This paper examines the plural inflectional processes present in Egyptian Arabic, with specific focus on the complex broken plural system. The data used in this examination is a set of 114 lexemes from a dictionary of the Egyptian Arabic variety by Badawi and Hinds (1984) collected through comparison of singular to plural template correspondences proposed by Gadalla (2004). The theoretical side of this analysis tests the proposed realizational approach in Kihm (2006) named the “Root-and-Site Hypothesis” against a variety of broken plural constructions in Egyptian Arabic. Categorizing concatenative and non-concatenative morphological processes as approachable in the same manner, this framework discusses inflection as not only represented by segments but also by “sites” where inflectional operations may take place. In order to organize the data through a computational lens, I emulate features of this approach in a DATR theorem that generates the grammatical forms for a set of both broken and sound plural nominals. The hierarchically-structured inheritance of the program’s language allows for default templates to be defined as well as overridden, permitting a wide scope of variation to be represented with little code content.

This research focuses on cross-cultural differences in facework between English and German conversation. Specifically, the research addresses facework occurring as part and parcel of sociable conversation, as it is played out within moments of focused topic development - what I term 'sociable episodes'. Drawing on extant literature, the study identifies a range of communicative parameters along which English and German communicative style has been shown to differ, non more so than those suggesting different facework norms, and orientation to face needs as opposed to such things as ideational aspects of talk. In an attempt to address these differences, the study develops a model of facework - facework as alignment -which is posited as being appropriate to the study of essentially apolite conversational interaction. Further, although utilising the notions of ritual equilibrium (Goffman 1967) and positive - negative aspects of face (Brown and Levinson), the posited model of facework focuses specifically on aspects of sociable selfhood informing sociable conversation. It is argued that facework in sociable episodes is a matter of positive and negative alignment of sociable selves in and through the claiming of solidarity with and autonomy from other co-participants in terms of expressions of definitions, evaluations, experiences. In terms of English - German differences, these are demonstrated to be a matter of alignment of different sociable selves, ones normatively and routinely positively and negatively aligned in the achievement of sociable conversation, and ones indexing prevailing but culturally differing positive social values (Goffman 1967). The study concludes by identifying areas for future research based on the facework as alignment model developed and applied throughout the thesis.

This thesis investigates the narrative models in Dante's Commedia with the aim of opening up the poem to alternatives to the dominant narrative embedded in the text, which it terms Dante's masterplot. This is the teleological trajectory which allows the poet to subjugate earlier works or earlier parts of the poem to the revisionist gaze of its endpoint. The thesis analyses the masterplot's workings in the text and its role in the interpretation of the poem, and documents its overwhelming success in influencing readings of the Commedia. It then explores three competing narrative models that resist and counter its monopoly, which are enacted by (i) paradoxes, (ii) alternative endings and parallel lives; and (iii) the future. Paradoxes are used to neutralise the teleological hierarchy and thus allow Dante to represent contradictory ideas and experiences in the temporal medium of language. Through counterfactuals and twin episodes, Dante establishes in his poem a number of storylines that detour from and run parallel to the main narrative; this allows him to make room for an affective space within the text, which suspends narrative necessity and moral normativity. The future tense poses a problem case for the masterplot in that it indefinitely postpones the endpoint on which teleology relies, and thus exposes the poem, and its author's, vulnerability to time and circumstance. By focusing on non-linear modes of storytelling, the thesis questions interpretations of the Commedia that favour one normative master-truth, and highlights instead the manifold poetic, theological and ethical tensions which, due to the masterplot's influence, are often overlooked. The thesis concludes with a proposal that, alongside the traditional notions of Dante's characteristic plurality of linguistic registers and styles, Dante's narrative pluralism can and should come to play a key role in contemporary and future readings of the Commedia.

This thesis was assigned by the Department of German principally to learn through the study of the German newspapers of the day what influence the German-American population of Indiana might have had upon the election of Governor Conrad baker and also upon his whole administration as such; since Governor Baker was of German descent and the act, August 16, 1859, which provided when the German language should be taught in the common schools, also took effect when Baker was Governor of Indiana.

