First language attrition is the temporary or permanent loss of first language competence as reflected in the incorrect use of native grammatical principles or in the speaker's inability to make grammaticality judgments that would be consistent with that of monolingual native speakers (Seliger y Vago, 1991; De Bot y Weltens, 1991; Seliger, 1996). Our study centers on L1 (Spanish) attrition of four constructions related to three syntactic issues: (1) the so-called 'Compounding Parameter' (resultative constructions and Noun-Noun compound formation); (2) the "Verb Movement Parameter" as it determines the position of subjects in Spanish and English interrogative constructions; (3) the speck characteristics of Spanish clitic pronouns. We analyze the influence of linguistic as well as sociolinguistic factors in the erosion of these grammatical structures among Spanish immigrants. The data reveal, among other things, that the age of contact with the second language is a determining factor in the process of language attrition, as it is in the process of language acquisition. We also argue that the process of attrition of the native's morphosyntax occurs locally and is not generalized across all morphosyntactic structures. As in the case of second language acquisition, there is no dramatic change of native parameters.

Utopias and dystopias are forms of social criticism in which the author draws on an existing society to create a perfected (utopian) or exaggerated (dystopian) projection which is set in a different time and/or space from the original. As reactions to problematic, or potentially problematic, situations and developments, utopias and dystopias are always connected to change---they explicitly or implicitly present an argument for change, and/or they embody a response to it. This thesis focuses on four English authors who wrote utopias and/or dystopias between the latter part of the Nineteenth Century and the middle part of the Twentieth: Richard Jefferies, William Morris, H. G. Wells, and Aldous Huxley. In each case they not only responded to recent, endemic, or continuing change, but also implicitly or explicitly sought it. The narratives they wrote are founded in change and emerged during a time of flux. Jefferies responded to a declining rural culture, Morris to an expanding industrial culture, Wells to the material uncertainties evoked by evolution theory, and Huxley to the post-Darwin, post-War metaphysical incertitude which appeared to him to have decentred the culture. Each author also sought appropriate change to remedy the particular circumstances of which he was critical. This thesis looks at these authors, not simply in terms of their response to change, but in terms of their attitudes to the relatively enduring structures of nature and history. Nature, in its various manifestations, had different connotations for different authors. To Jefferies, nature---as local landscape and cosmic immensity, as ears of corn and universal life force---offered, amongst other things, an essential continuity that modern life was eroding. For Morris, nature offered inspiration and the possibility of a harmonious interrelationship with humanity once the restless era of capitalism had been succeeded by a restful future in communism. To Wells, both external and internal nature offered a dangerous unpredictability which must be controlled, while Huxley believed that humanity's struggle with the environment and consequent negative impact on it could be dissolved in the possibility of epiphanic fusion with the cosmos. Central to all their various conceptions of, and attitudes toward, nature, however, is the question of what are the shaping characteristics of humanity's relationship with nature. The unfolding of history, in the simple sense of time passing, was not synonymous with progress for these writers, and the perception that the temporal current was actually carrying society, or elements of it, toward regression and/or fragmentation inspired their remedial dystopian and utopian texts. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Christian Signol est l'un des écrivains français contemporains les plus lus en France aujourd'hui. L'auteur d'une quinzaine de romans de terroir, il bénéficie d'un succès phénoménal. Pourtant, à ce jour, l'intérêt critique pour son oeuvre est très limité. Est-ce que Signol est la victime de son propre succès? Avant tout, ses romans plaisent au grand public. Cette étude propose donc d'examiner les rapports entre le roman du terroir et le roman populaire et de mettre à jour les enjeux du roman du terroir. Comme le roman populaire s'adresse plus à un large public qu'à l'institution littéraire, nous nous proposons d'analyser la mission de Signol. Dans un deuxième temps, nous nous pencherons sur la représentation de la femme dans la littérature du terroir. Dans les romans Les Cailloux bleus et Les Menthes sauvages le personnage féminin est mis en valeur. Philomène, le personnage principal, se montre habile et ingénieuse et n'hésite pas à prendre des initiatives pour parvenir à réaliser son idéal. C'est une héroïne à la forte personnalité qui apparaît comme l'antithèse des personnages féminins des romans du terroir. À la lumière des théories de l'héroïne, cette thèse vise à montrer comment Signol réussit à faire ressortir une héroïne moderne.

The aim of this investigation is to analyze texts by women composers of popular songs, in particular those by Maria Grever, Consuelo Velazquez and Emma Elena Valdelamar, written between 1930 and 1950 in Mexico. In the first chapter we discuss the way these women conceive love as a gender subject. We first define the concept of gender as well as some aspects of the language they use in relation to gender. Then we focus on the role of the women composers in Western tradition music, particularly Mexican women composers of popular songs. In the second chapter, we analyze the concept of popular song, discussing its origins and influences. We attempt a classification by theme. This allows us to establish the cultural historic framework delimited as the urban song of love. In the third chapter, we discuss the concepts of metaphor, metonymy and synecdoque (following Lakoff and Johnson understanding of this concept), to arrive at a definition of a general metaphor, i.e the way the three women composers understand the concept of love. To achieve this goal we allude to the body conception, the concrete action of love-making, the kiss, the opposition between love and reason, jealousy and destiny. To conclude, we explore the differences in language used by women composers and men composers of this period.

