Embora a doença de Alzheimer (DA) tenha sido descoberta há mais de 100 anos, muitas questões acerca dela, sobretudo sobre o seu diagnóstico, resistem ao tempo. Algumas delas, inclusive, nunca foram de fato investigadas, o que se aplica à preservação ou não, nos idosos acometidos, da capacidade de compreensão de informação pragmática. A busca pela elucidação desse tópico perpassa, necessariamente, o desenvolvimento de um método capaz de aferir quão preservada está tal capacidade, e foi a isso que se prestou esta pesquisa. Com o embasamento teórico propiciado pelos princípios funcionalistas e cognitivistas da linguagem, atestou-se que a função pragmática relaciona-se com os âmbitos do processamento cognitivo, do envolvimento da corporeidade e da linguagem verbal. Assim, esses domínios foram convertidos em critérios de análise, cada qual composto por três subitens que, por sua vez, podem ser avaliados segundo uma gradação tripartida. A partir da soma dos resultados de cada um desses elementos, obtêm-se valores para o desempenho dos idosos com DA que, contrastados com os resultados de idosos cognitivamente sadios, dão pistas a respeito de a capacidade de compreensão de informação pragmática nos indivíduos com demência estar preservada ou não. A elaboração do método, portanto, constitui o objetivo principal deste trabalho, que apresenta, também, a sua aplicação a um conjunto de seis informantes, todas do sexo feminino, divididas igualmente entre grupo focal e de controle, cujos resultados são interpretados sobretudo no sentido de testar a validade do próprio método. Não se sabe muito sobre a complexidade da linguagem em sua perda, e foi intenção aqui diminuir, ao menos um pouco, essa lacuna de conhecimento. / Although Alzheimer\'s disease (AD) has been discovered more than 100 years ago, many questions about it, especially about its diagnosis, stand the test of time. Some of them, even, have never really been investigated, what applies to the preservation or not, in the affected elderly, of the capacity of understanding pragmatic information. The search for the elucidation of this topic necessarily leads to the development of a method capable of checking how well this capacity is preserved, and that is what this research was done for. With the theoretical foundation provided by the functionalist and cognitivist principles of language, it was demonstrated that the pragmatic function is related to the scopes of cognitive processing, the involvement of corporeity and verbal language. Thus, these domains have been converted into analysis criteria, each composed of three factors that can be evaluated according to a tripartite gradation. From the sum of the results of each of these elements, values are obtained for the performance of the elderly with AD, which, contrasted with the results of cognitively healthy elderly, give clues about the capacity to understand pragmatic information in individuals with dementia. The elaboration of the method, therefore, is the main objective of this work, which also presents its application to a group of six female informants, equally divided between the focal group and the control group, whose results are interpreted mainly for the test of the method. Not much is known about the complexity of language in its loss, and it was intended here to decrease, at least a little, this knowledge gap.

The dissertation explores word order phenomena in a 'free' word order language, Russian. It has been proposed in the literature that in simple sentences like 'John sees Mary', six word orders are equally possible in Russian. The dissertation questions the equal acceptability of these word orders and shows that some of the "felicitous" word orders have a degraded status compared to others. The word order findings are based on experimental evidence from elicitation, perception and grammaticality judgment psycholinguistic studies with 237 adult native speakers of Russian. The results of the experiments demonstrate that Russian speakers have a strong preference for producing some word orders over others. For example, Russian native speakers produce transitive SVO, OVS and SOV felicitous word orders, but consistently do not produce VSO, VOS and OSV felicitous word orders, which they still recognize as acceptable, but as having a degraded grammaticality status. On the basis of the experimental evidence and analysis of the various constituent movements within the Minimalist Program approach, a model of grammar is proposed which adds a pragmatic component responsible for word order permutations. According to this model, the syntactic component of grammar generates only SVO sentences (the basic word order) in Russian. All discourse-dependent sentences result from realignment in the post-syntactic pragmatic component. In contrast to the hierarchical structure of syntax, the pragmatic component of grammar has a linear structure and operates with Optimality Theory-type constraints determining the optimal output word order in a particular discourse structure. The underlying assumption of this model is that this pragmatic component is present in all languages. However, the language specific ranking of the constraints in this component results in word order variations. In contrast to the previous structural approaches to word order permutations in Russian, the proposed model has obvious advantages. The model accounts not only for grammaticality and ungrammaticality, but also for the degraded grammaticality of different word order permutations in Russian. In addition, this approach accounts for the variation between 'fixed' word order languages like English and 'free' word order languages like Russian.

