No description available.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Mary T. Copple / The formation of English past tense by EFL (or ESL) learners has been the object of much second language acquisition research. This study investigates the production and marking of English past tense verbs by 55 adult Afghan EFL learners who use Pashto or Dari as their first language. The participants were first required to produce the past tense while responding to a questionnaire about their daily activities, and then completed a correction task in which sentences with verb errors appeared. The collected data was analyzed based on verb regularity (Pinker & Ullman 2002, Jaeger et al. 1996, Hoeffner 2000, Housen 2000) and the sequential inflection of events or non-events based on inherent lexical aspect (Vendler 1967, Salaberry 2000, Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds1995, Tickoo 2001, 2005). Results show that the participants were more accurate in marking and producing regular verbs than irregular verbs for the past tense in both experimental tasks. When examining the role of regularity of the verb in the sequential marking of lexical aspect, it was discovered that past tense production of irregular verbs was influenced by the lexical aspectual verb type as non-events exhibited lower accuracy rates for past tense inflection.

Limited research is available about how lexical and phonological verb properties interact with past tense production by children. Frequency of the inflected form and phonotactic probability might serve as input-driven alternatives to previously-studied factors such as lexical aspect and coda composition. Archival elicited production data from 4-9 year old children with typical language (N = 24) and specific language impairment (N=14) using 108 two-clause complex sentences/85 different verbs were analyzed for past tense use, coda composition, telicity, phonotactic probability (Vitevitch & Luce, 2004), and lexical frequency (CHILDES; MacWhinney, 2000). Several regression models were considered, including one with only categorical factors (e.g. obstruent/continuant ending), one with only continuous factors (e.g. average biphone probability), one with only phonological factors, one with only lexical factors, and several mixed models. Diagnostic status and verb regularity accounted for the majority of the variance. The combination of lexical frequency of the inflected form with residuals of stem lexical frequency was the best lexical model. Place and manner information for the final consonant of the stem comprised the best phonological model. These two models combined into a final overall predictive model.

Orientador: Gladis Massini-Cagliari / Banca: Luiz Carlos da Silva Schwindt / Banca: Beatriz Nunes de Oliveira Longo / Resumo: Este estudo tem como objetivo principal fazer um vínculo entre o passado e o presente, comparando processos morfofonológicos desencadeados pela flexão verbal através das formas do pretérito perfeito do modo indicativo, ou seja, processos que alteram a forma dos morfemas e geram alomorfias em vários níveis no Português Arcaico (PA) dos séculos XII-XIII analisados a partir de teorias não lineares (cf. Fonologia Lexical, Fonologia métrica e Geometria de Traços). Para a realização desta pesquisa foram considerados como objeto as formas verbais do pretérito perfeito do modo indicativo, tanto dos verbos regulares quanto dos verbos irregulares. A metodologia foi baseada no mapeamento das formas verbais nas Cantigas de Santa Maria. Contamos também com glossários, vocabulários, dicionários, e especialmente o glossário de Mettmann (1972), como auxílio na categorização das formas verbais. Depois de coletados, os dados foram separados de acordo com o tipo de processo morfofonológico verificado. O corpus de base, para o PA, foi constituído pelas Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM), elaboradas em galego-português e atribuídas a Dom Afonso X de Castela, o Sábio, com a colaboração de trovadores, músicos, desenhistas e miniaturistas que acolhia em sua corte. Correspondem a um monumento literário de mais elaborada importância, que ocupa um lugar privilegiado na literatura medieval galego-portuguesa. Ao final da análise dos processos morfofonológicos, nos resultados obtidos, verificamos a alta produtividade da harmonização vocálica e da neutralização e crase da vogal temática em um estágio inicial da língua que denominamos de período arcaico. Podemos comprovar que os processos morfofonológicos, sobretudo a harmonia vocálica, já ocorriam desde o estágio inicial do português com as mesmas características e produtividade dos dias de hoje, uma vez que, na passagem do latim... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This study aims to make a link between past and present, comparing morphophonological processes triggered by verbal inflection through the forms of the past tense of the indicative, that is, processes that alter the shape of morphemes and generate allomorphs at various levels in the Archaic Portuguese (AP) of XII-XIII centuries were investigated by Lexical Phonology (LP) and Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. The past tense verb forms of the indicative mood both of regular and irregular verbs were considered as an object for this research. The methodology was based on the mapping of verb forms in the Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM). We have also used glossaries, vocabularies, dictionaries, and especially the glossary of Mettmann (1972) as an aid in the categorization of verbal forms. Once collected, the data was separated according to the type of morphophonogical process checked. The corpus was formed by the Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM), written in Galician-Portuguese and attributed to Don Alfonso X of Castile, the Wise, in collaboration with the troubadours, musicians, designers and miniaturists who lived in his court. The CSM correspond to the most elaborate literary monument, which occupies a privileged place in the medieval Galician-Portuguese literature. After the analysis of the morphophonological processes, in the results obtained, we verified the high productivity of vowel harmony and vowel neutralization and at an early stage of the language that corresponds to the archaic period. We could prove that the morphophonological processes, especially vowel harmony, have occurred since the initial stage of the Portuguese with the same characteristics and productivity of today, since in the passage from Latin to Portuguese, the verb conjugations were already well defined. In addition to the morphophonological processes, we also mapped the irregular verbs that we called... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

