This dissertation combines psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and cognitive linguistic approaches to study the language production phenomenon of crosslinguistic influence (CLI). Modern psycholinguistics has taken an active interest in language production studies, offering a particularly influential model of speech production that is examined in detail. And yet, as many researchers have argued, language data alone are insufficient to paint an accurate portrait of a given speaker’s language use. Whether mono- or multilingual, a speaker’s system of language(s) is itself a sub-system of the language system of the speaker’s family, community, culture, etc. At the same time, recent cognitive linguistic advances in the study of conceptual blending and construction grammar offer unique insights into the structure of the lexicon and even concepts themselves. This dissertation examines the speech production of multilinguals whose English language system has been acquired but is still developing. Such a system is dynamic and subject to unpredictable dynamic effects, here grouped under the general rubric of CLI. The psycholinguistic aspects of this study are concerned with establishing the psychology of students’ language use. The sociolinguistic aspect addresses the need to research the sociocultural background within which the English language system has been acquired. The cognitive linguistic aspects allow in-depth insights into the cognitive and conceptual mechanisms underlying the... [to full text] / Šioje disertacijoje, siekiant ištirti kalbos produkavimo fenomeną, taikomi psicholingvistikos, sociolingvistikos ir kognityvinės lingvistikos metodai. Šių dienų psicholingvistai atliko daugybę kalbos produkavimo tyrimų, siūlydami itin svarbų kalbos produkavimo modelį, kuris bus išsamiai išnagrinėtas. Tačiau, kaip dauguma mokslininkų įrodinėjo, vien tik kalbos duomenų nepakanka norint pateikti išsamų konkretaus kalbos vartotojo kalbos vartojimo vaizdą. Nepriklausomai nuo to, ar kalbantysis yra vienakalbis, ar dvikalbis, jo kalbos (-ų) sistema pati yra kalbančiojo šeimos, bendruomenės, kultūros ir kt. kalbos sistemų posistemė. Be to, dabartinės kognityvinės lingvistikos progresas nagrinėjant konceptualiąją metaforą, konceptualųjį derinimą ir konstrukcijų gramatiką teikia unikalių įžvalgų apie žodyno ir net pačių sąvokų struktūrą. Šioje disertacijoje yra nagrinėjamas daugiakalbių, kurie jau yra įsisavinę anglų kalbos sistemą, tačiau kurių kalbos įgūdžiai tebesivysto, kalbos produkavimas. Tokia sistema yra dinamiška ir priklauso nuo iš anksto nenumatomų kintamųjų, kurie šiame darbe pateikti bendrame skyriuje tarpkalbinė įtaka. Psicholingvistiniu šio tyrimo požiūriu siekiama nustatyti studentų kalbos vartojimo psichologinius aspektus. Sociolingvistiniu šio darbo aspektu pabrėžiamas poreikis išnagrinėti sociokultūrinę aplinką, kurioje tiriamieji įsisavino anglų kalbos sistemą. Kognityvinės lingvistikos aspektai leidžia giliau pažvelgti į kognityvinius ir konceptualius mechanizmus... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Šioje disertacijoje, siekiant ištirti kalbos produkavimo fenomeną, taikomi psicholingvistikos, sociolingvistikos ir kognityvinės lingvistikos metodai. Šių dienų psicholingvistai atliko daugybę kalbos produkavimo tyrimų, siūlydami itin svarbų kalbos produkavimo modelį, kuris bus išsamiai išnagrinėtas. Tačiau, kaip dauguma mokslininkų įrodinėjo, vien tik kalbos duomenų nepakanka norint pateikti išsamų konkretaus kalbos vartotojo kalbos vartojimo vaizdą. Nepriklausomai nuo to, ar kalbantysis yra vienakalbis, ar dvikalbis, jo kalbos (-ų) sistema pati yra kalbančiojo šeimos, bendruomenės, kultūros ir kt. kalbos sistemų posistemė. Be to, dabartinės kognityvinės lingvistikos progresas nagrinėjant konceptualiąją metaforą, konceptualųjį derinimą ir konstrukcijų gramatiką teikia unikalių įžvalgų apie žodyno ir net pačių sąvokų struktūrą. Šioje disertacijoje yra nagrinėjamas daugiakalbių, kurie jau yra įsisavinę anglų kalbos sistemą, tačiau kurių kalbos įgūdžiai tebesivysto, kalbos produkavimas. Tokia sistema yra dinamiška ir priklauso nuo iš anksto nenumatomų kintamųjų, kurie šiame darbe pateikti bendrame skyriuje tarpkalbinė įtaka. Psicholingvistiniu šio tyrimo požiūriu siekiama nustatyti studentų kalbos vartojimo psichologinius aspektus. Sociolingvistiniu šio darbo aspektu pabrėžiamas poreikis išnagrinėti sociokultūrinę aplinką, kurioje tiriamieji įsisavino anglų kalbos sistemą. Kognityvinės lingvistikos aspektai leidžia giliau pažvelgti į kognityvinius ir konceptualius mechanizmus... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / This dissertation combines psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and cognitive linguistic approaches to study the language production phenomenon of crosslinguistic influence (CLI). Modern psycholinguistics has taken an active interest in language production studies, offering a particularly influential model of speech production that is examined in detail. And yet, as many researchers have argued, language data alone are insufficient to paint an accurate portrait of a given speaker’s language use. Whether mono- or multilingual, a speaker’s system of language(s) is itself a sub-system of the language system of the speaker’s family, community, culture, etc. At the same time, recent cognitive linguistic advances in the study of conceptual blending and construction grammar offer unique insights into the structure of the lexicon and even concepts themselves. This dissertation examines the speech production of multilinguals whose English language system has been acquired but is still developing. Such a system is dynamic and subject to unpredictable dynamic effects, here grouped under the general rubric of CLI. The psycholinguistic aspects of this study are concerned with establishing the psychology of students’ language use. The sociolinguistic aspect addresses the need to research the sociocultural background within which the English language system has been acquired. The cognitive linguistic aspects allow in-depth insights into the cognitive and conceptual mechanisms underlying the... [to full text]

The aim of this study is to investigate crosslinguistic influence in the Arabic language of Iraqi Arabic-Swedish bilingual children (5-7) who live in Sweden. The scope is to study lexical, morphological and syntactic uses in the children’s speech that do not belong to the Iraqi Arabic variety (IAV). The used research method was interview method that has been applied in a descriptive framework without any normative evaluations. The interviews were based on a series of narrative pictures that had already been designed for the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). The primary material is a corpus which totals 164 recorded minutes that were obtained from twelve Iraqi Arabic-Swedish bilingual children who are 5-7 years old. The secondary material was sociolinguistic background information that was obtained from the children’s parents by using a questionnaire. The results revealed the following main points: (1) Most of the children’s linguistic uses that did not belong to IAV occurred mainly on the lexical level, less on the morphological level and least on the syntactic level. (2) Not all linguistic uses that do not belong to the IAV indicate a crosslinguistic influence in the children’s language development, because some of these uses occur occasionally. (3) Many linguistic uses that do not belong to the IAV were related to Modern standard Arabic (MSA), other Arabic varieties and Swedish, but some of them, e.g. morphological observations, were not related to a specific language. (4) Diglossia and bilingualism have led to different crosslinguistic influences on the children’s speech. Diglossia has led to lexical influence and bilingualism has led to lexical and syntactic influence. (5) The combination of diglossia and bilingualism can increase the crosslinguistic influence on the bilingual children compared to other bilingual children that do not experience this combination of both phenomena. (6) The fact that the children use MSA spontaneously along with their mother tongue shows that they learn MSA before they start school. (7) Use of other Arabic varieties by the children along with their mother tongue can bring these different Arabic varieties closer to the IAV and may also create a mixed variety in the future, if there is continuous and intensive language contact. (8) The results indicate the possible types of language acquisition for all children’s languages/varieties but without normative evaluation as the following: IAV as L1 (first language/mother tongue), Swedish as L1 or ESLA (early second language acquisition), MSA as ESLA or L2, and other Arabic varieties as ESLA or L2.

