Cette thèse aborde l'étude de la structuration sémantique de la classe des noms abstraits, appréhendée sous l'angle de l'analysede leurs variations sémantiques régulières. La problématique qui sous-tend cette recherche est la suivante : de quelle façon les mécanismes de variation sémantique régulière permettent-ils d'appréhender la structure du lexique et en particulier celle des noms abstraits ? Cette problématique est abordée par l'étude de cas d'un sous-ensemble de noms abstraits : les noms d'affect. L'analyse des variations interprétatives régulières de ces noms se fonde sur une vaste étude de corpus. Le premier objectif est descriptif : nous mettrons en évidence les contraintes morpho-syntaxiques et sémantiques qui pèsent sur ces variations interprétatives et de nous déterminerons leur statut lexical. Le second objectif est explicatif : nous montrerons qu'il est possible de mettre en évidence des éléments sémantiques propres à expliquer la possibilité ou l'impossibilité de véhiculer une ou plusieurs variations interprétatives. Le dernier objectif est théorique : nous proposerons une réflexion sur la notion de polysémie régulière. Nous montrerons qu'il existe différents mécanismes de variation sémantique régulière qui ne peuvent pas recevoir un traitementidentique. / In this dissertation we study the semantic structure of the category of abstract nouns through the analysis of their regular semantic variations. The research questions underpinning this study are the following: how do the mechanisms of regular semantic variation allow us to apprehend the structure of the lexicon and of the abstract nouns in particular? We tackle these issues through the analysis of a subset of abstract nouns: the affect nouns. The observation of the regular interpretative variations of these nouns is based on a vast corpus study. The primary goal is descriptive: we will underline the morpho-syntactic and semantic constraints which weigh on these interpretative variations and determine their lexical status. The second goal is explanatory: we will show that it is possible to highlight certain semantic elements suitable to explain the possibility or impossibility of conveying one or more interpretative variations. The last goal is theoretical: we will discuss the concept of regular polysemy. We will show that there are various mechanisms of regular semantic variation at work which cannot receive an identical processing.

Orientador: Gladis Massini-Cagliari / Banca: Flaviane Romani Fernandes Svartman / Banca: Beatriz Nunes de Oliveira Longo / Resumo: O objetivo desta pesquisa é fazer uma ponte entre o passado e o presente, comparando processos morfofonológicos desencadeados pela derivação, ou seja, processos que alteram a forma dos morfemas. Este trabalho surge da necessidade de se levar em conta para a descrição de determinados contextos não apenas sons, mas fatos de natureza gramatical, principalmente morfológica, por isso dizemos que "quando uma forma básica lexical serve de motivação para uma regra fonológica, acontece um processo morfofonológico" (Cagliari, 2002, p.82). Realizamos este estudo entre duas sincronias da língua portuguesa: o Português Arcaico (PA), dos séculos XII-XIII, e o Português Brasileiro (PB), dos séculos XX-XXI. Nesses dois períodos da língua portuguesa, observamos os processos morfofonológicos desencadeados por dois sufixos derivacionais específicos, formadores de nomes deverbais em PA e em PB, isto é, nomes formados a partir de bases verbais: -çon e -mento, para o PA, e -ção e -mento, para o PB. Para a coleta dos dados no PA, escolhemos como corpus as Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM), que são uma das fontes mais ricas dessa época e, além disso, de acordo com Mattos e Silva (2006, p.37), os textos líricos são os melhores para o estudo da fonética segmental e prosódica da língua e seus dados, essenciais para o conhecimento do léxico dessa época. Já para a observação do PB, contamos com um recorte do banco de dados do Laboratório de Lexicografia da UNESP (LabLEX) que contém um corpus que possui cerca de 220 milhões de ocorrências do português do Brasil, colhidas em diversas fontes, desde as literárias até as jornalísticas. A partir das palavras provenientes desses corpora, procedemos as analises dos processos morfofonológicos que são condicionados pela formação de nomes deverbais com os sufixos selecionados, utilizando o aparato teórico das teorias ...(Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This research is aimed at relating past and present, comparing morphophonological processes triggered by derivation, i.e., processes that change the shape of morphemes. This work considers that it is necessary to describe not only sounds but grammatical facts in some contexts, especially in the case of morphological facts; "when a lexical basis is a motivation for a phonological rule, a morphophonological process occurs" (Cagliari, 2002, p.82). We conducted this study comparing two periods of the Portuguese language: Archaic Portuguese (AP), 12th-13th centuries, and Brazilian Portuguese (BP), 20th-21st centuries. In these two periods of the Portuguese language, we observed morphophonological processes triggered by two specific derivational suffixes which create deverbal nouns in AP and BP, that is, nouns formed from verbal basis: -çon and -mento, for AP, and -ção e -mento for BP. The corpus for AP is composed by the Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM), which can be considered one of the richest linguistic sources of that time and, moreover, according to Mattos e Silva (2006, p.37), poetical texts are the best ones to study segmental and prosodic phonetics of past languages and the data they provide are essential to the knowledge of the lexicon of that period. As for the observation of PB, we considered some of the data form from the database of the Laboratorio de Lexicografia [Laboratory of Lexicography] at UNESP (LabLEX), which contains a corpus with about 220 million occurrences of Brazilian Portuguese texts, collected from several sources, from literary to journalistic ones. From the words of these corpora, we analyzed morphophonological processes that are conditioned by the formation of deverbal nouns with the specific suffixes which are focused in this Dissertation, using the theoretical apparatus of nonlinear phonological theories, especially Feature Geometry Theory and Lexical ...(Complete abstract click electronic address below) / Mestre

