Cette étude comparative porte sur les emplois interrogatif, percontatif, relatif (avec antécédent) et intégratif (sans antécédent) du pronom indéfini quoi en français et de ses équivalents mā et māḏā en langue arabe. Notre corpus est tiré de la littérature du XXe siècle, et plus particulièrement des romans et des pièces de théâtre de Margueritte Duras et de Marcel Pagnol pour le français, et de Naguib Mahfouz pour lʼarabe. Nous étudierons tout dʼabord les emplois de ces trois pronoms régis par leurs caractéristiques et leurs propriétés syntaxiques. Nous analysons le comportement syntaxique de mā et de māḏā dans leurs emplois interrogatifs en comparaison avec leur équivalent français quoi. Nous verrons notamment quʼil existe des points communs et des divergences entre les deux langues, plus particulièrement concernant leur autonomie syntaxique au niveau de leur position dans la phrase. Nous examinons également lʼemploi de quoi et de mā et māḏā dans la subordination, en tant que percontatifs, relatifs et intégratifs. Notre analyse montre que les différentes formes de la percontative sʼexpliquent par les caractéristiques propres aux trois pronoms. Pour les deux autres emplois, il existe des points de divergence entre mā et quoi, surtout au niveau de lʼantécédent utilisé pour le relatif. Quant à lʼemploi intégratif, mā, de par ses propriétés syntaxiques, admet plus de fonctions dans la phrase que son équivalent quoi. / This comparative study examines the interrogative, percontative, relative (with antecedent)and integrative (with no antecedent) uses of quoi the indefinite pronoun in French and itsequivalents mā and māḏā in Arabic. Our corpus is taken from twentieth century literature,especially novels and plays of Margueritte Duras and Marcel Pagnol for French, and NaguibMahfouz for Arabic. We first see how the uses of these three pronouns are governed by theircharacteristics and syntactic properties. We analyze the syntactic behavior of mā and māḏā intheir interrogative uses compared with their French equivalent quoi. We will see that there aresimilarities and differences between the two languages, especially regarding their syntacticautonomy in their position in the sentence. We also examine the use of quoi, mā and māḏā insubordination, as percontatifs, relatives and integratives. Our analysis shows that the differentforms of percontative are explained by the characteristics of the three pronouns. For the lasttwo uses, there are many points of divergence between mā and quoi, especially regarding thetype of antecedent being used. In terms of integrative use mā, through its syntactic properties,admits more functions in the sentence than its equivalent quoi.

The process of determining the structural relationships between words in both natural and machine languages is known as parsing. Parsers are used as core components in a number of Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications such as online tutoring applications, dialogue-based systems and textual entailment systems. They have been used widely in the development of machine languages. In order to understand the way parsers work, we will investigate and describe a number of widely used parsing algorithms. These algorithms have been utilised in a range of different contexts such as dependency frameworks and phrase structure frameworks. We will investigate and describe some of the fundamental aspects of each of these frameworks, which can function in various ways including grammar-driven approaches and data-driven approaches. Grammar-driven approaches use a set of grammatical rules for determining the syntactic structures of sentences during parsing. Data-driven approaches use a set of parsed data to generate a parse model which is used for guiding the parser during the processing of new sentences. A number of state-of-the-art parsers have been developed that use such frameworks and approaches. We will briefly highlight some of these in this thesis. There are three specific important features that it is important to integrate into the development of parsers. These are efficiency, accuracy, and robustness. Efficiency is concerned with the use of as little time and computing resources as possible when processing natural language text. Accuracy involves maximising the correctness of the analyses that a parser produces. Robustness is a measure of a parser’s ability to cope with grammatically complex sentences and produce analyses of a large proportion of a set of sentences. In this thesis, we present a parser that can efficiently, accurately, and robustly parse a set of natural language sentences. Additionally, the implementation of the parser presented here allows for some trading-off between different levels of parsing performance. For example, some NLP applications may emphasise efficiency/robustness over accuracy while some other NLP systems may require a greater focus on accuracy. In dialogue-based systems, it may be preferable to produce a correct grammatical analysis of a question, rather than incorrectly analysing the grammatical structure of a question or quickly producing a grammatically incorrect answer for a question. Alternatively, it may be desirable that document translation systems translate a document into a different language quickly but less accurately, rather than slowly but highly accurately, because users may be able to correct grammatically incorrect sentences manually if necessary. The parser presented here is based on data-driven approaches but we will allow for the application of constraint rules to it in order to improve its performance.