<p>The study of appropriateness in language use is part of pragmatics, and how speakers give and respond to complements is a source of data in such studies. Compliments are strategies to explicitly or implicitly ascribe qualities that are mutually appreciated by the speaker and the addressee of a compliment. When individuals from different cultures interact in conversations, including the giving and receiving of compliments, and their behaviour is based on different conventions, it may lead to misunderstandings. Earlier studies (Cedar, 2006 & Sharifian, 2005, 2008) suggest that pragmatic transfer can cause cross-cultural misunderstanding. Second language users seem to transfer first language pragmatic rules into second language domains. This study will examine whether pragmatic transfer occurs in Swedish as first language into English as a second language in compliment responses. It will be assumed that pragmatic conventions are influenced by both linguistic and social norms. A Discourse completion task was used in order to obtain the data. The Discourse completion task consisted of one questionnaire in English, and one translated into Swedish, with situations where a compliment was given and the participant was instructed to imagine him/herself in that situation and give their most probable response to that compliment. The results showed that there was no significant difference between compliment responses given in Swedish and those given in English by native Swedish speakers. Thus, pragmatic transfer could have occurred. The Swedish participants’ compliment responses were also compared to compliment responses of Scottish English L1 speakers. The results are discussed in relation to other studies of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses, and suggestions for future research are considered.<strong> </strong></p>

<p>Two propositions connected by and have the same truth-value, irrespective of the order of the conjuncts. However, in a sentence like “I put my socks and shoes on” it becomes obvious that the order of the conjuncts affects the meaning of the sentence. This study concerns the contribution of pragmatics to and by implicit enrichment to and then or and thus. It includes three experiments that investigate and-enrichment in adults and children. Nine five-line stories concerning everyday events were used. After each story the participants were to respond “yes” or “no” to a statement which referred to two events that occurred in the story, conjoined with and. In the critical statement, the two events were presented in the inverse order to which they had occurred. The results show no general developmental effect but awareness of the task plays a critical role for and-enrichment production. Ten-year-olds enrich and to the same extent as adults when no efforts are made to mask the intention behind the task. However, when a more spontaneous response is captured by masking the purpose of the task children respond more logically. There are no clear evidence that and-enrichment is affected by the cognitive demands of the task.</p>

The study of appropriateness in language use is part of pragmatics, and how speakers give and respond to complements is a source of data in such studies. Compliments are strategies to explicitly or implicitly ascribe qualities that are mutually appreciated by the speaker and the addressee of a compliment. When individuals from different cultures interact in conversations, including the giving and receiving of compliments, and their behaviour is based on different conventions, it may lead to misunderstandings. Earlier studies (Cedar, 2006 &amp; Sharifian, 2005, 2008) suggest that pragmatic transfer can cause cross-cultural misunderstanding. Second language users seem to transfer first language pragmatic rules into second language domains. This study will examine whether pragmatic transfer occurs in Swedish as first language into English as a second language in compliment responses. It will be assumed that pragmatic conventions are influenced by both linguistic and social norms. A Discourse completion task was used in order to obtain the data. The Discourse completion task consisted of one questionnaire in English, and one translated into Swedish, with situations where a compliment was given and the participant was instructed to imagine him/herself in that situation and give their most probable response to that compliment. The results showed that there was no significant difference between compliment responses given in Swedish and those given in English by native Swedish speakers. Thus, pragmatic transfer could have occurred. The Swedish participants’ compliment responses were also compared to compliment responses of Scottish English L1 speakers. The results are discussed in relation to other studies of pragmatic transfer in compliment responses, and suggestions for future research are considered.

Verbal irony, a form of figurative language, uses the discrepancy between a speaker’s intended meaning and the literal word meanings to achieve social goals. Yet, little research exists on individual differences that may disrupt irony understanding. Verbal irony may challenge shy children, who tend to interpret ambiguous stimuli as being threatening, and who have difficulties with mentalizing in social contexts. This study assessed whether shy children interpret ironic statements differently than do non-shy children. Children (8- to11-year-olds) listened to stories wherein one character made a statement to another character that was a literal or ironic criticism or a literal or ironic compliment. Children appraised the speaker’s belief and communicative intention. Shyness was assessed using self report measures of social anxiety symptoms and shy negative affect. Shy children did not differ from non-shy peers in comprehending speakers’ beliefs. However, shy children rated speakers who made ironic criticisms as being more mean than did children low in shyness. Thus, while understanding that speakers intended to communicate their true beliefs, shy children construed the social meaning of irony differently, indicating difficulties with pragmatics. Such subtle differences in pragmatic understanding may underlie some of the social difficulties facing shy children.