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-03-29T11:33:16Z No. of bitstreams: 1 sabrinaanacletoteixeira.pdf: 903908 bytes, checksum: 8a5b0ca66d22526e087950117bd1db22 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-04-24T02:45:42Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 sabrinaanacletoteixeira.pdf: 903908 bytes, checksum: 8a5b0ca66d22526e087950117bd1db22 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-24T02:45:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 sabrinaanacletoteixeira.pdf: 903908 bytes, checksum: 8a5b0ca66d22526e087950117bd1db22 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-26 / Este estudo investiga o processo de categorização de palavras pertencentes às categorias lexicais N(ome) e V(erbo). Nosso objetivo é verificar se crianças em estágio inicial de aquisição do PB são sensíveis às categorias funcionais de determinantes e pronomes e se elas podem usar esses itens funcionais para categorizar palavras novas como nomes ou verbos. A perspectiva teórica adotada visa a conciliar um modelo de processamento voltado para a aquisição da linguagem – Bootstrapping Fonológico (MORGAN; DEMUTH, 1996; CHRISTOPHE et al., 1997) – e uma teoria linguística que considera uma interface entre o sistema linguístico e outros sistemas – sistemas sensório-motor e conceptual-intencional (CHOMSKY, 1995, 1999; HAUSER; CHOMSKY; FITCH, 2002). Tal conciliação permite-nos explicar como as crianças extraem a estrutura sintática subjacente à sua língua do continuum da fala, a partir das pistas distribucionais e prosódicas. Trabalhos anteriores com bebês alemães (HÖHLE et al., 2004) e canadenses de língua francesa (SHI; MELANÇON, 2010) obtiveram resultados que indicam que bebês de 14 meses usam os determinantes para categorizar palavras novas como nomes. Nossa hipótese é que bebês aos 13 meses identificam os determinantes e os pronomes como grupos distintos dentro da categoria dos itens funcionais e que esses itens podem guiar o processo de categorização de nomes e verbos. Os resultados de um experimento usando a técnica de Olhar Preferencial apontam para o uso dos determinantes e dos pronomes para a categorização de palavras novas como nomes e verbos, respectivamente, no PB por bebês brasileiros de 13 meses. / This study investigates the categorization process of words that belong to lexical categories N(oun) or V(erb). Our goal is to verify if children in the early stages of the acquisition of BP are sensitive to function categories such as determiners and pronouns and if they can use these function items to categorize novel words as nouns or verbs. The theoretical approach adopted aims at conciliating a processing model of language acquisition – Phonological Bootstrapping (MORGAN and DEMUTH, 1996; CHRISTOPHE et al., 1997) with a linguistic theory that considers an interface between linguistic system and other systems – sensory-motor and conceptual-intentional systems (CHOMSKY, 1995, 1999; HAUSER; CHOMSKY and FITCH, 2002). This conciliation allows us to explain how children extract the syntactic structure of their language from the speech through distributional and prosodic cues. Previous studies with German (HÖHLE et al., 2004) and French Canadian (SHI and MELANÇON, 2010) infants indicate that fourteen-month-old infants use determiners to categorize novel words as nouns. Our hypothesis is that thirteen-month-old infants identify determiners and pronouns as belonging to distinct groups within function categories and that these items can guide the categorization process of nouns and verbs. Results of an experiment using the Preferential Looking Paradigm suggest the use of determiners and pronouns to categorize novel words either as nouns or verbs in BP by thirteen-month-old Brazilian infants.

