The system of stressing pronouns is describing based on accentual characteristic of five morphemes. Three main – accentual might, accentual classification and accent, other – intonation and attraction – are subsidiary accentual characteristics of morphemes. Stressing of pronouns has no sixth – characteristic of vowel gradation. Accentual classification of primary pronouns is based on linguistic and pragmatic factors. There are three main stressing types: stable, unstable and individual. Almost for all primary pronouns, with few exceptions, characteristic weaker stem. Many primary pronouns has distinctive stressing. Primary pronouns are the most frequent. The most frequent pronoun in Lithuanian language is pronoun he. It is used different forms. Derivatives are classified taking into account formants of formation or accentual characteristics of other affixes. Between suffixal pronouns prevail strengthening and weakening stressed suffixes. Suffixal pronouns have suffixes of several types. From the respect of use suffixal pronouns are rare than primary, frequent pronouns are only few. Ending and compound pronouns are only few. It is rather hard to establish their regularity of accentual characteristics. For stressing pronouns it is important their component junction of morphemes. Stressing of pronouns, which grow together, depends on accentual characteristic of primary words. Many of pronouns, which grow together, are used very rare. The components of combinational pronouns... [to full text]

This master’s thesis looks at discourses that use the pronoun ”hen”. The media debate in Sweden over this pronoun in 2012 started in connection with the publishing of a children’s picture book: Kivi och monsterhund, by Jesper Lundqvist and Bettina Jansson. The essay investigates how eight librarians, who take an interest in and work with gender issues, talk about the pronoun hen and about this picture book and other books that have characters which are not named as a sex/gender. The essay takes a discursive perspective on reality and on the construction of knowledge and carries out a discourse analysis of the librarians’ talk in the qualitative interviews that were made for this study. In the analysis of these interviews Yvonne Hirdman’s theory of the gender system takes a central part. The result of the analysis is seven discourses that are central to the librarians talk about books and gender and where the pronoun hen is a focus or a related issue. The essay argues that gender categorization is a dominant discourse in our western society and that certain uses of the pronoun hen, especially the discourse named as the Human-discourse, challenges this domination. The discourses that most librarians used were within the reasoning of the dominant discourse of gender categorization. A conclusion is that the meaning of the pronoun hen is not determined by any one discourse but that there may be a political intervention working towards integrating the pronoun hen into the dominant discourse of gender categorization and thereby neutralising the pronoun.

The comparative method of variationist sociolinguistics has demonstrated that frequency changes are not reliable determinants of whether grammatical change is taking place. Frequency changes can be the result of extra-linguistic register changes, changes within the underlying grammar, or a combination (Szmrecsanyi, 2011; Tagliamonte, 2002). This work examines two variables known to vary along the written-to-spoken continuum — relative clause pronouns, and the genitive construction — across three registers of English and 100 years, with the goal of furthering our understanding of the relationship between spoken and written language. The s-genitive (i.e. Canada's government vs. the government of Canada) is on the rise in the 20th century (Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi, 2007; Rosenbach, 2007). Statistical modeling confirms the press register leads this increase — a register change. Examination of internal linguistic constraints over time indicates simultaneous grammatical change, with the s–genitive increasing with certain inanimate subtypes. The WH-forms (who, which) of the relative pronouns have become increasingly restricted to written registers (e.g. Romaine, 1982; Tottie, 1997), leaving that as the variant used most for subject function in vernacular speech (D'Arcy and Tagliamonte 2010). Although who continues to be used for animates, which is shown to have lost any grammatical conditioning that it once had and to be undergoing lexical replacement by that for non-human subject antecedents. Unlike the genitives, though, examination of internal linguistic factors reveals no evidence of grammatical change. The methodology employed here provides a way to tease apart grammatical change from register change, with register-internal change shown to be a motivating factor in change from above. While the vernacular is ''the most systematic data for our analysis of linguistic structure'' (Labov, 1972a:208), it is not necessarily the most innovative, nor is it always the locus of change. With that in mind, this work provides a model of language change that integrates change across speech and writing.

