Human manual action exhibits a differential use of a non-dominant (typically, left) and a dominant (typically, right) hand. Human communication exhibits a pervasive structuring of utterances into topic and comment. I will point out striking similarities between the coordination of hands in bimanual actions, and the structuring of utterances in topics and comments. I will also show how principles of bimanual coordination influence the expression of topic/comment structure in sign languages and in gestures accompanying spoken language, and suggest that bimanual coordination might have been a preadaptation of the development of information structure in human communication.

Esta pesquisa tem por finalidade analisar as construções sentenciais de tópico-comentário, de tópico marcado e de tópico não marcado, em produções textuais de estudantes do sexto ao nono anos do segundo segmento do ensino fundamental de escola pública localizada em comunidade da Zona Oeste do Rio de Janeiro, tendo sido analisadas 316 produções de um universo de 1040. O aporte teórico é o Funcionalismo, com ênfase na teoria dos três diferentes tipos de sujeito Sujeito Lógico, Sujeito Psicológico e Sujeito gramatical de Halliday (1994) e na teoria da Estrutura Informacional (Information Structure) de Lambrecht (1994). Partindo de análise quantitativa e qualitativa de corpus, investigou-se, de um lado, o percentual de aparecimento de construções de tópico marcado e não marcado e, de outro, os diferentes tipos de tópico não marcado e as motivações sintáticas e pragmático-discursivas de sua utilização. A análise foi feita em duas etapas. Primeiramente, para a identificação e a quantificação das construções sentenciais de tópico marcado, procedeu-se à investigação das seguintes variáveis: 1) tipo de tópico marcado mais recorrente, segundo categorização específica referente ao tópico e suas relações argumentais com o verbo 2) Posição mais frequente, considerando a estrutura textual e a ambiência sintática de favorecimento do uso do pronome correferente (presença/ausência de sintagma ou oração intercalada entre tópico sentencial e pronome correferente). A fim de investigar os contextos favorecedores de uso dos tópicos não marcados sujeito pronominal pleno de 3 pessoa e sujeito pronominal nulo de 3 pessoa, consideraram-se as seguintes variáveis: 1) tipo de oração e 2) conexão discursiva cf. Paredes Silva (2003). Os resultados obtidos permitem sistematizar as condições de uso das estruturas estudadas. Com relação às construções sentenciais de tópico marcado, verificou-se que se constitui em estratégia de ativar no discurso o elemento sobre o qual informações novas serão transmitidas, marcando-o como o tópico sentencial. Relativamente aos tópicos não marcados, as estratégias de uso estão relacionadas ao tipo de oração e ao grau de conexão discursiva da sentença. O uso do sujeito nulo está diretamente relacionado à conexão discursiva de grau 1, denominado ótimo. Uma breve análise de tais construções em autores consagrados da literatura brasileira e demais autores brasileiros contemporâneos permite afirmar que as construções de tópico, principalmente as que contêm tópico marcado, merecem uma atenção maior no ensino de Língua Portuguesa, uma vez que constituem uma estratégia pragmático-discursiva de uso corrente e de função relevante nos processos interacionais. O estudo das construções de tópico, portanto, merece uma atenção especial, uma vez que refletem a riqueza de nosso idioma, ao representar uma estratégia pragmático-discursiva que, se bem desenvolvida, constituir-se-á em uma ferramenta a mais para o usuário da língua no que concerne ao uso consciente e competente do idioma materno / The present study aims at analyzing sentence constructions of commentary topic, marked-topic and unmarked topic in textual productions of students attending the last four years of elementary education in a public school located in a poor community in the West zone of Rio de Janeiro. 316 out of 1040 productions have been analyzed. Functionalism has been used as the theoretical background with special emphasis on three different types of subject the Logical Subject, the Psychological Subject and the Grammatical Subject - Halliday (1994) and on Lambrechts information structure (1994). Based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the corpus, we have investigated, on the one hand, the percentage of marked and non-marked topic construction appearances and, on the other hand, the different types of non-marked topics and the syntactic and pragmatic discursive motivations of their usage. The analysis has been done in two stages. Firstly, for the identification and quantification of sentence constructions of marked topics, the investigation of the following variables has been made: 1st) most recurrent marked topic, according to specific categorization referring to the topic and its argumentative relationship with the verb, 2nd) most frequent position, taking into account the textual structure and the syntactic ambience of favoring the use of the coreferent pronoun (presence / absence of the syntagma or intercalated clause between sentence topic and coreferent pronoun). In order to investigate favoring contexts of the use of non-marked topics of 3rd person full pronominal subject and 3rd person null pronominal subject, the following variables have been considered: 1st) type of clause and 2nd) discursive connection, Paredes Silva (2003). The results obtained allow us to systematize the use conditions of the studied structures. When it comes to the sentence constructions of marked topic, we could perceive that it is a strategy