With the advent of corpora documenting learner English, a new and interesting field of research has become available. Learner corpora provide a new type of data which can inform thinking both in second language acquisition research and in foreign language teaching research. Analyses of learner corpora normally report on features which are typically ‘overused’ and ‘underused’, when contrasted to comparable native speaker corpora, in addition to those which are ‘misused’ by the learners. Ringbom (1998) conducted a study in which he identified one common aspect of non-native speaker corpora: the high frequency of general nouns, such as people and thing. The aim of this paper was to test Ringbom’s findings and attempt to identify how English as a second language learners’ usage of these particular nouns in written production differ from that of native speakers by conducting a corpus comparison of comparable learner and native speaker corpora. The results of this study clearly support Ringbom’s findings; additionally, it was found that the learners’ written production does not appear vaguer and ‘non-native like’ merely because they overuse the general nouns people and thing, but it also seems as if the learners use these nouns in a more restricted range of meanings whereas the natives’ usage is more diversified. Moreover, this study has identified some of the issues that teachers of English as a second language should be aware of when helping their students to avoid using the general nouns people and thing in a non-native like manner.

The present thesis examines the influence of Czech nouns frequency features on their acquisition by non-native speakers. The first theoretical part summarizes the ongoing discussion regarding the importance of frequency for the entrenchment of grammatical categories in one's mind as outlined by cognitive and psycho-linguists abroad. The second introduces the research methodology, collection method and annotation of 20 lemmas obtained from non-native Czech speaker corpus CzeSL-SGT. Subsequently, an analysis of selected nouns is carried out with regard to their grammatical profiles (comprising two or three most frequent case forms as found in SYN2015). Based on its results, the production of non-native speakers shows a tendency to follow grammatical profiles as demonstrated by high correspondence of frequency features of nouns on the one hand and by low error rate in morphology of most frequent forms on the other. Additionally, cases where lower rate does not correspond to the above mentioned model can be explained using type frequency, i.e. the productivity of particular declension models having simultaneously more far-reaching effect, and higher relevance of nominative as the default form for non-native speakers.

The history of translation has been built on the notions that the translator either leaves the writer alone and moves towards the reader (domesticating the text), or leaves the reader alone and moves towards the writer (foreignising the text). These strategies have been called many names, but the translator has always been faced with the choice between domesticating or foreignising the target text. This study considers the options available to a translator when translating the proper nouns and neologisms in a fantasy novel. The translator should not move towards and stand next to the reader to create a target text that is unrecognisable compared to the source text. At the same time, the translator cannot remain next to the writer and thus not change the proper nouns and neologisms to ensure that the target-text readers can understand all – or most of – the potential meanings. If the translator does not move closer to the readers, they cannot have the same experience as source-text readers. This study looks at the translation theories, strategies and procedures that can be applied when translating proper nouns and neologisms used in Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods. It is limited to the study of the neologisms that act as proper nouns, and does not look at other neologisms in the novel. The study identifies translation procedures that retain the meaning potential of the proper nouns and neologisms in the source text in the process of translating them into an Afrikaans target text. It compares the procedures that may have been used by the Dutch translator, by Venugopalan Ittekot, of the novel, Kleingoderij, into Dutch with the procedures that are identified to be used by a translator of the text into Afrikaans. This study identifies the procedures most appropriate to a possible translation of proper nouns and neologisms in Small Gods to Afrikaans in order to retain the meaning potential. The translation procedures that has been identified are addition, cultural adaptation, internationalisation, literal translation, neutralisation, substitution, transference, transliteration and transposition. These procedures can be used to attain equivalence at word level and in such a way that the meaning-potential is retained. / Dissertation (MA) University of Pretoria, 2016. / African Languages / MA / Unrestricted

