University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Chinese

English Language Learners (ELLs) are a growing population within the U.S. school system. In the secondary grades, this diverse group requires instruction to improve not only English language proficiency but also utilization of the academic language register, especially in writing tasks. The present study focused on ELLs in middle school. The aim was to explore the effects of enhanced Self–Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) writing instruction on the use of complex language, particularly elaborated noun phrases (ENPs) when SRSD was combined with linguistic instruction on increased sentence complexity. As a part of a larger study exploring critical literacy and the persuasive writing instruction of Spanish–English speaking students, this repeated measures design detailed the effects of two six–week instructional periods aimed at teaching 19 ELLs methods for organizing, planning, and constructing persuasive texts (the macr–-structure level), as well as ways of incorporating academic language forms and functions in their writing (the micro–structure level). Within the critical literacy project that involved topics and themes related to immigration, the 19 students produced three texts in English (pre–, mid–, and post–instruction essays). These texts were analyzed for ENP frequency and complexity. Three case studies were also chosen to highlight the variation in ENP outcomes and to discuss additional aspects of persuasive writing at both the macr–- and micro–structure levels. Statistical analysis of group use of ENPs revealed no significant increase in frequency or complexity across essays as simple pre–noun modifications were produced in amounts greater than all other ENP type across all essays. The three case studies revealed that frequency of ENP use generally corresponded to strength of abilities at either the macro–structure level, such as inclusion of more persuasive elements, or the micro–structure level as indicated by increased text length and variety of vocabulary. One implication of these outcomes indicates the need for more in–depth emphasis on the coordination of both the macro– and micro–structure levels in writing instruction studies with ELLs. Other implications pertain to further analysis of classification approaches for designating ENP complexity, and how enhanced understanding of ENP production signals aspects of the academic language register.

Αντικείμενο της εργασίας αυτής αποτελεί η χρήση της γλώσσας λογικού προγραμματισμού Prolog για τη συντακτική ανάλυση (parsing) παραδειγμάτων ρηματικής φράσης, ακολουθώντας τις τελευταίες εξελίξεις στο χώρο της γενετικής γραμματικής (Μινιμαλιστικό Πρόγραμμα). Στην προσπάθεια πλήρους περιγραφής του προβλήματος, όπως απαιτεί ο λογικός προγραμματισμός, στο επίκεντρο τοποθετείται η διεπαφή σύνταξης – σημασιολογίας. Γίνεται αναφορά σε θεωρητικά προβλήματα όπως η διάκριση μεταξύ ανεργαστικών και μεταβατικών ρημάτων και η φύση των ρημάτων καιρού (weather verbs), και προτείνονται τρόποι ερμηνείας και διαχείρισης των παραπάνω προβλημάτων στο περιβάλλον της Prolog. / The purpose of this study is to examine the use of the logic programming language Prolog as a parser for VPs within the generative grammar/Minimalist Program framework. We focus on the syntax- semantics interface and try to address issues such as the differences between unergative- transitive verbs and the structure of weather verbs within the Prolog environment.

