Research has identified language impairment as a pervasive disability (Bishop & Edmundson, 1987; Greenhalgh & Strong, 2001). Classroom communication behaviors have a role in the maintenance of special education eligibility and functional communication difficulties for young children with language impairment. This paper reviews the theoretical and experimental literature on narrative skills and language impairment as well as empirical support for understanding language delays as part of a group of risk factors that affect child development. The present study describes patterns in the communication skills of a small group of young children with a predetermined diagnosis of language impairment using a case and field mixed methods research design. The study contributes to our conceptual understanding of the pervasive nature of language impairment by focusing on patterns in oral narrative skills and their relationship to communication at school, at home, and in the community. Study results differentiate participants by the severity of utterance formulation difficulties as well as social communication differences and emotional health symptoms to identify patterns. This study was unique in that information from classroom teachers and parents in addition to an analysis of multiple language samples created a thick description of patterns across participants. Discussion elaborates upon patterns in the data and implications for assessment and practice implications for school based services from a speech-language pathologist.

La dysphasie consiste en une atteinte sévère et persistante de l’acquisition et du développement du langage oral. Les élèves qui en sont atteints peinent à devenir des lecteurs habiles et sont à haut risque d’échec scolaire. Si ce trouble très complexe est étudié dans différents domaines (la santé et l’éducation, entre autres), peu d’études se sont spécifiquement intéressées à vérifier si les élèves dysphasiques possèdent des connaissances morphologiques dérivationnelles. Or, depuis un certain nombre d’années, de nombreux chercheurs soutiennent que ces connaissances, qui concernent la forme des mots et leurs règles de formation, peuvent constituer une stratégie supplémentaire aidante pour les élèves aux prises avec un déficit phonologique, comme les élèves dysphasiques. C’est dans ce cadre que se situe la présente étude, dont l’objectif général est d’évaluer les connaissances morphologiques dérivationnelles d’apprentis-lecteurs dysphasiques francophones du primaire. Pour y parvenir, trois tâches morphologiques, soit une tâche de jugement de relation, une tâche de dérivation et une tâche de plausibilité, ont été soumises à trois groupes de participants dont un groupe d’élèves dysphasiques (D=30) et deux groupes contrôles, c’est-à-dire des élèves du même âge chronologique (CA, n=30) et des élèves plus jeunes, mais du même niveau de lecture (CL, n=30). Nos résultats montrent que l’ensemble des trois groupes de participants a tiré profit des unités morphologiques contenues dans les items pour réussir les tâches proposées, les dysphasiques obtenant des résultats inférieurs aux CA mais comparables aux CL. Toutefois, ces résultats ne s’apparentent pas tout à fait au continuum de développement des connaissances morphologiques dérivationnelles établi par Tyler et Nagy (1989). De plus, aucun effet du type d’affixation (items préfixés vs suffixés) n’a été observé. Les résultats obtenus nous permettent de proposer des pistes d’interventions orthodidactiques visant l’enseignement de la morphologie dérivationnelle auprès des élèves aux prises avec des difficultés de lecture, à l’instar des participants dysphasiques qui ont participé à cette étude. / Dysphasia, also known as specific language impairment, is a severe and persistent impairment of acquisition and development of oral language. Students struggling with dysphasia have reading issues and are at high risk of school failure. If this complex disorder is studied in different areas (health and education, among others), few studies have specifically focused on the evaluation of morphological knowledge of dysphasic students. Morphology refers to the study of the internal structure of words and to how small meaningful linguistic units, termed “morphemes”, can be combined to form words. Over the past 30 years, numerous studies have been published on morphological knowledge, showing that awareness of words’ morphological structure can be a very helpful tool for students who are regularly exposed to unfamiliar words and can contribute to reading comprehension, among other skills. From these observations, we conducted a study to investigate morphological knowledge in young French students with dysphasia. To achieve this, three morphological tasks were used among three groups of students including a group of dysphasic students (D=30) and two control groups (students of the same chronological age (CA=30) and younger students of the same reading level (CL=30)). Our results show that all groups of participants took advantage of the units of meaning contained in the words in order to succeed tasks. Results also indicate that D and CL performed similarly on three tasks, but were outperformed by the CA group. For all three groups, results are not following the morphological knowledge continuum suggested by Tyler and Nagy (1989). Moreover, our results show no effect of the type of affixation (prefixed items vs suffixed items). These results have implications for teaching practices, especially when teachers plan specific activities to teach derivational morphology to students struggling with reading difficulties.