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This paper deals with developing pragmatic competence in the English as a second language classroom, mainly through speaking activities. In Part One the theoretical background of pragmatics and its various aspects are discussed. Views of a number of authors on pragmatics are presented, witnessing the necessity of pragmatic upbringing at schools and other educational establishments in the world of globalization. Some examples are given why pragmatic awareness is inseparable from grammatical or vocabulary knowledge of a particular language. The importance of reflective teaching and its types is stressed. Next, the paper focuses on ways to stimulate learner pragmatic growth, critical thinking and self-awareness, the role of questions, also the role of the mother tongue in the pragmatically oriented classroom. In Part Two possible activities for raising pragmatic competence, as proposed by various linguists, are described. Some specific examples are given here. In this part of the paper the reader gets acquainted with ways of developing pragmatic competence that are effective and convenient to implement in the classroom. Finally, in Part Three the coursebooks Twist 1 and Twist 2 (Student’s Books and Teacher’s Books) are analyzed as means to be used by teachers having specific aims for learner pragmatic development. All the chapters (Issues) are overviewed (each separately and all of them as one whole), general tendencies and peculiarities are discerned, specific tasks are... [to full text]

Ontology integration is a process of matching and merging two ontologies for reasons such as for generating a new ontology, thus creating digital services and products. Current techniques for ontology integration, used for information and knowledge integration, are not powerful enough to handle the semantic and pragmatic heterogeneities. Because of the heterogeneities, the ontology matching and integration have shown to be a complex problem, especially when the intention is to make the process automatic. This thesis addresses the problem of integrating heterogeneous ontologies, first, by exploring the context of ontology integration, secondly, by building a context knowledge base, and thirdly, by applying the context knowledge base. More specifically, the thesis contributes a context knowledge base method for ontology integration, CKB-OI method, which contains: 1) A method of building a context knowledge base by extracting context and contextual information from ontologies in an ontology repository to improve ontology integration. 2) A method of refining the result of ontology integration with the help of the context knowledge base and expanding the context rules in the context knowledge base. In the first method, the context of the ontology integration is identified by examining the content and metadata of the integrated ontologies. The context of an ontology integration contains the information describing the integration, such as the domain of ontology, the purpose of ontology, and the ontology elements involved. Context criteria, such as the metadata of ontologies and the element of ontologies in the repository, are used to model the context. The contextual information is extracted and integrated from ontologies in an ontology repository, using an ontology integration process with non-violation check. With the context and the contextual information, a context knowledge base is built. Since this is built by reusing ontologies to provide extra information for new ontology integration in the same context, it is quite possible that the context knowledge base will improve the earlier ontology integration result. A method for identifying the domain of an ontology is also proposed to help in building and using the context knowledge base. Since the method considers the semantic and pragmatic heterogeneities of ontologies, and uses a light-weight ontology representing a domain, this work increases the semantic value of the context knowledge base. In the second method, the context knowledge base is applied to the result of an ontology integration process with a non-violation check, which in turn results in an ontology intersection. The contextual information is searched for and extracted from the context knowledge base and then applied on the ontology intersection to improve the integration result. The ontology non-violation check integration process is adjusted and adopted in the method. Moreover, the context knowledge base is expanded with perspective rules, with which the different views of ontologies in a context are preserved, and reused in future ontology integration. The results of the CKB-OI methods are: 1) a context knowledge base with rules that consider semantic and pragmatic knowledge for ontology integration; 2) contextual ontology intersection (COI) with the refining result compared to the ontology intersection (OI), and 3) an extended context knowledge base with the different views of both ontologies. For evaluation, ontologies from the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI) and from ontology search engines Swoogle and Watson have been used for testing the proposed methods. The results show that the context knowledge base can be used for improving heterogeneous ontologies integration, hence, the context knowledge base provides semantic and pragmatic knowledge to integrate ontologies. Also, the results