This study represents a sociolinguistic contribution to the analysis of Past Participle Agreement (PPA) in [avoir+PP] constructions. In spoken French, this agreement is marked only for gender, and is subject to much variation in the production of speakers of French. The objectives of this thesis are twofold: firstly, to observe the variable in the context of production, by a quantitative study of several corpora. Variation in the production of PPA is tested against linguistic factors, such as the position of the participle in the verbal group where it appears. Social and stylistic factors are also considered, notably the socioprofessional category of the speaker. These analyses reveal that agreement is conditioned by a complex interaction of these factors. The second objective is the design of a Matched Guise Test, based on scripted conversations. This test was carried out with a view to measuring the extent to which the presence or absence of marked PPA, often considered a typical result of normative pressures, affects the stereotypical social representation of a speaker. Differences in informants' judgements were modest, and two issues are discussed with regard to this: firstly, the validity of the methodology, and secondly, the evaluation of PPA as a sociolinguistic marker. Both parts of this thesis reflect the methodological issues pertaining to the investigation of a rare variable.

Thesis (DLitt (Afrikaans and Dutch))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The compilation of dictionaries is a laborious activity and it takes time, money and staff to achieve the objectives of any dictionary project. Many dictionaries have been compiled using the lexicographers’ personal intuition and guessing rather than being corpus based. That resulted in some dictionaries often being criticised by users because of the lack of representation of some important lexical items. This can probably be explained by the fact that most of these dictionaries were compiled in an era when theoretical lexicography was lacking or not well established. The last decades have witnessed the emergence of metalexicography as a theory directed also at dictionary planning in order to enhance the quality of lexicographic practice and the way in which the management and the compilation of dictionaries are dealt with. The planning of dictionaries takes into account not only the gathering of language material to be used but also the way in which this material will be treated and presented on both the macrostructural and the microstructural level as well as in the front matter texts and the back matter texts. In order to enhance the quality of the presentation in dictionaries, this dissertation pleads in favour of the formulation of a data collection policy that takes into consideration all the different sources of material, written and spoken, used in the different phases of the compilation of a dictionary. The three phases that form the main focus of this study are the material acquisition phase, the material preparation phase and the material processing phase. The involvement of the speech community in the compilation of a lexicographic corpus ensures the collection of representative and balanced data, and the different needs of that community are central to the dictionary project. The different language materials can be organised into different corpus types. The efficiency of a corpus resides in its capacity to provide different data types that can be included in the comment on semantics and the comment on form of each article in the central list of each dictionary. Some dictionaries lack a good representation of data in both these comments in the different articles. However, languages such as the Gabonese languages are in a privileged situation because they can still avoid the mistakes of other dictionary compilers by investing in corpus-based dictionaries at this early stage. Therefore, the establishment of lexicographic units with multifunctional tasks can play an important role. In a multilingual environment such as Gabon the issue of language status needs to be dealt with carefully because it is realistic to choose a certain number of languages to function as official languages. Different alphabets are presented in this study and realistic choices are made. The way in which the language material is organised will impact on the quality of the macrostructure and microstructure; this is essential because dictionaries are consulted most of the time for the spelling of a given lexical item, for a translation equivalent or for the explanation of the meaning of a lemma sign. The computerisation of a corpus is a focal point and needs to be done in a satisfactory manner that presents a clean and helpful corpus in order to provide the lexicographer with useful statistics, frequency word lists and the different concordance lines that are very important for the wording of definitions and the extraction of example sentences. This is why a corpus is seen as an indispensable tool in the improvement of the macro- and the microstructure of any type of dictionary. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die saamstel van woordeboeke is ’n moeisame aktiwiteit, en dit verg tyd, geld en personeel om die doelstellings van ’n woordeboekprojek te bereik. Talle woordeboeke is op grond van die navorsers se persoonlike intuïsie en raaiwerk saamgestel, in stede daarvan dat dit korpusgebaseerd is. Die gevolg is dat baie woordeboeke dikwels deur gebruikers gekritiseer word weens die gebrek aan verteenwoordiging van enkele belangrike leksikale items. Dít kan moontlik verklaar word deur die feit dat die meeste van hierdie woordeboeke saamgestel is in ’n era waartydens teoretiese leksikografie gebrekkig en nie goed gevestig was nie. In die afgelope dekades het metaleksikografie na vore getree as a teorie wat op woordeboekbeplanning gerig is ten einde die gehalte van die leksikografie-praktyk en die manier waarop die bestuur en samestelling van woordeboeke hanteer word, te verbeter. By die beplanning van woordeboeke word nie net die versameling taalmateriaal wat gebruik kan word in berekening gebring nie, maar ook die manier waarop hierdie materiaal op sowel makro- as mikrostrukturele vlakke, asook in die voorwerk en die agterwerk, hanteer en aangebied gaan word. Ten einde die gehalte van die aanbieding in woordeboeke te verbeter, lewer hierdie proefskrif ’n pleidooi vir die formulering van ’n dataversamelingsbeleid wat al die verskillende materiaalbronne, hetsy skriftelik of mondelings, wat in die verskillende stadia van die samestelling van ’n woordeboek gebruik word, in ag neem. Die drie stadia wat die hooffokus van hierdie studie is, is die stadia waarin die materiaal aangeskaf, voorberei en verwerk word. Die spraakgemeenskap se betrokkenheid by die saamstel van ’n leksikografiese korpus verseker die versameling van verteenwoordigende en gebalanseerde data, en die verskillende behoeftes van sodanige gemeenskap is die kern van die woordeboekprojek. Die verskillende taalmateriale kan in verskillende korpussoorte georden word. Die doeltreffendheid van ’n korpus berus op die vermoë daarvan om verskillende datasoorte te verskaf wat in die kommentaar op semantiek en die kommentaar op vorm van elke item in die sentrale lys van elke woordeboek ingesluit kan word. Sommige woordeboeke toon ’n gebrek aan goeie verteenwoordiging van data in albei hierdie soorte kommentaar in die verskillende items. Tale soos die Gaboenese tale is egter in ’n bevoorregte posisie, aangesien hulle nog die foute van ander woordeboeksamestellers kan vermy deur op hierdie vroeë stadium in korpusgebaseerde woordeboeke te belê. Die stigting van leksikografiese eenhede met multifunksionele take kan dus ’n belangrike rol speel. In ’n veeltalige omgewing soos Gaboen moet die kwessie van taalstatus versigtig hanteer word, aangesien dit realisties is om ’n sekere hoeveelheid tale as amptelike tale te kies. Verskillende alfabette word in hierdie studie aangebied en realistiese keuses word gemaak. Die manier waarop die taalmateriaal georden is, sal ’n uitwerking op die makro- en mikrostruktuur hê; dit is van belang omdat woordeboeke meestal vir die spelling van ’n gegewe leksikale item, vir ’n vertaalekwivalent of vir die verklaring van die betekenis van ’n lemmateken geraadpleeg word. Die rekenarisering van ’n korpus is ’n belangrike aspek en moet op ’n bevredigende wyse uitgevoer word wat ’n skoon en nuttige korpus lewer ten einde die leksikograaf van goeie statistieke, frekwensiewoordlyste en die verskillende konkordansielyne te voorsien, wat baie belangrik is vir die skryf van definisies en die onttrekking van voorbeeldsinne. Om hierdie rede word ’n korpus as ’n onmisbare instrument in die verbetering van die makro- en mikrostruktuur van enige soort woordeboek beskou.

La terminologie est une science qui étudie les termes, ces unités lexicales véhiculant un sens spécialisé dans un discours scientifique ou technique. Constituée en science dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, la terminologie est un terrain interdisciplinaire qui se nourrit des apports de la linguistique, de la logique et de l'informatique. C'est surtout grâce à cette dernière qu'elle a pu se développer considérablement. Le lexique-grammaire est une méthode de description linguistique strictement empirique d'inspiration harrissienne qui a vu le jour en France à la fin des années 1960. La description linguistique a été menée en parallèle avec la réalisation d'outils informatiques nécessaires à la formalisation et à l'exploitation de ces données, parmi lesquels il y a aussi le logiciel Unitex (Paumier, 2002). Tant le lexique-grammaire que le logiciel Unitex présentent un potentiel intéressant, largement inexploité, pour la terminologie. Dans ce travail, nous nous proposons d'évaluer les apports des méthodes liées au lexique-grammaire et au logiciel Unitex à une description terminologique bilingue de qualité. Après avoir défini des critères de qualité d'une description terminologique, nous menons cette évaluation sur deux corpus comparables ayant trait à la médecine thermale, en français et en italien / Terminology is the science concerned with the study of the terms, those lexical units thatpossess a specialized meaning within a scientific or technical context. Established as ascience in the first half of 20th century, terminology is an interdisciplinary field takingadvantage of contributions from linguistics, logics, and informatics. This latter in particularhas allowed significant developments in terminology. Lexicon-grammar is an empirical method of linguistic description inspired by the works of Zellig S. Harris, which has been founded by the French linguist Maurice Gross at the end of the 1960s. Linguistic description has been carried out in parallel with the development of informatics tools able to formalise and exploit linguistic data, including the software Unitex (Paumier, 2002). Both lexicon-grammar and Unitex have an interesting, largely unexploited potential for further developments in terminology. In this work, we assess the contributions brought by lexicon-grammar and Unitex to a high-profile bilingual terminological description. After defining quality criteria for such terminological description, we carry out our evaluation on two comparable corpora specific of thermal medicine, both in French and in Italian

