Em todas as disciplinas do currículo escolar são utilizados termos específicos nas aulas. No caso da disciplina de Língua Portuguesa, a terminologia gramatical é utilizada para referir-se à própria língua. Essa terminologia é tradicionalmente denominada Nomenclatura Gramatical Brasileira e conhecida como NGB. Esta pesquisa discute a terminologia gramatical da Língua Portuguesa utilizada na sala de aula do ensino fundamental II e tem como objetivo geral verificar como o aluno, ao chegar no 9.º ano, compreende essa terminologia. Com a finalidade de se chegar ao objetivo geral, por meio de pesquisa de campo, foi aplicado um questionário com termos gramaticais referentes às classes de palavras, a fim de verificar como os estudantes definiriam tais termos, pois são palavras que fazem parte do universo escolar dos alunos, estão inseridas no discurso didático e pedagógico da sala de aula e constam dos livros didáticos utilizados por eles ao longo dos anos escolares. O questionário apresentado trouxe os termos e um espaço em branco para os alunos colocarem o significado de cada um, da maneira como eles os entendem. O trabalho seguiu um percurso semasiológico, ou seja, partiu da designação já estabelecida para o conceito. As definições deles foram analisadas, de forma a averiguar se expressam adequadamente os conceitos observados. Para verificar o que se esperaria dos alunos, foram analisadas as definições presentes nas gramáticas, nos livros didáticos, bem como os conceitos etimológicos dos termos. Como esta pesquisa faz parte de um programa de Mestrado Profissional, ela tem a pretensão de oferecer propostas para o trabalho em sala de aula com essa terminologia, de modo a levar os contributos dos estudos lexicológicos e terminológicos à escola. Os resultados apontam que os alunos têm dificuldade para entender a terminologia gramatical usada nas aulas. Nesse sentido, a pesquisa demonstra a necessidade de se produzir materiais voltados ao ensino e intervenções didáticas que propiciem, de maneira mais eficaz, o entendimento e a apropriação pelos estudantes dos conceitos estudados e utilizados por eles. / In all subjects of the curriculum are used specific terms in class. In the case of discipline of Portuguese Language, grammatical terminology is used to refer to own language.This terminology is traditionally called Brazilian Grammatical Nomenclature, known as NGB. This research discusses the terminology of the Portuguese language used in the classroom of elementary school II and has the general objective to verify how the student to reach the 9th grade, understand this terminology. In order to reach the overall goal, through field research, a questionnaire was applied with grammatical terms referring to the words classes in order to verify how the students would define such terms, because these words are part of the school context and student context. They are inserted in the didactic and pedagogical discourse of the classroom and they are found in textbooks used by them over the years. The questionnaire presented brought the terms and a blank space for the students to put the meaning of each one, the way they understand them. The work followed a semasiological route, therefore from designation already established for the concept. The definitions of students were analyzed to see if express adequately the concepts analyzed. To verify what the would expected of students, additionally, it were analyzed the definitions presents in the grammar books, in textbooks, as well as the etymological concepts of terms. As this research is part of a Professional Master\'s program purports to offer proposals for work in the classroom with this terminology, to take contributions from lexicological and terminological studies to school. The results show that students have trouble understanding the grammatical terminology used in class. In this sense, the research demonstrates the need to produce materials geared to teaching and educational interventions that provide, more effectively, understanding and ownership by the students of the concepts studied and used by them.

Thesis (M. A. (Language Education)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / The study focused on the grammatical errors made by learners in writing descriptive essays: A case study of Mmakgabo Senior Secondary School, Koloti circuit, Limpopo, South Africa, paying much attention to the use of grammatical rules features specifically, in their academic piece of writing (descriptive essay). The study aimed at finding out the patterns of grammatical errors that are present in learners’ essays and the effective approach that one can use to trace the grammatical errors made by school learners in descriptive essays. The nature of the study and type of data to be collected motivated the researcher to use qualitative approach. Therefore, the researcher deployed qualitative method to collect and analyse data for this study. This method gave the researcher a wide range of opportunities to collect invaluable data which made him to gain in-depth insight of the study and the problem researched. As data collection instruments, the research firstly relied on document analysis by analysing English essay scripts of learners. In addition, the researcher conducted structured interviews by asking relevant questions to English teachers in order to ascertain their experiences and knowledge of the kind of grammatical errors learners make when they write English texts. The researcher found from document analysis that learners commit grammatical errors such as the use informal language, sentences fragment, spelling errors, incorrect use of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. The interview findings also presented similar findings and the interviewees ranked learners’ adherence to grammatical rules to average level. The researcher relied on the findings of both the interviews, and document analysis interpreted in conjunction with recent empirical studies to conclude that learners still have many challenges with regard to following grammatical rules when they write in English. Therefore, the researcher recommends that teachers put extra effort to teach learners how to write coherently in English