The comparative method of variationist sociolinguistics has demonstrated that frequency changes are not reliable determinants of whether grammatical change is taking place. Frequency changes can be the result of extra-linguistic register changes, changes within the underlying grammar, or a combination (Szmrecsanyi, 2011; Tagliamonte, 2002). This work examines two variables known to vary along the written-to-spoken continuum — relative clause pronouns, and the genitive construction — across three registers of English and 100 years, with the goal of furthering our understanding of the relationship between spoken and written language. The s-genitive (i.e. Canada's government vs. the government of Canada) is on the rise in the 20th century (Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi, 2007; Rosenbach, 2007). Statistical modeling confirms the press register leads this increase — a register change. Examination of internal linguistic constraints over time indicates simultaneous grammatical change, with the s–genitive increasing with certain inanimate subtypes. The WH-forms (who, which) of the relative pronouns have become increasingly restricted to written registers (e.g. Romaine, 1982; Tottie, 1997), leaving that as the variant used most for subject function in vernacular speech (D'Arcy and Tagliamonte 2010). Although who continues to be used for animates, which is shown to have lost any grammatical conditioning that it once had and to be undergoing lexical replacement by that for non-human subject antecedents. Unlike the genitives, though, examination of internal linguistic factors reveals no evidence of grammatical change. The methodology employed here provides a way to tease apart grammatical change from register change, with register-internal change shown to be a motivating factor in change from above. While the vernacular is ''the most systematic data for our analysis of linguistic structure'' (Labov, 1972a:208), it is not necessarily the most innovative, nor is it always the locus of change. With that in mind, this work provides a model of language change that integrates change across speech and writing.

The aim of this dissertation was to examine how Japanese learners of English in the United States developed their interpretation of antecedents of reflexive pronouns and their understanding of the direction of verb gapping in English over time. The two properties in question operate differently in English and Japanese, and neither property is normally taught. Therefore, the acquisition of these properties of English by Japanese learners sheds light on the role of Universal Grammar (UG) in second language acquisition (SLA).Fourteen Japanese learners answered three questionnaires, each containing a test assessing reflexives (the Binding Test) and a test assessing verb gapping (the Gapping Test) at three different times, approximately 12 weeks apart from each other. In addition, three groups of 20 native speakers of English provided their results on the same questionnaires.The overall performance of the learners on the Binding Test started out significantly inferior to that of native speakers, and it did not reach the level of native speakers in later sessions. In contrast, the overall performance of the learners on the Gapping Test started out as good as that of native speakers, and it maintained the same level relative to the native performance in later sessions. Furthermore, the overall performance of the learners in later sessions was not significantly better than that in earlier sessions. These findings seem to suggest that increased time spent in an English-speaking environment did not have any effects on the learners' acquisition of the two properties. However, when performance by subset was considered, significant improvement was observed.Examination of individual patterns of responses revealed that the learners showed the patterns consistent to English, Japanese, and even other languages and that some of the learners who previously showed a pattern other than the English pattern successfully demonstrated the English pattern in later sessions. These findings constitute evidence for the view that parameter-resetting is possible in SLA.The dissertation also includes discussion of the test instrument and explanation of the data in the light of recent theoretical predictions. The concluding chapter offers pedagogical implications as well as suggestions for future UG-based SLA research. / Department of English