No description available.

Purpose: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) lag behind children with typical language (TL) in their grammatical development, despite equivalent early exposure to recasts in conversation (M. E. Fey, T. E. Krulik, D. F. Loeb, & K. Proctor-Williams, 1999) and the ability to learn from recasts in intervention as quickly as do children with TL (K. E. Nelson, S. Camarata, J. Welsh, L. Butovsky, & M. Camarata, 1996). This experiment tested whether this apparent paradox could be attributed to variations in the density of recasts in conversation versus intervention. Method: Thirteen children (7–8 years of age) with SLI and 13 language-similar children (5–6 years of age) with TL were exposed to 3 recast densities of novel irregular past tense verbs (none, conversation-like, intervention-like) over 5 sessions. Outcomes were based on spontaneous conversational productions and a post-test probe. Results: As predicted, at conversation-like densities, children with TL more accurately produced the target verbs they heard in recasts than in nonrecast models (d = 0.58), children with SLI showed no differences, and children with TL produced the verbs more accurately than did children with SLI (d = 0.54). Contrary to expectations, at higher intervention-like recast densities, the SLI group did not improve their accuracy, and the TL group performances were significantly poorer (d = 0.47). Conclusion: At conversational levels, recasts facilitated greater verb learning than models alone but only in the TL group. Increasing recast density to the modest levels in this brief intervention experiment did not benefit children with SLI and led to poorer learning for children with TL. To optimize learning, efficiency of recast distribution as well as rate must be considered.

No description available.

Comorian is a Bantu language spoken on the Comoro Islands, a small archipelago between the East African coast and the northern tip of Madagascar. It is usually grouped within the Sabaki languages together with Swahili, Mwani, Elwana, Pokorno and Mijikenda (Nurse & Hinnebusch 1993: 4-19). Internally Comorian is divided into different dialects. In congruence with the four main islands, four dialects of Comorian are usually distinguished in the linguistic literature (Ahmed- Charnanga 1992:13; Nurse & Hinnebusch 1993: 18): Shingazija on the island of Ngazija (Grande Comore), Shimwali on Mwali (Moheli), Shinzwani on Nzwani (Anjouan) and Shimaore on Maore (Mayotte). These four dialects are arranged into two dialect groups (Shingazija/ Shimwali vs. Shinzwani/Shimaore) which are supposed to reflect peculiar linguistic similarities and differences. Although, in general, the greatest morphological differences between the Comorian dialects are within the TAM-markers, the past tense is morphologically quite homogeneous. Therefore dialectal differences do not play a dominant role for the subject of this paper. Two different past tense forms frequently used in everyday speech will be treated here: one morphological simple (one word) form and one compound (two word) form combining the auxiliary -ka (be) with the main verb. They will be discussed first from a formal point of view demonstrating the rules to create the morphosyntactical form. After this they are treated with regard to their semantic contents. The results presented here are based on a one year dialectological research on the Comoro Islands 1996-97. Interviews were made in 56 towns and villages on all four islands of the archipelago.