This thesis presents a study of the relationship between test-takers’ first language, listening proficiency and their performance on paired speaking tests. Forty participants from two different L1 backgrounds (20 Urdu and 20 Thai) participated in the study. They took two paired speaking tests: one with a shared L1 partner, and one with a non-shared L1 partner, as well as a listening test and a monologic speaking test to measure their listening ability and individual speaking ability. After each paired speaking test, the participants were also interviewed about their test-taking experience. All speaking tests and interviews were video recorded and transcribed. Raters awarded test-takers analytical speaking test scores (grammar and vocabulary, discourse management, pronunciation and interactive communication) and provided comments to justify their scores. Raters also participated in a stimulated recall session. The mixed-methods approach was utilised in analysing and triangulating different data sources. The data analysed in this study included listening and speaking test scores, raters’ perceptions of the test-takers’ speaking performance gathered from stimulated recalls and test-takers’ stimulated recall interviews, as well as the interactional discourse data in the paired speaking formats. The combination of quantitative analysis, Conversation Analysis (CA) and thematic analysis informed the relationship between test-takers’ listening proficiency, their L1 and their paired speaking performance.

This dissertation investigates how cognates are organized in the bilingual mental lexicon and examines whether orthography in one language, via phonological representations, influences the processing of cognates and false friends in the other language. In light of the framework of two well-known models of bilingual visual word recognition, the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) and the Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus (BIA+), the premise is that there is activation from orthography to phonology across a bilingual’s two languages and that this activation is modulated by the degree of orthographic and phonological code overlap. Two objective metrics were used to assess crosslinguistic similarity of Portuguese-English cognates and false friends that were selected for a cross-language lexical decision task with masked priming. Dynamic time warping (DTW), an algorithm that was originally conceived to compare different speech patterns in automatic speech recognition and to measure acoustic similarity between two time-dependent sequences, was used to compute crosslinguistic phonological similarity. The Normalized Levenshtein Distance (NLD), an algorithm that calculates the minimum number of single-character insertions, deletions or substitutions required to change one word into another and normalizes the result by their lengths, was used to compute crosslinguistic orthographic similarity. Portuguese-English bilinguals who acquired their second language after reaching puberty, and English functional monolinguals who grew up speaking primarily English were recruited to participate in the experimental task. Based on collected reaction time and accuracy data, mixed-effects models analyses are used to estimate the individual effects of crosslinguistic orthographic, phonological and semantic similarity and the role each of them, along with English proficiency, word frequency and length play in the organization of the Portuguese-English bilingual mental lexicon.

On s’accorde aujourd’hui sur la nécessité de la dimension textuelle dans l’enseignement de la langue écrite. L’objectif de notre recherche est de mettre à l’essai une démarche pédagogique visant à enseigner la compréhension/expression écrite en prenant appui sur la typologie textuelle et en adoptant une approche stratégique. Compte tenu que les Coréens apprennent le français comme deuxième langue étrangère après l’apprentissage de l’anglais, nous menons notre recherche dans un contexte d’apprentissage multilingue (le coréen, le français et l’anglais). Nous effectuons notre recherche à Montréal. Nous sélectionnons vingt- et-un apprenants coréens âgés de 14 à 15 ans en passant des entrevues sur les caractéristiques de leurs expériences scolaires et leurs apprentissages des langues. Ils possèdent tous un bagage éducatif solide en anglais mais leurs niveaux de français sont variés (i.e. sept sujets débutants, sept intermédiaires et sept avancés). Notre recherche se base sur trois expérimentations. Dans la première, nous nous intéressons notamment au rôle de la typologie textuelle auprès des débutants, dont les caractéristiques sont représentatives des