This corpus-based study examined English and Spanish learner language for ‘heart’ metaphors. Gutiérrez Pérez (2008) compared ‘heart’ metaphors across five languages and that study served as a reference framework for the work presented here. This work intended to find evidence of metaphor transfer and/or new metaphor learning in second language writing. Conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) and linguistic or lexical metaphors (Falck, 2012) from both languages were considered in the analysis. This work analyzed ‘heart’ metaphors taken from two learner corpora, the Cambridge Learner Corpus and the Corpus de Aprendices de Español. Results were compared to the findings of Gutiérrez Pérez (2008) to see whether these metaphors typically occur only in English, only in Spanish, or are found in both languages. The results showed evidence of language learners using several kinds of metaphors that do not typically occur in their first language. The aim of this study was to add a new facet to this body of research by examining these phenomena in learner corpora rather than monolingual corpora. Furthermore, this study also examined both second language English and second language Spanish corpora, addressing potential bi-directionality of transfer or conversely, the use of new linguistic forms.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-14T14:34:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 458443.pdf: 484553 bytes, checksum: 8b489fdad596e4f85c7d0d29b7018ab3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-27 / The present work has the objective of, primarily, bring some considerations about the effectiveness of fundamental rights in the context of individual and social rights in relations between individuals and big enterprise business corporations. It examines legal principles involved in the subject, such as the unity of the legal system, the human dignity, the equality and solidarity, and the necessary relativity of autonomy so that there is effectively protection of the fundamental rights. It approaches about some theories on the effectiveness of fundamental rights in private relations, especially the theory of direct or immediate effectiveness, and the theory of indirect or mediate effectiveness. It asks about the mode and intensity of the vinculation of these entities, analyzing substantive criteria to be used in the judgment (analisys of values involved in the solution of concrete cases), in special the criterion of the social function of the company and the contract, becoming some considerations on the fundamental duties in the implementation of fundamental rights. For the last, we analyze homelands jurisprudence on the application of the effectiveness of the fundamental rights of individuals and big enterprise business corporations. It is inferred that the theory to be applied to the cases, in principle, is the theory of immediate effectiveness, with the establishment of canons by which this binding should occur (to what extent). This work has the objective of demonstrating the direct linking of big enterprise business corporations to fundamental rights, analysing specific aspects of the subject, as well as providing information and study by the law operators about current and relevant topic. / O presente trabalho tem como desiderato trazer, precipuamente, algumas considera??es a respeito da efic?cia dos direitos fundamentais no ?mbito dos direitos individuais e sociais, nas rela??es entre particulares e as grandes corpora??es econ?micas empresariais. Analisam-se princ?pios jur?dicos envolvidos na tem?tica, como o da unidade do ordenamento jur?dico, da dignidade humana, da igualdade e da solidariedade, bem como a necess?ria relativiza??o da autonomia privada para que haja efetivamente a defesa dos direitos fundamentais. Aborda-se a respeito de algumas teorias sobre a efic?cia dos direitos fundamentais nas rela??es privadas, especialmente a teoria da efic?cia direta ou imediata, e a teoria da efic?cia indireta ou mediata. Perscruta-se a respeito do modo e intensidade da vincula??o desses entes, analisando-se crit?rios materiais a serem utilizados no ju?zo de pondera??o (sopesamento dos valores envolvidos na solu??o dos casos concretos), em especial o crit?rio da fun??o social da empresa e do contrato, fazendo-se algumas considera??es sobre os deveres fundamentais na implementa??o dos direitos fundamentais. Por derradeiro, analisam-se jurisprud?ncias p?trias relativas ? aplica??o da efic?cia dos direitos fundamentais entre indiv?duos e grandes corpora??es econ?micas empresariais. Infere-se que a teoria a ser aplicada ao caso concreto, em princ?pio, ? a teoria da efic?cia imediata, com o estabelecimento de c?nones pelos quais deve ocorrer essa vincula??o (em que medida). Tem o trabalho o objetivo de demonstrar a necessidade de uma vincula??o direta das grandes corpora??es econ?micas empresariais aos direitos fundamentais, analisando aspectos pontuais sobre o tema, bem como promovendo a informa??o e o estudo por parte dos operadores do direito de tema atual e relevante.

