Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:07:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 WashintianePBS_DISSERT.pdf: 1298796 bytes, checksum: 3e1b887f7b78a37e9abdfb6a15f30847 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-08-02 / In this dissertation, based on two theoretical frameworks, American functionalism and variationist sociolinguistics, I take as subject the sequence connectors E and A?, which has the grammatical function of indicating retroactive-propeller sequenciation of information. I analyze the variable use of these connectors in texts written by students from two public schools in the city of Natal, RN, attending at the time of data collection (the year 2012), two distinct levels of basic education: the sixth and the ninth year. The students who contributed to this research wrote, as part of their activities in the classroom, texts of two narrative genres: narrative of personal experience (non-fictional) and short story (fictional). In addition, these students and their Portuguese teachers answered a test of linguistic attitude in which they gave their opinions regarding the appropriateness of the use of connectors E and A? in contexts of speech and writing marked by distinct degrees of formality. The results obtained by means of quantitative analysis showed different tendencies of linguistic, social and stylistic distribution of connectors E and A? in the narrative texts written by the students. I related these results to the action of two principles: the principle of persistence, linked to the process of change by grammaticalization, and the principle of stylistic markedness. Besides, I took into account the answers provided by students and teachers to the test of linguistic attitude for refine the interpretation of the results / Nesta disserta??o, apoiando-me em dois referenciais te?ricos, o do funcionalismo lingu?stico de vertente norte-americana e o da sociolingu?stica variacionista, tomo como objeto de estudo os conectores sequenciadores E e A?, que atuam na fun??o gramatical de indica??o de sequencia??o retroativo-propulsora de informa??es. Analiso o uso vari?vel desses conectores em textos escritos por alunos de duas escolas da rede p?blica da cidade de Natal-RN, que cursavam, ? ?poca da coleta de dados (o ano de 2012), duas s?ries distintas do ensino fundamental: o sexto e o nono ano. Os alunos que contribu?ram para a realiza??o desta pesquisa escreveram, como parte de suas atividades em sala de aula, textos de dois g?neros da esfera narrativa: narrativa de experi?ncia pessoal (de car?ter n?o ficcional) e conto (de car?ter ficcional). Al?m disso, esses alunos e seus professores de l?ngua portuguesa responderam a um teste de atitude lingu?stica em que opinaram sobre a adequa??o do uso dos conectores E e A? em contextos de fala e de escrita marcados por diferentes graus de formalidade. Os resultados, obtidos por meio de an?lise quantitativa, revelaram diferentes tend?ncias de distribui??o lingu?stica, social e estil?stica dos conectores E e A? nos textos narrativos escritos pelos alunos. Relacionei tais resultados ? a??o de dois princ?pios: o princ?pio da persist?ncia, vinculado ao processo de mudan?a por gramaticaliza??o, e o princ?pio da marca??o estil?stica. Al?m disso, levei em conta as respostas fornecidas por alunos e professores ao teste de atitude lingu?stica para refinar a interpreta??o dos resultados