This dissertation investigates how grammatical functions in transitive sentences (i.e., `subject' and `direct object') are distributed in written Swedish discourse with respect to morphosyntactic as well as semantic and referential (i.e., prominence-based) information. It also investigates how assignment of grammatical functions during on-line comprehension of transitive sentences in Swedish is influenced by interactions between morphosyntactic and prominence-based information. In the dissertation, grammatical functions are assumed to express role-semantic (e.g., Actor and Undergoer) and discourse-pragmatic (e.g., Topic and Focus) functions of NP arguments. Grammatical functions correlate with prominence-based information that is associated with these functions (e.g., animacy and definiteness). Because of these correlations, both prominence-based and morphosyntactic information are assumed to serve as argument interpretation cues during on-line comprehension. These cues are utilized in a probabilistic fashion. The weightings, interplay and availability of them are reflected in their distribution in language use, as shown in corpus data. The dissertation investigates these assumptions by using various methods in a triangulating fashion. The first contribution of the dissertation is an ERP (event-related brain potentials) experiment that investigates the ERP response to grammatical function reanalysis, i.e., a revision of a tentative grammatical function assignment, during on-line comprehension of transitive sentences. Grammatical function reanalysis engenders a response that correlates with the (re-)assignment of thematic roles to the NP arguments. This suggests that the comprehension of grammatical functions involves assigning role-semantic functions to the NPs. The second contribution is a corpus study that investigates the distribution of prominence-based, verb-semantic and morphosyntactic features in transitive sentences in written discourse. The study finds that overt morphosyntactic information about grammatical functions is used more frequently when the grammatical functions cannot be determined on the basis of word order or animacy. This suggests that writers are inclined to accommodate the understanding of their recipients by more often providing formal markers of grammatical functions in potentially ambiguous sentences. The study also finds that prominence features and their interactions with verb-semantic features are systematically distributed across grammatical functions and therefore can predict these functions with a high degree of confidence. The third contribution consists of three computational models of incremental grammatical function assignment. These models are based upon the distribution of argument interpretation cues in written discourse. They predict processing difficulties during grammatical function assignment in terms of on-line change in the expectation of different grammatical function assignments over the presentation of sentence constituents. The most prominent model predictions are qualitatively consistent with reading times in a self-paced reading experiment of Swedish transitive sentences. These findings indicate that grammatical function assignment draws upon statistical regularities in the distribution of morphosyntactic and prominence-based information in language use. Processing difficulties in the comprehension of Swedish transitive sentences can therefore be predicted on the basis of corpus distributions.

The present thesis investigates grammatical gender processing in French as a first and second language. It focuses mainly on whether non-native speakers can achieve native-like representation and processing of gender, and whether the native language (L1) influences the acquisition of the second language (L2). Theoretical linguistic models have made two contrasting assumptions concerning the ability of late bilinguals to acquire grammatical gender in their L2. While some models propose that grammatical features, such as gender, are no longer available for L2 acquisition if they are not present in L1 (Hawkins & Chan, 1997), others assume that these features are still available via the universal grammar if required in the L2 (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996; White, 1989, 2003). These assumptions, however, are supported only by off-line studies and do not provide a comprehensive account for gender representation and processing. The present thesis uses online techniques to address these questions both in language comprehension and language production. The first chapters are devoted to comprehension processes and examined French native speakers, English-French and German-French bilinguals’ performance during the processing of correct and syntactically anomalous sentences, using ERPs and eye-movements to record behaviour. We concluded that, like native speakers, English-French bilinguals are sensitive to gender agreement violations. Thus, we argue that late bilinguals are able to acquire the gender system of their L2 even if this grammatical feature is not present in their L1. On the other hand, the performance of the German speakers we tested suggests that the presence of a competing gender system in the native language may hamper gender acquisition in L2. The influence of the native language may vary, however, according to both proficiency and how gender systems map across languages, as suggest the results we obtained with Spanish bilinguals tested in language production. In a second series of experiments, we examined determiner selection in French to further investigate gender representation and processing, but in language production. Using a picture-word interference paradigm, we compared the production of simple and complex noun phrases (NP) in French native speakers, English-French and Spanish-French bilinguals. From our results, we argue that gender representation is similar in L1 and L2, but that gender processing is less incremental in non-native speakers in that they do not compute agreement between the noun and other elements of the NP as automatically as native speakers do. The absence of interference between the two gender systems of the Spanish-French bilinguals we tested suggests that the gender systems of the two languages may be autonomous in highly proficient bilinguals. Our results suggest that highly proficient bilinguals can reach native-like representation and processing of gender in their L2 and that such is not constrained by either the age of onset of learning or the grammar of the learners L1.

