Hakka is an under-developed language. compared with Mandrin and taiwanese. Many fields of Hakka such as ststematic studies of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic theories remain unexploited. This thesis aims to exploring some linguistic phenomena of Hakka by means of the studies on the particle to in Hakka. To is a very versatile morpheme in Makka. It may serve as a main verb, a coverb, a presuppositional particle or a verb ending. Chapter Two explores the functions of to as a main verb and as a coverb. It discusses the three functions of to as a coverb respecitvely. To can occur between two portions in a sentence in which to serves to mark the relation between the two portions. Chapter three explores the relatio- ns between the two portions in such a to construcfion. The status of to in such a construction is also investigated. To can be a verb enaing of a verb compound. Chapter Four aiscusses what a verb+to compound is. It explores the productivity of to as a verb ending. It further explicates the structural ambiguity between a coverb to and a verb ending to. Cmapter Five makes a generalization and draws a conclusion. It is hoped t- hat this thesis may provide a more intensive analysis of some Hakka const- ructions involving to and thus may spark a wider interest in the Hakka la- nguage.

Although language usually occurs in an interactive and world-situated context (Clark, 1996), most research on language use to date has studied comprehension and production in isolation. This thesis combines research on comprehension and production, and explores the links between them. Its main focus is on the coordination of visual attention between speakers and listeners, as well as the influence this has on the language they use and the ease with which they understand it. Experiment 1 compared participants’ eye movements during comprehension and production of similar sentences: in a syntactic priming task, they first heard a confederate describe an image using active or passive voice, and then described the same kind of picture themselves (cf. Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland, 2000). As expected, the primary influence on eye movements in both tasks was the unfolding sentence structure. In addition, eye movements during target production were affected by the structure of the prime sentence. Eye movements in comprehension were linked more loosely with speech, reflecting the ongoing integration of listeners’ interpretations with the visual context and other conceptual factors. Experiments 2-7 established a novel paradigm to explore how seeing where a speaker was looking during unscripted production would facilitate identification of the objects they were describing in a photographic scene. Visual coordination in these studies was created artificially through an on-screen cursor which reflected the speaker’s original eye movements (cf. Brennan, Chen, Dickinson, Neider, & Zelinsky, 2007). A series of spatial and temporal manipulations of the link between cursor and speech investigated the respective influences of linguistic and visual information at different points in the comprehension process. Implications and potential future applications are discussed, as well as the relevance of this kind of visual cueing to the processing of real gaze in face-to-face interaction.

This paper aims to spell out the post-syntactic operations involved in the placement of second-position subject clitics in Alsea, an extinct language of the central Oregon coast. It assumes that the subject clitic is a syntactic head that is moved to a complementizer position in syntax, but is linearized in a post-syntactic morphological component in PF; operations in morphology account for the deviation of the subject clitic from its syntactic output position. Based on Buckley (1994), this paper proposes a two-stage post-syntactic derivation to account for the subject clitic distribution in Alsea: (i) concatenation, in which the subject clitic adjoins to an adjacent head of the same type to satisfy its suffixal requirement, (ii) prosodic readjustment, whereby a clitic whose morphological host is non-overt, leans rightward to procliticize to the first prosodic constituent.

The semantic model developed in this research was in response to the difficulty a group of mathematics learners had with conventional mathematical language and their interpretation of mathematical constructs. In order to develop the model ideas from linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, formal languages and natural language processing were investigated. This investigation led to the identification of four main processes: the parsing process, syntactic processing, semantic processing and conceptual processing. The model showed the complex interdependency between these four processes and provided a theoretical framework in which the behaviour of the mathematics learner could be analysed. The model was then extended to include the use of technological artefacts into the learning process. To facilitate this aspect of the research, the theory of instrumentation was incorporated into the semantic model. The conclusion of this research was that although the cognitive processes were interdependent, they could develop at different rates until mastery of a topic was achieved. It also found that the introduction of a technological artefact into the learning environment introduced another layer of complexity, both in terms of the learning process and the underlying relationship between the four cognitive processes.