apprenants coréens qui sont grammaticalement et lexicalement faibles en français. Nous mobilisons les connaissances textuelles par le biais des textes en anglais puis nous mesurons si les participants peuvent les utiliser dans les textes en français. Nous vérifions cette utilisation en comparant les résultats de la perception du fonctionnement de l’écrit en français avant et après la mobilisation des connaissances textuelles. Les donnés empiriques révèlent que les apprenants coréens qui n’ont pas encore maîtrisé les compétences de base réussissent à percevoir le fonctionnement de l’écrit en français grâce à leurs connaissances textuelles préalablement mobilisées en anglais.Dans notre deuxième expérimentation, nous examinons l’effet de l’enseignement de la typologie textuelle sur la lecture stratégique dans l’apprentissage multilingue. Nous offrons le cours de lecture stratégique avec un texte en français et examinons l’effet de cette pratique. En comparant les résultats de la compréhension avant et après le cours, nous vérifions que le cours de lecture stratégique est efficace non seulement sur la perception du fonctionnement de l’écrit, mais également sur l’apprentissage de la grammaire et du vocabulaire. Nous vérifions également l’influence translinguistique du français vers l’anglais. Dans la troisième expérimentation, nous examinons l’effet de l’enseignement de la typologie textuelle sur le processus de production écrite en français. Nous recueillons les productions des participants avant et après le cours de l’écriture. Nous les analysons avec les mêmes grilles de codage concernant la forme typologique et le sens culturel. Nous observons que les scripteurs qui ont l’occasion de mobiliser explicitement leurs connaissances textuelles peuvent obtenir des performances plus élevées concernant la forme typologique ainsi que le sens culturel après le processus de production. Nous en concluons que la didactique effectuée à partir de la typologie textuelle a toute sa pertinence dans l’apprentissage multilingue et que l’approche stratégique peut stimuler la mise en place de la typologie textuelle pour appréhender la langue écrite au niveau textuel tant en lecture qu’en écriture. / The concept of text-level organization is required in French literacy education for Korean learners. The major objective of this study was to explore a strategic approach which emphasizes the concept of textual typology on text-level language learning, as well as its cognitive and cultural dimensions of transfer, particularly in relation to French literacy education in multilingual learning (Korean, French and English). The textual typology which is deeply embedded in the empirical traditions of French literacy education has been a useful educational tool not only for teaching rhetorical conventions but also for practicing lexical and grammatical usage. Data were obtained from 21 Korean aged 14 to 15 years who study in English-French multilingual learning environments in Montreal. For comparative purposes, the results of the reading activity of three groups of seven students with elementary, intermediate and advanced competence in French as a second foreign language were analyzed. Our empirical research focuses on three issues. The first issue deals with whether the textual typology facilitates access to the text-level meaning as a useful pedagogical tool especially for low French level learners who have a limited vocabulary and grammar. We mobilized students’ background knowledge using English texts and we verified if they use it when they read French texts. The Post hoc contrasts showed that the textual typology is a profitable tool especially for beginners. The second issue is concerned with the practice of the strategic reading approach using a textual typology. The post-hoc about reading comprehension provided empirical support for the positive effects of reading strategies, not only for learning rhetorical conventions but also for understanding lexical and grammatical usage. And the results indicate crosslinguistic influence effects as well. The third issue focuses on the writing process with emphasis on the rhetorical norm in French writing. An analysis of students’ written texts showed that the rhetorical pattern of textual typology guided effectively to well formed writings in rhetorical and cultural dimension. In conclusion, the results demonstrated that the participants could effectively use the textual typology as well-developed networks of relevant prior knowledge in multilingual learning. And the strategic approach could stimulate the practice of the textual typology in textual comprehension and composition during reading and writing process.

