A lack of research in adult literacy for both native speakers and speakers of English as a second language led to the development of the Test of Affixes in Syntactic Structures (TASS) for use in a pilot study (Dogger, January 1978) in which knowledge of derivational morphology was tested to determine its possible relationship with reading for English as a second language students. Test construction was followed by a thorough verification procedure which is the purpose of this study. In September 1978 the following measures of test strength were established: construct validity, content validity, item difficulty, item discrimination, internal consistency, rational equivalence, and concurrent validity. The degree of relationship between reading proficiency, as demonstrated by subject performance on the Iowa Silent Reading Test, Level III (ISRT,III), and knowledge of derivational affixes, as demonstrated by subject performance on TASS, was also established. Results show that successful performance on the ISRT, III includes reading strategies beyond those required for successful performance on TASS. In other words, mastery of language structures as represented by English orthography is necessary but not sufficient for college-level reading proficiency.

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2004 / Refer to the document / Department of Sports, Arts and Culture

Wong Mei-kiu. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-107). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.i / ABSTRACT (English version) --- p.ii / ABSTRACT (Chinese version) --- p.iii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iv-v / LIST OF TABLES --- p.vi / Chapter 1. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Background and the Problem --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Purpose of the Study --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Significance of the Study --- p.4 / Chapter 2. --- REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Mechanisms of Processing and the Retention of Words --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Approaches to Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.2.1 --- Implicit Learning of Vocabulary --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1.2.2 --- Explicit Learning of Vocabulary --- p.11 / Chapter 2.1.2.3 --- Implicit versus Explicit Learning of Vocabulary --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2 --- Significance of Affix Learning in the Learning of Vocabulary --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Definition and related concepts of ´بAffix´ة --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Importance of Morphological Knowledge in Learning Vocabulary --- p.18 / Chapter 2.2.2.1 --- Proportion of Affixed Words --- p.19 / Chapter 2.2.2.2 --- Functions of Affixes --- p.20 / Chapter 2.2.2.3 --- Relationship between Affix Knowledge and Vocabulary Size --- p.25 / Chapter 2.2.2.4 --- Empirical Studies on Affix Learning --- p.27 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Explicit Learning of Affixes --- p.35 / Chapter 2.2.3.1 --- Procedure for Learning Affixes --- p.36 / Chapter 2.2.3.2 --- Difficulties in Learning Affixes --- p.36 / Chapter 3. --- METHODOLOGY --- p.40 / Chapter 3.1 --- Research Design --- p.40 / Chapter 3.2 --- Subject Selection --- p.41 / Chapter 3.3 --- Materials --- p.43 / Chapter 3.4 --- Pilot Study --- p.48 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Aim --- p.48 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Methodology --- p.49 / Chapter 3.4.2.1 --- Subject Selection --- p.49 / Chapter 3.4.2.2 --- Procedure --- p.50 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- Comments on the Pilot Study and Improvements made after the Pilot Study --- p.54 / Chapter 3.4.3.1 --- Comments on the Procedure --- p.54 / Chapter 3.4.3.2 --- Comments on the Materials --- p.55 / Chapter 3.5 --- Procedure of the Research --- p.59 / Chapter 4. --- RESULTS AND DISCUSSION --- p.64 / Chapter 4.1 --- Treatment of Data --- p.64 / Chapter 4.2 --- Findings of the Experiment --- p.65 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Test Results --- p.66 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Questionnaires --- p.71 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Classroom Observation --- p.80 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Summary of the Research Findings --- p.81 / Chapter 4.3 --- Discussion of the Findings --- p.82 / Chapter 5. --- CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS --- p.94 / Chapter 5.1 --- Conclusions --- p.94 / Chapter 5.2 --- Implications --- p.96 / Chapter 5.3 --- Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research --- p.97 / REFERENCES --- p.100-107 / APPENDICES / Appendix 1 Previous Studies on the Effectiveness of Affix Learning --- p.108 / Appendix 2 Test items and Distractors --- p.109-117 / Appendix 3 Background Questionnaire for the Research --- p.118 / Appendix 4 Follow-up Questionnaire for the Research --- p.119 / Appendix 5 The 36 Word Target Vocabulary for the Research --- p.120 / Appendix 6 Prefixes and Suffixes for the Experimental Group in the Research --- p.121 / Appendix 7a Background Questionnaire for the Experimental Groupin the Pilot Study --- p.122 / Appendix 7b Background Questionnaire for the Control Group in the Pilot Study --- p.123 / Appendix 8 Follow-up Questionnaire for the Pilot Study --- p.124 / Appendix 9 The 12 Target Words for the Pilot Study --- p.125 / Appendix 10 Procedure of the Research --- p.126 / Appendix 11 Samples of the Exercises --- p.127-128