Despite the plethora of SLA research conducted on the acquisition of the definite marker in noun phrase configurations in L2 Arabic and English (e.g., Sarko, 2007; Master, 1997; Collier, 1987; Anderson, 1984; Kharma, 1981), there is as yet no definitive description of how noun phrases are acquired and why errors persist after advanced stages in L2 learning. Results, as shown by Butler (2002), are inconclusive, and the primary causes of difficulties in the acquisition of the definite marker in noun phrase configurations remain unclear. Recently, the internal syntax-semantics interface (Cuza & Frank, 2011; Montrul, 2010; Tsimpli & Sorace, 2006; Sorace, 2003, 2004) and the specificity-definiteness distinction (Ionin, 2003; Ionin et al., 2004; Ionin et al., 2008) have been considered as appropriate frameworks for exploring the acquisition of noun phrases and other structural features. The structure of noun phrase configurations in Arabic and English offers a complex interface between form and meaning for L2 learners with multiple cases of matches and mismatches between specificity and definiteness. In this three-article dissertation project, two of which were conducted in a bidirectional methodological framework with L1 Arabic-L2 English and L1 English-L2 Arabic learners, I explored the acquisition of three cases of noun phrase configurations. In the first study, I investigated the acquisition of plural noun phrase configurations that carry generic and specific readings at the initial state of L2 learning. Using three data collection instruments: written translation; error detection and correction; and forced choice elicitation, I tested the predictions made by the Interface Hypothesis (IH) and the Full Transfer (FT) Hypothesis. Results showed that L2 learners in both directions tend to transfer noun phrase configurations from L1 into L2, a result that I took to support the FT hypothesis. In addition, it took L1 English-L2 Arabic learners two years of instruction to recover from this L1 effect. The second study aimed at confirming the result of the first study, but in the acquisition of the definite marker in generic singular noun phrase configurations in the L1 English-L2 Arabic direction. The behavior of generic singular noun phrases in L2 Arabic offers a good testing ground since it has numerous similarities and differences with English. Two conditions were established: a matching condition and a mismatching condition. Both conditions were tested in the L1 English-L2 Arabic direction. Results showed a similar pattern to the one recorded in the first study. Typological proximity and distance were found to be important determiners of language acquisition of the in/definiteness configurations of singular noun phrases. In the third study, I shifted to the exploration of a more complex type of noun phrases; namely the definite Iḍāfah construction in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and its equivalent noun phrase configurations in English in the two directions. I started with a common difference between MSA and English. Whereas in MSA there is a canonical configuration in terms of head-complement ordering and head-complement definiteness, English is tolerant of more than one permissible configuration. I operationalized the acquisition of these noun phrases in terms of head-complement ordering and head-complement definiteness. Results showed a clear effect of L1 transfer in both directions; knowledge of L1 noun phrase configurations acts as the initial step in L2 learning. I concluded that both communities of L2 learners face problems that vary according to the L1 noun phrase configuration at hand. However, in the L1 English-L2 Arabic direction, learners reached a satisfactory level of performance in the Iḍāfah construction after two years of instruction. I approached this finding as a result of intensive Focus-on-Form Episodes (Loewn, 2005) that the Iḍāfah construction receives in MSA instruction. At the conclusion of this research project I highlighted some implications for the second language acquisition and teaching of noun phrases. The overall results were couched in a broader perspective that characterizes the initial state of L2 learning of noun phrases in + article and – article languages, the effects of typological proximity and distance, and the effects of Instructed SLA. For the pedagogical implications, I called for the integration of the semantics of the definite marker while presenting noun phrases in textbooks. I also recommended the use of explicit instruction and structured-input activities (VanPatten, 2004; Marsden & Chen, 2011) as effective pedagogical tools that foster form-meaning mapping in the acquisition of L2 Arabic and English noun phrases.

Simply put, Crown liability doctrine in Crown/Aboriginal Law in Canada is a mess. Demonstrably, there are fiduciary-based duties, fiduciary-based principles, an over-arching honour of the Crown principle, Crown honour-based duties, and a constitutional Crown/Aboriginal “reconciliation” imperative. How the various pieces are meant to fit together is atypically unclear. In this project, Ronald Dworkin’s rights thesis is invoked as a conceptual tool in an attempt to help bring some order to the disarray. It is argued that the Supreme Court of Canada made a fundamental (Dworkinian) mistake in the manner in which they adopted fiduciary concepts into the core of Crown/Aboriginal Law; that this mistake has led to a dysfunctional doctrine; and that the Supreme Court has implicitly acknowledged their error and are now in the process of incrementally mending their materially flawed doctrine. Crown liability doctrine in Crown/Aboriginal Law in Canada is now centrally organized around the principle that the honour of the Crown must always be upheld in applicable government dealings with Aboriginal peoples. Enforceable Crown honour-based “off-shoot” duties operate to regulate the mischief of Crown dishonour in constitutional contexts. The Supreme Court has now stated that a (non-conventional and fundamentally unresolved) Crown/Aboriginal fiduciary obligation is one such “off-shoot” duty. This emergent “essential legal framework” is meant to protect and facilitate the over-arching project of reconciling the pre-existence of Aboriginal societies with the de facto sovereignty of the Crown, which reconciliation project, it is argued here, is to be fundamentally undertaken by the executive and legislative branches of government working collaboratively with Aboriginal peoples. The judicial branch of government is then largely limited to the more modest task of regulating the mischief of constitutional Crown dishonour. This project ultimately purports to theorize this relatively new Crown honour-based framework, and to conceptualize what residual role there is for fiduciary accountability to play in applicable Crown/Aboriginal contexts moving forward. It is concluded there is likely only a narrow jurisdiction remaining for fiduciary accountability in Crown/Aboriginal contexts, which jurisdiction appears destined to take the form of conventional fiduciary doctrine which, as will be demonstrated, has itself been fundamentally reconfigured in recent years.