This thesis addresses the technical and linguistic aspects of discourse-level processing in phrase-based statistical machine translation (SMT). Connected texts can have complex text-level linguistic dependencies across sentences that must be preserved in translation. However, the models and algorithms of SMT are pervaded by locality assumptions. In a standard SMT setup, no model has more complex dependencies than an n-gram model. The popular stack decoding algorithm exploits this fact to implement efficient search with a dynamic programming technique. This is a serious technical obstacle to discourse-level modelling in SMT. From a technical viewpoint, the main contribution of our work is the development of a document-level decoder based on stochastic local search that translates a complete document as a single unit. The decoder starts with an initial translation of the document, created randomly or by running a stack decoder, and refines it with a sequence of elementary operations. After each step, the current translation is scored by a set of feature models with access to the full document context and its translation. We demonstrate the viability of this decoding approach for different document-level models. From a linguistic viewpoint, we focus on the problem of translating pronominal anaphora. After investigating the properties and challenges of the pronoun translation task both theoretically and by studying corpus data, a neural network model for cross-lingual pronoun prediction is presented. This network jointly performs anaphora resolution and pronoun prediction and is trained on bilingual corpus data only, with no need for manual coreference annotations. The network is then integrated as a feature model in the document-level SMT decoder and tested in an English–French SMT system. We show that the pronoun prediction network model more adequately represents discourse-level dependencies for less frequent pronouns than a simpler maximum entropy baseline with separate coreference resolution. By creating a framework for experimenting with discourse-level features in SMT, this work contributes to a long-term perspective that strives for more thorough modelling of complex linguistic phenomena in translation. Our results on pronoun translation shed new light on a challenging, but essential problem in machine translation that is as yet unsolved.

The aim of this study is to analyse the variation between infinitive and finite verb adverbial clauses in European Portuguese. In order to understand this variation, three central questions are raised: (1) What determines the use of the uninflected vs. the inflected infinitive in same-subject adverbial clauses? (2) What does the pronoun SE signal in these adverbial clauses? (3) What difference is there between the use of the inflected infinitives vs. finite verbs in different subject adverbial clauses? Earlier investigations about these three questions are discussed. One conclusion of this review is that former research almost exclusively has been conducted from a traditional or formalistic point of view that has given priority to structural descriptions instead of semantic or conceptual explanations. In contrast to this, the present study endeavours to examine these issues from a cognitive linguistic perspective. It is claimed that the use of the inflected infinitive in adverbial same-subject clauses may be explained by contextual factors which create a cognitive need to highlight the subject of the adverbial clause. Further, an analysis about how the grammatical micro-context can determine the interpretation of the clitic pronoun SE as a marker for a generic trajector is conducted. It is also argued that the difference between infinitive and finite adverbial clauses can bee explained by means of theories of subjectification and mental spaces. The conclusion is drawn that a cognitive approach to grammar can, indeed, shed light on the issues considered. In particular, it is shown that different adverbial constructions can express different conceptual meaning. In the light of this fact, other issues concerned with finite and infinite verb forms are raised.

