Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-03-22T11:42:28Z No. of bitstreams: 1 daniellenovaisuchoa.pdf: 1181307 bytes, checksum: 63df2d7f7f776f75f785a71fcacbc79d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-04-24T02:19:05Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 daniellenovaisuchoa.pdf: 1181307 bytes, checksum: 63df2d7f7f776f75f785a71fcacbc79d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-24T02:19:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 daniellenovaisuchoa.pdf: 1181307 bytes, checksum: 63df2d7f7f776f75f785a71fcacbc79d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-04-05 / CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Este estudo tem como objetivos investigar a sensibilidade à forma fônica dos determinantes e analisar se essa sensibilidade ajudaria bebês de 13 meses, adquirindo o português, a segmentar o sintagma determinante (DP) em unidades menores (determinante + nome). A perspectiva teórica adotada busca conciliar um tratamento psicolinguístico para aquisição de língua com uma teoria linguística, através da integração entre o modelo de Bootstrapping Fonológico (MORGAN & DEMUTH, 1996; CHRISTOPHE ET AL., 1997) e o Programa Minimalista, no que se refere, sobretudo, à sua concepção de Faculdade da Linguagem (HAUSER, CHOMSKY & FITCH, 2002), entendida sob duas perspectivas: no sentido estrito (FLN – Faculty of Language in the narrow sense) e no sentido amplo (FLB – Faculty of Language in the broad sense). Essa conciliação permite-nos explicar como a criança chega à sintaxe da sua língua a partir de pistas distribucionais e prosódicas disponibilizadas na interface fônica. Estudos conduzidos em diversas línguas, inclusive em português (Name, 2002), sugerem que, por volta dos 10 meses de idade, as crianças já seriam capazes de reconhecer os itens funcionais no fluxo da fala, a partir de suas características acústicas e distribucionais, utilizando-os como pistas para o acesso lexical e sintático. As hipóteses assumidas são de que (i) aos 13 meses, a criança é sensível à forma fônica dos determinantes, distinguindo, assim, os determinantes reais dos pseudodeterminantes, sendo capazes, (ii) de segmentar o DP formado por um determinante real + pseudonome. Nossos resultados sugerem que aos 13 meses, o bebê é sensível à forma fônica dos determinantes da língua, reagindo diferentemente quando apresentados aos determinantes (o / um/ este / aquele) ou aos pseudodeterminantes (ône / ór / ugi / ófupi). Além disso, sugerem também que as crianças foram capazes de segmentar o DP em unidades menores, já que reagiram diferentemente aos pseudonomes familiarizados quando antecedidos por determinante real ou pseudodeterminante. / This study aims at investigating the sensitivity to phonetic form of determiners and analyzing whether this sensitivity would help 13-month-old Brazilian babies to segment the Determiner Phrase (DP) into smaller unities (determiner + noun). The theoretical approach adopted seeks at conciliating a psycholinguistic treatment for the language acquisition with a linguistic theory, through the integration between Phonological Bootstrapping (MORGAN and DEMUTH, 1996; CHRISTOPHE et al., 1997) and the Minimalist Program, in relation, especially, to its conception of Language Faculty (HAUSER, CHOMSKY & FITCH, 2002), seen through two perspectives: in its narrow sense (FLN) and in its broad sense (FLB). This conciliation allows us to explain how the child reaches the language syntax from distributional and prosodic cues available at the phonic interface. Studies conducted in different languages, including Brazilian Portuguese (Name,2002) suggest that, around the age of 10 months, children would already be able of recognizing function words in the speech stream, from their acoustic and distributional characteristics, using them as cues for syntactic and lexical access. The hypothesis are that (i) at 13 months, the child is sensitive to the phonic form of determiners, distinguishing the real determiners from the nonsense determiners, being able of (ii) segment the DP consisting of a real determiner + a nonsense noun. Our results suggest that, at 13 month-old, babies are sensible to the phonic form of their language determiners, reacting differently when they are presented either to the determiners (o / um / este/ aquele) or the nonsense determiners (ône / ór / ugi / ófupi).It also suggests that the children were able of segmenting the DP into smaller unities, since they reacted differently to the familiarized nonsense nouns when they were preceded by a real determiner or a nonsense determiner.