El propósito de la presente monografía es investigar si un grupo de hablantes no nativos de español, todos de nivel muy avanzado, usan los adjetivos modificadores en su discurso espontáneo de una manera parecida a la nativa, y más particularmente en qué medida los colocan de manera idiomática delante o detrás del substantivo. El material usado consiste, por un lado, de entrevistas, en las cuales los participantes cuentan de sus propias vidas, y por el otro lado, de una tarea en la que comentan la acción en un videoclip de la película Tiempos Modernos (de Charlie Chaplin). Los participantes del estudio son diez suecos que residen en Chile desde hace por lo menos 5 años. La hipótesis es que, dada una constatada tendencia conservadora general en los hablantes de una segunda lengua que los llevaría a “ir por lo seguro“, los sujetos sobreusarían la opción no marcada, o sea, la posposición, en la colocación de los adjetivos. Los adjetivos están categorizados en dos grupos: uno de adjetivos cotidianos que tienden a anteponerse al sustantivo (bueno, malo, pequeño, grande, pobre, puro, nuevo, viejo, alto), y los restantes adjetivos, que por defecto aparecen en posición posnominal (p.ej. laboral, sueco, libre, desnudo, rápido, cultural, blanco, redondo, privado etc.). Los resultados no apoyan la hipótesis, en el sentido de que los participantes no nativos tienden a sobreusar la posposición. Estos participantes son comparados con un grupo de control que consiste de diez hablantes de español L1 que residen en Chile. Un aspecto que discrepa en el grupo de hablantes no nativos es el uso del adjetivo grande, para el cual los no nativos prefieren la posposición. También destaca el hecho que los participantes nativos son más propensos a usar adjetivos en general en comparación con el grupo no nativo. / The purpose of this thesis is to investigate to what extent a group of non-native Spanish speakers, all of whom are highly proficient users of L2 Spanish, use modifying adjectives in spontaneous discourse in a targetlike manner and, particularly, to what extent they place them idiomatically before or after the noun. The corpus used consists of interviews, in which the subjects talk about their lives, and another task in which they comment the action of a videoclip from the movie ‘Modern Times’ (by Charlie Chaplin). The subjects of the study are ten Swedes that have lived in Chile for at least 5 years. The assumption being the tendency for second language speakers to be generally conservative and choose to ‘go for what's safe’, it is hypothesized that the L2 users would overuse the unmarked option for placing adjectives, namely after the noun. The adjectives are divided into two categories: one consisting of everyday adjectives that strongly tend to be placed ahead of the noun (bueno, malo, pequeño, grande, nuevo, pobre, puro, viejo, alto) and the other of adjectives that appear in postposition by default (e.g. laboral, sueco, libre, desnudo, rápido, cultural, blanco, redondo, privado etc.). The results don’t support the hypothesis, in the sense that the non-native participants tend to overuse postposition. The L2 participants have been compared to a control group consisting of ten L1 Spanish speakers living in Chile. One aspect that differs in the non-native group is the use of grande, for which the non-native speakers, unlike the natives, prefer postposition. What also stands out is the fact that native speakers are more prone to using adjectives in general compared to the non-native group.

This thesis deals with the group of Latin iterative verbs, i.e. the group that is formally marked with the iterative suffix -t. It deals with the question what was the actual meaning of the iterative suffix -t in classical Latin as reference literature says that in some cases the meaning of iterative verbs in classical Latin was the same as that of the base verb and there are iterative verbs whose base verbs are not attested at all. Also, only iterative verbs often passed into Romance languages. Another question this thesis deals with is the relationship of iterative verbs as a group set off on the basis of the category of aktionsart as it is understood in the Czech linguistic tradition and the categories that are generally referred to as aspect (grammatical aspect, lexical aspect). In this case, the selected method is a corpus-based quantitative method called the "behavioural profiles". In our case, the corpus is limited to selected prosaic works of the classical Latin period of approximately the 1st century b.C. to the 1st century AD. In its first part, the analysis is based on studying the occurrences of selected iterative verb - base verb pairs in the above mentioned corpus, especially focused on the frequency of occurrence, valence and classification of predicates into Vendler's classes,...

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.