No description available.

Notre travail est consacré à l’élément LA (< fr. là) en guyanais, langue créole française pour laquelle il n’existe que peu de données linguistiques accessibles. Nous fournissons un nouveau corpus du guyanais qui inclut une vaste gamme de textes anciens de 1799 à 1893 et des données du guyanais parlé. En nous basant sur notre corpus, nous proposons une analyse diachronique et synchronique de LA, élément extrêmement polyfonctionnel en guyanais. Nous commençons notre étude par distinguer ses différentes fonctions : adverbe/marqueur de discours, élément du pronom déictique-démonstratif, LA en fin de proposition subordonnée ou interrogative, ainsi que LA marqueur postnominal. Pour l’analyse du dernier, nous proposons une approche théorique de la référence nominale qui tient compte de l’usage de l’élément en question en discours, et donc aussi des fonctions interactionnelles et sociales du langage. Notre analyse de corpus nous permet de classer LA comme marqueur dont l’emploi est non seulement incomplètement généralisé dans les contextes définis, mais dont l’usage dépend d’une interaction complexe de différents facteurs d’ordre sémantico-pragmatique, ontologico-cognitif et informationnel-syntaxique. LA dénote en outre une certaine variation graduelle en fonction de la tradition discursive, ou bien des conditions/intentions communicatives respectives. LA est enfin un élément qui laisse toujours entrevoir à un certain degré son enracinement initial dans la deixis et l’oralité. De ce lien témoigne également le rôle joué par là/LA non seulement dans les autres créoles français, mais également dans les variétés orales du français en Afrique ou au Canada. / Die vorliegende Arbeit widmet sich dem Element LA (< fr. là) im Guayanakreol, einer französischen Kreolsprache für die bisher kaum Untersuchungen vorliegen. Unsere Arbeit legt ein neues Korpus vor, das sich aus Texten von 1799-1893 sowie aus eigenen Sprachaufnahmen zusammensetzt. Das Hauptaugenmerk der Untersuchung liegt auf einer detaillierten synchronen und diachronen Beschreibung der Verwendungskontexte des im Guayanakreol stark polyfunktionalen LAs. Hierfür nehmen wir zunächst eine Abgrenzung zwischen LA als Adverb/Diskursmarker, LA als Teil des Demonstrativpronomens, LA am Ende von Neben- oder Fragesätzen sowie dem postnominalen Marker LA vor. Für die Analyse des postnominalen LAs entwickeln wir anschließend einen umfangreichen theoretischen Unterbau zur Nominalreferenz, wobei ein semantisch-pragmatischer und kognitiver Ansatz verfolgt wird. Die Korpusanalyse zeigt schließlich, dass das postnominale LA allenfalls als definiter Marker auf einer niedrigen Grammatikalisierungsstufe eingeordnet werden kann, dessen Auftreten durch ein komplexes Zusammenspiel semantisch-pragmatischer, ontologisch-kognitiver sowie informationell-syntaktischer Faktoren bestimmt wird. Unsere diachrone Analyse zeigt zudem, dass in unserem Korpus der Gebrauch von LA weitgehend stabil bleibt, dass aber eine gewisse graduelle Variation je nach Diskurstradition und Kommunikationsintentionen vorliegt. Die Funktionalität von LA zeugt außerdem bis heute von einer gewissen Verankerung in der Deixis und in der Nähesprache, die auch in anderen Frankokreols sowie in gesprochenen Varietäten des Französischen, wie etwa in Afrika oder Kanada, zutage tritt.