This thesis examines the historical development of the expletive það in Icelandic, from the earliest texts to the present day. This development is set against the backdrop of Icelandic clause structure, with particular attention to verb-second, information structure and the left periphery. The study combines corpus linguistic data and quantitative techniques with theoretical analysis, conducted within Lexical Functional Grammar. I show that Icelandic underwent three syntactic developments in the period 1750-present and argue that these all reflect one overall change: the establishment of það as a structural placeholder for the topic position (the clause-initial prefinite position). I claim that það functions as a topic position placeholder in the earliest attested stage of Icelandic (1150-1350), but is restricted to a specific context: topicless subjectless constructions with a clausal object, where það has cataphoric reference. The three changes in the period 1750-present represent the establishment of this topic position placeholder in new contexts: (1) það generalises to all types of topicless subjectless construction, beyond those with a clausal object; (2) það emerges in presentational constructions (which inherently lack a topic), out-competing the earlier expletive form þar; (3) in cataphoric contexts with a clausal subject, það begins to transition from subject to topic position placeholder. The majority of these contexts exhibit at least a short period in which það - or alternatively þar - behaves like a subject. Icelandic thus exhibits the emergence of a topic position placeholder expletive from an earlier subject-like element. This shift towards prefinite expletives, which sets Icelandic apart from e.g. Mainland Scandinavian, happens relatively late in the diachrony (1750-present). Moreover, the Icelandic development challenges the standard claim in the literature on Germanic expletives, which assumes that subject expletives emerge from prefinite expletives.

O treinamento de sistemas de Tradução de Máquina baseada em Estatística (TME) é bastante dependente da disponibilidade de corpora paralelos. Entretanto, este tipo de recurso costuma ser difícil de ser encontrado, especialmente quando lida com idiomas com poucos recursos ou com tópicos muito específicos, como, por exemplo, dermatologia. Para contornar esta situação, uma possibilidade é utilizar corpora comparáveis, que são recursos muito mais abundantes. Um modo de adquirir corpora comparáveis é a aplicação de algoritmos de Coleta Focada (CF). Neste trabalho, são propostas novas abordagens para CF, algumas baseadas em n-gramas e outras no poder expressivo das expressões multipalavra. Também são avaliadas a viabilidade do uso de CF para realização de adaptação de domínio para sistemas genéricos de TME e se há alguma correlação entre a qualidade dos algoritmos de CF e dos sistemas de TME que podem ser construídos a partir dos respectivos dados coletados. Os resultados indicam que algoritmos de CF podem ser bons meios para adquirir corpora comparáveis para realizar adaptação de domínio para TME e que há uma correlação entre a qualidade dos dois processos. / Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) is highly dependent on the availability of parallel corpora for training. However, these kinds of resource may be hard to be found, especially when dealing with under-resourced languages or very specific domains, like the dermatology. For working this situation around, one possibility is the use of comparable corpora, which are much more abundant resources. One way of acquiring comparable corpora is to apply Focused Crawling (FC) algorithms. In this work we propose novel approach for FC algorithms, some based on n-grams and other on the expressive power of multiword expressions. We also assess the viability of using FC for performing domain adaptations for generic SMT systems and whether there is a correlation between the quality of the FC algorithms and of the SMT systems that can be built with its collected data. Results indicate that the use of FCs is, indeed, a good way for acquiring comparable corpora for SMT domain adaptation and that there is a correlation between the qualities of both processes.

This experiment was designed to determine the involvement of varying levels of whole-body irradiation on ovarian follicular and corpora luteal development in mice. Previous research has indicated reduced counts of ovarian follicles and corpora lutea in mice flown in space. These differences may be the result of microgravity, increased exposure to radiation, or some combination of both. Fifty-six mice were divided into three groups (apocynin-treated, nox2 knockout, and wild-type control) before exposure to 0 Gy, 0.5 Gy, or 2.0 Gy radiation. The tissues were harvested, preserved, run through the appropriate paraffin embedding procedures, serially sectioned, mounted on microscope slides, and stained using a standard H&E staining technique. Total and mean follicular and corpora luteal counts were accessed and compared across treatment groups. Mean ovarian weight, mean total reproductive weight, mean ovarian weight percentage of total body weight, mean total reproductive weight percentage of total body weight, and the apparent estrous phase of the animals were also compared. Radiation from 0.5-2.0 Gy had no significant effect on mean ovarian weight, mean total reproductive weight, mean ovarian weight percentage of total body weight, or mean total reproductive weight percentage of total body weight. Radiation from 0.5-2.0 Gy significantly increased mean early-stage follicular count in the wildtype group only. Radiation of 2.0 Gy increased late-stage follicular count across all groups after accounting for mean ovarian percent of total body weight. Radiation of 2.0 Gy significantly increased mean corpora lutea count in the wildtype group only. This result not only suggests that low-dose radiation accelerates oocyte development in the murine ovary, but also that the inaction of NADPH-oxidase (via apocynin inhibition or genetic knockout) may ameliorate some of these effects.

