Dans l'étude présente, nous avons fait une analyse distributionnelle du ngam, langue sara parlée au Sud du Tchad et au Nord de la République Centrafricaine. L'étude s'est subdivisée en cinq parties: - la phonologie - une description générale des structures du syntagme nominal - une description du nom - un chapitre consacré à l'expression de la qualification en nous basant essentiellement sur la définition de la catégorie des adjectifs qualificatifs - une étude pronominale Le verbe ne fait partie de cette étude, elle fera l'objet d'une publication dans un futur proche. L'annexe comprend un lexique et un texte d'illustration.

Les poissons demoiselles (Pomacentridae) représentent lune des familles les plus importantes des récifs coralliens ; du point de vue du nombre despèces (> 350) et de leur abondance. Malgré cette importance, très peu détudes ont abordé leur diversité trophique et morphologique. Comme la majorité des poissons coralliens, les demoiselles possèdent un cycle de vie complexe divisé en deux phases : (1) une phase larvaire pélagique et océanique potentiellement dispersive et (2) une phase juvénile et adulte sédentaire associée à lhabitat corallien. La fin du stade larvaire coïncide avec la colonisation du récif. Le milieu océanique offre un habitat relativement homogène pour toutes les larves de Pomacentridae et celles-ci se nourrissent exclusivement de copépodes planctoniques. Au contraire, le récif propose une grande variété dhabitats et de ressources alimentaires. Au cours de leur ontogénie, les demoiselles subissent donc un changement de mode de vie qui doit saccompagner de modifications morphologiques, physiologiques et comportementales pour optimiser leur survie dans chaque environnement. La présente thèse a pour premier objectif de tester lhypothèse selon laquelle la plus grande diversité trophique attendue au stade adulte saccompagne dune plus grande disparité (mesure de la diversité morphologique au sein dun taxon) que chez les larves. Répondre à cet objectif a nécessité dorganiser la recherche selon trois axes. Premièrement, Lanalyse des contenus stomacaux et des isotopes stables du carbone et de lazote chez treize espèces a permis de mettre en évidence trois comportements alimentaires : (1) les « pelagic feeders » qui se nourrissent presquexclusivement de copépodes planctoniques, (2) les « benthic feeders » qui sont des espèces principalement herbivores broutant des algues filamenteuses et (3) un groupe intermédiaire incluant des espèces qui se nourrissent en proportions variables dans le compartiment pélagique et benthique (ex : copépodes planctoniques et benthiques, petits invertébrés vagiles et sessiles, algues filamenteuses). La littérature signale en plus deux demoiselles spécialisées dans la consommation exclusive de polypes de coraux. Deuxièmement, une étude écomorphologique a caractérisé la diversité du squelette céphalique chez les adultes. Les variations de forme de quatre unités du squelette céphalique (le neurocrâne, lunité « suspensorium et opercule », la mandibule et le prémaxillaire) ont été explorées au moyen de la morphométrie géométrique chez quatorze espèces adultes montrant des régimes alimentaires différents. Les résultats révèlent un parallélisme entre la diversité du squelette céphalique et la diversité des régimes alimentaires présent au stade adulte. Dune manière générale, les demoiselles planctonophages possèdent des caractères squelettiques optimisant la prise de nourriture par aspiration (ex : hauts suspensoria et opercules, une large crête supraoccipitale, des mandibules courtes formant une petite bouche). Les espèces brouteuses montrent des pièces squelettiques plus robustes (ex : mandibules hautes et massives, hyomandibulaires larges). Parmi les espèces zooplanctonophages, Chromis viridis et C. acares montrent une morphologie céphalique assez divergente de celle des autres. Leurs caractéristiques squelettiques laissent supposer un mode de prise de nourriture où le poisson capture sa proie en nageant vers elle bouche ouverte (type « ram-suction feeder »). La dentition buccale nest pas toujours corrélée au régime alimentaire. Troisièmement, lontogénie post-colonisation et la variation du niveau de disparité squelettique ont été étudiées et comparées chez huit espèces représentant un échantillon complet de la diversité trophique de la famille. Après la colonisation, les demoiselles subissent des allométries de croissance importantes (40 à 87% des variations de forme). La disparité morphologique est plus grande au stade adulte quau stade de la colonisation pour chaque structure squelettique céphalique. Lensemble des paramètres développementaux étudiés ont subi des changements évolutifs. À la colonisation, les formes larvaires sont déjà spécifiques, probablement à cause de différences dans la durée de vie larvaire pélagique des espèces. Laugmentation de la disparité au cours du développement post-colonisation est essentiellement due à la divergence des patrons allométriques. La longueur des trajectoires ontogénétiques et les vitesses de développement apparaissent comme deux facteurs moins variables. Dune manière générale, peu de liens existent entre les données phylogénétiques ou écologiques (régime, durée de vie larvaire,) et les paramètres développementaux. La diversité du genre Dascyllus illustre des cas de gigantisme. Les méthodes de morphométrie géométrique montrent que les petites espèces et les espèces géantes partagent les mêmes trajectoires ontogénétiques pour le neurocrâne et la mandibule. Au sein de ce groupe, lapparition despèces de grande taille au cours de lévolution résulterait de processus hétérochroniques. La morphologie céphalique larvaire suggère une prise de nourriture de type « ram/suction feeding ». Chez toutes les espèces étudiées, les patrons allométriques révèlent une optimisation du système de prise de nourriture par aspiration au cours du développement. Les demoiselles acquièrent au cours de leur croissance des joues et de opercules proportionnellement plus hauts, une crête supraoccipitale plus grande, des mandibules plus courtes et un processus ascendant du prémaxillaire plus long. Chez les espèces herbivores, dautres changements de forme sont liés à lacquisition de capacités de morsure et de découpe. Par exemple, les mandibules et les suspensoria deviennent plus massifs.