of activating in the discourse the element about which the new information will be transmitted, marking it as the sentence topic. When it comes to non-marked topics, the strategies of use are related to the type of clause and to the degree of discursive connection of the sentence. The use of the null subject is directly related to the discursive connection degree 1, which is considered great. A brief analysis of such constructions in works of renowned authors in the field of Brazilian literature and other contemporary Brazilian authors allow us to say that topic constructions, especially the ones that contain marked topics, deserve greater attention in the education of Portuguese language, since they represent a pragmatic discursive strategy which is relevant and commonly used in interactional processes. Therefore, the study of topic construction deserves special attention since it reflects the richness of our language when it represents a pragmatic discursive strategy that, if well developed, can be one more tool for the language user when it comes to the conscientious and competent use of the mother tongue

Esta pesquisa tem por finalidade analisar as construções sentenciais de tópico-comentário, de tópico marcado e de tópico não marcado, em produções textuais de estudantes do sexto ao nono anos do segundo segmento do ensino fundamental de escola pública localizada em comunidade da Zona Oeste do Rio de Janeiro, tendo sido analisadas 316 produções de um universo de 1040. O aporte teórico é o Funcionalismo, com ênfase na teoria dos três diferentes tipos de sujeito Sujeito Lógico, Sujeito Psicológico e Sujeito gramatical de Halliday (1994) e na teoria da Estrutura Informacional (Information Structure) de Lambrecht (1994). Partindo de análise quantitativa e qualitativa de corpus, investigou-se, de um lado, o percentual de aparecimento de construções de tópico marcado e não marcado e, de outro, os diferentes tipos de tópico não marcado e as motivações sintáticas e pragmático-discursivas de sua utilização. A análise foi feita em duas etapas. Primeiramente, para a identificação e a quantificação das construções sentenciais de tópico marcado, procedeu-se à investigação das seguintes variáveis: 1) tipo de tópico marcado mais recorrente, segundo categorização específica referente ao tópico e suas relações argumentais com o verbo 2) Posição mais frequente, considerando a estrutura textual e a ambiência sintática de favorecimento do uso do pronome correferente (presença/ausência de sintagma ou oração intercalada entre tópico sentencial e pronome correferente). A fim de investigar os contextos favorecedores de uso dos tópicos não marcados sujeito pronominal pleno de 3 pessoa e sujeito pronominal nulo de 3 pessoa, consideraram-se as seguintes variáveis: 1) tipo de oração e 2) conexão discursiva cf. Paredes Silva (2003). Os resultados obtidos permitem sistematizar as condições de uso das estruturas estudadas. Com relação às construções sentenciais de tópico marcado, verificou-se que se constitui em estratégia de ativar no discurso o elemento sobre o qual informações novas serão transmitidas, marcando-o como o tópico sentencial. Relativamente aos tópicos não marcados, as estratégias de uso estão relacionadas ao tipo de oração e ao grau de conexão discursiva da sentença. O uso do sujeito nulo está diretamente relacionado à conexão discursiva de grau 1, denominado ótimo. Uma breve análise de tais construções em autores consagrados da literatura brasileira e demais autores brasileiros contemporâneos permite afirmar que as construções de tópico, principalmente as que contêm tópico marcado, merecem uma atenção maior no ensino de Língua Portuguesa, uma vez que constituem uma estratégia pragmático-discursiva de uso corrente e de função relevante nos processos interacionais. O estudo das construções de tópico, portanto, merece uma atenção especial, uma vez que refletem a riqueza de nosso idioma, ao representar uma estratégia pragmático-discursiva que, se bem desenvolvida, constituir-se-á em uma ferramenta a mais para o usuário da língua no que concerne ao uso consciente e competente do idioma materno / The present study aims at analyzing sentence constructions of commentary topic, marked-topic and unmarked topic in textual productions of students attending the last four years of elementary education in a public school located in a poor community in the West zone of Rio de Janeiro. 316 out of 1040 productions have been analyzed. Functionalism has been used as the theoretical background with special emphasis on three different types of subject the Logical Subject, the Psychological Subject and the Grammatical Subject - Halliday (1994) and on Lambrechts information structure (1994). Based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the corpus, we have investigated, on the one hand, the percentage of marked and non-marked topic construction appearances and, on the other hand, the different types of non-marked topics and the syntactic and pragmatic discursive motivations of their usage. The analysis has been done in two stages. Firstly, for the identification and quantification of sentence constructions of marked topics, the investigation of the following variables has been made: 1st) most recurrent marked topic, according to specific categorization referring to the topic and its argumentative relationship with the verb, 2nd) most frequent position, taking into account the textual structure and the syntactic ambience of favoring the use of the coreferent pronoun (presence / absence of the syntagma or intercalated clause between sentence topic and coreferent pronoun). In order