Les tables du Lexique-Grammaire, dont le développement a été initié par Gross (1975), constituent un lexique syntaxique très riche pour le français. Elles couvrent diverses catégories lexicales telles que les verbes, les noms, les adjectifs et les adverbes. Cette base de données linguistiques n'est cependant pas directement exploitable informatiquement car elle est incomplète et manque de cohérence. Chaque table regroupe un certain nombre d'entrées jugées similaires car elles acceptent des propriétés communes. Ces propriétés ont pour particularité de ne pas être codées dans les tables même mais uniquement décrites dans la littérature. Pour rendre ces tables exploitables, il faut expliciter les propriétés intervenant dans chacune d'entre elles. De plus, un grand nombre de ces propriétés doivent être renommées dans un souci de cohérence. Notre objectif est d'adapter les tables pour les rendre utilisables dans diverses applications de Traitement Automatique des Langues (TAL), notamment l'analyse syntaxique. Nous expliquons les problèmes rencontrés et les méthodes adoptées pour permettre leur intégration dans un analyseur syntaxique. Nous proposons LGExtract, un outil générique pour générer un lexique syntaxique pour le TAL à partir des tables du Lexique-Grammaire. Il est relié à une table globale dans laquelle nous avons ajouté les propriétés manquantes et un unique script d'extraction incluant toutes les opérations liées à chaque propriété devant être effectuées pour toutes les tables. Nous présentons également LGLex, le nouveau lexique syntaxique généré des verbes, des noms prédicatifs, des expressions figées et des adverbes. Ensuite, nous montrons comment nous avons converti les verbes et les noms prédicatifs de ce lexique au format Alexina, qui est celui du lexique Lefff (Lexique des Formes Fléchies du Français) (Sagot, 2010), un lexique morphologique et syntaxique à large couverture et librement disponible pour le français. Ceci permet son intégration dans l'analyseur syntaxique FRMG (French MetaGrammar) (Thomasset et de La Clergerie, 2005), un analyseur profond à large couverture pour le français, basé sur les grammaires d'arbres adjoints (TAG), reposant habituellement sur le Lefff. Cette étape de conversion consiste à extraire l'information syntaxique codée dans les tables du Lexique-Grammaire. Nous présentons les fondements linguistiques de ce processus de conversion et le lexique obtenu. Nous évaluons l'analyseur syntaxique FRMG sur le corpus de référence de la campagne d'évaluation d'analyseurs du français Passage (Produire des Annotations Syntaxiques à Grande Échelle) (Hamon et al., 2008), en comparant sa version basée sur le Lefff avec notre version reposant sur les tables du Lexique-Grammaire converties / Lexicon-Grammar tables, whose development was initiated by Gross (1975), are a very rich syntactic lexicon for the French language. They cover various lexical categories such as verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs. This linguistic database is nevertheless not directly usable by computer programs, as it is incomplete and lacks consistency. Tables are defined on the basis of features which are not explicitly recorded in the lexicon. These features are only described in literature. To use these tables, we must make explicit the essential features appearing in each one of them. In addition, many features must be renamed for consistency sake. Our aim is to adapt the tables, so as to make them usable in various Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, in particular parsing.We describe the problems we encountered and the approaches we followed to enable their integration into a parser. We propose LGExtract, a generic tool for generating a syntactic lexicon for NLP from the Lexicon-Grammar tables. It relies on a global table in which we added the missing features and on a single extraction script including all operations related to each property to be performed for all tables. We also present LGLex, the new generated lexicon of French verbs, predicative nouns, frozen expressions and adverbs.Then, we describe how we converted the verbs and predicatives nouns of this lexicon into the Alexina framework, that is the one of the Lefff lexicon (Lexique des Formes Fléchies du