Cette recherche vise à étudier et rendre-compte du fonctionnement des interactions orales entre pairs, en classe d’anglais L2, au niveau du collège en France. L’enjeu est donc, à partir d’une description détaillée de tâches (au sens didactique du terme) et de l’analyse des productions des apprenants, de documenter la notion de compétence d’interaction orale. L’approche retenue relève de la recherche-action et s’appuie sur des données empiriques recueillies dans des classes. Après avoir mené plusieurs études exploratoires sur des groupes d’apprenants, un protocole de recherche a été mis en place pour collecter des données longitudinales sur un échantillon 24 dyades, soit 48 élèves de 3ème. Les participants ont mené deux tâches d’interaction orale en début d’année puis en fin d’année scolaire, après avoir bénéficié, d’une formation spécifique à l’interaction orale. Leurs performances ont été filmées (18h) et transcrites sous CLAN pour être analysées. Au plan théorique, des liens sont tissés entre plusieurs cadres. Le premier est la didactique des langues qui retient la perspective actionnelle telle que décrite dans le CECRL (2001). Je m’appuie également sur la théorie socioculturelle, issue des travaux de Vygotsky (1978), puis de Lantolf (2000) qui avancent que l’interaction sociale ne se contente pas de faciliter l’apprentissage, mais est au cœur du processus de développement. Enfin les outils de l’analyse conversationnelle sent convoqués afin d’étudier la construction des échanges de manière systématique. Ce sont les questions de formation spécifique des apprenants à l’interaction orale, les résultats auxquels il est raisonnable de s’attendre dans ce contexte, et enfin les modalités d’évaluation de cette compétence en milieu institutionnel qui sont au cœur du sujet. / This research explores the potential of teenage peer spoken interactions in ESL classrooms in France. The focus here is on analysing task-based activities and learners’ performances, in order to improve our understanding of interactional competence. My approach is based on Action Research and a collection of empirical data from language classrooms. Several studies were conducted before setting up a protocol for a longitudinal corpus of video-recorded conversations between 24 dyads of peers. The 48 lower intermediate participants performed two tasks at the beginning and end of the school year. Specific training was offered in order to improve strategic spoken interaction. The 18 hours of verbal and non-verbal outcome was transcribed on CLAN and analysed according to the Conversational Analysis method. On a theoretical level, my approach brings together the European tradition of language didactics based on the CEFR (2001) and the sociocultural theory that takes its roots in Vygotsky’s (1978) work, followed by Lantolf (2000) who deals more specifically with SLA. According to these authors, social interaction not only promotes learning but is also at the core of a development process. This thesis examines the effects of training on communication strategies, the expectable outcomes and assessments of such a competence in an institutional environment.

Lexical bundles (fixed sequences of three to four words) have been described as building blocks of discourse, both written and spoken (Biber & Barbieri, 2007), and as a useful mechanical device for creating writing that is suited for its academic field (Hyland, 2008). Having noticed that the academic theses of my students at Longdong University in Qingyang, China seemed very different from professional writing in their fields, I created a thesis project that addressed the question of how professionals in their fields were using bundles and how the learners' use of these bundles in terms of frequency, structure, and function varied from the professionals' use. In order to answer this question, I compiled four corpora of writing in literature and applied linguistics, representing professional and learner writing in each field. I used concordancing software in order to identify four-word lexical bundles that occurred at least 20 times per 100,000 words and over a range of four texts. I then did a three-part analysis which looked at frequency, structure, and function of these bundles. The results of the study reveal that professionals in applied linguistics and literature use bundles with different frequency, display different choices of lexical items to fill structural bundles, and use functional bundles differently. These differences seem to reflect the rhetorical needs of each discipline. Further, the learners in each field displayed differences in their use of bundles as compared to the professionals' use. Learners in applied linguistics used more types and tokens of bundles overall, while learners in literature used fewer. Both groups of learners relied more on repetitive use of certain bundles than did the professionals. Implications of this study are discussed for teaching and curriculum development. The findings can be applied to teaching through creating awareness-raising and guided practice opportunities for the students to see how bundles are used in professional writing and to help them apply this understanding to their own writing.