Die Studie untersucht den Erwerb der frühen Verbmorphologie im Estnischen. Als Datengrundlage der Arbeit dienen Spontansprachaufnahmen von 10 estnischsprachigen Kindern im Alter zwischen 10 und 32 Monaten.<br /> <br /> Die Studie versucht eine detaillierte Analyse des Erwerbs des estnischsprachigen Verbmorphologie vorzunehmen. Dabei werden die aufeinander folgenden Entwicklungsstadien, ihre ungefähren Altersgrenzen, sowie Erwerbsreihenfolge dargestellt und mit typologisch unterschiedlichen Sprachen verglichen. / The thesis 'The acquisition of early verbal morphology in Estonian' examines the development of the early stages of acquisition of Estonian verbal morphology.<br /> The study based on recordings of the spontaneous speech production of 10 monolingual Estonian children between the age of 10 and 32 months.<br /> More specifically the study focusses on the investigation of aspects of the acquisition of inflectional morphology which can be derived from the language specific morphophonological properties of Estonian and compared with those of typologically different languages like English.

Heterodrilus is a marine group of small (3-25 mm) clitellates that occur interstitially in sandy sediments from the intertidal zone down to about 150 m depths. The taxon includes 42 valid species and has been recorded from localities in the Mediterranean Sea, the North-west Atlantic Ocean (including the Caribbean), the Galapagos Islands, and the Indo-Pacific Region. A majority of the species of Heterodrilus are characterized by having trifid anterior chaetae (i.e., chaetae with three teeth at the distal end). A few species have bifid chaetae, but these are regarded as having lost the third tooth secondarily. Within the taxon, species are distinguished by morphological characters in the internal organization of the male and female genitalia, but also by characters in the form and number of chaetae. In this thesis, two new taxa are introduced, Heterodrilus tripartitus and H. ursulae, both from the Mediterranean Sea. The ultrastructure of the cuticle in four species (H. paucifascis, H. pentcheffi, H. flexuosus, H. minisetosus) is studied and it is shown that there is interspecific variation in the morphology of the cuticle. One of the studied species, H. paucifascis, shows intraspecific variation, which is associated with sample locality. The systematic position of Heterodrilus within Tubificidae is studied with molecular markers, and the results support that Heterodrilus (earlier classified as a member of Rhyacodrilinae) is positioned within Phallodrilinae. Furthermore, the phylogenetic relationships within Heterodrilus are estimated based on molecular characters from mitochondrial COI, the 16S rRNA gene, and the nuclear 18S rRNA gene, and the result indicate that the two major clades in our tree corresponds to different geographical distributions. This thesis also includes a checklist, as well as a key, to the species of Heterodrilus.