demonstrate that ontology integration, refined with the context knowledge base, contains more knowledge without contradicting the ontologies involved in our examples. / Ontologi-integration är en process för att matcha och sammanfoga två ontologier för att t.ex. generera en ny ontologi, och därmed skapa digitala tjänster och produkter. Aktuella tekniker för ontologi- integration, som används för information och kunskapsintegration, är inte tillräckligt kraftfulla för att hantera semantiska och pragmatiska heterogeniteter. På grund av heterogeniteter, har ontologi- matchning och -integration visat sig utgöra ett komplext problem, särskilt när avsikten är att göra processen automatisk. Denna avhandling behandlar problemet med att integrera heterogena ontologier; för det första genom att undersöka kontexten för ontologi-integrationen, för det andra genom att bygga en kunskapsbas för kontexten, och för det tredje genom att tillämpa denna kunskapsbas. Mer specifikt bidrar avhandlingen med CKB-OI-metoden för ontologi-integration, vilken innehåller: 1)      En metod för att bygga en kontextkunskapsbas, genom att extrahera sammanhang och kontextuell information från ontologier i ett ontologi-förvar för att förbättra ontologi-integrationen. 2)      En metod för att förfina resultatet av ontologi-integration med hjälp av kontextkunskapsbasen och för att utöka kontextreglerna i kunskapsbasen. I metod nr. 1 identifieras kontexten genom att undersöka innehållet och metadata för de ontologier, som ska integrereras. Kontexten innehåller information som beskriver integrationen, till exempel domän och syfte för varje ontologi, samt element som ingår i respektive ontologi. Kontexten  modelleras med kriterier, såsom metadata och element för ontologierna i förvaret. Den kontextuella informationen extraheras och integreras med användning av en integrationsprocess med icke-överträdelsekontroll. Kontextkunskapsbasen byggs utav kontext samt kontextuell information. Eftersom kunskapsbasen är byggd av återanvända ontologier för att ge ytterligare information till ontologi-integrationen inom samma kontext, så är det mycket möjligt att kontextkunskapsbasen kommer att förbättra det tidigare integrationsresultatet. En metod för att identifiera domänen för en ontologi föreslås också, för att hjälpa till att bygga och använda kontextkunskapsbasen. Eftersom metoden tar hänsyn till de semantiska och pragmatiska heterogeniteterna hos ontologier, och använder en enkel ontologi för att representera en domän, så ökar detta arbete det semantiska värdet av kontextkunskapsbasen. I metod nr. 2 tillämpas kontextkunskapsbasen på resultatet av en ontologi-integrationsprocess med icke-överträdelsekontroll, vilket i sin tur resulterar i ett ontologisnitt. Den kontextuella informationen extraheras från kontextkunskapsbasen och appliceras sedan på ontologisnittet för att förbättra integrationsresultatet. Icke-överträdelsekontrollen i integrationsprocessen justeras och används på nytt. Dessutom utökas kontextkunskapsbasen med perspektivregler, med vilka de olika vyerna av ontologier i en gemensam kontext bevaras och återanvänds i framtida ontologi-integrationer. Resultaten av CKB-OI metoden är: 1) en kontextkunskapsbas med regler som avser semantiska och pragmatiska kunskaper om en ontologi-integration; 2) ett kontextuellt ontologisnitt (COI) med ett förfinat resultat jämfört med ontologisnittet (OI) och 3) en utökad kontextkunskapsbas med olika vyer av båda ontologier. För utvärderingen har ontologier från Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI) samt ontologisökmotorerna Swoogle och Watson använts för att testa de föreslagna metoderna. Resultaten visar att kontextkunskapsbasen kan användas för förbättring av heterogena ontologi-integrationer. Följaktligen tillhandahåller kontextkunskapsbasen semantiska och pragmatiska kunskaper för att integrera ontologier. Dessutom visar resultaten att ontologi-integrationer, utökade med kontextkunskapsbaser, innehåller mer kunskap, utan att motsäga de ontologier som ingår i våra exempel. / <p>QC 20141017</p>

Verbal irony, a form of figurative language, uses the discrepancy between a speaker’s intended meaning and the literal word meanings to achieve social goals. Yet, little research exists on individual differences that may disrupt irony understanding. Verbal irony may challenge shy children, who tend to interpret ambiguous stimuli as being threatening, and who have difficulties with mentalizing in social contexts. This study assessed whether shy children interpret ironic statements differently than do non-shy children. Children (8- to11-year-olds) listened to stories wherein one character made a statement to another character that was a literal or ironic criticism or a literal or ironic compliment. Children appraised the speaker’s belief and communicative intention. Shyness was assessed using self report measures of social anxiety symptoms and shy negative affect. Shy children did not differ from non-shy peers in comprehending speakers’ beliefs. However, shy children rated speakers who made ironic criticisms as being more mean than did children low in shyness. Thus, while understanding that speakers intended to communicate their true beliefs, shy children construed the social meaning of irony differently, indicating difficulties with pragmatics. Such subtle differences in pragmatic understanding may underlie some of the social difficulties facing shy children.