Le système de marquage personnel du kurde centrale, avec un ensemble complexe de paradigmes personnels, présente un bon nombre de problèmes. Par exemple, un enclitique personnel qui marque l’actant oblique, construit avec une préposition dans les constructions au présent, devient un affixe personnel dans les constructions au passé. Les recherches précédentes (Bynon 1979 ; Samvelian 2007 ; Haig 2008 ; Jügel 2009) ont mis en évidence les phénomènes pertinents, mais un traitement global du problème et une explication générale des motivations derrière le phénomène font encore défaut. Nous établissons le statut morphophonologique des paradigmes des personnes et nous examinons en détail le fonctionnement des marques de personnes. Nous proposons une nouvelle analyse du positionnement des enclitiques mobiles en kurde centrale en termes de phonologie prosodique (Selkirk 1995 ; Truckenbrodt 1999 ; Anderson, 2005) selon laquelle une forme de personne enclitique apparait systématiquement après la première phrase phonologique (ou mot prosodique) dans le domaine du syntagme verbal. L’alternance formelle d’un enclitique personnel et d’un affixe personnel est considéré comme le résultat des restrictions sur les combinaisons des enclitiques (Gerlach 2002). D’autres problèmes du système des marques de personnes sont expliqués grâce à un examen plus approfondi des faits de prosodie et par une série de contraintes plus générales de la langue (Prince and Smolensky 1993 ; Yip 1998) qui favorisent l’expression des actants en maintenant distincte l’identité morphologique et phonologique des marques de personnes lorsqu’elles sont en combinaison. / The person-marking system of Central Kurdish, with a complex set of person-marker paradigms, presents a number of problems, especially in the manners in which different person-marker paradigms are distributed for argument-indexing. For instance, a pronominal complement of an adposition is a person form from clitic person markers in a present-tense construction, but the formal expression of the same argument is switched to a verbal affix person marker in a past-tense construction. Previous scholarship (Bynon 1979; Samvelian 2007; Haig 2008; Jügel 2009) has pointed to the relevant phenomena and provided important descriptive facts, but, a comprehensive treatment of the problem is still lacking. In this study, morphophonological status of person marking paradigms is established and argument-indexing function of person-marker paradigms are thoroughly investigated. A novel analysis of clitic placement in Central Kurdish is proposed whereby a clitic is considered to be systematically occurring after a prosodic word. The formal switch from a clitic to a verbal affix person marker in the expression of a number of arguments is analysed as occurring for avoiding certain clitic combinations (Gerlach 2002) since the latter inevitably leads to an improperly placed clitic. A number of other problems relating to seeminlgy non-clitic-

[pt] Este estudo tem como foco a passagem da percepção fônica para a representação morfofonológica de elementos funcionais, mais precisamente os afixos verbais, bem como a realização do parsing linguístico no processo inicial de aquisição da linguagem. Nesta tese a aquisição da linguagem é abordada em uma perspectiva psicolingüística de forma integrada com a Teoria Linguística Gerativa, em sua versão Minimalista (Corrêa, 2006). A hipótese que orienta este trabalho é a de que os elementos de classe fechada são percebidos pela criança de forma diferenciada e que há uma distinção entre a percepção inicial desses elementos no nível fonético/fonológico e a sua posterior representação morfofonológica. Esses elementos, uma vez representados em termos de categorias funcionais do léxico, contribuem para a realização do parsing lingüístico pela criança. Uma análise de histórias infantis demonstrou que determinantes e afixos tendem a ocorrer em fronteiras de frases fonológicas e que propriedades fonéticas, como o acento, podem favorecer a percepção inicial de afixos verbais. Foram conduzidos três experimentos, sendo que os dois primeiros fizeram uso da Técnica de Escuta Preferencial e o terceiro utilizou a Técnica de Fixação Preferencial do Olhar. O primeiro experimento teve como objetivo avaliar a sensibilidade das crianças (de 9 a 15 meses) adquirindo o Português Brasileiro a distinções fônicas que afetam o padrão silábico da língua, independentemente do ambiente morfológico em