[pt] Neste trabalho analisamos sob que perspectivas o presente do indicativo é apresentado nas gramáticas normativas. Em função do resultado dessa análise, levantamos algumas propostas para vermos amenizados os conflitos entre forma e significado, a partir de uma abordagem funcional. Baseados em breve reflexão sobre o conceito tempo, observamos as nuances semânticas do presente do indicativo encontradas no discurso oral e buscamos uma sistematização dessas ocorrências. / [en] In this essay we analyze in which perspectives the present tense is presented in standard grammars. As a result of this analysis, some proposals were raised to minimize the conflicts between form and meaning, rooted in a systemic functional approach. Based on a brief reflection about the concept of time, we observed the semantic nuances of the present tense found in oral discourse and we searched for a systematization of these occurrences.

published_or_final_version / Japanese Studies / Master / Master of Philosophy

The subject of this dissertation is an analysis of the use of verbal tenses in Czech subordinate clauses. This analysis is based on the notions of relative and absolute tenses and on the distinction between content and adjunct clauses. We test the hypothesis about the connection of relative and absolute tense with the type of a subordinated clause (content and adjunct) and propose a revised version of the views presented in Czech grammars, monographs and articles based on a detailed analysis of the data from the Czech National Corpus. The syntactic and semantic criteria for the classification of dependent clauses into content and adjunct classes are studied together with the conditions for the application of relative or absolute tense. The great amount of data exploited from the Czech National Corpus support the idea that beside the expected forms of tense (relative in content clauses, absolute in adjunct clauses) there exists some shifting of the presupposed forms of verbal tenses. The explanation of these shifts is presented in this dissertation as a new contribution to the study of the interplay between Czech morphology and syntax. Key Words: subordinate content clause, relative tense, absolute tense, factual predicate, indirect speech

The goal of this work is the study of the alternation between two verb tenses Futuro do Pretérito ( Future of Past Tense) and Pretérito Imperfeito of the Indicativo (Imperfect Tense) in main clauses of hypothetical contexts in the speech of alagoanos (people who live in Alagoas, in the northeast of Brazil). We adopt as the theoretical and methodological framework the theory of Linguistic Variation (LABOV, 1972). The alternation between these two verb tenses becomes possible because of the fact that these tenses share the property to refer to unfinished/unbounded events/actions. What puzzles us is the reason(s) that makes a speaker choose one or another verb tense. We start from the hypothesis that the Imperfect Tense supersedes the Future of Past Tense in main clauses of hypothetical contexts of spoken language. In this dissertation we intend to verify what linguistic and non-linguistic variables are statistically significant in terms of VARBRUL for the dependent variable. For this purpose, we selected as external factors age, gender and educational level; and as internal factors we selected the formal parallelism and the order of the clause. / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / O presente trabalho tem como objeto de estudo a variação entre o futuro do pretérito (FP) e o pretérito imperfeito do indicativo (PII) na oração principal em contextos hipotéticos na fala de alagoanos. Seguimos como pressuposto teórico/metodológico o da Teoria da Variação Linguística, representado por William Labov (1972), uma vez que a variação é algo inerente à língua, já que ela é indissociável da comunidade que a fala e não existe comunidade linguística homogênea (BELINE, 2003). A alternância entre os tempos verbais (FP) e (PII) se torna possível pelo fato de esses verbos compartilharem a possibilidade de manifestar traços de aspecto inconcluso. O que nos intriga é (são) o (s) motivo (s) que leva (m) o falante a optar por uma forma ou outra. Partimos da hipótese de que o (PII) suplanta o (FP) na oração principal em contextos hipotéticos, na língua falada. Nesta dissertação buscamos, portanto, verificar quais variáveis linguísticas e não linguísticas são estatisticamente significativas na rodagem do VARBRUL para a variável dependente. Para tanto, selecionamos como fatores externos: a idade, o sexo e a escolaridade; e como fatores internos: o paralelismo formal e a ordem da sentença.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:07:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 NaraJAB_DISSERT.pdf: 612958 bytes, checksum: a8bb10f184372180ba364567f0b2d48e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-03 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico / Neste trabalho, tomamos como objeto de estudo a express?o da fun??o contrafactual presente em constru??es do tipo se p, ent?o q , com foco no uso alternado de formas verbais na estrutura??o da ap?dose/condicionado, cujo valor ? canonicamente designado pelo futuro do pret?rito. Trabalhamos com amostras de fala extra?das de reportagens televisivas veiculadas na televis?o brasileira entre os anos de 2010 e 2013. A base te?ricometodol?gica para nossa discuss?o adv?m dos princ?pios do Sociofuncionalismo (cf. TAVARES, 2003, 2011, 2013; GORSKI; TAVARES, 2013; entre outros) que, por sua vez, trabalha na interface entre os pressupostos do Funcionalismo lingu?stico (cf. GIV?N, 2001; BYBEE, 2010; entre outros) e da Sociolingu?stica (cf. WEINRICH; LABOV; HERZOG, 1968; LABOV, 2008 [1972], 2001, 2010; entre outros). Averiguamos contextos lingu?sticos e extralingu?sticos pass?veis de influenciar a escolha do falante pelo futuro do pret?rito ou pelo pret?rito imperfeito, tanto em suas formas simples quanto em locu??es ou formas perifr?sticas. Para tanto, partimos da hip?tese de que fatores lingu?sticos como a ordem da senten?a e o paralelismo, e de que fatores sociais como o sexo e o n?vel de escolaridade sejam relevantes para a explica??o do uso alternado de formas verbais na codifica??o da indica??o contrafactual. Os resultados obtidos em nossa an?lise (qualitativa e quantitativa) apontam a relev?ncia de alguns desses fatores no uso efetivo das formas verbais futuro do pret?rito e do pret?rito imperfeito do indicativo nas ap?doses contrafactuais, e ressaltam o papel de princ?pios funcionalistas (a exemplo do princ?pio da marca??o e do princ?pio da iconicidade) sobre o uso vari?vel das formas verbais sob enfoque