This thesis considers possible criteria for the selection of example sentences for difficult or unknown words in reading texts for students of German as a Second Language (GSL). The examples are intended to be provided within the context of an Intelligent Computer-Aided Language Learning (ICALL) Vocabulary Learning System, where students can choose among several explanation options for difficult words. Some of these options (e.g. glosses) have received a good deal of attention in the ICALL/Second Language (L2) Acquisition literature; in contrast, literature on examples has been the near exclusive province of lexicographers. The selection of examples is explored from an educational, L2 teaching point of view: the thesis is intended as a first exploration of the question of what makes an example helpful to the L2 student from the perspective of L2 teachers. An important motivation for this work is that selecting examples from a dictionary or randomly from a corpus has several drawbacks: first, the number of available dictionary examples is limited; second, the examples fail to take into account the context in which the word was encountered; and third, the rationale and precise principles behind the selection of dictionary examples is usually less than clear. Central to this thesis is the hypothesis that a random selection of example sentences from a suitable corpus can be improved by a guided selection process that takes into account characteristics of helpful examples. This is investigated by an empirical study conducted with teachers of L2 German. The teacher data show that four dimensions are significant criteria amenable to analysis: (a) reduced syntactic complexity, (b) sentence similarity, provision of (c) significant co-occurrences and (d) semantically related words. Models based on these dimensions are developed using logistic regression analysis, and evaluated through two further empirical studies with teachers and students of L2 German. The results of the teacher evaluation are encouraging: for the teacher evaluation, they indicate that, for one of the models, the top-ranked selections perform on the same level as dictionary examples. In addition, the model provides a ranking of potential examples that roughly corresponds to that of experienced teachers of L2 German. The student evaluation confirms and notably improves on the teacher evaluation in that the best-performing model of the teacher evaluation significantly outperforms both random corpus selections and dictionary examples (when a penalty for missing entries is included).

Title: Joining segments in Czech sentences Author: Bc. Josef Čech Department: Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics Supervisor: doc. RNDr. Vladislav Kuboň Ph.D. e-mail: vk@ufal.mff.cuni.cz Abstract: This thesis follows up segmentation of complex sentences to linguistic motivated objects - segments - and their mutual relations. These relations can be used for next work with segments. Main purpose for mapping relations is their joining into next level unit - clause. Theoretically should be possible to analyse each clause of complex sentence separately. Analysis of set of clauses should be quicker than of analysis whole complex sentence. Segments should be found thanks to linguistic separators and rule approach. Rule approach proves in problem relations between neighbouring segments. This thesis should attest that rule approach is best solution for joining segments into clauses. Position tag of segment was part of this thesis. This tag should be used in methods dealing with segments instead of custom segment. Keyword: segment, clause, tag, joining segments, syntactic analysis

Title: Joining segments in Czech sentences Author: Bc. Josef Čech Department: Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics Supervisor: doc. RNDr. Vladislav Kuboň Ph.D. e-mail: vk@ufal.mff.cuni.cz Abstract: This thesis follows up segmentation of complex sentences to linguistic motivated objects - segments - and their mutual relations. These relations can be used for next work with segments. Main purpose for mapping relations is their joining into next level unit - clause. Theoretically should be possible to analyze each clause of complex sentence separately. Analysis of set of clauses should be quicker than of analysis whole complex sentence. Segments should be found thanks to linguistic separators and rule approach. Rule approach prove in problem relations between neighbouring segments. This thesis should attest that rule approach is best solution for joining segments into clauses. Position tag of segment was part of this thesis. This tag should be used in metods dealing with segments instead of custom segment. Keyword: segment, clause, tag, joinig segments, syntactic analysis

Student Number: 8402734 Master of Arts (Speech Pathology) Faculty of Humanities / Comprehension was assessed under various conditions in nine subjects with probable Alzheimer’s Disease. Four linguistic variables were selected, namely syntactic complexity, the use of pronouns, directness and literality. Each variable was assessed in sentences in a simple form and in a complex form. Discourse passages which included all of the variables were then constructed, and these tasks were also administered in simple and complex forms. All subjects performed qualitatively and quantitatively better under the simple conditions than under the complex for all four of the variables assessed. However, this effect was more marked in the sentence tasks than in the discourse tasks. Furthermore, individual subjects responded differently to the manipulation of the variables. Results of the study suggest that modifying the variables investigated can improve the comprehension of people with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s Disease. This has important implications for the training of caregivers and conversational partners, and suggests that this type of indirect intervention may be an effective way for speech therapists to provide clinical services to people with dementia in South Africa.