Esta dissertação apresenta um estudo acerca da ordem pronominal do português brasileiro (PB) atual. O objetivo da pesquisa é investigar as razões para a mudança de ênclise para próclise, atestada em meados do século XIX, e o uso do pronome tônico em função de objeto direto, observado no PB atual, que, pela nossa hipótese, é a estratégia empregada na tentativa de se recuperar a ordem SVO, perdida quando, em meados do século XIX, a próclise se tornou categórica. Fizemos um levantamento bibliográfico a respeito da ordem pronominal em momentos anteriores da língua a fim de entender o momento atual pelo qual o PB está passando. A reunião de todos esses trabalhos nos possibilitou explicar, via Teoria da Otimidade (OT), (i) as causas que levaram o português antigo (PA) a admitir, primeiramente, a ênclise; (ii) a mudança da ênclise para a próclise em uma fase posterior ao PA; e (iii) a coexistência de próclise e pronome tônico, no caso dos pronomes eu, tu, nós, me, te, nos, e a prevalência do pronome tônico, nos casos de você(s), ele(a/s) e a gente no PB atual. A OT nos forneceu embasamento para investigar as restrições que atuaram no PA e que estão atuando no PB atual, a hierarquia das restrições e a mudança nessa hierarquia, que foi essencial na explicação das alterações no quadro pronominal que nos propusemos a estudar. Averiguamos que as restrições presentes na gramática do PA – e em fase posterior, quando ocorre a mudança da ordem pronominal – não dão conta de explicar o que vem acontecendo com o PB na atualidade. Por isso, acreditamos, uma nova restrição – *PRONOPOD – desempenha hoje papel fundamental na colocação pronominal do PB. Empregando essa nova restrição às análises, chegamos à hierarquia de restrições do PB atual e constatamos que, no que tange aos pronomes de fato, quando o foco recai sobre o objeto, há uma oscilação de duas gramáticas ainda flutuantes. Também concluímos que a implementação do pronome pleno como objeto tenha se dado, primeiramente, com o pronome ele e, posteriormente, se espalhado pelo quadro pronominal. / This dissertation presents a study on pronoun placement of actual Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Its aim is investigate the reasons for the changing from enclisis to proclisis, occurred in mid-nineteenth century, and the use of the lexical pronoun in object position, observed in the actual BP, which, by our analysis, is the strategy used in the attempt to recover the SVO order, lost when proclisis became categorical. We did a bibliographic survey about the pronoun placement in previous moments of language in order to understand the current moment the BP is passing by. The joining of all these studies allowed us to explain, via Optimality Theory (OT), (i) the causes that led the former Portuguese (FP) to admit firstly enclisis, (ii) the change from enclisis to proclisis in FP at a later stage, and (iii) the coexistence of proclisis and lexical pronoun, in the case of the pronouns eu, tu, nós, me, te, nos, and the prevalence of lexical pronoun, in the cases of você(s), ele(a/s) and a gente in the current BP. OT provided the basis for investigating the constraints that acted in FP and that are acting in the PB, the hierarchy of restrictions and the changing in this hierarchy, which was essential in explaining the changes in the pronominal framework that we proposed to study here. We noticed that the restrictions present in the FP – and at a later stage, when the change of pronoun order occurs – did not explain what is happening to the PB today. Therefore, we believe, a new constraint – *PRONOPOD – plays today a key role in pronoun placement in BP. Using this new restriction in the analysis, we come to the hierarchy of constraints of the current BP and we found that, with respect to real pronouns, when the focus is on the object, there is an oscillation between two floating grammars. We also concluded that the implementation of the lexical pronoun as the object has been given, first, with the pronoun ele, and later spread to the other pronouns.

Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2017-03-29T13:09:38Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1881713 bytes, checksum: a9b89058147d2b2baedc5e63b41e978a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-29T13:09:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1881713 bytes, checksum: a9b89058147d2b2baedc5e63b41e978a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This dissertation, in the context of Experimental Psycholinguistics, aims to investigate the influence of cohesion and coherence in the co-referential processing of repeated nouns and pronouns in brazilian portuguese, increasing the comprehension about the co-referential processing. Through the application of two experiments, using the online technique of automonitored reading, we manipulated a cohesion element (more precisely the presence or absence of connectives) as well as the coherence of the experimental sentences to investigate the anaphoric solution behavior in the face of different experimental conditions raised by such manipulations. The pronominal processing, observed in experiment 1, was not affected by incongruity issues or by the presence of connectives. Sentences of experiment 2 had significant differences in the time of reading, from the reading of anaphoric resumption with repeated noun. We observed that the processing of incongruent linguistic elements and anaphoric resumption with repeated nouns is more costly to the work memory when compared with the processing of incongruities and pronominal anaphora. Furthermore, through the acquisition and analysis of the reading times of the subjects who participate in the experiments, we could observe the psychological reality of certain postulates of Textual Linguistics, contributing to the approximation between two important areas of study about the human language. / Esta dissertação, no âmbito da Psicolinguística Experimental, tem como objetivo investigar a influência da coesão e da coerência no processamento correferencial de pronomes e nomes repetidos em português brasileiro, ampliando a compreensão sobre o processamento correferencial. Através da aplicação de dois experimentos, utilizando a técnica online de leitura automonitorada, manipulamos um elemento de coesão (mais precisamente a presença ou ausência de conectivos) assim como a coerência das sentenças experimentais para investigar o comportamento da solução anafórica diante das diferentes condições experimentais suscitadas por tais manipulações. O processamento pronominal, observado no experimento 1, não foi afetado por questões de incongruência ou pela presença de conectivos. Sentenças do experimento 2 tiveram diferenças significativas no tempo de leitura, a partir da leitura da retomada anafórica com nome repetido. Observamos que o processamento de elementos linguísticos incongruentes e retomada anafórica com nomes repetidos é mais custoso para a memória de trabalho quando comparados ao processamento de incongruências e anáfora pronominal. Além disso, através da obtenção e análise dos tempos de leitura dos sujeitos participantes dos experimentos, pudemos observar a realidade psicológica de certos postulados da Linguística Textual, contribuindo para a aproximação entre duas áreas importantes de estudo a respeito da linguagem humana.