PhD (English) / Department of English / Learning English as a second language by the South African learners studying English First Additional language (EFAL) presents many challenges, such as poor competence in the use of tenses, because of the differences between the learners’ first and second languages. In Grade 11, which is the closest point with regard to the exit point to institutions of higher learning or to the workplace, learners still display certain discrepancies in the mastery of the English tenses. These discrepancies occur despite the fact that in many South African schools, English is used as a medium of instruction and is learnt as a First Additional Language. The study used pragmatist research paradigm to collect data from the sampled respondents. The study answered four questions based on the types of errors committed in the use of tenses, the description and evaluation of errors, establishment of the causes of errors; and remedial measures for the errors committed by the Grade 11 EFAL learners in the use of tenses. Thus, Error Analysis Approaches were applied to find learners’ errors committed in written tasks. The types of errors identified include the inter-lingual transfer, overgeneralisation, false concept hypothesised, inadequate learning, fossilisation and ignorance of rule restrictions. Learners’ errors occurred in the domains of the simple present, the simple past, the present perfect and the past perfect tenses, regular and irregular verb inflectional morphemes, third person singular and plural subjects; and subject-verb agreement. In essence, this study reveals that some learners still face challenges in the use of tenses. Thus, remedial measures were suggested for the errors committed. / NRF

The main aim of this thesis is to examine discourse functions of tense and aspect in Setswana narrative texts. We are going to show that tense and aspect have distinct but related roles to play in Setswana in general and in narrative in particular and that this distinction and relationship become crystal clear in discourse in general. The field of tense and aspect has not yet been fully explored in Setswana let alone in the Bantu languages south of the Sahara. Moreover, the function of tense and aspect in discourse appears to be taboo in grammatical studies. If successfully carried out, this thesis would therefore be a contribution to the existing research in Bantu languages and theoretical issues in general. In realizing this aim, this work is structured in the following way. The first chapter provides the aim and scope of the investigation, chapter 2 reviews literature on tense and aspect with a view to showing the need for and to delimiting the topic. Chapter 3 provides the theoretical framework and chapter 4 and 5 are concerned with the application of data from D. P. S. Monyaise’s narrative texts. Chapter 6 provides the concluding remarks. / Linguistics / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