Ces dernières années ont connu un renouveau des Environnements Informatiques pour l'Apprentissage Humain. Afin que ces environnements soient largement utilisés par les enseignants et les apprenants, ils doivent fournir des moyens pour assister les enseignants dans leur tâche de génération d'exercices. Parmi ces exercices, les Questionnaires à Choix Multiples (QCM) sont très présents. Cependant, la rédaction d'items à choix multiples évaluant correctement le niveau d'apprentissage des apprenants est une tâche complexe. Des consignes ont été développées pour rédiger manuellement des items, mais une évaluation automatique de la qualité des items constituerait un outil pratique pour les enseignants.Nous nous sommes intéressés à l'évaluation automatique de la qualité des distracteurs (mauvais choix de réponse). Pour cela, nous avons étudié les caractéristiques des distracteurs pertinents à partir de consignes de rédaction de QCM. Cette étude nous a conduits à considérer que l'homogénéité des distracteurs et de la réponse est un critère important pour valider les distracteurs. L'homogénéité est d'ordre syntaxique et sémantique. Nous avons validé la définition de l'homogénéité par une analyse de corpus de QCM, et nous avons proposé des méthodes de reconnaissance automatique de l'homogénéité syntaxique et sémantique à partir de cette analyse.Nous nous sommes ensuite focalisé sur l'homogénéité sémantique des distracteurs. Pour l'estimer automatiquement, nous avons proposé un modèle d'ordonnancement par apprentissage, combinant différentes mesures d'homogénéité sémantique. L'évaluation du modèle a montré que notre méthode est plus efficace que les travaux existants pour estimer l'homogénéité sémantique des distracteurs. / Recent years have seen a revival of Intelligent Tutoring Systems. In order to make these systems widely usable by teachers and learners, they have to provide means to assist teachers in their task of exercise generation. Among these exercises, multiple-choice tests are very common. However, writing Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ) that correctly assess a learner's level is a complex task. Guidelines were developed to manually write MCQs, but an automatic evaluation of MCQ quality would be a useful tool for teachers.We are interested in automatic evaluation of distractor (wrong answer choice) quality. To do this, we studied characteristics of relevant distractors from multiple-choice test writing guidelines. This study led us to assume that homogeneity between distractors and answer is an important criterion to validate distractors. Homogeneity is both syntactic and semantic. We validated the definition of homogeneity by a MCQ corpus analysis, and we proposed methods for automatic recognition of syntactic and semantic homogeneity based on this analysis.Then, we focused our work on distractor semantic homogeneity. To automatically estimate it, we proposed a ranking model by machine learning, combining different semantic homogeneity measures. The evaluation of the model showed that our method is more efficient than existing work to estimate distractor semantic homogeneity