to investigate favoring contexts of the use of non-marked topics of 3rd person full pronominal subject and 3rd person null pronominal subject, the following variables have been considered: 1st) type of clause and 2nd) discursive connection, Paredes Silva (2003). The results obtained allow us to systematize the use conditions of the studied structures. When it comes to the sentence constructions of marked topic, we could perceive that it is a strategy of activating in the discourse the element about which the new information will be transmitted, marking it as the sentence topic. When it comes to non-marked topics, the strategies of use are related to the type of clause and to the degree of discursive connection of the sentence. The use of the null subject is directly related to the discursive connection degree 1, which is considered great. A brief analysis of such constructions in works of renowned authors in the field of Brazilian literature and other contemporary Brazilian authors allow us to say that topic constructions, especially the ones that contain marked topics, deserve greater attention in the education of Portuguese language, since they represent a pragmatic discursive strategy which is relevant and commonly used in interactional processes. Therefore, the study of topic construction deserves special attention since it reflects the richness of our language when it represents a pragmatic discursive strategy that, if well developed, can be one more tool for the language user when it comes to the conscientious and competent use of the mother tongue

The paper investigates focus marking devices in the scarcely documented North-Ghanaian Gur language Konkomba. The two particles lé and lá occur under specific focus conditions and are therefore regarded as focus markers in the sparse literature. Comparing the distribution and obligatoriness of both alleged focus markers however, I show that one of the particles, lé, is better analyzed as a connective particle, i.e. as a syntactic rather than as a genuine pragmatic marker, and that comparable syntactic focus marking strategies for sentence-initial constituents are also known from related languages.

La communication efficace a tendance à suivre la loi du moindre effort. Selon ce principe, en utilisant une langue donnée les interlocuteurs ne veulent pas travailler plus que nécessaire pour être compris. Ce fait mène à la compression extrême de textes surtout dans la communication électronique, comme dans les microblogues, SMS, ou les requêtes dans les moteurs de recherche. Cependant souvent ces textes ne sont pas auto-suffisants car pour les comprendre, il est nécessaire d’avoir des connaissances sur la terminologie, les entités nommées ou les faits liés. Ainsi, la tâche principale de la recherche présentée dans ce mémoire de thèse de doctorat est de fournir le contexte d’un texte court à l’utilisateur ou au système comme à un moteur de recherche par exemple.Le premier objectif de notre travail est d'aider l’utilisateur à mieux comprendre un message court par l’extraction du contexte d’une source externe comme le Web ou la Wikipédia au moyen de résumés construits automatiquement. Pour cela nous proposons une approche pour le résumé automatique de documents multiples et nous l’appliquons à la contextualisation de messages, notamment à la contextualisation de tweets. La méthode que nous proposons est basée sur la reconnaissance des entités nommées, la pondération des parties du discours et la mesure de la qualité des phrases. Contrairement aux travaux précédents, nous introduisons un algorithme de lissage en fonction du contexte local. Notre approche s’appuie sur la structure thème-rhème des textes. De plus, nous avons développé un algorithme basé sur les graphes pour le ré-ordonnancement des phrases. La méthode a été évaluée à la tâche INEX/CLEF Tweet Contextualization sur une période de 4 ans. La méthode a été également adaptée pour la génération de snippets. Les résultats des évaluations attestent une bonne performance de notre approche. / The efficient communication tends to follow the principle of the least effort. According to this principle, using a given language interlocutors do not want to work any harder than necessary to reach understanding. This fact leads to the extreme compression of texts especially in electronic communication, e.g. microblogs, SMS, search queries. However, sometimes these texts are not self-contained and need to be explained since understanding them requires knowledge of terminology, named entities or related facts. The main goal of this research is to provide a context to a user or a system from a textual resource.The first aim of this work is to help a user to better understand a short message by extracting a context from an external source like a text collection, the Web or the Wikipedia by means of text summarization. To this end we developed an approach for automatic multi-document summarization and we applied it to short message contextualization, in particular to tweet contextualization. The proposed method is based on named entity recognition, part-of-speech weighting and sentence quality measuring. In contrast to previous research, we introduced an algorithm for smoothing from the local context. Our approach exploits topic-comment structure of a text. Moreover, we developed a graph-based algorithm for sentence reordering. The method has been evaluated at INEX/CLEF tweet contextualization track. We provide the evaluation results over the 4 years of the track. The method was also adapted to snippet retrieval. The evaluation results indicate good performance of the approach.

Syftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka hur olika ordföljdsprinciper i ett förstaspråk påverkar inlärningen av ordföljden i andraspråket svenska. Två grupper jämfördes där den ena hade ett förstaspråk med en bunden ordföljd baserad på den grammatiska principen och den andra ett förstaspråk med en fri ordföljd baserad på tema-rema-principen. Respondenterna bestod av elever inom den kommunala vuxenutbildningen i en västsvensk kommun som gick och läste på Sfi och SAS Grund. Varje respondent fick i uppgift att fritt skriva en kort uppsats. Texterna analyserades därefter ingående för att kunna identifiera vilka sats- och textgrammatiska ordföljdsfel som hade gjorts. Resultatet visade att de båda grupperna gjorde ungefär samma typ av satsgrammatiska fel men att gruppen med ett förstaspråk med fri ordföljd gjorde något fler textgrammatiska fel. Medan flera andra studier lyfter fram övergeneralisering av tema-rema-principen som det största problemet ur textgrammatisk synvinkel för denna senare grupp, fann jag att det snarare var underanvändning av tema-rema-principen som var problematiskt. / The purpose of this study was to examine how different word order principles in a first language influence the learning of word order in Swedish as second language. Two groups were compared in which one had a first language with a bound word order based on the grammatical principle and the other a first language with a free word order based on the topic-comment-principle. Respondents consisted of students in municipal adult education in a western Swedish municipality who studied at SFI and SAS Basic. Each respondent were asked to freely write a short essay. The texts were then analyzed in detail to identify which batch- and text grammatical word order inaccuracy that had been made. The results showed that both groups did about the same type of grammatical errors, but that the group with a first language with free word order did some more text grammatical errors. While several other studies highlight the generalization of the topic-comment-principle as the biggest problem for this latter group, I found that it was rather the lack of use of the topic-comment-principle that was problematic.

