The Portuguese Future Subjunctive (FS) is frequently studied since out of all modern romance languages, this verbal tense and mood is regularly maintained only in Portuguese. Moreover, variation and alternation occur in the use of the FS by the speakers of the language through a substitution of the irregular inflections of the FS by the regular inflections of the Personal Infinitive (IP). The only difference between the FS and the IP is found in the irregular verbs of the FS, and these are usually "regularized" by Portuguese speakers. Since the regular verbs of the FS are identical to the IP, through a false analogy there is a tendency to use the IP for the irregular verbs as well. This thesis studies the role that immersion plays in the production of the FS and the regularization of irregular verbs by immersed speakers. The results of this study show that although there is a difference in the use of the FS between the immersed and non-immersed speakers, there is no difference as far as the regularization that occurs between both groups. The results also indicate that the regularization phenomenon is minimal, and the only difference between the native speakers of Portuguese in Brazil and the immersed group in the United States is found in the production and election of the verbal tense that is used. Although immersion seems to be affecting the immersed group at a morphological level, there seems to be no difference as far as the regularization of the FS between the immersed and non immersed groups.

Lexical variation, or the existence of multiple lexemes that can be used to denote a particular concept, is a phenomenon characteristic of most of the world’s language systems. Often times the source of this variation is difficult to determine, with a variety of inter- and intra-linguistic factors at play. This thesis was conducted with three main goals: 1) to delineate lexical items typical to specific dialects of Spanish and generate country-specific word lists that focus on salient contrasts between the different varieties of the language; 2) to determine whether speakers of particular varieties of Spanish, namely Puerto Rican and Venezuelan Spanish, were able to recognize lexical items that are supposedly characteristic of their dialect in particular; 3) to examine how dialectal variation can affect linguistic processing. The first part of this investigation examined the relative frequency of use of 1,903 dialectal words in the 22 countries contained within Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual, or CREA, (REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA, 2008). Of these 1,903 words, total of 320 were found to be characteristic of a particular variety of Spanish. The lexical items that demonstrated significant correlation with Puerto Rican and Venezuelan Spanish were then used to develop a picture naming task in which participants were asked to designate whether a particular lexical item constituted an appropriate label for the image depicted. The results from this study suggest that speakers of these two dialects were unable to distinguish words as pertaining to their variety in particular, regardless of the supposed high frequency of use within their dialect. The present study thus theorizes that the processing of these dialectal lexical items is closer to monolingual models rather than bilingual models as bilingual-like behaviors were not observed.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Issued also as Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania. / Bibliography: p. 104-105.

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of Portuguese

I have investigated the theme of imposters in three Hispanic American plays and two Caribbean plays from the early twentieth century; I selected each play from a different country so that I can present a broader perspective of Hispanic American and Caribbean themes. In these five plays, the main characters fabricate their own identities for various reasons. My focus is on analyzing those imposters and on presenting how the dramatists present this type of imposters in their works. Identity is one of the most prominent themes in Hispanic American and Caribbean literature because the history of these regions involves a long period of European colonization. As a result of this colonization the cultures of these regions imitated European culture for centuries. For this reason the act of constructing a distinct American identity has been a struggle for Hispanic American and Caribbean writers. The five plays analyze this struggle by depicting main characters who pretend to be someone else and abandon their own identity. I have analyzed the imposters and incorporated findings from various studies that make a connection between the play and Hispanic American and Caribbean history. My goal is to demonstrate the historical circumstances that provoke the characters into falsifying their own identities. In the final chapter I will perform a contrastive analysis of the five plays and focus on their similarities and differences. Each of the five plays demonstrates a different circumstance, and the characters fabricate their own identities for a different reason. However, all five cases produce a negative consequence in the play or give the readers a negative impression of imposters.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1979. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 172-176). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:22:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2007-04-16Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:09:30Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 bonadio_fb_me_arafcl.pdf: 5274542 bytes, checksum: b48425be385dfb4df391cf3cb3211ad1 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Tendo em vista o momento educacional brasileiro e a necessidade de se trabalhar pela qualidade no ensino, especialmente na disciplina de língua portuguesa, o objetivo deste trabalho é oferecer aos professores de língua portuguesa do terceiro e quarto ciclos do Ensino Fundamental uma referência para a elaboração de práticas pedagógicas coerentes com os princípios estabelecidos pelos Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais - PCN. Num primeiro momento, será feita uma leitura do conteúdo desse documento e a articulação de suas questões centrais com as entrevistas feitas com professores da rede pública de duas cidades do interior do estado de São Paulo. Num segundo momento, partir das conclusões obtidas nessa análise serão propostas atividades relacionadas às práticas lingüístico-discursivas requeridas pelos PCN, buscando um encaminhamento didático-metodológico coerente com os pressupostos dos PCN. / Having in mind the Brazilian educational moment and the need of working in teaching quality, specially in the Portuguese language subject, the purpose of this study is to offer Portuguese language teachers of the third and forth cycles of the basic education a reference to elaborate coherent teaching practices with the principles established by the Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais - PCN. At a first moment, a reading of this document content will be done and the articulation of its main topics with interviews of some public school's teachers of two cities in the interior of the São Paulo State. At a second moment, from the conclusions obtained in this analysis, activities will be proposed related to the linguistic-discursive practices demanded by PCN, aiming at a didactic and methodological procedure coherent with the assumptions of PCN.