The diploma thesis deals with analysis of chosen idioms whose main part contains designation of human body, also called somatisms. This paper focuses on designations of sensory organs organs of sight, sense of hearing, olfactory sense, sense of taste, sense of touch. Theoretical part is dedicated to the description of cognitive linguistics which amongst other issues, studies representation of human body in language. The first part of this diploma thesis is also focused on the description of phraseology as a field of science and theoretical definition of somatic phrases. The content of the practical part is analysis of data of The Czech National corpus which are compared with phrasal dictionaries. The main aim of the work consists in the description of whether and to what extent they are being applied in spoken language and written texts and if they are updated.

Les modèles de la perception du langage écrit et du langage oral mettent au premier plan l’importance du lexique mental. En effet, parmi les nombreux indices hiérarchisés et guidant la segmentation du flux continu de parole chez l’adulte et l’enfant, les indices lexicaux ont une place prépondérante. Tout au long de ce travail, nous nous intéressons aux spécificités du stockage des séquences multimots dans le lexique mental et à l’hypothèse d’une mémorisation de ces séquences en une seule unité.Ce travail se divise en deux parties, chacune composée d’une série d’expériences. La première partie interroge en premier lieu les indices impliqués dans les effets facilitateurs de la reconnaissance des noms au sein du groupe nominal. Pour cela, sont mis en perspective l’effet du genre grammatical porté par les déterminants et l’effet de fréquence de co-occurrence des séquences déterminant-nom sur le traitement du nom. C’est ensuite l’effet de la cohésion des séquences multimots sur leur reconnaissance qui est examiné.La seconde partie aborde l’influence de la variabilité interne des combinaisons déterminant-nom dans l’acquisition de la structure du groupe nominal chez l’enfant de deux ans à deux ans et demi. Au travers d’une étude longitudinale, nous opposons deux grandes conceptions de l’acquisition du langage chez le jeune enfant: la Grammaire Universelle et les approches Basées sur l’Usage. / The mental lexicon is usually assumed as the main foundation of written and spoken-language perception. Numerous and hierarchically-organized cues drive speech segmentation in adults and infants but lexical cues appear as overriding. Throughout this work, we question multiword-sequence storage idiosyncrasy and multiword-sequence memorizing as one unit in the mental lexicon.This work splits into two parts, each composed of a set of experiments. The first one assesses the cues involved in recognition facilitation of nouns in noun phrases. For that purpose, we disentangled grammatical-gender effects and co-occurrence frequency effects on the processing of determiner-noun sequences. Then, we tested the cohesiveness effect on three-word sequences’ recognition.The second set of experiments is about the influence of determiner-noun sequences’ internal variability in noun-phrase’s structure aquisition in 2 to 2,5 year-old children. In a three-month longitudinal study, we contrast two main conceptions of first-language acquisition: Universal Grammar and Usage-Based approaches.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:45:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 1654.pdf: 1522831 bytes, checksum: 6e24e9553b543342fb0db3eaed22b5b1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-02-28 / Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais / Responding under the control of verbal commands is an important component of human learning. The stimulus equivalence paradigm, as a model of symbolic behavior, is useful in explaining how instructions specify contingencies of reinforcement: Words can become members of equivalence classes with other stimuli (the referents) such as objects, actions, relations, etc. This study investigated the formation of stimulus classes among pseudo-words (verbs) and phrases (verbs and nouns). The specific goals were to verify 1) whether the pseudo-words would become equivalent to actions and objects (presented as recorded videotapes) and abstract pictures; 2) whether the words and pictures would acquire instructional control over the non-verbal responding (performing the actions, in isolation or directed to objects). Two experiments were conducted with children aged four to six years. Experiment I used verb-like pseudo-words (Set A), actions without a particular name established by the verbal community to which the participants belonged (Set B) and colorful abstract pictures (Set C). In