This dissertation presents a theory of grammatical aspect in which perfects and prospectives form a sub-group separate from perfectives and imperfectives. I claim that aspects in this sub-group display a number of similar semantic and syntactic behaviors because of the way in which they relate event and reference times. While perfectives and imperfectives situate these times in inclusion relations, perfects and prospectives separate event time from reference time. This effectively creates an interval, homogeneous with respect to the eventuality, that can be interpreted as a state. The separation of the times in these aspects also means that modification of the interval between these times is possible, as is modification by adverbials like since that cannot occur with other aspects. These claims are supported by the morphosyntax and semantics of aspect particles in Scottish Gaelic, with additional data from English. I investigate six particles in Scottish Gaelic, focusing on four I claim to mark various aspects and one I claim to be simply a preposition. I argue that in addition to two inclusion aspects, perfective and imperfective (expressed via a synthetic form and by a' , respectively), Scottish Gaelic shows four distinctions of precedence aspect - two retrospective (air , as dèidh) and two prospective (gu , a' dol do). I provide a neo-Reichenbachian analysis of these particles within event semantics. In each case, the particle is an instantiation of an Aspect head that existentially quantifies over an event and places its runtime in a relation to reference time. I also argue that the particle ann, which seems to appear with both verbal and nominal material, is not an aspect particle but a preposition. Its appearance in the same linear position as the aspect particles belies its distinct syntactic structure. Overall, the data indicate the benefit of a view of grammatical aspect in which the basic time relations of reference time within, before, and after event time delineate groups of aspects rather than individual distinctions. This view of aspect is a more cohesive alternative to one in which aspects that may actually be very similar are taken to exist in separate categories.

Nous nous plaçons dans le cadre de l’inférence grammaticale probabiliste. Il s’agit, étant donnée une distribution p sur un ensemble de chaînes S∗ inconnue, d’inférer un modèle probabiliste pour p à partir d’un échantillon fini S d’observations supposé i.i.d. selon p. L’inférence gram- maticale se concentre avant tout sur la structure du modèle, et la convergence de l’estimation des paramètres. Les modèles probabilistes dont il sera question ici sont les automates pondérés, ou WA. Les fonctions qu’ils modélisent sont appelées séries rationnelles. Dans un premier temps, nous étudierons la possibilité de trouver un critère de convergence absolue pour de telles séries. Par la suite, nous introduirons un type d’algorithme pour l’inférence de distributions rationnelles (i.e. distributions modélisées par un WA), basé sur des méthodes spectrales. Nous montrerons comment adapter cet algorithme pour l’appliquer au domaine, assez proche, des distributions sur les arbres. Enfin, nous tenterons d’utiliser cet algorithme d’inférence dans un contexte plus statistique d’estimation de densité. / Our framework is the probabilistic grammatical inference. That is, given an unknown distribution p on a set of string S∗ , to infer a probabilistic model for p from a sample S of observations assumed to be i.i.d. according to p. Grammatical inference focuses primarily on the structure of the probabilistic model, and the convergence of parameter estimate. Probabilistic models which will be considered here are weighted automata, or WA. The series they model are called rational series. Initially, we study the possibility of finding an absolute convergence criterion for such series. Subsequently, we introduce a algorithm for the inference of rational distrbutions (i.e. distributions modeled by WA), based on spectral methods. We will show how to fit this algorithm to the domain, fairly close, of rational distributions on trees. Finally, we will try to see how to use the spectral algorithm in a more statistical way, in a density estimation task.