Esta dissertação apresenta um estudo acerca da ordem pronominal do português brasileiro (PB) atual. O objetivo da pesquisa é investigar as razões para a mudança de ênclise para próclise, atestada em meados do século XIX, e o uso do pronome tônico em função de objeto direto, observado no PB atual, que, pela nossa hipótese, é a estratégia empregada na tentativa de se recuperar a ordem SVO, perdida quando, em meados do século XIX, a próclise se tornou categórica. Fizemos um levantamento bibliográfico a respeito da ordem pronominal em momentos anteriores da língua a fim de entender o momento atual pelo qual o PB está passando. A reunião de todos esses trabalhos nos possibilitou explicar, via Teoria da Otimidade (OT), (i) as causas que levaram o português antigo (PA) a admitir, primeiramente, a ênclise; (ii) a mudança da ênclise para a próclise em uma fase posterior ao PA; e (iii) a coexistência de próclise e pronome tônico, no caso dos pronomes eu, tu, nós, me, te, nos, e a prevalência do pronome tônico, nos casos de você(s), ele(a/s) e a gente no PB atual. A OT nos forneceu embasamento para investigar as restrições que atuaram no PA e que estão atuando no PB atual, a hierarquia das restrições e a mudança nessa hierarquia, que foi essencial na explicação das alterações no quadro pronominal que nos propusemos a estudar. Averiguamos que as restrições presentes na gramática do PA – e em fase posterior, quando ocorre a mudança da ordem pronominal – não dão conta de explicar o que vem acontecendo com o PB na atualidade. Por isso, acreditamos, uma nova restrição – *PRONOPOD – desempenha hoje papel fundamental na colocação pronominal do PB. Empregando essa nova restrição às análises, chegamos à hierarquia de restrições do PB atual e constatamos que, no que tange aos pronomes de fato, quando o foco recai sobre o objeto, há uma oscilação de duas gramáticas ainda flutuantes. Também concluímos que a implementação do pronome pleno como objeto tenha se dado, primeiramente, com o pronome ele e, posteriormente, se espalhado pelo quadro pronominal. / This dissertation presents a study on pronoun placement of actual Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Its aim is investigate the reasons for the changing from enclisis to proclisis, occurred in mid-nineteenth century, and the use of the lexical pronoun in object position, observed in the actual BP, which, by our analysis, is the strategy used in the attempt to recover the SVO order, lost when proclisis became categorical. We did a bibliographic survey about the pronoun placement in previous moments of language in order to understand the current moment the BP is passing by. The joining of all these studies allowed us to explain, via Optimality Theory (OT), (i) the causes that led the former Portuguese (FP) to admit firstly enclisis, (ii) the change from enclisis to proclisis in FP at a later stage, and (iii) the coexistence of proclisis and lexical pronoun, in the case of the pronouns eu, tu, nós, me, te, nos, and the prevalence of lexical pronoun, in the cases of você(s), ele(a/s) and a gente in the current BP. OT provided the basis for investigating the constraints that acted in FP and that are acting in the PB, the hierarchy of restrictions and the changing in this hierarchy, which was essential in explaining the changes in the pronominal framework that we proposed to study here. We noticed that the restrictions present in the FP – and at a later stage, when the change of pronoun order occurs – did not explain what is happening to the PB today. Therefore, we believe, a new constraint – *PRONOPOD – plays today a key role in pronoun placement in BP. Using this new restriction in the analysis, we come to the hierarchy of constraints of the current BP and we found that, with respect to real pronouns, when the focus is on the object, there is an oscillation between two floating grammars. We also concluded that the implementation of the lexical pronoun as the object has been given, first, with the pronoun ele, and later spread to the other pronouns.