[pt] Este trabalho se debruça sobre o estatuto de termos metalinguísticos, com especial interesse sobre os nomes próprios. Assim como percebida pelo senso comum, esta classe de palavras se presta com especial docilidade a reforçar uma visão representacionista da linguagem: aqui o nome, ali o nomeado. A recorrente constatação contemporânea da falência dessa visada representacionista convida a reflexões alternativas sobre o vocabulário metalinguístico e sobre os nomes próprios em especial — pois as tentativas de lançar um novo olhar sobre a compreensão da significação linguística esbarram na persistência de um vocabulário que traz consigo marcas da longa hegemonia daquela compreensão de linguagem. A reflexão aqui proposta é desenvolvida a partir dos escritos de Ludwig Wittgenstein e de Samuel Beckett, concentrando-se especialmente nos textos daquele que ficou conhecido como o segundo Wittgenstein e em quatro romances de Beckett — Watt, Molloy, Malone Morre e O inominável. A escolha de tais autores e textos é sensível, por um lado, à fertilidade contemporânea das aproximações entre filosofia e literatura e, por outro, à especial atenção dedicada pelos dois à questão dos nomes próprios. Examina-se um conjunto de passagens relevantes na escrita madura de Wittgenstein, de modo sensível ao que ele diz em Cultura e valor (p. 24): a filosofia realmente deveria ser escrita apenas como uma composição poética. Nos romances de Beckett, por sua vez, focalizam-se tanto as suas singulares provocações onomásticas, quanto momentos metalingüísticosem que personagens endereçam de forma explícita a questão dos nomes próprios. Mostra-se que, tomadas como contra-signos, as escritas desses dois autores, dando a ver a um só tempo a errância dos nomes próprios e o seu paradoxal conservadorismo, acenam com a promessa de caminhos por onde diminuir o abismo que parece ainda separar compreensões intelectuais da linguagem como práxis desprovida de fundamentos e a sua efetiva vivência como tal. / [en] This work focuses on the statute of metalinguistic terms, with special interest in proper names. As perceived by common sense, this class of words is particularly useful to reinforce a representationistic view of language: here the name, there the named. The contemporary and recurring evidence of failure of this representationistic view invites to alternative reflections on the metalinguistic vocabulary and especially on proper names because the attempts to bring a new insight on the understanding of linguistic significance collide with the persistence of a vocabulary marked by a long hegemony of that language comprehension. The argument proposed here is developed from the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Samuel Beckett, especially focusing on the texts of the second Wittengstein and in four Beckett’s novels: Watt, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. The choice of these authors and texts has to do with the contemporary richness of approaches between philosophy and literature and also with the special attention both authors dedicated to the question of proper names. It examines a set of relevant texts of Wittgenstein’s mature writings and agrees with his words in Culture and Value (1989, p. 24): philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry. On the other hand, from Beckett’s novels this work focuses both the unique onomastic challenges and metalinguistic moments in which characters explicitly deal with the issue of proper names. It is demonstrated that the writings of these two authors, taken as countersigns showing at the same time the wandering of proper names and their paradoxical conservativeness, beckon with the promise of ways to reduce the gap that still seems to separate intellectual understandings of language as a praxis without basis and its effective experience as such.

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In this paper we refuse the generalized idea within linguists working on Spanish word formation that compounds with a verbal element in Spanish language are nouns. Based on different criteria (morphological, syntactic and semantic) and attending the evolution of Spanish language, we like to show in contrast that these formations are adjectives.

<p>The category of grammatical gender has gained considerable attention in the linguistic literature. Previous studies focused primarily on describing the often very complex system of genders in particular languages, on the understanding of the category <em>per se</em> (e.g. the origin of gender differentiation) or the acquisition of grammatical gender and the processing of this category in language production.</p> <p>In contrast, the present dissertation looks at grammatical gender from a cognitive point of view. For the sake of this dissertation, <em>cognitive perspective</em> is defined as the assumption that human language cannot be separated from the way human beings perceive the world since language and thought are inextricably related. This approach also implies that research cannot be limited to theoretical explorations, but rather, that it must employ experimental methods and use research tools traditionally associated with other disciplines to collect data about authentic language use. All studies included in this thesis concentrate on the topic of grammatical gender, but they approach the category from a variety of perspectives.</p> <p>It was found that the grammatical gender, at least to some degree, shapes the worldview of speakers of those languages in which the category operates, since the gender of the personification of concepts usually agrees with the grammatical gender of the respective nouns. In the context of translation, grammatical gender proved to be much more challenging than had been expected; there were many mistakes found in the translation product and many hesitations observed in the translation process.</p> <p>The findings of the studies included in this thesis add to the general understanding of the complexities of the category of grammatical gender and its relationship to the way language users perceive the world. What is more, the investigations and proposals presented here emphasize the need for a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of grammatical gender.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)