que estas ocorrem (afixos flexionais e raízes de Nomes). O segundo experimento visou a verificar se o ambiente morfológico (afixos flexionais e raízes de Nomes) afeta o modo como crianças (de 9 a 18 meses) adquirindo o PB percebem alterações fônicas que não afetam o padrão silábico, o que indicaria que estas percebem afixos verbais como uma classe morfológica. O terceiro experimento pretendeu verificar se as crianças com idades entre 17 e 23 meses realizam o parsing de enunciados linguísticos, diferenciando elementos lexicais homófonos em função da natureza de elementos funcionais. Os resultados sugerem que crianças com média de 11 meses são capazes de perceber alterações fônicas independentemente do ambiente morfofonológico em que estas ocorrem. Também foi constatado que crianças entre 9 a 12 meses percebem alterações fônicas que não afetam o padrão silábico da língua em elementos de classe fechada, sugerindo que esses elementos são percebidos pelas crianças como uma classe morfológica em uma fase inicial no processo de aquisição da linguagem. Além disso, foi verificado que as crianças com média de 21 meses respondem diferencialmente a palavras homófonas em classes gramaticais diferentes (Nome e Verbo), com base na distinção entre projeções mínimas e máximas do Determinante, no parsing linguístico. A marcação do afixo verbal não afeta o reconhecimento do verbo, mas formas marcadas em relação a tempo adicionam dificuldade à condução da tarefa. Os resultados encontrados são compatíveis com as hipóteses testadas e permitem que se reconstrua a passagem da percepção do estímulo linguístico em um nível fônico para a representação morfofonológica de elementos de classe fechada, e finalmente para a representação dos mesmos como elementos de categorias funcionais, os quais são essenciais na condução do parsing linguístico. / [en] This study focuses on the passage from speech perception to the morphophonological representation of functional elements, verbal affixes in particular, and on the early parsing of linguistic utterances in language acquisition. A psycholinguistic perspective to language acquisition is adopted together with a minimalist conception of language (Corrêa, 2006). The working hypothesis is that closed class elements are distinctively perceived by children initially at a phonetic/phonological level and subsequently at a morphophonological one. Their representation as functional elements at a later stage contributes to the parsing of linguistic utterances. An analysis of a set of tales for children has demonstrated that determiners and verbal affixes occur at the edges of phonological phrases and phonetic properties such as the accent may contribute to their early perception by children. Three experiments were conducted, the first two in Head-turn Paradigm and the latter in the Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm. Experiment 1 aimed at assessing 9-15 month infants sensibility to phonetic distinctions in the linguistic stimulus, which affect the syllabic pattern of the language (Brazilian Portuguese), independently of the morphological context in which they occur (verbal affixes and nominal roots). Experiment 2 aimed at verifying whether these morphological contexts affect infants perception of phonetic alterations that do not affect the phonological pattern of the language. The perception of such distinctions in the verbal affixes, but not in the nominal roots, was considered to indicate sensibility to the morphophonological patterns of these closed class elements. The third experiment aimed at verifying the extent to which children by the age of 21 months would rely on functional information in the parsing of linguistic utterances, thereby ascribing different categorical features to homophonous words (nouns and verbs). The results of Experiment 1 suggest that 9-15 month infants do perceive phonetic alterations that affect the syllabic pattern of language, regardless of the morphological context in which they occur. The results of the Experiment 2 suggest that infants are sensitive to phonetic alterations that do not affect the syllabic pattern of the language by the end of their first year of life (9-12 months). The results of Experiment 3 suggest that take into account different syntactic projections of the determiner in ascribing homophonous words to different classes (noun and verb). These results also indicate that verbs are analyzed as such regardless of the type of morphological affix they present (marked or unmarked for Tense). However, tensed marked forms seem to add processing costs in the accomplishment of the task. These results are compatible with the hypotheses that guided the present thesis and enable a theory of language acquisition to reconstruct the passage from the phonetic perception of the linguistic stimulus to the morphophonological representation of closed class elements (verbal affixes) and from this level of representation to children s reliance on functional elements in the parsing of linguistic utterances.