Harmony Landfill is a former industrial waste disposal site located adjacent to Harmony Creek in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. During active disposal, from 1957 until 1980, approximately 1 million tonnes of waste were land-filled at the site. Although past environmental monitoring had indicated localized contamination of ground and surface waters, the current level of impact remained unclear. In order to determine the potential of Harmony Landfill leachate to affect aquatic organisms in Harmony Creek, chemical analysis of field samples and laboratory toxicity testing were performed. Chemical analysis was completed on water samples from Harmony Creek and surface leachate samples collected seasonally at Harmony Landfill. Toxicity tests were conducted using the model freshwater invertebrate Green Hydra (Hydra viridissima). Hydra were pulse-exposed for 24 hours to varying concentrations (0%, 3.2%, 10%, 32%, 100%) of monthly field-collected leachate samples diluted with laboratory water. Population growth, Hydra morphology and survival were recorded daily for 7 days. Results showed that creek waters generally had comparable analyte levels upstream and downstream of Harmony Landfill. Leachate samples contained iron, manganese and zinc at levels which may be toxic to aquatic invertebrates. Population growth was significantly inhibited compared to lab water (0%) controls at the 100% leachate concentration in December 2008 and July 2009. Hydra morphology (32% and 100%) and survival (100%) were also affected by the December 2008 leachate. Findings indicate that leaching is occurring at Harmony Landfill and that the leachate sampled and tested during this research program had the potential to negatively affect Green Hydra (Hydra viridissima). / UOIT

The goal of galaxy classification is to understand the physical basis for the wide range in shapes and structures exhibited by galaxies in the local and high redshift universe. We present a catalog of visually classified galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with detailed morphological classifications including bars, rings, lenses, tails, warps, dustlanes, arm flocculence and multiplicity (so called ’fine structure’). This thesis explores the importance of galaxy morphology by probing its relationship to physical properties. Our analysis includes an investigation of correlations between fine structures and AGN activity. This sample defines a comprehensive local galaxy sample which we use to study the low redshift universe both qualitatively and quantitatively. We find the stellar mass appears to be a defining characteristic of a galaxy. The break in most correlations of physical properties with morphology is due to a lack of late type, massive disk galaxies. Our analysis of the size-mass relations of galaxies as a function of morphology (T-Type) has revealed many interesting connections. We find the size-mass relation of Sa, Sab, Sb, and Sbc galaxies bifurcates into two families of objects as one moves down the sequence such that the high concentration branch exhibits a similar slope to low concentration early type (E) galaxies suggesting a closer than expected physical (possibly evolutionary) connection between the two populations. We find bar fraction is bimodal with respect to mass (at 3 x 10^10 M) and color (at g - r ∼ 0.55). The dependence is seen to intimately depend on central concentration such that objects below the transition mass with low concentrations have a higher bar fraction than objects above the transition mass which have high bar fractions for high concentration systems. In addition we find the presence of an AGN alters the behavior and abundance of barred/ringed galaxies in the high mass peak such that the bar/ring fractions increase with mass in nonactive galaxies whereas they decrease with mass in active galaxies. AGN fractions are also decreasing in the same mass range possibly implying a positive correlation between fine structure and ring formation.