Français) (Sagot, 2010), a freely available and large-coverage morphological and syntactic lexicon for French. This enables its integration in the FRMG parser (French MetaGrammar) (Thomasset et de La Clergerie, 2005), a large-coverage deep parser for French, based on Tree-Adjoining Grammars (TAG), that usually relies on the Lefff. This conversion step consists in extracting the syntactic information encoded in Lexicon-Grammar tables. We describe the linguistic basis of this conversion process, and the resulting lexicon. We evaluate the FRMG parser on the reference corpus of the evaluation campaign for French parsersPassage (Produire des Annotations Syntaxiques à Grande Échelle) (Hamon et al., 2008), by comparing its Lefff-based version to our version relying on the converted Lexicon-Grammar tables

Des études précédentes démontrent qu’avoir accès à la structure syntaxique des phrases aide les enfants à découvrir le sens des mots nouveaux. Cela implique que les enfants doivent avoir accès à certains aspects de la structure syntaxique avant même de connaître beaucoup de mots. Étant donné que dans toutes les langues du monde la structure prosodique d’une phrase corrèle avec sa structure syntaxique, et que par ailleurs les mots et morphèmes grammaticaux sont utiles pour déterminer la catégorie syntaxique des mots, il se pourrait que les enfants utilisent la prosodie et les mots grammaticaux pour initialiser leur acquisition lexicale et syntaxique. Dans cette thèse, j’ai étudié le rôle de la prosodie phrasale et des mots grammaticaux pour guider l’analyse syntaxique chez les enfants (PARTIE 1) et la possibilité que les jeunes enfants exploitent cette information pour apprendre le sens des mots nouveaux (PARTIE 2). Dans la partie 1, j’ai construit des paires minimales de phrases en français et en anglais afin de tester si les enfants exploitent la relation entre les structures prosodique et syntaxique pour guider leur interprétation des homophones noms-verbes. J’ai démontré que les enfants d’âge préscolaire utilisent la prosodie phrasale en temps réel pour guider leur analyse syntaxique. En écoutant des phrases telles que [La petite ferme][.., les enfants interprètent ferme comme un nom, mais pour les phrases telles que [La petite][ferme...], ils interprètent ferme comme un verbe (Chapitre 3). Cette capacité a également été observée chez les enfants américains: en écoutant des phrases telles que « The baby flies… », ils utilisent la prosodie des phrases pour décider si flies est un nom ou un verbe (Chapitre 4). Par la suite, j’ai démontré que même les enfants d’environ 20 mois utilisent la prosodie des phrases pour récupérer leur structure syntaxique et pour en déduire la catégorie syntaxique des mots (Chapitre 5), une capacité qui serait extrêmement utile pour découvrir le sens des mots inconnus. C’est cette hypothèse que j’ai testé dans la partie 2, à savoir si l’information syntaxique obtenue à partir de la prosodie phrasale et des mots grammaticaux permet aux enfants d’apprendre le sens des mots. Une première série d’études s’appuie sur des phrases disloquées à droite contenant un verbe nouveau en français : [ili dase], [le bébéi] qui est minimalement différente de la phrase transitive [il dase le bébé]. Mes résultats montrent que les enfants de 28 mois exploitent les informations prosodiques de ces phrases pour contraindre leur interprétation du sens du nouveau verbe (Chapitre 6). Dans une deuxième série d’études, j’ai étudié si la prosodie et les mots grammaticaux guident l’acquisition de noms et de verbes. J’ai utilisé des phrases comme « Regarde la petite bamoule » qui peuvent être produites soit comme [Regarde la petite bamoule!], où «bamoule» est un nom, ou [Regarde], [la petite] [bamoule!], où bamoule est un verbe. Les enfants de 18 mois ont correctement analysé ces phrases et ont attribué une interprétation de nom ou de verbe au mot bamoule selon sa position dans la structure prosodique-syntaxique des phrases (Chapitre 7). Ensemble, ces études montrent que les jeunes enfants exploitent les mots grammaticaux et la structure prosodique des phrases pour inférer la structure syntaxique et contraindre ainsi l’interprétation possible du sens des mots. Ce mécanisme peut permettre aux enfants de construire une