随着社会的发展，尤其是互联网的发展，很多语言每年都涌现出了不少新词汇。词语是每个语言最基本也是最重要的组成部分，因此分析这些新词汇的结构特点以及构词法是很有意义的。这篇文章分析了2014年出现在中文里的新词汇和它们的构词方式，论文的目的是为了更好地了解中文词汇的发展和特点。本文以《2014汉语新词语》中公布的2014年出现的新词汇作为语料进行分析，发现了以下两个主要特点：第一，合成法，派生法，缩略法是2014年产生的新词汇的主要构词方式；第二， 百分之七十二的新词汇是多音节词（包含三个或者三个以上音节），而百分之八十的是名词。这些特点说明中文词汇现阶段的特点和发展趋势，跟传统的中文词汇有不同之处。 / The aim of this thesis was to investigate how new Chinese words are formed and to examine the linguistic patterns among them. This thesis focused on the analysis of Chinese words formed in 2014. The quantitative data for the analysis included a collection of 423 new Chinese words from the book 2014 汉语新词语 (hànyǔxīn cíyǔ) by Hou and Zhou. Parts of speech and number of syllables in the new words were investigated, although the focus was on word-formation processes. A discussion of derivation, blending, abbreviation, analogy, borrowing, change of meaning, compounding and inventions is also included. The share of each word-formation process used for each of the new words was presented statistically in order to reveal the significance of each word-formation process. The analysis showed that compounding, derivation and abbreviation were the major word-formation processes in 2014. The study also suggests that words formed by derivation and analogy were much more frequent in 2014, in comparison to previous studies. Furthermore, the ways words are formed in Chinese are changing and evolving, as some word-formation processes are becoming more frequently used in the formation of new words.

Notre étude s’intitule variations de formes dans la langue Mbochi (bantu C25). Elle s’inscrit dans le cadre de la linguistique historique bantu.A travers une analyse dialectométrique, elle identifie et localise les dix parlers mbochi. Elle montre que le mbochi est une langue bantu parlée dans le nord de la République du Congo, dans le département de la Cuvette (dans les districts de Boundji, Ngoko, Tchikapika et Oyo) et celui des Plateaux (dans les districts d’Ongogni, Ollombo, Abala, Alembe). Il compte dix dialectes (Olee, Mbonzi, Tsambitso, Ngilima, Bokwele, Bonyala, Ngae, Obaa, Eboyi et Ondinga). Visant une meilleure compréhension des mécanismes linguistiques qui sous-tendent la diversification linguistique dans le pays mbochi, notre analyse se focalise sur les variations phoniques, morphologiques et lexicales qui s’opèrent d’un dialecte mbochi à un autre. Elle dégage les divergences et les convergences entre les différents parlers. Aussi présente-t-elle une description phonologique et morphologique des parlers mbochi actuels (synchronie). Elle examine les correspondances phonologiques et morphologiques ainsi que les réflexes du proto-bantu en mbochi avant de procéder à la reconstruction des phonèmes et des morphèmes du proto-mbochi, mère hypothétique des parlers actuels.La présente étude divise les parlers mbochi en trois principaux sous-groupes selon leurs convergences phonologiques et morphologiques. Elle montre l’impact de la proximité géographique, du contact des langues dans la diversification de celles-ci. / Our study entitled “variations of forms in Mbochi language (Bantu C25)” is considered as part of the Bantu historical linguistics. It identifies and locates the ten Mbochi dialects through a dialectometric analysis. It shows that Mbochi is a Bantu language spoken in the northern part of Republic of Congo, mainly in the Cuvette (in the districts of Boundji, Ngoko, Tchikapika and Oyo) and Plateau (in the Ongogni districts Ollombo, Abala Alembé) departments. It has ten dialects (Olee, Mbonzi, Tsambitso, Ngilima, Bokwele, Bonyala, Ngae, Obaa, Eboyi and Ondinga).Our analysis targets a better understanding of the underlying language mechanisms of linguistic diversity of Mbochi and is focused on sound, morphological and lexical variations from one dialect to another. It highlights the differences and similarities between these dialects. It also presents a phonological and morphological description of the current Mbochi dialects (synchrony). It examines the phonological and morphological correspondences to the proto-bantu before reconstructing the phonemes and morphemes of proto-Mbochi, the hypothetical source of the current Mbochi dialects.This study divides the Mbochi dialects into three main sub-groups according to their phonological and morphological similarities. It shows both the impact of geographical proximity and that of language contact in the diversification of these dialects.