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit den morphosyntaktischen und derivationellen Eigenschaften von Nominalisierungen im modernen Hebräisch und ihrer strukturelle Repräsentation. Eine zentrale Fragestellung im Rahmen von ‚hybriden‘ Wortbildungen wie Nominalisierungen ist die Ähnlichkeit bzw. die Unähnlichkeit zu den ihr zugrundeliegenden Verben. Unter Heranziehung des Hebräischen, einer Sprache mit reicher morphologischer Markierung, sowohl bei Verben als auch bei Nominalisierungen, werden mehrere Divergenzen zwischen Verben und entsprechenden Nominalisierungen im Bereich der Argument- und Ereignisstruktur eliminiert. Ausgehend von der einflussreichen These der Gleichsetzung von Nominalisierung und Passivierung untersucht diese Studie die syntaktische Struktur und deren Interaktion mit dem Wortbildungsprozess der Nominalisierung und zeigt, dass Eigenschaften, die für Passivformen typisch sind, in Nominalisierungen fehlen. Dabei präsentiert diese Studie mit der Untersuchung morphosyntaktischer Faktoren und deren Beziehungen zu Nominalisierungen, der Inkonsistenzen aufzeigt. Durch einen Vergleich von etwa 3000 Verben auf Basis der Verbklassenmorphologie ergibt sich eine signifikante Asymmetrie zwischen Nominalisierungen, die eine mediale/intransitive Markierung tragen, und Nominalisierungen, die als aktiv markiert sind, wobei sich die mediale Form in zwei klar definierten syntaktischen Kontexten als weniger produktiv erweist. Dies zeigt sich auch dadurch, dass alternierende Wurzeln, also Wurzeln die sowohl aktive als auch mediale Verbformen ausbilden können, bilden ihre Nominalisierungen auf Basis ihrer aktiven Form. Auf Basis der Konzepte von Konkurrenz und Markiertheit werden diese paradigmatischen Lücken nicht als grammatisch bedingte Inkompatibilitäten analysiert, sondern als eine generelle Präferenz für weniger markierte Formen (aktiv-markierte Nominalisierungen) gegenüber komplexeren (medial-markierte Nominalisierungen), wie in der Performanz häufig zu beobachten. / This study is concerned with the properties, structural representation and derivational patterns of deverbal nouns (DNs) in Modern Hebrew. A recurring question arises in the context of such ‘hybrid’ formations: precisely how similar or far-apart are these derivatives from the verbs from which they originate? Enlisting Hebrew, a language with rich morphological marking on both verbs as well as DNs, several loci of divergence between verbs and respective DNs in the domain of argument- and event-structure are eliminated. Taking as a point of reference the influential view which equates the processes of nominalization and passivization, this study scrutinizes syntactic structure and its interaction with nominalization, showing that behaviours typical of passives are absent from DNs. a finding which weakens long-standing beliefs bearing on this class. A novel area of exploration offered in this study is the examination of morpho-syntactic factors and their interaction with nominalization, a domain where inconsistencies do arise. What emerges from a comparison of some 3000 verbs based on verb-class (templatic) morphology is a significant asymmetry between DNs carrying Middle (intransitive) marking and DNs marked as Active, wherein Middle forms are found to be less productive in two well-defined syntactic contexts. Not entirely absent, however, the same roots which fail to surface with Middle morphology are perfectly licit when derived from the corresponding Active verb (in case of alternating roots). Building on the notions of competition and markedness, such paradigmatic gaps are analysed not as grammatically-determined incompatibilities, but as a consistent preference for less-marked forms (Active-marked DNs) over more complex ones (Middle-marked DNs), a trend which lies within the realm of performance. As such, Hebrew DNs constitute a case study of the interrelations between the syntactic and morphological modules, and pragmatics.

Cette thèse en linguistique théorique s’inscrit dans un cadre comparatiste. La première partie de notre thèse est un essai de théorisation de la mesure de la complexité linguistique. Nous y proposons une redéfinition de la théorie de la marque, socle de notre recherche transversale, qui prend en compte (1) les différentes définitions qu’elle a reçues au cours de son développement, (2) les apports que peuvent représenter d’autres modèles théoriques et (3) les critiques qui lui ont été faites jusqu’à notre présente étude. La seconde partie de notre thèse est un essai d’application de la théorie de la marque qui a pour objectif de tester son degré de validité dans plusieurs composantes du langage et dans des analyses intra- et intersystémiques de quelques langues indo-européennes et de l’océan Indien. Il s’agit aussi de cerner ses limites et de présenter les principes fonctionnels avec lesquels elle est en concurrence. / This thesis in theoretical linguistics is set within a comparative framework. The first part is an attempt to theorize the measurement of linguistic complexity. We endeavour to redefine markedness theory – on which our cross-disciplinary research is based – while taking into account (i) the different definitions given to the theory since its creation, (ii) the benefits other theoretical models can bring to this theory, and (iii) the criticisms the theory has received. The second part of our thesis is an attempt to apply markedness theory in order to test its degree of validity in several components of language and in intraand inter-systemic analyses of some Indo-European and Indian Ocean languages. We also aim at identifying the limits of this theory and presenting other competing functional principles.

This study investigates the impact of second language age of onset on the development of syntactic competence in bilinguals. Forty-five bilingual children were tested using a picture- matching task with relative clauses. In this paradigm, children are aurally presented with relative clauses of various kinds and are asked to match what they hear with the appropriate picture (out of four choices) on the screen. More specifically, our experiment compared the comprehension of subject- vs. object-extracted center-embedded relative clauses and contained sentences with noun phrases (NPs) that did or did not match in number (both NPs singular or plural = match, one NP singular, one NP plural = mismatch). We compared the performance of a group of Simultaneous bilinguals (two languages since birth), Early sequential bilinguals (first exposure to L2 - English between the ages of 1 to 4) and Late sequential bilinguals (first exposure to L2 -English after the age of 4 but latest at the age of 6 - primary school). The mean age of the participants at the time of testing was approx. 10 years of age. The results show that there is a varied pattern in the comprehension strategies used among the three bilingual groups. The group of Simultaneous bilinguals showed more reliance on the syntactic information contained in...