This thesis investigates the syntactic structure of determiner phrases (DP) and their distribution in pre- and postverbal subject positions in Standard Arabic (SA) and Saudi dialects (SUD). It argues that indefinite DPs cannot occupy preverbal subject positions unless they are licensed by modification. Working within the theory of syntactic visibility conditions (visibility of the specifier and/or the determiner) put forth by Giusti (2002) and Landau (2007), I propose that adjectives, diminutives or construct states (CS) together with nunation can license indefinite DPs in preverbal subject positions. The syntactic derivation of the licensed indefinite DP depends on its complexity. In other words, in the case of simple DPs (e.g., a noun followed by an adjective), the correct linear word order is achieved by the syntactic N-to-D movement which takes place in the syntax proper. By contrast, if the DP is complex as in diminutives or CSs, the narrow syntax may not be able to derive the correct linear order. Therefore, I propose a novel analysis that accounts for the mismatches between the spell out of the syntax and the phonological form. I argue that the derivation of diminutives and CSs is a shared process between the narrow syntax and the phonological component (PF). I show that movement operations after-syntax (Lowering and Local-dislocation) proposed by Embick and Noyer (1999, 2001, 2007), in the sense of Distributed Morphology (DM), can account for the mismatch. The last theoretical chapter of the thesis investigates the linguistic status of nunation. I argue that nunation is an indefinite marker that performs half of determination with a full lexical item satisfying the other half. As far as the subject position is concerned, the current thesis includes two experimental studies that investigate processing of syntactic subjects in different word orders (SVO/VSO) by two groups: Native speakers (NSs) and Heritage speakers (HSs) of Arabic whose dominant language is English. The first study aims to answer two questions: a) which word order is more preferred by NSs, SVO or VSO? and b) which word order requires more processing? The second study aims to answer the same questions but with different participants, HSs. It also aims to check whether or not the dominant language grammar affected the heritage language grammar. Results showed that VSO is more preferred than SVO by both groups. As far as processing is concerned, NSs significantly processed subjects in VSO faster the SVO; they showed no significant difference when processing postverbal subjects in definite and indefinite VSO. By contrast, HSs processed subjects in SVO faster than VSO; however, the difference was not significant. The slow processing of VSO shown by HSs might be attributed to the effect of the dominant language which has a different word order from the heritage language.

This dissertation proposes a uniqueness-based theory of definiteness that accounts for the semantics and the pragmatics of German (non-) contracted forms of a preposition and the definite determiner (e.g. ‘zum / zu dem’, ‘am / an dem’), but the analysis also carries over to definite descriptions in general. I propose that the definite determiner is ambiguous between a referential and a quantificational reading. Crucially, referential DDs exploit information provided in the surrounding linguistic context, while the interpretation of quantificational DDs heavily relies on extra-linguistic world knowledge that can be represented by an implicit free individual variable and an implicit free relation variable. Non-contracted forms are always interpreted referentially, whereas contracted forms receive quantificational interpretations. This proposal has a wide range of applications: It deals with anaphoric and demonstrative DDs, as well as with typical ‘uniqueness uses’ (such as ‘the moon’ or ‘the sun’), covarying DDs involving explicit and implicit antecedents, bridging definites, and, last but not least, so-called Weak Definites.

L’objectif principal de cette recherche est d’étudier la façon dont le jeune enfant acquiert l’usage référentiel des syntagmes nominaux et des pronoms dans les dialogues avec sa mère. La question qui se pose est donc celle de déterminer si les valeurs pragmatiques de ces expressions référentielles arrivent après l’acquisition de leurs formes grammaticales ou au même moment ? Les analyses de nos suivis longitudinaux, de trois enfants francophones âgés de 1;11 à 3 ans, montrent une acquisition graduelle des catégories des déterminants du nom impliquant des phénomènes précurseurs, tels que l’utilisation des « fillers ». Nous avons relevé aussi une certaine capacité du jeune enfant à introduire, à maintenir et à réintroduire les référents avec les expressions référentielles appropriées. Ces résultats suggèrent une acquisition précoce de la valeur référentielle, en français, aussi bien pour les syntagmes nominaux que pour les pronoms. / The aim of this research is to study the way children acquire the referential use of nouns and pronouns in dialogues with their mother. The question is to determine whether the child acquires the pragmatics values of these referential expressions after their morpho-syntactic forms or at the same time? The analysis of our longitudinal data, three French-speaking children aged between 1;11 and 3 years, shows that determiner categories are gradually acquired and that the process implies the use of precursory phenomena, such as ‚filler-syllables‛. We also observe that young children show a certain ability to introduce, maintain and reintroduce referents with appropriate referential expressions. Those findings suggest that the referential valuesof nouns and pronouns are acquired from a very early age in French language.