This thesis explores the structure of the verb stem in Ojicree, a dialect of Ojibwe. I argue that the surface complexity of the stem structure in this language can be explained if we distinguish between two types of roots: strong roots and weak roots. Strong roots combine with a verbal head to build a full stem. I call these simple stems. Weak roots build a more complex structure. Their combination with a verbal head is not enough to build a complete verb stem and some additional material needs to appear to the left of the root to form a full stem. I refer to these stems as complex stems and to the requirement posed by the weak roots the left edge requirement. In the traditional templatic view of the Algonquian stem weak roots correspond to an element called ‘pre-final’ or the lexical portion of the concrete final. Strong roots fall into the traditional slot ‘initial’. In the first part of the thesis I argue that weak and strong roots build two fundamentally different structures. Complex stems (build from weak roots) are dynamic syntactic constructs, while simple stems (build from strong roots) need to be stored. I bring both syntactic and phonological evidence for this distinction. In the second part of the thesis I explore the nature of the left edge requirement in complex stems, arguing that it is a semantic constraint that has to do with event composition. Weak roots are semantically deficient elements, and the left edge element fills a gap in their semantics and completes event composition. The syntactic composition of the stem reflects event composition. Finally, I extend the idea of the left edge requirement to a certain type of noun incorporation construction. The proposed analysis advances our understanding of the Ojicree morphosyntax by moving away from the traditional templatic view of the stem, situating it within the current syntactic framework of Minimalism and proposing answers to some long standing questions from a new perspective. More broadly, it furthers our understanding of how words are formed in the Algonquian languages and in polysynthetic languages in general.

This study examined the acquisition of Hebrew noun plurals in early immersion and bilingual education by focusing on performance, as well as morpho-syntactic and semantic errors in inflecting nouns. A total of 196 students from Senior Kindergarten (n = 86) and grades 1 (n = 58) and 2 (n = 53) were administered measures of inflectional morphology in Hebrew. Results indicated that children applied high frequency, salient, simple to apply inflectional patterns involving male-female nouns, as well as the basic way of noting plurality. Two major obstacles in the pluralisation of Hebrew nouns were suffix regularity and stem transparency. Error analysis revealed three categories of responses: rule-based, analogy-based and non-strategic errors. The principal conclusion was that errors notwithstanding, young children learning Hebrew as a foreign language are moving toward an understanding of plural formation. The development of morpho-syntactic structures gradually develops over time and with exposure to Hebrew instruction.

This study investigated the effect of palate morphology and anthropometric measures of the head and face on lingual consonant target (positional) variability of twenty one adult speakers (eleven male, ten female). An electromagnetic tracking system (WAVE, NDI, Canada) was used to collect tongue movements while each speaker produced a series of VCV syllables containing a combination of consonants /t, d, s, z, ʃ, tʃ, k, g, j/ and three corner vowel /i, ɑ, u/. Distributions of x, y, and z coordinates representing maximum tongue elevation during the consonants were used to represent target variability across contexts. Palate and anthropometric measures were obtained for each participant. A correlational analysis showed that target variability of the consonants produced in the front of the mouth (e.g. alveolar and palatal) was explained, to a degree, by palate morphology. The variability of velar consonants was not explained by the structural measures.

This study examined the acquisition of Hebrew noun plurals in early immersion and bilingual education by focusing on performance, as well as morpho-syntactic and semantic errors in inflecting nouns. A total of 196 students from Senior Kindergarten (n = 86) and grades 1 (n = 58) and 2 (n = 53) were administered measures of inflectional morphology in Hebrew. Results indicated that children applied high frequency, salient, simple to apply inflectional patterns involving male-female nouns, as well as the basic way of noting plurality. Two major obstacles in the pluralisation of Hebrew nouns were suffix regularity and stem transparency. Error analysis revealed three categories of responses: rule-based, analogy-based and non-strategic errors. The principal conclusion was that errors notwithstanding, young children learning Hebrew as a foreign language are moving toward an understanding of plural formation. The development of morpho-syntactic structures gradually develops over time and with exposure to Hebrew instruction.