Bilingual language production is an area of psycholinguistic research that has received recent attention. Experimental evidence from bilingual word production tasks has shown that both languages share representation at the mental lexicon, meaning that concepts will lead to the activation of the target lemma from both languages. Investigations into how bilinguals organise two grammatical systems has largely come from cross-linguistic syntactic priming. Syntactic priming is a phenomenon in which speakers are likely to repeat a syntactic structure in which they have recently experienced: cross-linguistic syntactic priming is when a speaker uses a syntactic structure in one language because they have recently experienced that structure from the other language. Together, the study of the bilingual lexicon and syntactic representations have led to the development of models of bilingual language production. A more recent experimental paradigm is the forced code-switching task in which participants are required to code-switch in some experimental trials. The forced code-switching task is the experimental method used in this thesis. This thesis aims to use this experimental task to test my proposed model of bilingual language production, the Hybrid model. The Hybrid model proposes an architecture of the bilingual lemma stratum that differs from previous models of bilingual language production. The Hybrid model assumes that lexical items from one language can be produced using the syntactic structure of the other language. In this thesis I report seven experiments testing the proposed lemma stratum of the Hybrid model. Experiment 3.1 investigated the production of prenominal adjectives of English and postnominal adjectives of Spanish during code-switching between Spanish and English to see whether speakers would use the lexical items from one language with the word order of the other language. The results showed that speakers almost exclusively used the word order dictated by the language in which they produced the lexical items. This did not support the proposed lemma stratum of the Hybrid model. Experiments 4.1 and 4.2 investigated gender agreement of possessive pronouns during code-switching between Spanish and English to see if the possessive pronoun from one language could be produced using the gender agreement rules from the other language. The results showed that English-Spanish and Spanish-English bilinguals sometimes produced possessive pronouns in one language with the gender agreement rules from the other language. It was demonstrated that this effect was not due to a misunderstanding of the gender agreement rules of the participants' second language. These results support the proposed lemma stratum of the Hybrid model. Experiments 5.1 and 5.2 investigated gender agreement of possessive determiners during code-switching between French and English to see if the possessive determiner from one language could be produced using the gender agreement rules from the other language. The results showed that English-French and French-English bilinguals sometimes produced possessive determiners in one language with the gender agreement rules from the other language. It was demonstrated that this effect was not due to a misunderstanding of the gender agreement rules of the participants' second language. These results support the proposed lemma stratum of the Hybrid model. Experiments 6.1 and 6.2 investigated the production of determiners during code-switching between German and English. Of specific interest was whether English determiners would be produced more often than German determiners because German determiners hold case information whereas English determiners do not. In Experiment 6.1 participants were forced to code-switch before an accusative NP. The results showed that English determiners were sometimes produced within the German NPs, but German determiners were not used within the English NPs. In Experiment 6.2 participants were forced to code-switch before a dative NP. The results showed that participants almost exclusively produced the determiner in the same language as the target noun. Analysing the frequencies of the determiner used within the experimental session, the different pattern of results between Experiments 6.1 and 6.2 may be a result of a competition for selection between determiner forms. To conclude the thesis I discuss the implications of these findings, what they mean for the Hybrid model, and directions for future research.

Previous models of language acquisition have had partial success describing the processes that children use to acquire knowledge of the grammatical categories of their native language. The present study used a computer model based on the evolutionary principles of adaptation and selection to gain further insight into children's acquisition of grammatical categories. Transcribed language samples of eight parents or caregivers each conversing with their own child served as the input corpora for the model. The model was tested on each child's language corpus three times: two fixed mutation rates as well as a progressively decreasing mutation rate, which allowed less adaptation over time, were examined. The output data were evaluated by measuring the computer model's ability to correctly identify the grammatical categories in 500 utterances from the language corpus of each child. The model's performance ranged between 78 and 88 percent correct; the highest performance overall was found for a corpus using the progressively decreasing mutation rate, but overall no clear pattern relative to mutation rate was found.