On s’accorde aujourd’hui sur la nécessité de la dimension textuelle dans l’enseignement de la langue écrite. L’objectif de notre recherche est de mettre à l’essai une démarche pédagogique visant à enseigner la compréhension/expression écrite en prenant appui sur la typologie textuelle et en adoptant une approche stratégique. Compte tenu que les Coréens apprennent le français comme deuxième langue étrangère après l’apprentissage de l’anglais, nous menons notre recherche dans un contexte d’apprentissage multilingue (le coréen, le français et l’anglais). Nous effectuons notre recherche à Montréal. Nous sélectionnons vingt- et-un apprenants coréens âgés de 14 à 15 ans en passant des entrevues sur les caractéristiques de leurs expériences scolaires et leurs apprentissages des langues. Ils possèdent tous un bagage éducatif solide en anglais mais leurs niveaux de français sont variés (i.e. sept sujets débutants, sept intermédiaires et sept avancés). Notre recherche se base sur trois expérimentations. Dans la première, nous nous intéressons notamment au rôle de la typologie textuelle auprès des débutants, dont les caractéristiques sont représentatives des apprenants coréens qui sont grammaticalement et lexicalement faibles en français. Nous mobilisons les connaissances textuelles par le biais des textes en anglais puis nous mesurons si les participants peuvent les utiliser dans les textes en français. Nous vérifions cette utilisation en comparant les résultats de la perception du fonctionnement de l’écrit en français avant et après la mobilisation des connaissances textuelles. Les donnés empiriques révèlent que les apprenants coréens qui n’ont pas encore maîtrisé les compétences de base réussissent à percevoir le fonctionnement de l’écrit en français grâce à leurs connaissances textuelles préalablement mobilisées en anglais.Dans notre deuxième expérimentation, nous examinons l’effet de l’enseignement de la typologie textuelle sur la lecture stratégique dans l’apprentissage multilingue. Nous offrons le cours de lecture stratégique avec un texte en français et examinons l’effet de cette pratique. En comparant les résultats de la compréhension avant et après le cours, nous vérifions que le cours de lecture stratégique est efficace non seulement sur la perception du fonctionnement de l’écrit, mais également sur l’apprentissage de la grammaire et du vocabulaire. Nous vérifions également l’influence translinguistique du français vers l’anglais. Dans la troisième expérimentation, nous examinons l’effet de l’enseignement de la typologie textuelle sur le processus de production écrite en français. Nous recueillons les productions des participants avant et après le cours de l’écriture. Nous les analysons avec les mêmes grilles de codage concernant la forme typologique et le sens culturel. Nous observons que les scripteurs qui ont l’occasion de mobiliser explicitement leurs connaissances textuelles peuvent obtenir des performances plus élevées concernant la forme typologique ainsi que le sens culturel après le processus de production. Nous en concluons que la didactique effectuée à partir de la typologie textuelle a toute sa pertinence dans l’apprentissage multilingue et que l’approche stratégique peut stimuler la mise en place de la typologie textuelle pour appréhender la langue écrite au niveau textuel tant en lecture qu’en écriture. / The concept of text-level organization is required in French literacy education for Korean learners. The major objective of this study was to explore a strategic approach which emphasizes the concept of textual typology on text-level language learning, as well as its cognitive and cultural dimensions of transfer, particularly in relation to French literacy education in multilingual learning (Korean, French and English). The textual typology which is deeply embedded in the empirical traditions of French literacy education has been a useful educational tool not only for teaching rhetorical conventions but also for practicing lexical and grammatical usage. Data were obtained from 21 Korean aged 14 to 15 years who study in English-French multilingual learning environments in Montreal. For comparative purposes, the results of the reading activity of three groups of seven students with elementary, intermediate and advanced competence in French as a second foreign language were analyzed. Our empirical research focuses on three issues. The first issue deals with whether the textual typology facilitates access to the text-level meaning as a useful pedagogical tool especially for low French level learners who have a limited vocabulary and grammar. We mobilized students’ background knowledge using English texts and we verified if they use it when they read French texts. The Post hoc contrasts showed that the textual typology is a profitable tool especially for beginners. The second issue is concerned with the practice of the strategic reading approach using a textual typology. The post-hoc about reading comprehension provided empirical support for the positive effects of reading strategies, not only for learning rhetorical conventions but also for understanding lexical and grammatical usage. And the results indicate crosslinguistic influence effects as well. The third issue focuses on the writing process with emphasis on the rhetorical norm in French writing. An analysis of students’ written texts showed that the rhetorical pattern of textual typology guided effectively to well formed writings in rhetorical and cultural dimension. In conclusion, the results demonstrated that the participants could effectively use the textual typology as well-developed networks of relevant prior knowledge in multilingual learning. And the strategic approach could stimulate the practice of the textual typology in textual comprehension and composition during reading and writing process.