En associant les récentes techniques de neuro-imagerie (IRMf et Potentiels Evoqués) à la finesse des analyses syntaxiques des approches typologiques et formelles, cette recherche pluridisciplinaire se penche sur la question de la représentation des structures hiérarchiques qui caractérisent l’unité-phrase à travers les langues. La façon dont le cerveau humain représente, construit et l'esprit comprend les diverses structures de phrase, est en effet une des plus importantes questions qui restent encore largement irrésolues dans l’organisation cérébrale du langage. En nous appuyant sur la diversité des langues dans leur organisation syntaxique de l’unité-phrase, nous avons pu isoler différentes dimensions de cette complexité grâce aux propriétés syntaxiques du français dans la formation des questions, ainsi qu'aux spécificités des articulations Topique-Commentaire en chinois mandarin. Suite à une étude du marquage intonationel de la hiérarchie entre Topique et Commentaire, nous avons pu enregistrer les réponses cérébrales (PE) à ce type de constructions en contexte, et ainsi découvrir l’influence de sa signature prosodique sur son traitement en temps réel. Nos deux études d’IRMf apportent quand à elles un éclairage sur les bases neurales de deux dimensions de la complexité syntaxique de la phrase : sa structure hiérarchique et les transformations structurelles dont elle témoigne en cas de dislocation de ses éléments. La première étude, sur les interrogatives en français, met en lumière les corrélats cérébraux de différents types de movements syntaxiques, la seconde, sur les différents phénomènes topicaux du chinois, révèle les représentations et processus qui sont liés à l’activation par le Topique de l’interface entre l’unité-phrase et le niveau du discours. / Combining fine-grained linguistic analyses — from both typological and formal approaches to syntax — with neuro-imaging techniques (fMRI and ERP), this pluri-disciplinary research aims at investigating experimentally the issue of the hierarchical nature and complexity of the linguistic representation of sentence structure and its processing strategies across languages, specifically focusing on the case of Chinese Topic-Comment articulations and on French Interrogative constructions. The question of how the brain achieves sentence structure representation, building and understanding is often seen as one of the most important and unsolved issues of the neural organization of language. Leveraging on cross-linguistic invariance and variability in sentence hierarchical structure organization and building, we found in Chinese and French two exceptional testing grounds to isolate different syntactic complexity dimensions of the sentence-unit encoding. While the on-line auditory comprehension of sentence hierarchical structure in case of minimal intonational cues is investigated thanks to ERP recordings of Topic-Comment articulations in Chinese, two fMRI studies isolate two different syntactic complexity dimensions, respectively reflecting the sentence’s hierarchy and syntactic transformations. The first study, on French interrogative, seeks to isolate the neural correlates of different syntactic movement types. The second study, on Chinese sentence-discourse interface and Topics types, enables us to distinguish word-order surface complexity factors from syntactic movement transformations.

主題-評論結構(topic-comment)在主題顯著(topic prominent)的語言(如中文)扮演十分重要的角色,尤其是在描述第二語言學習者的中介語時特別重要．但是有關研究,對於中國學生在學習英文時產生的中介語,並沒有對主題-評論結構提供全面且確切的描述．本研究旨在探討中國學生學習英文時所產生的中介語之主題-評論結構, 運用三種測驗來引出中介語—文法判定測驗, 引導寫作測驗, 及翻譯測驗．受試者包含台灣區域位於台北的三所國中挑選的94位國二生,以國一期末考英文成績分為三組．此外,並於政大語視中心挑選14位以英語為母語的外籍生作為本研究的控制組．本研究探討的四種主題-評論結構是由中英文主題結構對比中所產生的, 分別為主題省略(topic drop), 主題移前(topicalization), 主題置左(left-dislocation), 及雙主詞結構(double-subject construction)．本研究所運用的中介語之理論架構是參考三種第二外語習得理論所發展出來的, 分別為第一語言影響(L1 influence), 普遍語法(universal grammar)的存在, 以及附屬集合理論(the Subset Principle)． 研究結果顯示, 第一語言轉換(L1 transfer)在所有程度的學生的中介語當中都十分普遍, 但是普遍語法只有在程度最高的學生的中介語較為明顯．因此本研究推論中介語系統內部運作過程包含三階段, 開始為第一語言轉換, 接著是第一語言轉換及普遍語法並存, 最後階段為普遍語法． / The role that the topic-comment structure plays in a topic prominent language such as Chinese is very important when it comes to SLA learners’ interlanguage. However, the related research has not provided a comprehensive framework in describing topic structures of Chinese EFL learners’ interlanguage. The purpose of this study is to analyze the topic structures in Chinese EFL learners’ interlanguage elicited by three tasks—the grammaticality judgment task, the guided writing task, and the translation task. The subjects include 94 junior high school students chosen from three separate schools in Taipei, Taiwan, and they were divided into three proficiency levels. In addition, 14 native speakers from the language center of NCCU served as the control group. This study investigated four topic structures—topic drop, topicalization, left-dislocation, and double-subject construction—which were determined by a comparative study of Chinese and English topic structures. The current theoretical framework of interlanguage operation is developed from three SLA perspectives—L1 influence, the existence of universal grammar (UG), and the subset principle. Results indicated that L1 transfer was prevalent in all proficiency levels but UG was only obvious in the most advanced level. It was thus inferred that the internal operation of interlanguage system should include three stages—first L1 transfer, then L1 transfer and UG, and finally UG.