Les systèmes distribués supportent l'exécution d'un grand nombre d'applications pouvant avoir des contraintes d'exécution différentes. La sécurité pour ces systèmes possède une influence déterminante sur les performances et la qualité de service de ces applications. Le recours à la sécurité à base de politiques pour sécuriser ces systèmes est particulièrement attrayant. Toutefois, cette approche implique la spécification et le déploiement de politiques, qui reste une tâche laborieuse, souvent propice aux erreurs, et requiert une connaissance approfondie des mécanismes de sécurité. Dans cette thèse nous proposons un cadre pour la spécification, la vérification et l'implémentation des politiques pour la sécurité des systèmes distribués. Ce cadre repose sur un langage de spécification de politiques nommé PPL (Policy Programming Language) et une architecture de déploiement de politiques. Cette architecture se base sur le langage PPL et offre un support pour la compilation de politiques dans différents mécanismes d'implémentation en tenant compte des exigences de l'application ou du service sous-jacent. Elle permet par ailleurs une attribution automatique des politiques de sécurité aux composants d'implémentation. Le langage métier PPL fournit quant à lui des abstractions spécifiques pour permettre la spécification de politiques de sécurité facilitant ainsi leur développement et leur intégration dans le support de déploiement. Il est déclaratif, robuste, fortement expressif, et permet plusieurs possibilités de vérification. Il est aussi doté d'une sémantique formelle, qui permet de valider, vérifier et prouver les propriétés et les règles de sécurité d'une politique. / Distributed systems support the execution of a large number of applications that have different performance constraints. Security for these systems has a decisive influence on the performance and quality of service of such applications. The use of security-based policies to secure these systems is particularly attractive. However, this approach involves the specification and the deployment of policies, which remains a laborious task, often conducive to error, and requires a thorough knowledge of security mechanisms. In this thesis we propose a framework for specification, verification and implementation of security policies for distributed systems. This framework is based on a policy specification language called PPL (Policy Programming Language) and an architecture of policies deployment. This architecture is based on PPL language and offers a support for the compilation of policies in different mechanisms of implementation, taking into account the requirements of the application or the underlying service. It also enables automatic distribution of security policies to their implementation components. The PPL language provides specific abstractions to allow the specification of security policies and facilitating their development and integration in the deployment support. It is declarative, robust, highly expressive, and allows several possibilities of verification. It also has a formal semantic, which allows you to validate, verify and prove the properties of a security policy.

The thesis reports on specific language impairment (SLI). First part of the thesis summarizes first the current theoretical knowledge about this issue. It reviews terminology, classification, etiology, symptoms, diagnostic, therapy and association SLI with developmental dyslexia. The thesis then refers about search for diagnostic markers of SLI in pre-school age. The empirical part of the thesis summarizes the research conducted. Three groups of children were compared- 19 children with SLI, 19 peers without SLI (AC) and 19 younger language- matched children (LC). Four diagnostic methods were used - picture vocabulary test, number recall, sentence repetition and non-word recall. In all tests children with SLI performed poorly than AC-group and in some of them also poorly than LC-group. Limitation in sentence repetition and non-word recall, omission of prepositions and clitics and also omission of verbs or using of incomplete infinitive forms in sentences were detected as possible relevant diagnostic markers.

This thesis solves deals with special pedagogical problems of primary literacy acquisition of the children with specific language impairment. The aim is to analyze the phenomena, which disrupt the process of acquiring written language forms of the pupils with this diagnosis and to record factors, which help to streamline this process. Another task is to propose the steps to help overcome the problems caused by impaired communication skills by teaching analytic-synthetic method. The theoretical part is the basis for meeting the targets. It describes specific language impairment as one of the categories of impaired communication skills and its consequences for education. Attention is given to the topic of literacy. Emphasis is particularly given on the initial reading literacy. This period is seen in the context of the speech development and the psycholinguistic concept of literacy is introduced, where the skill of phonemic awareness has a central position. At the end of the theoretical part, the methods of teaching of reading are described. The practical part presents the research study, which was carried out in several consecutive phases: initial diagnostic phase, observation of pupils in various stages of teaching of reading, implementation of methodical support measures and the final assessment of the...