This paper focuses on two aspects of the recipe minilect: clause-initial adverbials and object and determiner ellipsis in the translation from English into Swedish. The aim of the study is to find general tendencies on how clause-initial adverbials are translated and how this affects the information structure. In addition, the occurrence of object and determiner ellipsis in translations is studied, to see if there are differences between English and Swedish. Based on a theoretical background by Hasselgård (1997) the translation of clause-initial adverbials is identified and structured, according to Hasselgård’s (1997) model of word order correspondence. The structures are then studied quantitatively, through different examples in English and Swedish, and with regards to Lindquist’s (1989) definition of adverbial placement. The theoretical background for the study on object and determiner ellipsis is mainly based on the work by Nordman (1994), Hultman (2003) and Biber et al (1999). The occurrence of ellipsis is identified and then studied quantitatively. The results show that different kinds of word order restrictions govern the translation of clause-initial adverbials and that changes in adverbial placement can affect the information structure. The occurrence of object ellipsis is somewhat higher in the present study than in the analyzed parallel texts, possibly due to influence from the ST. Due to Swedish rules on definiteness, there is a low occurrence of determiner ellipsis in the TT.

This thesis investigates the function of number marking in Persian, within the framework of principles and parameters (P&P), and its relationship to inflectional and derivational number marking. Following the assumption in Distributed Morphology that inflectional and derivational morphology are not distinct, the distribution and properties of number marking in Persian provide evidence for both inflectional and derivational number marking. Assuming the two parameters of number marking (Wiltschko, 2007, 2008), number marking as a functional head and number marking as a modifier, I propose that number marking in Persian is mainly inflectional while number functions as a functional head; moreover, I propose that number marking in Persian can be derivational while number functions as a modifier. This explains that number morphology in Persian is not split to either inflectional or derivational. Rather, following Booij’s (1993, 1995) claim that inflectional morphology can be used contextually as well as inherently, I propose that number morphology in Persian is inflectional while number is a functional head; however, it has inherent residues as a modifier. Considering the functions of inflectional plural morphology in Persian, I argue that the functional category Number Phrase (NumP) is projected in Persian, and number is generated in the head of this functional category. Besides, Persian is a classifier language in which classifiers are in complementary distribution with plural marking. Following Borer’s (2005) discussion of the complementary distribution of plural marking and classifiers in Armenian, I argue that the head of NumP in Persian is either occupied by the plural maker or by full/empty classifiers. Moreover, I show that the presence of bare singulars/plurals in certain syntactic positions in Persian is related to the projection/non-projection of NumP.

This thesis investigates the function of number marking in Persian, within the framework of principles and parameters (P&P), and its relationship to inflectional and derivational number marking. Following the assumption in Distributed Morphology that inflectional and derivational morphology are not distinct, the distribution and properties of number marking in Persian provide evidence for both inflectional and derivational number marking. Assuming the two parameters of number marking (Wiltschko, 2007, 2008), number marking as a functional head and number marking as a modifier, I propose that number marking in Persian is mainly inflectional while number functions as a functional head; moreover, I propose that number marking in Persian can be derivational while number functions as a modifier. This explains that number morphology in Persian is not split to either inflectional or derivational. Rather, following Booij’s (1993, 1995) claim that inflectional morphology can be used contextually as well as inherently, I propose that number morphology in Persian is inflectional while number is a functional head; however, it has inherent residues as a modifier. Considering the functions of inflectional plural morphology in Persian, I argue that the functional category Number Phrase (NumP) is projected in Persian, and number is generated in the head of this functional category. Besides, Persian is a classifier language in which classifiers are in complementary distribution with plural marking. Following Borer’s (2005) discussion of the complementary distribution of plural marking and classifiers in Armenian, I argue that the head of NumP in Persian is either occupied by the plural maker or by full/empty classifiers. Moreover, I show that the presence of bare singulars/plurals in certain syntactic positions in Persian is related to the projection/non-projection of NumP.

Code-switching (CS) between French and Arabic is common across North Africa and in parts of the Middle East. Many researchers have examined this phenomenon in Tunisia (Belazi 1991, Lawson & Sachdev 2000, Belazi et. al 1994) and Morocco (Abbassi 1977, Bentahila 1983, Bentahila & Davies 1983, Lahlou 1991, Redouane 2005.) Corpus and elicited data from these two countries has helped form the basis of proposed universal constraints on code-switching, specifically the Functional Head Constraint (FHC) (Belazi et al 1994) and the Complement Adjunct Distinction (CAD) (Mahootian and Santorini 1996). However, CS between French and Moroccan and Tunsian dialects has not been directly investigated within a single study. This study is a step in filling that gap. Using a web-based survey, the present study examines native dialect speakers’ ratings of authenticity of sentences that contain both French and Arabic with a switch occurring in the Determiner Phrase (DP). The syntactic structure of the DP in the dialects examined is the same, (DP = D (D) N (A)). This is similar to the DP in French (DP = D (A) N (A)) with a few key differences that make it possible to test the FHC and CAD within the DP alone. An example of one of the eight possible switch types, between an Arabic Demonstrative Determiner and a French Definite Determiner, is seen here between Moroccan Arabic and French: Men dima had l’homme n’aime pas les chiens. (Since always this the man doesn’t like dogs.) A mixed-model ANOVA performed on the participants’ ratings reveals main effects for dialect, sex and switch type. Significant interactions also exist, including an interaction between switch type, sex and dialect. While further research is needed, the results indicate that syntactic constraints may not be the only way to understand the practice of CS. Instead, a typological approach, as suggested by Muysken (2000), may lead to a more complete understanding of why and how communities use multiple languages. / text