Experiment II the auditory stimuli were pseudo-phrases (verb-object) and the videotaped actions were directed to objects. Matching-to-sample procedures, with three comparison stimuli, were used in both experiments to establish conditional discriminations among stimuli of Sets A and B (AB relations) and among stimuli of Sets A and C (AC relations) and test for class formation (BC and CB probe trials interspersed among baseline trials). In both experiments, all children learned the baseline of conditional discriminations AB and AC and demonstrated the formation of equivalence classes (BC and CB), relating, without direct training, pseudo-words or phrases, actions and abstract pictures. Tests for instructional control, conducted at the beginning of the study (pre-test), after children learned the conditional discriminations (intermediate test) and after the formation of classes (post-tests) demonstrated that the baseline was sufficient for establishing the control by spoken instructions, but not by the corresponding abstract pictures. After class formation, all children followed both kinds of instructions . However, when tests in Experiment II presented new phrases (recombinations of words from learned phrases), no children showed recombinative generalization. This raises a question about the necessary and sufficient conditions for establishing a generalized repertoire of instruction following based on equivalence relations. The present results replicated and extended the results of previous studies on equivalence relations as a mechanism by which instruction following could emerge as a derived repertoire, without explicit training / Responder sob o controle de comandos verbais é um importante componente de aprendizagem humana. O paradigma de equivalência de estímulos, como modelo do comportamento simbólico, pode contribuir para esclarecer como instruções especificam contingências de reforçamento: as palavras podem se tornar membros de classes de equivalência que incluem outros estímulos (os referentes) tais como objetos, ações, relações, etc. Esse estudo investigou a formação de classes de estímulos envolvendo pseudo-palavras (verbos) e pseudo-frases (verbos e objetos). Os objetivos específicos foram verificar: 1) se as pseudo-palavras se tornariam equivalentes a ações e objetos (apresentados em filmes em videoteipes) e figuras abstratas; e 2) se as palavras e figuras adquiririam controle instrucional sobre o responder não verbal (realizar as ações, isoladas ou direcionadas aos objetos). Foram conduzidos dois experimentos com crianças com idades entre quatro e seis anos. No Experimento I os estímulos do Conjunto A eram pseudo-palavras (verbos no infinitivo), os do Conjunto B eram ações (videoteipes) sem um nome definido, para as quais não se esperava nomeações consistentes na comunidade verbal dos participantes e os do Conjunto C eram figuras abstratas coloridas. No Experimento II os estímulos auditivos foram estendidos para pseudo-frases (verbo-objeto) e ações direcionadas a objetos. Em ambos os experimentos foi empregado um procedimento de emparelhamento com o modelo com três estímulos de comparação para ensinar as discriminações condicionais entre os estímulos dos conjuntos A e B (relação AB) e entre os dos conjuntos A e C (relação AC) e testar a formação de classes (tentativas de sondas BC e CB intercaladas com tentativas de linha de base). Nos dois experimentos, todas as crianças aprenderam as discriminações condicionais AB e AC e apresentaram formação de classes de equivalência, relacionando, sem ensino direto, pseudo-palavras ou pseudo-frases, ações e figuras indefinidas (emergência de BC e CB). Os testes de controle instrucional, conduzidos no início do estudo (pré-teste), depois do ensino das discriminações condicionais (teste intermediário) e depois da formação de classes de estímulos equivalentes (pós-teste), mostraram que o ensino da linha de base foi suficiente para estabelecer o controle pelas instruções orais (inexistente no pré-teste), mas não pelas figuras abstratas correspondentes. Após a formação de classes, todas as crianças seguiram ambos os tipos de instruções . Contudo, quando os testes no Exprimento II apresentavam novas sentenças (recombinações entre verbos e substantivos das sentenças aprendidas), nenhuma criança apresentou generalização recombinativa, o que levanta a questão sobre as condições necessárias e suficientes para estabelecer um repertório generalizado de seguimento de instruções baseado nas relações de equivalência. Os presentes resultados replicam e estendem os resultados de estudos prévios sobre relações de equivalência como um mecanismo pelo qual o seguimento de instrução pode emergir como um repertório derivado, sem treino explícito