[pt] Esta dissertação apresenta a forma como foi desenvolvida uma arquitetura de desenvolvimento dirigida por modelos combinada com um ambiente de desenvolvimento para dar apoio ao desenvolvimento de aplicações Web, utilizando SHDM/OOHDM como métodos de desenvolvimento. Os modelos, descritos através de uma interface gráfica, são processados pela ferramenta. A interface da aplicação também é descrita utilizando modelos, e a interface produzida é definida por uma ontologia de interface concreta, especificada em RDFS, que faz o mapeamento entre os elementos de interface concretos e alguma tecnologia de destino como ASP.Net e XAML. O principal objetivo é tornar mais fácil o desenvolvimento de uma aplicação Web utilizando Visual Studio 2005 como IDE e SHDM como método de desenvolvimento, permitindo que o arquiteto de software concentre seus esforços na modelagem da aplicação. O SHDM .Net produz uma aplicação completa, criando linguagens específicas de domínio para cada modelo desenvolvido. A principal funcionalidade do SHDM .Net é a integração entre as fases de análise e de desenvolvimento de um projeto. / [en] This dissertation presents how a model driven development architecture and environment framework to support Web application development are being developed using SHDM/OOHDM as development methods. The models are described through graphical diagrams that are processed by the environment. The application interface is also produced using models, and the interface produced is defined by concrete interface ontologies, specified in RDFS, that maps the concrete widgets to some target technology such as ASP.Net and XAML. The main purpose is to ease the development of a web application using Visual Studio .Net 2005 as an IDE and SHDM as the development method, allowing the application architect to focus on the application modeling. SHDM .Net generates a complete runnable application; also producing domain- specific languages for each application modeled, resulting in a programming model much more concise and natural. The main feature of SHDM .Net is the integration between the analysis and development phases of a project.

Les grammaires de construction postulent l’émergence progressive des structures du langage via l’utilisation de processus cognitifs généraux. Les hypothèses théoriques qui en émanent suggèrent que la complexité et la structure des formes morphosyntaxiques ne peuvent s’expliquer que dans une perspective constructiviste, où l’enfant développe ses nouvelles formes en complexifiant et en généralisant ses propres productions antérieures. Ces hypothèses ont été éprouvées auprès de populations présentant un développement typique du langage (DTL) mais ont peu fait l’objet d’une mise en application auprès d’enfants avec troubles spécifiques du langage (TSL). Or, ces théories offrent de nouvelles perspectives théoriques permettant de mieux appréhender leurs difficultés langagières. Ces enfants présentent un manque de productivité syntaxique ainsi qu’une plus grande dépendance à l’input linguistique, allant dans le sens d’un manque de généralisation des schémas de construction. Nous suggérons que, contrairement aux enfants avec DTL, l’abstraction des schémas de construction des enfants avec TSL serait entravée en raison d’un mécanisme de généralisation qui se mettrait en place plus lentement. Ce travail de thèse a pour objectif de tester cette hypothèse chez les enfants avec TSL, en s’intéressant plus particulièrement au rôle du mapping analogique. Les résultats obtenus sont prometteurs et compatibles avec cette hypothèse. Si l’étude du mapping analogique comme facteur à l’origine des difficultés des enfants avec TSL est particulièrement séduisante, de nombreuses pistes restent à explorer pour appuyer davantage notre hypothèse. / Construction grammars argue that language structures progressively emerge thanks to the use of general cognitive processes. Theoretical hypotheses suggest that complexity and structure of morphosyntactic forms can only be explained in a constructivist perspective in which children develop their new forms by making more complex and generalizing their own prior utterances. These hypotheses have been already tested with children with typical language development (TLD) but few studies were interested in children with specific language impairment (SLI). These hypotheses give new interesting theoretical perspectives for apprehending their language disorders better. Children with SLI present a lack of syntactic productivity and a more important input dependency. These observations are compatible with the hypothesis of a lack of generalization of construction schemas. Consequently, the children’s abstraction of construction schemas would be slowed down compared to children with TLD’s abstraction. The current doctoral thesis studies the hypothesis of a lack of generalization in children with SLI by analyzing more particularly the role of analogical mapping. The results obtained are promising and in agreement with our hypothesis. If studies about the role of analogical mapping as a factor explaining the disorders in children with SLI are attractive, other considerations have still to be explored for strengthening our hypotheses.