This thesis investigates the function of number marking in Persian, within the framework of principles and parameters (P&P), and its relationship to inflectional and derivational number marking. Following the assumption in Distributed Morphology that inflectional and derivational morphology are not distinct, the distribution and properties of number marking in Persian provide evidence for both inflectional and derivational number marking. Assuming the two parameters of number marking (Wiltschko, 2007, 2008), number marking as a functional head and number marking as a modifier, I propose that number marking in Persian is mainly inflectional while number functions as a functional head; moreover, I propose that number marking in Persian can be derivational while number functions as a modifier. This explains that number morphology in Persian is not split to either inflectional or derivational. Rather, following Booij’s (1993, 1995) claim that inflectional morphology can be used contextually as well as inherently, I propose that number morphology in Persian is inflectional while number is a functional head; however, it has inherent residues as a modifier. Considering the functions of inflectional plural morphology in Persian, I argue that the functional category Number Phrase (NumP) is projected in Persian, and number is generated in the head of this functional category. Besides, Persian is a classifier language in which classifiers are in complementary distribution with plural marking. Following Borer’s (2005) discussion of the complementary distribution of plural marking and classifiers in Armenian, I argue that the head of NumP in Persian is either occupied by the plural maker or by full/empty classifiers. Moreover, I show that the presence of bare singulars/plurals in certain syntactic positions in Persian is related to the projection/non-projection of NumP.

Cette thèse étudie le fonctionnement des déterminations définie et indéfinie au sein des syntagmes nominaux génériques en anglais contemporain à partir d’un corpus essentiellement composé de textes encyclopédiques et scientifiques. La catégorisation générique peut relever de processus cognitifs et de niveaux d’abstraction distincts signifiés par les déterminations définie et indéfinie. La première partie décrit successivement le cadre référentiel de cette étude, la formalisation morphosyntaxique de la généricité nominale, la spécification dont sont porteurs les articles définis et indéfinis, ainsi que les contraintes déterminatives liées à la classe lexico-grammaticale des substantifs et au contexte prédicatif. La deuxième partie étudie les possibilités et impossibilités déterminatives au regard des contextes prédicatifs lorsque le syntagme nominal est associé à un prédicat d’espèce. Nous considérons plus spécifiquement l’interaction entre la classification des espèces, le nombre singulier ou pluriel et la détermination définie ou indéfinie en nous intéressant aux espèces conçues dans leur pluralité interne. La troisième partie examine le fonctionnement de l’article défini comme opérateur d’abstraction. L’étude des spécialisations de the montre qu’il est lié à une visée référentielle externalisante et synthétique. La quatrième partie traite du fonctionnement des syntagmes nominaux génériques définis et indéfinis au sein des textes génériques eu égard à la structuration du discours. L’article défini sous-tend une dimension anaphorique au générique également, et reste la marque de la saillance cognitive du référent. / This dissertation deals with the use of definite and indefinite determiners in generic noun phrases in contemporary English, using a corpus based on encyclopedic and scientific texts mainly. The categorization which genericity is based on results from various cognitive processes and levels of abstraction which are signified in the use of definite and indefinite determiners. The first part successively describes the referential framework of our study, the morphosyntactical forms of generic noun phrases, the values of definite and indefinite articles, as well as the pattern of constraints on definite and indefinite articles established by the lexico-grammatical features of nouns and the predicative context. The second part examines determiner possibilities and impossibilities with regard to the predicative context when a generic noun phrase is combined with a kind-predicate. More specifically, we correlate species classification, singular/plural number marking and definite/indefinite determination as we examine the plural structure of generic referents. The third part studies the use of the definite article as an abstraction operator. As we consider cases in which the use of definite noun phrases is favored, we show that its reference involves an externalizing and synthetic dimension. The fourth part deals with the way generic definite and indefinite noun phrases combine in generic texts with regard to the discourse structure. The use of the definite article presupposes an anaphoric dimension in generic reference also and indicates that the referent is salient in a cognitive perspective.