Ever since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, Cuba has witnessed an unprecedented productive boom in the genres of science fiction and the fantastic. A large number of the literary and cinematic works that have surfaced during the last half-century attempt to replace and ultimately reify motifs and scenarios appropriated from the various science fiction and fantastic narratives in world literature and have generated alternative or imagined settings that challenge extant sociopolitical realities and certainties of the island. My dissertation, “Cuba i+Real: singularidades de lo fantástico y la ciencia ficción en la Cuba contemporánea”, examines these literary texts in a Post-Soviet context, analyzing the ways they reimagine the themes, plot devices, and scenarios traditional to the different genres. My argument is that, in most cases, the narratives are carefully and intentionally transformed, adapting them to the strenuous political and economic circumstances of the island and to the tense social conditions of the post-Soviet era. My thesis both decentralizes and expands contemporary debates about fantastic and science fiction theories by recognizing—and including—Cuban science fiction and fantastic production within broader conversations about the relationship between science fiction, the fantastic, and politics. My dissertation builds and expands upon the contemporary currents in literature, exploring how Cuban science fiction and fantastic texts provide a new, imaginative space and frontier to interrupt and contest the Cuban Revolution's hegemonic and monolithic discursive arcs, while allowing for a unique transnational corpus formation which not only crosses many generic and formal boundaries, but also evades and goes beyond existing theoretical and thematic paradigms.

This dissertation explores the troubled relationship between Hispanic-American Modernism and modernity through the close study of a representative array of authors (José Martí, Rubén Darío, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Augusto Dhalmar and Pedro Prado). My analysis departs from the revisionist theories of Angel Rama and Ivan A. Schulman, which changed the traditional views about the movement towards a more complete vision of its role as a literature that is highly subversive. During the XIX century, America experienced a vigorous cultural awakening unsupported by an incomplete modernization whose more fundamental principles are challenged by the systematic use of primitivism by these authors. I propose that by analyzing how primitivism is used as an essential tool for criticism, a deeper understanding of a highly codified literature and its importance as precursor of the Vanguard may be reached.

The historical distribution of power in Peru, characterized by segregation and oppression, changed drastically after its independence from Spain. Starting in the second half of the 19th century, the rigid social policies of the Colony gave way to ideas of tolerance, such as the indigenist movement of post-colonial Latin America. No longer considered enemies of the country, several minorities were gradually integrated in the Peruvian society, collaborating in the formation of a new national identity. This normalization was selective, however, and the new ideas of integration often involved a new and more pernicious control of the Peruvian nation. Central to this discourse is the one that the Peruvian mulatto writer Ricardo Palma presents in his Tradiciones (1864-1910), characterized by ambiguous representations of traditionally stigmatized individuals, such as Native Americans, African Americans, and women. Other groups, such as Creoles, Mestizos, or Mulattoes (like Palma), struggle to overcome their social boundaries in order to create a new set of identities built on idealized national models. The prevailing tendency in much of the research written about this situation has been to focus almost exclusively on the situation of minorities within society, neglecting the role played by these groups in the construction of the Peruvian national identity. Moreover, it has failed to address the 19th century social and psychological struggle among minorities to be recognized within the newly formed nation. My research addresses these issues in Peruvian studies using the examples of Palma’s Tradiciones, with the aim of exploring the particularities of the post-colonial new configuration of nation, identity, and power.