représentation initiale de la structure syntaxique des phrases, avant même de connaître la signification des mots. Bien que les informations prosodiques et les mots grammaticaux puissent prendre des formes différentes selon les langues, nos études suggèrent que cette information pourrait représenter un outil universel et qui permettrait aux enfants d’accéder à certaines informations syntaxiques des phrasesqu’ils entendent, et d’initialiser l’acquisition du langage. / Previous research demonstrates that having access to the syntactic structure of sentences helps children to discover the meaning of novel words. This implies that infants need to get access to aspects of syntactic structure before they know many words. Since in all the world’s languages the prosodic structure of a sentence correlates with its syntactic structure, and since function words/morphemes are useful to determine the syntactic category of words, infants might use phrasal prosody and function words to bootstrap their way into lexical and syntactic acquisition. In this thesis, I empirically investigated the role of phrasal prosody and function words to constrain syntactic analysis in young children (PART 1) and whether infants exploit this information to learn the meanings of novel words (PART 2). In part 1, I constructed minimal pairs of sentences in French and in English, testing whether children exploit the relationship between syntactic and prosodic structures to drive their interpretation of noun-verb homophones. I demonstrated that preschoolers use phrasal prosody online to constrain their syntactic analysis. When listening to French sentences such as [La petite ferme][…–[The little farm][…, children interpreted ferme as a noun, but in sentences such as [La petite][ferme…] – [The little girl][closes…, they interpreted ferme as a verb (Chapter 3). This ability was also attested in English-learning preschoolers who listened to sentences such as ‘The baby flies…’: they used prosodic information to decide whether “flies” was a noun or a verb (Chapter 4). Importantly, in further studies I demonstrated that even infants around 20-months use phrasal prosody to recover syntactic structures and to predict the syntactic category of upcoming words (Chapter 5), an ability which would be extremely useful to discover the meaning of unknown words. This is what I tested in part 2: whether the syntactic information obtained from phrasal prosody and function words could allow infants to constrain their acquisition of word meanings. A first series of studies relied on right-dislocated sentences containing a novel verb in French: [ili dase], [le bébéi] - ‘hei is dasing, the babyi’ (meaning ‘the baby is dasing’) which is minimally different from the transitive sentence [il dase le bébé] (he is dasing the baby). 28-montholds were shown to exploit prosodic information to constrain their interpretation of the novel verb meaning (Chapter 6). In a second series of studies, I investigated whether phrasal prosody and function words constrain the acquisition of nouns and verbs. I used sentences like ‘Regarde la petite bamoule’, which can be produced either as [Regarde la petite bamoule!] - Look at the little bamoule!, where ‘bamoule’ is a noun, or as [Regarde], [la petite] [bamoule!] - Look, the little (one) is bamouling, where bamoule is a verb. 18-month-olds correctly parsed such sentences and attributed a noun or verb meaning to the critical word depending on its position within the syntactic-prosodic structure of the sentences (Chapter 7). Taken together, these studies show that infants exploit function words and the prosodic structure of an utterance to recover the sentences’ syntactic structure, which in turn constrains the possible meaning of novel words. This powerful mechanism might be extremely useful for infants to construct a first-pass syntactic structure of spoken sentences even before they know the meanings of many words. Although prosodic information and functional elements can surface differently across languages, our studies suggest that this information may represent a universal and extremely useful tool for infants to access syntactic information through a surface analysis of the speech stream, and to bootstrap their way into language acquisition.