<p>Abstract</p><p>This study investigates variable past tense marking patterns in an emerging variety of N.C. Hispanic English (n=44) spoken by language learners at three Length of Residency (LOR) groups in three schools in Durham, NC in terms of 1. lexical semantics (Andersen & Shirai 1996, Bayley 1999), 2. frequency (Guy & Erker 2012) 3. discourse structure (Bardovi-Harlig 1998) and 4. verb class and phonological environment (Wolfram 1985, Bayley 1994). Statistical results show significant effects of verb class, lexical aspect, and frequency and interacting effects of verb class and frequency (specifically, suppletives like copula are simultaneously highly frequent and highly phonetically salient). A subsample coded for the discourse factor shows some evidence for the correlation of copula and backgrounding function. A separate analysis of consonant cluster reduction patterns (CCR) demonstrates dialect acquisition of variable constraints (e.g. in terms of N.C. AAVE), namely phonological environment (_C > _V) and morphemic status (monomorpheme > bimorpheme). Pedagogical applications are discussed, including accurately identifying English Language Learners (ELLs) in the context of local/regional accommodation.</p> / Dissertation

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2012-03-07Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:55:15Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 favaro_gs_me_arafcl.pdf: 1659339 bytes, checksum: f9a1036d424ad6a96ecf1284b58a17f8 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Este estudo tem como objetivo principal fazer um vínculo entre o passado e o presente, comparando processos morfofonológicos desencadeados pela flexão verbal através das formas do pretérito perfeito do modo indicativo, ou seja, processos que alteram a forma dos morfemas e geram alomorfias em vários níveis no Português Arcaico (PA) dos séculos XII-XIII analisados a partir de teorias não lineares (cf. Fonologia Lexical, Fonologia métrica e Geometria de Traços). Para a realização desta pesquisa foram considerados como objeto as formas verbais do pretérito perfeito do modo indicativo, tanto dos verbos regulares quanto dos verbos irregulares. A metodologia foi baseada no mapeamento das formas verbais nas Cantigas de Santa Maria. Contamos também com glossários, vocabulários, dicionários, e especialmente o glossário de Mettmann (1972), como auxílio na categorização das formas verbais. Depois de coletados, os dados foram separados de acordo com o tipo de processo morfofonológico verificado. O corpus de base, para o PA, foi constituído pelas Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM), elaboradas em galego-português e atribuídas a Dom Afonso X de Castela, o Sábio, com a colaboração de trovadores, músicos, desenhistas e miniaturistas que acolhia em sua corte. Correspondem a um monumento literário de mais elaborada importância, que ocupa um lugar privilegiado na literatura medieval galego-portuguesa. Ao final da análise dos processos morfofonológicos, nos resultados obtidos, verificamos a alta produtividade da harmonização vocálica e da neutralização e crase da vogal temática em um estágio inicial da língua que denominamos de período arcaico. Podemos comprovar que os processos morfofonológicos, sobretudo a harmonia vocálica, já ocorriam desde o estágio inicial do português com as mesmas características e produtividade dos dias de hoje, uma vez que, na passagem do latim... / This study aims to make a link between past and present, comparing morphophonological processes triggered by verbal inflection through the forms of the past tense of the indicative, that is, processes that alter the shape of morphemes and generate allomorphs at various levels in the Archaic Portuguese (AP) of XII-XIII centuries were investigated by Lexical Phonology (LP) and Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. The past tense verb forms of the indicative mood both of regular and irregular verbs were considered as an object for this research. The methodology was based on the mapping of verb forms in the Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM). We have also used glossaries, vocabularies, dictionaries, and especially the glossary of Mettmann (1972) as an aid in the categorization of verbal forms. Once collected, the data was separated according to the type of morphophonogical process checked. The corpus was formed by the Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM), written in Galician-Portuguese and attributed to Don Alfonso X of Castile, the Wise, in collaboration with the troubadours, musicians, designers and miniaturists who lived in his court. The CSM correspond to the most elaborate literary monument, which occupies a privileged place in the medieval Galician-Portuguese literature. After the analysis of the morphophonological processes, in the results obtained, we verified the high productivity of vowel harmony and vowel neutralization and at an early stage of the language that corresponds to the archaic period. We could prove that the morphophonological processes, especially vowel harmony, have occurred since the initial stage of the Portuguese with the same characteristics and productivity of today, since in the passage from Latin to Portuguese, the verb conjugations were already well defined. In addition to the morphophonological processes, we also mapped the irregular verbs that we called... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)