Os Sistemas de Apoio à Decisão (SAD) organizam e processam dados e informações para gerar resultados que apoiem a tomada de decisão em um domínio especifico. Eles integram conhecimento de especialistas de domínio em cada um de seus componentes: modelos, dados, operações matemáticas (que processam os dados) e resultado de análises. Nas metodologias de desenvolvimento tradicionais, esse conhecimento deve ser interpretado e usado por desenvolvedores de software para implementar os SADs. Isso porque especialistas de domínio não conseguem formalizar esse conhecimento em um modelo computável que possa ser integrado aos SADs. O processo de modelagem de conhecimento é realizado, na prática, pelos desenvolvedores, parcializando o conhecimento do domínio e dificultando o desenvolvimento ágil dos SADs (já que os especialistas não modificam o código diretamente). Para solucionar esse problema, propõe-se um método e ferramenta web que usa ontologias, na Web Ontology Language (OWL), para representar o conhecimento de especialistas, e uma Domain Specific Language (DSL), para modelar o comportamento dos SADs. Ontologias, em OWL, são uma representação de conhecimento computável, que permite definir SADs em um formato entendível e accessível a humanos e máquinas. Esse método foi usado para criar o Framework Decisioner para a instanciação de SADs. O Decisioner gera automaticamente SADs a partir de uma ontologia e uma descrição naDSL, incluindo a interface do SAD (usando uma biblioteca de Web Components). Um editor online de ontologias, que usa um formato simplificado, permite que especialistas de domínio possam modificar aspectos da ontologia e imediatamente ver as consequência de suasmudanças no SAD.Uma validação desse método foi realizada, por meio da instanciação do SAD SustenAgro no Framework Decisioner. O SAD SustenAgro avalia a sustentabilidade de sistemas produtivos de cana-de-açúcar na região centro-sul do Brasil. Avaliações, conduzidas por especialistas em sustentabilidade da Embrapa Meio ambiente (parceiros neste projeto), mostraram que especialistas são capazes de alterar a ontologia e DSL usadas, sem a ajuda de programadores, e que o sistema produz análises de sustentabilidade corretas. / Decision Support Systems (DSSs) organize and process data and information to generate results to support decision making in a specific domain. They integrate knowledge from domain experts in each of their components: models, data, mathematical operations (that process the data) and analysis results. In traditional development methodologies, this knowledge must be interpreted and used by software developers to implement DSSs. That is because domain experts cannot formalize this knowledge in a computable model that can be integrated into DSSs. The knowledge modeling process is carried out, in practice, by the developers, biasing domain knowledge and hindering the agile development of DSSs (as domain experts cannot modify code directly). To solve this problem, a method and web tool is proposed that uses ontologies, in the Web Ontology Language (OWL), to represent experts knowledge, and a Domain Specific Language (DSL), to model DSS behavior. Ontologies, in OWL, are a computable knowledge representations, which allow the definition of DSSs in a format understandable and accessible to humans and machines. This method was used to create the Decisioner Framework for the instantiation of DSSs. Decisioner automatically generates DSSs from an ontology and a description in its DSL, including the DSS interface (using a Web Components library). An online ontology editor, using a simplified format, allows that domain experts change the ontology and immediately see the consequences of their changes in the in the DSS. A validation of this method was done through the instantiation of the SustenAgro DSS, using the Decisioner Framework. The SustenAgro DSS evaluates the sustainability of sugarcane production systems in the center-south region of Brazil. Evaluations, done by by sustainability experts from Embrapa Environment (partners in this project), showed that domain experts are capable of changing the ontology and DSL program used, without the help of software developers, and that the system produced correct sustainability analysis.

Este estudo tem por objetivo investigar o comportamento das crianças com Distúrbio Específico de Linguagem (doravante DEL) em relação à produção de uma estrutura sintática complexa, a interrogativa QU de longa distância (doravante pergunta QULD) no português brasileiro, e compará-lo ao das crianças com Desenvolvimento Típico (doravante DT). Foram coletados dados desses 2 grupos de crianças (DEL e DT) entre 5 e 11 anos de idade. Utilizou-se a metodologia de eliciação, implantada em Thornton (1990), para realizar o experimento. Foram eliciadas 16 perguntas QU LD para cada criança, sendo que 8 dessas perguntas eram com extração de sujeito (4 QU nu e 4 QU+N) e 8 com extração de objeto (4 QU nu e 4 QU+N). Os dados da produção dos 2 grupos foram comparados e observou-se que as crianças de ambos os grupos dominam a estrutura de pergunta-QU LD a partir dos 5 anos. Contudo, a produção de tal estrutura sintática pelo grupo das crianças com DEL (36,65%) mostrou-se menos frequente do que a produção do grupo com DT (89,70%), sugerindo que o grupo com DEL enfrenta dificuldades com as estruturas complexas que envolvem movimento. Considerando-se a produção das crianças com DEL, as perguntas-QU de objeto foram produzidas a taxas semelhantes às perguntas QU de sujeito (QU-que simples de sujeito com movimento-QU (44,44%) e QU simples de objeto (55,55%)) pelo grupo com DEL. A análise dos dados nos sugere que as crianças com DEL, embora apresentem dificuldades relacionadas aos movimentos sintáticos, são capazes de processar ambas as estruturas, diferentemente do que outros estudos com essa população encontrou (por exemplo, Van der Lely e Battell (2003) e Friedmman e Novogrodsky, (2011)). Curiosamente, as crianças não produziram perguntasQU com QU in situ, embora a produção de tal estrutura fosse esperada como uma estratégia de minimização de custo de processamento da informação, algo que foi encontrado em estudos anteriores (como em Corrêa e Augusto (2011)). / The present study investigates the behavior of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) when producing the complex syntactic structure of Long Distance WH- Question and compares it to the production of the same structure by Typically Developing children (TD) at the age of language acquisition in Brazilian Portuguese. Data was taken from 2 groups of children (TD and SLI) aged from 5 to 11 years old. The elicitation method, implemented by Thornton (1990), was used for the experiment. 16 WH-questions were elicited from each child, i.e., 8 with object extraction (4 WH-bare and 4 WHICH+N) and 8 with subject extraction (4 WH-bare and 4 WHICH+N). Data obtained from the 2 groups showed that TD children as well as the SLI group master the complex WH-questions at the age of 5, however, SLI children produced this syntactic structure less frequently (36,65%) than the TD group (89,70%). SLI children certainly faced difficulties in producing it. However, this group of children produced WH-questions with object extraction (55,55%) as frequently as the production of the WH-questions with subject extraction (44,44%). Data analysis suggests that SLI children are able to deal with both syntactic structures (subject and object WH-questions) the same way. SLI children did not produce WH- in situ (a syntactic structure licensed in Brazilian Portuguese).