[pt] O Método Pragmalingüístico é um instrumento de leitura bíblica cujos fundamentos encontram-se na semiótica, ciência articulada e dividida em três estágios: sintática, semântica e pragmática. A singularidade da pragmalingüística está na análise do texto como estratégia comunicativa do autor, que procura conduzir e provocar os sucessivos leitores para uma ação. A aplicação do Método Pragmalingüístico para a leitura de Os 10,1-8 evidencia que o próprio texto contem em si mesmo, explícita ou implicitamente, os elementos para sua compreensão. Permite detectar elementos relevantes para a reflexão metodológica, sobretudo a relação entre análise sincrônica e diacrônica. Se a interpretação dos textos bíblicos não depende exclusivamente dos conhecimentos que se tem das condições históricas da origem dos mesmos, não significa que estas devem ser ignoradas ou descartadas. A singularidade da pragmalingüística não está na oposição sincrônico e diacrônico. Mesmo admitindo o estudo diacrônico como indispensável para interpretação da Bíblia, a inclusão no método histórico crítico de uma análise sincrônica dos textos constitui uma operação legítima, pois é o texto em seu estado final, e não uma redação anterior, que é expressão da Palavra de Deus. O método pragmalingüístico não seria um método alternativo, mas é uma metodologia que possibilita uma visão totalizante, procurando integrar os resultados já adquiridos, potenciando-os a partir de uma concepção do texto como processo comunicativo. / [en] The Pragmalinguistic Method is an instrument of biblical reading of which fundamentals are found in semiotics, articulated science and divided in three stages: syntactic, semantics and pragmatics. The uniqueness of Pragmalinguistics lies in the text analysis as an author's communicative strategy that seeks to lead and incite to action the consecutive reader. The Pragmalinguistic Method application to the reading of Hos 10,1-8 makes evident that the text itself encloses within, explicitly or implicitly, the necessary elements to achieve its understanding. It makes possible to relevant elements for the methodological reflection, above all the relation between sycchronistic and diachronistic analysis. If the interpretation of biblical texts does not depend exclusively on the knowledge acquired through historical conditions of their origin, it does not mean that these very same should be ignored or dismissed. The uniqueness of Pragmalinguistics does not reside in the opposition synchronistic and diachronistic. Even admitting the diachronistic study as being essential for the interpretation of the Bible, the inclusion into the historic critical method of a synchronistic analysis of the texts establishes a genuine operation, since it regards the text final outcome, not a former draft, the expresses the Word of God. The Pragmalinguistic Method wouldn't be an alternative method, but a methodology which enables an absolute view attempting to integrate the results already acquired, involving them from the basis of a text conception as communicative process.

L’alternance codique (Code-switching, CS) est l’un des comportements naturels les plus courants chez les bilingues. Les linguistes ont exploré les contraintes derrière l’alternance codique (CS) pour expliquer ce comportement. Au cours des dernières décennies, la recherche a plutôt été axée sur les contraintes syntaxiques et ce n’est que récemment que les contraintes prosodiques ont commencé à attirer l’attention des linguistes. Puisque la paire de langues choisie est moins étudiée dans le domaine de recherche sur la CS, les études sur la CS mandarin-anglais sont limitées en ce qui concerne les deux contraintes. Ainsi, cette étude explore à la fois les contraintes prosodiques et les schémas syntaxiques de cette paire de langues grâce à une base de données naturelle sur l’alternance codique. Prosodiquement, l’étude applique une approche fondée sur l’information (information-based approach) et utilise une unité fondamentale, l’unité d’intonation (Intonation