Det saknas logopediskt bedömningsmaterial normerat för flerspråkiga barn, och kunskapen om dessa barns typiska tal- och språkutveckling är begränsad hos logopeder i Sverige. Detta leder till över- och underdiagnostisering av språkstörning. Denna studie syftar till att undersöka svensk-engelsktalande barns narrativer (berättelser). Dessa analyseras kvantitativt och kvalitativt, både makrostrukturellt (story grammar) och mikrostrukturellt (lingvistiska mått). Även narrativ förståelse undersöks och jämförs med produktion. Studiens deltagare är 16 simultant flerspråkiga svensk-engelsktalande barn i åldern 6-7 år, som går i förskoleklass eller i första klass. Narrativerna eliciteras med hjälp av två bildsekvenser ur ett bedömningsmaterial framtaget av en forskningsgrupp inom COST Action IS0804. Bedömningsmaterialet innehåller även förståelsefrågor till bildsekvenserna, och bakgrundsfrågor för vårdnadshavare att fylla i. Resultaten visar inga skillnader i makrostruktur mellan svenska och engelska, vilket tyder på att narrativ förmåga inte nödvändigtvis är språkbunden. Jämförelser mellan förståelse och produktion av utvalda story grammar-komponenter visar dock en tydlig skillnad. Förståelsen för en karaktärs mål (story grammar-komponenten goal), vad karaktären vill uppnå, är etablerad hos de flesta deltagarna trots att produktionen av goal är begränsad. Till skillnad från makrostrukturen, skiljer sig mikrostrukturen åt i narrativerna. De engelska narrativerna är både längre och mer komplexa än de svenska. Skillnaderna mellan barn i förskoleklass och i första klass är dessutom stor, både makro- och mikrostrukturellt. Detta tyder på att mycket händer i barns språkliga och narrativa utveckling i tidig skolålder. Tvärspråkligt inflytande förefaller vara en naturlig del av den typiska språkutvecklingen hos simultant flerspråkiga barn. / There are no standardised tests for assessing bilingual children’s speech and language development, and the knowledge about these children’s typical language development is limited amongst speech and language therapists in Sweden. Studies have shown that this can lead to misdiagnosis of language impairment in these children. The aim of this study is to investigate the narratives of Swedish-English speaking children. Analysis is made, both quantitatively and qualitatively, regarding the macrostructure (story grammar) and the microstructure (linguistic measurements) of the narratives. Narrative comprehension is also examined, and compared with the produced narratives. The participants are 16 simultaneously bilingual Swedish-English speaking children, aged 6-7 years and either attending preschool class or first grade in the Swedish education system. The narratives are elicited using two different sets of pictures from an assessment material designed by a research group within COST Action IS0804. The assessment material also contains comprehension questions and a form for carers to fill in, regarding the children’s linguistic backgrounds. The results in this study show no macrostructural differences between the Swedish and the English narratives, which indicates that narrative ability is not necessarily language dependent. There is a clear difference between the comprehension and production of selected story grammar components. Despite the limited production of characters’ goals in the narratives, the participants appear to have established the comprehension of this story grammar component. The microstructural analysis of the narratives shows that the English narratives are both longer and more complex than the Swedish ones. There are differences between participants attending Swedish preschool class and participants attending Swedish first grade, with regards to both macrostructure and microstructure. The differences indicate that language and narrative ability is increasing between the ages of 6 and 7. Crosslinguistic influence appears to be a natural part of typical language development in simultaneously bilingual children.

The study reported in this thesis investigates the source language of lexical transfer in multilingual learners using a mixed methods approach. Previous research has shown that the source language of crosslinguistic influence can be related to factors such as proficiency, recency/exposure, psychotypology, the L2 status, and item-specific transferability. The present study employed a mixed methods approach in order to best serve the particularities of each of the five factors under investigation. Multinomial logistic regression was emloyed to test the predictive power of the first four factors, thereby addressing the issue of confounding variables found in previous studies. A more exploratory qualitative analysis was used to investigate item-specific transferability due to the lack of prior empirical studies focusing on this aspect. Both oral and written data were collected, offering an analysis of modal differences in direct comparison. The results show a significant effect of proficiency and exposure, but inconsistent patterns for psychotypology. Most importantly, in this study of lexical transfer, a significant L1 status effect was found, rather than an L2 status effect. In addition, the statistical model predicted the source language of transfer better in the spoken than in the written mode. Finally, learners were found to assess, as well as actively improve, an item’s transferability in relation to target language norms and constraints. All of these findings contribute to our understanding of lexical organization, activation, and access in the multilingual mind.