The Nineteenth Dynasty, which ushered in the Ramesside period in ± 1308 B.C.E. is an important period in which to study the development of the Egyptian language, falling as it does between the time of the Middle Egyptian (ME) idiom and the Late Egyptian (LE) language. Regarding the Egyptian language, Gardiner (1982:1) writes" ... the idiom in which the public records of the Twentieth Dynasty are couched differs widely from that found, for example in the royal decrees of the Sixth Dynasty". There was a gradual change from a "synthetic" language in ME into an "analytical" one in LE and later Coptic. The synthetic tenses are first supplemented and then gradually replaced by "analytic" forms. And this happened during the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty. This thesis addresses the Nineteenth Dynasty texts, with respect to grammar, semantics and syntax (mainly verbal forms). It studies the occurrence of Middle Egyptian synthetic forms and Late Egyptian analytic forms in the Nineteenth Dynasty texts and makes observations on forms which appear to be unique to the Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian (NDE) too. This study describes and analyses the language, both in a synchronic way - "frozen" in its time (as a type of grammar book), and comparing literary and non-literary uses of the time, - and in a diachronic manner, seeking to show the evolution and development of language forms, their ancestors and their successors. A study of these texts as shown in this thesis demonstrates that the written language of the Nineteenth Dynasty is a unique blend of grammatical and syntactic forms: pure ME forms, LE literary and non-literary forms, as well as forms peculiar to NDE. Thus NDE is "an independent self-sufficient system, which is neither Middle Egyptian nor Late Egyptian of the Twentieth Dynasty." (Groll 1973:70) / Classics & Modern European Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Semitic Languages)

Cette thèse a pour objectif d’étudier le fonctionnement des catégories de temps, aspect et mode (TAM) et l’interaction de ces trois catégories dans des phrases complexes en mandarin moderne à partir d’un corpus tiré principalement d’énoncés authentiques (oral et écrit). A travers cette étude nous cherchons à répondre à trois questions liées à l’interprétation de la temporalité en mandarin : (i) Comment les catégories temporelles, aspectuelles et modales se manifestent et interagissent dans des phrases complexes ? ; (ii) Quelles sont les différences entre les interactions du TAM dans la phrase complexe et celles dans la phrase simple ? ; (iii) Comment est exprimé l’ordre séquentiel en mandarin ? La théorie temporelle de Comrie (1985) et le modèle aspectuel élaboré par Tournadre (2004) sont utilisés comme cadre théorique de cette étude. Dans la première partie, nous présentons les théories du TAM utilisées en linguistique générale et introduisons les notions fondamentales que nous allons utiliser dans la thèse. Puis nous abordons les moyens linguistiques employés en mandarin pour véhiculer des valeurs temporelles, aspectuelles et modales, ainsi que le fonctionnement de ces trois catégories dans la phrase simple afin de comparer ce fonctionnement avec celui dans la phrase complexe. La seconde partie consiste à analyser l’interaction du TAM dans divers types de phrases complexes, comprenant des phrases subordonnées ou des constructions verbale en série. / This dissertation is a corpus-based study of the tense, aspect and mood (TAM) and the interaction between these three categories in complex sentences in modern Mandarin Chinese. It aims to answer three questions related to the interpretation of temporality in Mandarin: (i) How temporal, aspectual and modal categories are marked and how they interact in complex sentences? ; (ii) What are the differences between the interactions of TAM in complex sentences and those in simple sentences? ; (iii) How is temporal sequence expressed in Mandarin? The temporal theory of Comrie (1985) and the aspectual model developed by Tournadre (2004) will be used as the theoretical framework to analyze the data. In the first part, we first introduce the concepts and theories of TAM used in general linguistics. Then we discuss the linguistic means used in Mandarin to convey temporal, aspectual and modal concepts, and the functioning of these three categories in simple sentences in order to compare it with the functioning in complex sentences. The second part is devoted to the analysis the interaction of TAM categories in various types of complex sentences which include those in subordinate clauses and verbal construction in series.

This corpus-based study of the use of expressions of future in English has two aims: to examine how certain expressions of future are used in Present-day English, and to explore how electronic corpora can be exploited for linguistic study. The expressions focused on in this thesis are five auxiliary or semi-auxiliary verb phrases frequently discussed in studies of future reference in English: will, ’ll, shall, going to and gonna. The study examines the patterned ways in which the expressions are used in association with various linguistic and non-linguistic (or extra-linguistic) factors. The linguistic factors investigated are co-occurrence with particular words and co-occurrence with items of particular grammatical classes. The non-linguistic factors examined are medium (written vs. spoken), text category, speaker characteristics (age, sex, social class, etc.), region and time. The data for the study are exclusively drawn from computer-readable corpora of Present-day English. Corpus analyses are performed with automatic and interactive methods, and exploit both quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques. The study finds that the use of these expressions of future varies with a number of factors. Differences between spoken and written language are particularly prominent and usage also varies between different types of text, both within spoken and written corpora. Variation between groups of speakers is also attested. Although the linguistic co-occurrence patterns are similar to some degree, there are nonetheless differences in the collocational patterns in which the expressions are used. Methodological issues related to corpus-based studies in general are discussed in the light of the insights gained from this study of expressions of future.