Compared with first language (L1) writing, writing in a second or foreign language (L2) is considered to be more challenging and difficult. The challenges and difficulties may result from both the cognitive and the affective aspects of writing. To mitigate the difficulties of L2 writing and help students master L2 writing, teachers could consider using the pedagogical strategies which can help enhance students' cognition in writing or students' writing performance, and also can help reduce students' fear of L2 writing. One of the pedagogical strategies is online collaborative writing supported by CMC. Collaborative learning helps enhance students' cognitive outcomes, such as academic achievement and cognitive development, as well as produce less anxiety in learning. CMC facilitates collaboration, and also provides more chances for interaction which could result in more thoughts. The more thoughts would facilitate to compose. Therefore, it is assumed that online collaborative writing is more effective than traditional collaborative writing in terms of writing performance and writing anxiety. The present study is a quasi-experimental study. Participants were 101 first-year college students from two intact classes of a private university in Taiwan. One class was randomly assigned as the control class. Participants were engaged in traditional collaborative writing. The other was the experimental class. Students wrote collaboratively via blogs. Before the treatment, both classes were asked to completed a background survey, a pre-test L2 writing anxiety questionnaire, and a pre-test individual writing task. The treatment lasted for ten weeks during which each collaborative group in both classes completed five collaborative writing tasks. After the treatment, a collaborative writing questionnaire, a post-test L2 writing anxiety questionnaire, and a post-test individual writing task were administered to all participants. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted to the students who made the largest, medium, and lowest gains in both classes. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to analyze the data. In terms of the quantitative results, there were no significant difference in collaborative writing performance and the quantity of individual writing between classes. The experimental class only significantly performed better than the control class in the quality of individual writing. Concerning the writing anxiety measured, the control class was significantly lower than the experimental class. Regarding students' perceptions, the results of the questionnaire showed that the control class made much more positive responses than the experimental class. As for the qualitative results, students' interviews revealed (1) the function of collaborative writing, (2) the features of the media, (3) the difficulty they encounter during collaborative writing, (4) the positive and negative factors influencing their motivation to write, and (5) their suggestions for teachers. The qualitative results support the quantitative results. Overall, this dissertation study found that, based on statistic results, traditional collaborative writing seems to be more effective than blog-supported collaborative writing in decreasing the writing anxiety of the EFL college students with weaker English ability and little writing experience. In addition, according to students' perceptions and interview results, traditional collaborative writing also appears to be more acceptable in this context. Although the statistic results suggest that the effect of blog-supported collaborative writing on writing performance and writing anxiety seems to be limited and little probably due to the use of blogs as individual and synchronous tools, its effectiveness can not be completely denied because students' perceptions and interviews suggest its positive influence and outcome. L2 teachers are suggested to provide more training sessions, employ the collaborative writing activity as an out-of-class assignment, and carefully monitor the process of collaborative writing if they do use blogs in L2 writing instruction.

The present study focuses on teacher’s attitudes to the European Language Portfolio (ELP) in mother tongue English programs. More specifically it will explore how effective the ELP and portfolio assessment are in mother tongue teaching inSweden. The aim is also to assess whether mother tongue English students perform equally well in the four language skill areas. This case study seeks to find the strengths and weaknesses of the ELP according to the teachers that are using the ELP as an assessment tool, as well as investigating previous evaluation materials used to identify achievement in mother tongue. For this purpose, a case study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with four English mother tongue teachers at theLanguageCenterin Göteborg (henceforth LCG). The teachers interviewed at the language center use the ELP assessment but do not actively use the other parts of the language passport. The LCG materials for the mother tongue ELP were adapted from the original ELP 6 to 16 years created for Österåker municipality by Iakovos Demetriádes in 2007. Mother tongue teachers in Göteborg have since identified a number of the ELP’s strengths, as well as some of its weaknesses. The ELP is compatible with the Swedish syllabus, which makes it easier to write a written assessment for each class from the 1st grade and up.  There are however problems with individual teachers interpretation of ELP descriptors.  These problems will be brought to light later on in this paper.

Abstract My purpose of doing this study is to investigate the culture of delivering education in a strange combination of subjects labelled ”Language choice Swedish/English”. The activity however exists without curriculum, syllabus or certification. I want to put study the problem of delivering an educational activity without national certification. I will use a hermeneutic approach and render properly the headmaster’s, the teachers’ and the students’ views on the activity in one school. “Langue choice Sv/Eng” is available for six to nine grade students. The headmaster’s and the teachers’ justification of the activity is that they offer help for students who need extra training in Swedish and English. / Sammanfattning Syftet med min studie är att undersöka utbildningskulturen i en skola när de undervisar i en ämneskombination som heter ”språkval svensk/engelska”. Kombinationen saknar egen kursplan och betyg. Jag vill belysa problemet genom att med hermeneutisk ansats tolka rektorerna, lärarnas och elevernas åsikter om ämnet. Idag erbjuds språkvalet som en valmöjlighet för eleverna i årskurserna 6 till 9. Intentionerna från rektorer och lärare är att svensk/engelska ska finnas tillgängligt för elever som behöver extra undervisning i svenska och engelska och/eller avstår att läsa ett annat modernt språk. Men svensk/engelskan har med att årskurserna ökar blivit ett ämne som används till stöd för alla ämnen. / Klevaskogen 110 455 92 Munkedal Tel: 0524-10623, 070-325 88 80