion of the population.

Evidentials are expressions used to indicate the source of evidence and strength of speaker commitment to information conveyed. They include sentence adverbials such as 'obviously', parenthetical constructions such as 'I think', and hearsay expressions such as 'allegedly'. This thesis argues against the speech-act and Gricean accounts of evidentials and defends a Relevance-theoretic account Chapter 1 surveys general linguistic work on evidentials, with particular reference to their semantic and pragmatic status, and raises the following issues: for linguistically encoded evidentials, are they truth-conditional or non-truth-conditional, and do they contribute to explicit or implicit communication. For pragmatically inferred evidentials, is there a pragmatic framework in which they can be adequately accounted for? Chapters 2-4 survey the three main semantic/pragmatic frameworks for the study of evidentials. Chapter 2 argues that speech-act theory fails to give an adequate account of pragmatic inference processes. Chapter 3 argues that while Grice's theory of meaning and communication addresses all the central issues raised in the first chapter, evidentials fall outside Grice's basic categories of meaning and communication. Chapter 4 outlines the assumptions of Relevance Theory that bear on the study of evidentials. I sketch an account of pragmatically inferred evidentials, and introduce three central distinctions: between explicit and implicit communication, truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional meaning, and conceptual and procedural meaning. These distinctions are applied to a variety of linguistically encoded evidentials in chapters 5-7. Chapter 5 deals with sentence adverbials, chapter 6 focuses on parenthetical constructions, and chapter 7 looks at hearsay particles. My main concern is with how these expressions pattern with respect to the three distinctions developed in chapter 4. 1 show that although all three types of expression contribute to explicit rather than implicit communication, they exhibit important differences with respect to both the truth conditional/ non-truth-conditional and the conceptual/procedural distinctions. Chapter 8 is a brief conclusion.

Thesis (M.R.P.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2009. / Open access. Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-78).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1968. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alberta, 2008. / Includes Vita. Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 25, 2010) Available through UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 261-266). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2001. / Title from title page screen, viewed April 6, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Ron Strickland (chair), Gerald Savage, Sophia McClennen, Doug Hesse. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-199) and abstract. Also available in print.

Orientador: Bento Carlos Dias da Silva / Banca: Ariani Di Felippo / Banca: Paula Tavares Pinto Paiva / Resumo: Ao abordar a tradução automática (TA), esta pesquisa insere-se no domínio do Processamento Automático de Língua Natural (PLN), defendendo a hipótese de que se faz necessária a inclusão, nos sistemas de TA, de um módulo de resolução de ambiguidades que ao menos forneça ao usuário as diferentes leituras de frases ambíguas. Norteia-se por estes dois objetivos: (i) propor, de modo sistemático e com exemplificações, uma tipologia dos principais tipos de ambiguidade linguística do inglês; (ii) avaliar, de modo exploratório, o impacto das ambiguidades estudadas em (i) sobre a TA com o auxílio do Google Tradutor; (iii) explorar estratégias de resolução de ambiguidades. A metodologia que norteia o estudo distribui a investigação nos domínios linguístico e linguístico-computacional. No primeiro, com foco no inglês, introduz-se a problemática geral das ambiguidades linguísticas que se manifestam na TA de frases/parágrafos de textos em inglês para o português e procede-se à sistematização, com exemplos, dos tipos de ambiguidades linguísticas selecionados na literatura sobre PLN. No segundo domínio, avalia-se, por meio do Google Tradutor, o impacto dos tipos de ambiguidades sistematizados no domínio linguístico sobre as TAs de frases selecionadas do corpus paralelo inglês-português selecionado para o estudo e a adequação das TAs, tendo como parâmetros, para a análise da qualidade das TAs, as diferentes leituras potenciais das frases e as traduções realizadas por humanos e selecionadas do corpus. As considerações finais resumem o trabalho, apresentam possíveis desdobramentos da investigação e enfatizam o papel decisivo que um módulo de detecção e resolução de ambiguidades pode exercer na qualidade das TAs ao resolvêlas ou apontar, para o usuário, diferentes leituras de uma sentença ambígua no contexto dos tipos de ambiguidade que é capaz de detectar. / Abstract: On taking up the study of linguistic ambiguities and machine translation (MT), this thesis unfolds against the backdrop of NLP (Natural Language Processing). It claims that MT systems, no matter whether they are couched in the symbolic or the statistical frameworks, should be equipped with a sort of disambiguation resolution module. In particular, it focuses on: (i) describing and exemplifying the core types of linguistic ambiguities in English in the context of the MT from English into Portuguese; (ii) explore, by means of the use of Google Translator, the impact of ambiguities on its Portuguese output from original English sentences; and (iii) sketch ambiguity resolution strategies for selected types. From the methodological point of view, the study is carried over the linguistic and computational-linguistic domains. In the former, it is discussed the different sorts of linguistic ambiguities by means of sample data collected from the NLP literature on ambiguity resolution investigation in English texts. In the latter, sample sentences were first selected in a parallel, English-Portuguese corpus, and then tested for their adequacy against the impact of the ambiguity types they illustrate. Sentence potential readings and their human translation counterparts were taken as parameters for the evaluation. The final remarks sum up the study, points out some of its further developments, and stress that the sample ambiguity resolution strategies explored in the study illustrates the key role a MT ambiguitiy detection and resolution module would play to improve the MT quality by either predicting them or by offering the user alternative readings of ambiguous sentences to choose from. / Mestre