O presente trabalho levanta a questão da derivação sintática em diferentes contruções de tópico. Essa diferenciação foi estabelecida por Frascarreli & Hinterhölzl (2007) com base na abordagem de Rizzi (1997) que propõe uma estrutura mais articulada para o complexo CP. Assim Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl (2007) realizam um levantamento de corpora determinando três tipos de tópico em sentenças do italiano e do alemão, a saber: a) Tópico conversacional (aboutness topic): informação que é o tema da sentença (REINHART, 1981); b) Tópico contrastivo: constituinte que cria um par opositivo a outro tópico (CHAFE, 1987) c) Tópico familiar: constituinte acessível, geralmente realizado em uma forma pronominal (PESETSKY, 1987). Para dar uma ideia do problema considere os exemplos, abaixo: 1) O JOÃO (*ele) leu o livro de sintaxe (não o Pedro). Foco contrastivo 2) O livro de sintaxe, o João leu ø/ele ontem. Tópico 3) O João, ele leu o livro de sintaxe. Tópico 4) O João, ø leu o livro de sintaxe ontem. Tópico Os autores avaliam o contorno entoacional de cada uma das construções (2 e 3) e a sentença (4) que coloca uma ambiguidade estrutural entre moviemnto e geração na base. Os autores, então, propõem que todas sejam geradas na base deixando a estrutura de cujo sintagma é inequivocamente movido para a expressão de foco, sentença (1). Com base nesse trabalho realizamos um estudo comparativo entre as estruturas de tópico em PB. Contrapomos a entoação de sentenças como as decritas acima e avaliamos se existe um melhor tratamento sintático para tais estruturas, seja derivação via movimento, ou geração na base. No primeiro capítulo apresentamos o problema e a arquitetura da fonética articulatória, autossegmental e métrica e prosódica que embasam o estudo. Em seguida apresentamos alguns estudos já realizados nessa matéria que contam com a descrição prosódica de sentenças neutras do PB e sentenças com foco prosódico sobre o sujeito, além de sentenças com tópicos já levantadas em pesquisas anteriores. No segundo capítulo apresentaremos a teoria sintática que ampara nosso entendimento das estruturas envolvidas e o tipo de derivação em jogo. A teoria gerativa formulada por Chomsky servirá como guia balizador da derivação, especialmente a partir do programa minimalista (COMSKY 1995 e posteriores) Após essa introdução aprsentaremos algns estudos sobre esse conjunto de sentenças os possíveis caminhos a serem seguidos. No terceiro capítulo descrevemos o experimento, no quarto apresentamos e discutimos os resultados. Por fim, o quinto e último capítulo oferece um panorama geral do que foi exposto e as conclusões. / This study is about different topic constructions and their darivations. This differentiation was established by Frascarreli & Hinterhölzl (2007) based on the approach developed by Rizzi (1997), which proposes a more articulated CP structure. So Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl (2007) conducted corpora syrvey and unveal three types of topics in the Italian and German: a) shifting topic (aboutness topic): information that is the subject of the sentence, relativaly (Reinhart, 1981); b) contrastive topic: a phrase that creates a opposition to another pharse (Chafe, 1987) c) familiar topic: a given or accessable constituint (PESETSKY, 1987). To give an ideato this problem, please, consider the examples, below: 1) JOHN (* he) reads the syntax book (not Peter). Contrastive focus 2) The syntax book, John read ø / it yesterday. Topic 3) John, he read the syntax book. Topic 4) John ø syntax read the book yesterday. Topic These sentences ar all fine in BP. Sentence (1) can not have the strong pronoun. Sentence (2) is accetable in both forms either with a strong pronoun or wth the empity category. Sentence (3) is accetable because John is based generated at spell out. Sentence (4) is ambiguous bettween movment or base generation. The authors evaluate the intonation of each one of the structures like (2, 3 and 4) and propose that: they are all based generated leaving the derivation via movment to express focus, sentence (1). Based on this work, we carried out a comparative study of the topic structures in BP. Analizing sentences like (2-4) we stabilishs the intonational contour of them and look for a better treatment for such syntactic structures: derivation via movement, or base generation. In the very first chapter we present the problem and the architecture of the phonetic articulation, the autossegmental and metric phonology and prosodic structure that will guide this study. Then, some previous studies in this area are show wtih the descriptions of the PB neutral sentences and sentences with prosodic focus on the subject, and, also, sentences with already raised topics in the recent past. In the second chapter, we will present the syntactic theory that supports our understanding of the structures involved here and the type of analisys envolved. The generative theory formulated by Chomsky will serve as base line, especially from the Minimalist Program (COMSKY 1995 and laters). After this introduction, we will present some findings on this set of sentences and two possible paths to follow. In the third chapter we describe the experiment, in the fourth we present and discuss the results. Finally, the fifth and final chapter offers an overview of the foregoing and the conclusions.