Con esta tesis doctoral aproximamos la teoría de la inferencia gramatical y los estudios de adquisición del lenguaje, en pos de un objetivo final: ahondar en la comprensión del modo como los niños adquieren su primera lengua mediante la explotación de la teoría inferencial de gramáticas formales.Nuestras tres principales aportaciones son:1. Introducción de una nueva clase de lenguajes llamada Simple p-dimensional external contextual (SEC). A pesar de que las investigaciones en inferencia gramatical se han centrado en lenguajes regulares o independientes del contexto, en nuestra tesis proponemos centrar esos estudios en clases de lenguajes más relevantes desde un punto de vista lingüístico (familias de lenguajes que ocupan una posición ortogonal en la jerarquía de Chomsky y que son suavemente dependientes del contexto, por ejemplo, SEC).2. Presentación de un nuevo paradigma de aprendizaje basado en preguntas de corrección. Uno de los principales resultados positivos dentro de la teoría del aprendizaje formal es el hecho de que los autómatas finitos deterministas (DFA) se pueden aprender de manera eficiente utilizando preguntas de pertinencia y preguntas de equivalencia. Teniendo en cuenta que en el aprendizaje de primeras lenguas la corrección de errores puede jugar un papel relevante, en nuestra tesis doctoral hemos introducido un nuevo modelo de aprendizaje que reemplaza las preguntas de pertinencia por preguntas de corrección.3. Presentación de resultados basados en las dos previas aportaciones. En primer lugar, demostramos que los SEC se pueden aprender a partir de datos positivos. En segundo lugar, demostramos que los DFA se pueden aprender a partir de correcciones y que el número de preguntas se reduce considerablemente.Los resultados obtenidos con esta tesis doctoral suponen una aportación importante para los estudios en inferencia gramatical (hasta el momento las investigaciones en este ámbito se habían centrado principalmente en los aspectos matemáticos de los modelos). Además, estos resultados se podrían extender a diversos campos de aplicación que gozan de plena actualidad, tales como el aprendizaje automático, la robótica, el procesamiento del lenguaje natural y la bioinformática. / With this dissertation, we bring together the Theory of the Grammatical Inference and Studies of language acquisition, in pursuit of our final goal: to go deeper in the understanding of the process of language acquisition by using the theory of inference of formal grammars. Our main three contributions are:1. Introduction of a new class of languages called Simple p-dimensional external contextual (SEC). Despite the fact that the field of Grammatical Inference has focused its research on learning regular or context-free languages, we propose in our dissertation to focus these studies in classes of languages more relevant from a linguistic point of view (families of languages that occupy an orthogonal position in the Chomsky Hierarchy and are Mildly Context-Sensitive, for example SEC).2. Presentation of a new learning paradigm based on correction queries. One of the main results in the theory of formal learning is that deterministic finite automata (DFA) are efficiently learnable from membership query and equivalence query. Taken into account that in first language acquisition the correction of errors can play an important role, we have introduced in our dissertation a novel learning model by replacing membership queries with correction queries.3. Presentation of results based on the two previous contributions. First, we prove that SEC is learnable from only positive data. Second, we prove that it is possible to learn DFA from corrections and that the number of queries is reduced considerably.The results obtained with this dissertation suppose an important contribution to studies of Grammatical Inference (the current research in Grammatical Inference has focused mainly on the mathematical aspects of the models). Moreover, these results could be extended to studies related directly to machine translation, robotics, natural language processing, and bioinformatics.

The purpose of this study was to assess the differential effects of grammatical and telegraphic input on word learning and language productivity in children with expressive language delays. Two case studies are presented. In Study 1, the participant received focused stimulation treatment over eight sessions. Type of language input (i.e. telegraphic or grammatical) was alternated across sessions. In Study 2, the participant received focused stimulation treatment over 16 sessions divided into two eight-session phases. Language input was alternated across phases. Participant characteristics limited definitive conclusions regarding word learning. Productive language differences during treatment sessions were observed for both participants. Participant 1, who entered treatment with a larger vocabulary and spontaneous production of some word combinations, demonstrated a higher mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) in more of the sessions under the grammatical condition. Participant 2, who demonstrated severe deficits in speech intelligibility, imitated the clinician more often in the telegraphic sessions. Results support the need for improved systematic study of language input variables in treatment as well as the careful selection of language input protocols based on initial client abilities and treatment outcome goals. / text