Unit, IU), pour mener l’analyse. Le résultat de 10,6 % d’IU bilingue (BIU) se révèle fiable et offre des preuves solides que l’alternance codique a tendance à avoir lieu aux frontières de l’IU chez les bilingues. Les résultats soutiennent le travail précurseur de Shenk (2006) à partir d’une paire de langues inexplorée (mandarin-anglais). De plus, cette étude développe des solutions au problème de subjectivité et au problème d’adéquation de la base de données afin de renforcer la fiabilité des résultats. D’un point de vue syntaxique, l’étude examine les schémas syntaxiques aux points de CS de la paire de langues mandarin-anglais en utilisant des données recueillies auprès d’une communauté bilingue rarement étudiée. Un schéma syntaxique spécifique à cette paire de langues a été observé en fonction des résultats, mais l’étude suggère que ce schéma ait perturbé les résultats finaux. L’étude comporte une analyse avec les résultats de l’aspect prosodique et de l’aspect syntaxique. Lorsque les résultats divergents sont éliminés, on peut observer un résultat plus solide qui soutient davantage l’argument de la contrainte prosodique. / Code-switching (CS) is one of the most common natural behaviors among bilinguals. Linguists have been exploring the constraints behind CS to explain this behaviour, and while syntactic constraints have been the focus for decades, prosodic constraints were only studied more in depth recently. As a less common language pair in CS research, studies on Mandarin-English CS are limited for both constraints. Thus, this study explores the prosodic constraints and syntactic patterns of this language pair with a natural CS database. Prosodically, this study applies the information-based approach and its fundamental unit, Intonation Unit (IU), to conduct the analysis. The result of 10.6% bilingual IU (BIU) proves to be reliable and offers solid evidence that bilinguals tend to code-switch at IU boundaries. This supports the pioneer work of Shenk (2006) from the unexplored Mandarin-English language pair. In addition to this, the study develops solutions to deal with the subjectivity problem and the database appropriateness problem in this approach to strengthen the validity of the results. Syntactically, this study investigates the syntactic patterns at switching points on the Mandarin-English language pair using data collected from a rarely investigated bilingual community. Based on the results, a syntactic pattern specific to this language pair was observed and this study suggests it disrupted the final results. This study conducts an analysis with the results of both the prosodic aspect and the syntactic aspect. When the interfering results are eliminated, a more solid outcome can be observed which provides greater support to the prosodic constraint argument.

This thesis deals with path-controlled grammars, which are grammars that place restrictions on the paths in a derivation tree of a context-free grammar. The goal of this thesis is to create an algorithm for conversion between the path-controlled grammars and the state grammars, which is a di erent type of regulated grammars. Another goal is to study the generative power of path-controlled grammars based on the conversion algorithm. The conversion algorithm is implemented and tested on a number of path-controlled grammars. Also, its complexity is discussed. Finally, a parsing tool for path-controlled grammars is implemented. Complexity of this tool is analyzed as well.

This paper addresses the issue of design and implementation of syntactic analysis based on the context sensitive languages, respectively, grammars that contains constructs, which isn't possible to analyze with the help of the standard parsers based on the context free grammars. More specifically, this paper deals with the possibility of adding context sensitive support to the classic LL-analysis by replacing the standard pushdown automata (PDA) with deep pushdown automata (DP), which were introduced and published by prof. Alexander Meduna.