Die vorliegende Dissertation ist dreiteilig: i) deskriptiv, ii) komparatistisch, und iii) theoretisch. Nach einer allgemeinen Diskussion über die Geschichte und Grammatik des Guinea-Bissau Kreol (GBK) und einer Übersicht über die Herangehensweisen an artikellose Nominalphrasen (Bare Noun Phrases; BNPs), bietet die vorliegende Arbeit eine ausführliche Beschreibung der Distribution und Interpretation von BNPs in GBK. Sie können als Argumente und nicht-Argumente erscheinen. Bei Subjekten, indirekten Objekten, bei Topikalisierung, “dislocation” und “clefting” ergeben sie definite Interpretationen. Artikellose direkte Objekte können alle möglichen Interpretationen haben, ausgenommen eine pluralisch-spezifische Lesart. Die Interpretation von BNPs wird von kontextuellen Zusammenhängen als auch von Aspekt und Prädikattyp bestimmt. Perfektive und kontinuativ-imperfektive Kontexte lösen definit-spezifische Lesarten für artikellose Objekte aus. Artikellose Objekte in habituell-imperfektiven Kontexten ergeben eine indefinite, nicht-spezifische Lesart. Artikellose Subjekte von “stage level”-Prädikaten ergeben eine existentiale Interpretation, indeterminierte Subjekte von “individual level”-Prädikaten dagegen leiten definit-generische Lesarten ab. Die vorliegende Arbeit beinhaltet auch einen interlingualen Vergleich zwischen Kreol- und Nicht-Kreolsprachen: i) Cape Verdean Creole, Santome, Papiamentu und Brazilianisches Portugiesisch; und ii) Mandarin Chinesisch, Vietnamesisch und Gbe Sprachen. Die Distribution und Interpretation von BNPs ist sehr homogen. Alle erlauben sowohl singularische als auch pluralische Lesarten für BNPs: BNPs sind bezüglich Numerus unspezifiziert. Das führt uns zur theoretischen Diskussion über Numerus: ausgehend von Depréz’s (2007) Plural Parameter und seinen grundlegenden Annahmen (BNPs sind unspezifiziert für Numerus, und die grundlegende Denotation von Nomen ist Art vom Typ e), wird ein neues Modell sowie eine konsequente Sprachtypologie entwickelt. / The nature of the present dissertation is threefold: i) descriptive, ii) comparative, and iii) theoretical. After a brief general discussion on the history and grammar of Guinea-Bissau Creole, and after an extensive review of various approaches on BNPs, both from the semantic and syntactic perspective, the present work will offer an exhaustive description of the distribution and interpretation of Bare Noun Phrases in GBC. They may be found in both argument and nonargument positions. The general tendency for BNPs in GBC is to yield a definite reading (subjects, recipient objects, in topicalizion, dislocation and clefting). One difference is that bare patient objects may yield any possible interpretation, except from the specific plural. BNPs interpretation is driven by contextual factors as well as by aspect and predicate type. Perfective and continuous imperfective contexts trigger definite specific readings for bare objects. One difference is that bare objects in habitual imperfective contexts yield indefinite nonspecific interpretations. As for predicate types, bare subjects of stage-level predicates yield existential readings, whereas bare subjects of individual-level predicates derive definite generic readings. The present work also undertakes a crosslinguistic comparison between creoles and noncreoles: i) Cape Verdean Creole, Santome, Papiamentu and Brazilian Portuguese; and ii) Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese and Gbe languages. It turns out that BNPs distribution and interpretation are quite homogeneous. Importantly, BNPs in any of these languages may yield both singular and plural readings: BNPs are thus unspecified as for Number. This leads us to our theoretical discussion on Number: starting from Depréz’s (2007) Plural Parameter and its basic assumptions (e.g. BNPs are unspecified as for Number, and the basic denotation of nouns is kind of type e), a new model, and the consequent linguistic typology, is developed.