Die Anwendung von Methodiken und Technologien aus dem Bereich der Softwaretechnik auf den Bereich der Umweltmodellierung ist eine gemeinhin akzeptierte Vorgehensweise. Im Rahmen der "modellgetriebenen Entwicklung"(MDE, model-driven engineering) werden Technologien entwickelt, die darauf abzielen, Softwaresysteme vorwiegend auf Basis von im Vergleich zu Programmquelltexten relativ abstrakten Modellen zu entwickeln. Ein wesentlicher Bestandteil von MDE sind Techniken zur effizienten Entwicklung von "domänenspezifischen Sprachen"( DSL, domain-specific language), die auf Sprachmetamodellen beruhen. Die vorliegende Arbeit zeigt, wie modellgetriebene Entwicklung, und insbesondere die metamodellbasierte Beschreibung von DSLs, darüber hinaus Aspekte der Pragmatik unterstützen kann, deren Relevanz im erkenntnistheoretischen und kognitiven Hintergrund wissenschaftlichen Forschens begründet wird. Hierzu wird vor dem Hintergrund der Erkenntnisse des "modellbasierten Forschens"(model-based science und model-based reasoning) gezeigt, wie insbesondere durch Metamodelle beschriebene DSLs Möglichkeiten bieten, entsprechende pragmatische Aspekte besonders zu berücksichtigen, indem sie als Werkzeug zur Erkenntnisgewinnung aufgefasst werden. Dies ist v.a. im Kontext großer Unsicherheiten, wie sie für weite Teile der Umweltmodellierung charakterisierend sind, von grundsätzlicher Bedeutung. Die Formulierung eines sprachzentrierten Ansatzes (LCA, language-centered approach) für die Werkzeugunterstützung konkretisiert die genannten Aspekte und bildet die Basis für eine beispielhafte Implementierung eines Werkzeuges mit einer DSL für die Beschreibung von Zellulären Automaten (ZA) für die Umweltmodellierung. Anwendungsfälle belegen die Verwendbarkeit von ECAL und der entsprechenden metamodellbasierten Werkzeugimplementierung. / The application of methods and technologies of software engineering to environmental modeling and simulation (EMS) is common, since both areas share basic issues of software development and digital simulation. Recent developments within the context of "Model-driven Engineering" (MDE) aim at supporting the development of software systems at the base of relatively abstract models as opposed to programming language code. A basic ingredient of MDE is the development of methods that allow the efficient development of "domain-specific languages" (DSL), in particular at the base of language metamodels. This thesis shows how MDE and language metamodeling in particular, may support pragmatic aspects that reflect epistemic and cognitive aspects of scientific investigations. For this, DSLs and language metamodeling in particular are set into the context of "model-based science" and "model-based reasoning". It is shown that the specific properties of metamodel-based DSLs may be used to support those properties, in particular transparency, which are of particular relevance against the background of uncertainty, that is a characterizing property of EMS. The findings are the base for the formulation of an corresponding specific metamodel- based approach for the provision of modeling tools for EMS (Language-centered Approach, LCA), which has been implemented (modeling tool ECA-EMS), including a new DSL for CA modeling for EMS (ECAL). At the base of this implementation, the applicability of this approach is shown.