Cette thèse étudie les rapports entre l’expression d’attitudes agressives contrôlées et la perception de la dominance, à partir d’extraits de séances télévisées du conseil Municipal de Montreuil (93100) durant l’année 2013, période marquée par un climat politique vif et hostile. Un corpus a été constitué à partir d’extraits de parole spontanée de la Maire, Dominique Voynet, et de quatre de ses opposants. Les cinq locuteurs ont participé à l’enregistrement d’une relecture neutre du corpus de leurs propres extraits de parole (25 stimuli par locuteur) ainsi qu’à l’auto-évaluation perceptive de leurs stimuli (profils émotionnels), dont les résultats ont été comparés à l’évaluation perceptive des extraits par des auditeurs naïfs. Tous les locuteurs ont été perçus comme légèrement hostiles, légèrement mécontents et légèrement dominants malgré des profils émotionnels auto-évalués variables. Les extraits originaux et relus ont été comparés au niveau de leur structuration prosodico-syntaxique et de leurs caractéristiques temporelles et mélodiques. Les résultats montrent que 1) certains locuteurs semblent plus s’appuyer sur des paramètres mélodiques et d’autres sur des paramètres temporels ; 2) on peut néanmoins dégager les tendances générales concernant les corrélats dans la parole de l’hostilité et de la dominance dans notre corpus : a) des écarts entre structuration syntaxique et prosodique des extraits, b) la réduction ou l’absence d’allongements syllabiques finaux pré-pausaux, c) de fortes variations de plage de variation de F0 de part et d’autre des pauses silencieuses. / This dissertation studies the relationship between the expression of controlled aggressive attitudes and the perception of dominance, based on extracts from televised sessions of the Municipal Council of Montreuil during 2013; a period marked by a lively and hostile political climate. We constituted a corpus of spontaneous speech extracts from the Mayor, Dominique Voynet, and four of her opponents. During subsequent recording sessions, the five speakers were asked to read transcriptions of their own speech extracts in a neutral tone (25 stimuli per speaker). They also participated in a self-evaluation questionnaire that focused on the perception of emotional profiles in their own stimuli. The results of the speakers’ perceptive evaluations were compared to those of a control group of naïve listeners. All speakers were perceived as slightly hostile, discontent and dominant, despite the variability observed in the self-evaluated profiles. The original and re-read extracts were compared in their prosodic- syntactic structure as well as their temporal and melodic characteristics. We show that: 1) some speakers seem to rely mostly on melodic parameters whereas others primarily use temporal parameters, 2) nevertheless, general trends emerge regarding the speech correlates of hostility and dominance in our corpus, notably: a) discrepancies between the syntactic and the prosodic structure of the extracts, b) reduction or absence of pre-pausal final syllabic lengthening, c) large variations in F0 range on both sides of silent pauses.

Human infants have been shown to have an innate capacity to acquire their mother tongue. In recent decades, the advent of the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique has made it feasible to explore the neural basis underlying language acquisition and processing in children, even in newborn infants (for reviews, see Kuhl & Rivera-Gaxiola, 2008; Kuhl, 2010) . Spontaneous low-frequency (< 0.1 Hz) fluctuations (LFFs) in the resting brain have been shown to be physiologically meaningful in the seminal study (Biswal et al., 1995) . Compared to task-based fMRI, resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) has some unique advantages in neuroimaging research, especially in obtaining data from pediatric and clinical populations. Moreover, it enables us to characterize the functional organization of the brain in a systematic manner in the absence of explicit tasks. Among brain systems, the language network has been well investigated by analyzing LFFs in the resting brain. This thesis attempts to investigate the functional connectivity within the language network in typically developing preschool children and the covariation of this connectivity with children’s language development by using the rs-fMRI technique. The first study (see Chapter 2.1; Xiao et al., 2016a) revealed connectivity differences in language-related regions between 5-year-olds and adults, and demonstrated distinct correlation patterns between functional connections within the language network and sentence comprehension performance in children. The results showed a left fronto-temporal connection for processing syntactically more complex sentences, suggesting that this connection is already in place at age 5 when it is needed for complex sentence comprehension, even though the whole functional network is still immature. In the second study (see Chapter 2.2; Xiao et al., 2016b), sentence comprehension performance and rs-fMRI data were obtained from a cohort of children at age 5 and a one-year follow-up. This study examined the changes in functional connectivity in the developing brain and their relation to the development of language abilities. The findings showed that the development of intrinsic functional connectivity in preschool children over the course of one year is clearly observable and individual differences in this development are related to the advancement in sentence comprehension ability with age. In summary, the present thesis provides new insights into the relationship between intrinsic functional connectivity in the brain and language processing, as well as between the changes in intrinsic functional connectivity and concurrent language development in preschool children. Moreover, it allows for a better understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying language processing and the advancement of language abilities in the developing brain.