Trop souvent dans l'ombre des contes populaires merveilleux et des contes de fées ou bien situés dans le sillage des fabliaux et du Décaméron , les contes populaires français de la Renaissance n'ont pas toujours été appréciés avec justesse. Ils sont appréhendés sous diverses approches et perspectives qui tendent généralement à les définir à l'aide de critères préétablis et plutôt stables, lesquels ne rendent pas compte de leur complexité et mènent, par conséquent, au conformisme. Il s'agit donc dans un premier temps de procéder à une description des contes populaires en France qui respecte leurs différences en même temps qu'elle souligne leur parenté. Après quoi, on s'intéressera à la question du passage de l'oral à l'écrit des contes populaires qui s'effectue à une époque où l'imprimé conquiert de plus en plus de territoire. Nous prêterons une attention toute particulière à la façon dont les contes populaires réagissent à ces nouvelles conditions de production qui leur sont étrangères alors qu'ils relevaient auparavant de la tradition orale.

Esta tesis se centra en dos aspectos de la causacion. Por una parte, se analizan desde un punto de vista comparado las propiedades lexicas y mortosintacticas de las construcciones causativas analiticas (El director hizo trabajar a sus empleados), morfologicas (Mtsikana anaugw-ets-a mtsuko: "La chica hizo caer el cantaro") y lexicas (Juan rompio el vaso) en dos lenguas romance (frances y espanol) y una lengua germanica (ingles). Por otra parte, se estudian dos tipos de derivaciones que tienen lugar en la formacion de las causativas: la causafivizacion (la formacion de construcciones causativas a partir de construcciones no causativas) y la anticausativizacion (la formacion de construcciones no causativas a partir de construcciones causativas), que presentan propiedades y estan sometidas a restricciones diferentes. A partir del analisis de las construcciones causativas, este estudio tiene como objetivo encontrar pruebas para confirmar la hipotesis de que hay algunos tipos de causativas que estan sujetas no solo a restricciones de tipo sintactico, sino tambien de tipo lexico, aunque, como afirman Hale y Keyser (1999) en el marco de la Teoria Argumental, no estan sometidas a restricciones de tipo lexico-argumental.

Woolf, Lawrence, and Joyce all have a deep interest in the problem of the mother, and especially in the problem of the mother figured as a problem of the self. The main focus of their work is the identity of the self and how problematic it is to find or preserve that identity. In this quest, they raise some of the general concerns of modernism about origins. Since origins are a major aspect of self-definition, here is where the problem of motherhood begins. This thesis explores the mother figure as seen through the psychoanalytical lens of Freud. By using such Freudian concepts as narcissism, melancholy, and the death instinct, it focuses on the mother figure as she relates to the child or child figures, to the world, and to her own function as a mother and shows how Woolf, Lawrence, and Joyce cooperate with Freud in defining for mothers a central role in the modern self's investigations of its origins. For Woolf, Lawrence, and Joyce, the mother figure is something other than a specific person. Although the actual mother in the novels I study is physically out of reach, she is still present as a psychological projection of the self, so that even though the self can grow out of its biological need for the mother, it is impossible to grow out of the epistemological need for her. Thus, my analyses of the mother figure are concerned with what the mother is not, or should not be---since inheritance, history, and identity can emerge only if there is something beyond the mother as a specific person, some continuity leading from the mother outward to what is beyond her. And it is precisely this function of continuity, rather than the individual physical experience of having a child, that I define as motherhood proper. All three authors investigate the relationship of a specific female human being to motherhood, and the degree to which the mother as a concrete human being is more, less, or other than motherhood, as well as the ways in which motherhood is something more than the individual. The mother figure is ontologically dead/unavailable as origin for Woolf, physically dead/sexually unavailable for Lawrence, and historically dead/unavailable as inheritance for Joyce. For Woolf, there are doubts that the mother ever existed in the past (lack of continuity); for Lawrence, that she exists in the present (lack of contemporaneity); and for Joyce, that she will be reincarnated in the future (lack of chronology). But in all three of them, motherhood emerges as problematic and ambivalent, and, if its status and authority are restored, it is only through the struggle and growth of the individual self.

This thesis analyzes Constance Beresford-Howe's novels in terms of their place in the contemporary feminist debate over women's traditional roles as mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. Her treatment of these roles supports Andrea O'Reilly's assertion that Beresford-Howe espouses what Angela Miles has called "integrative feminism", "a feminism which affirms and celebrates women's specificity and asks not for the eradication of women's traditional roles and values but for the recognition of their importance" (O'Reilly 69). Chapter One deals with a range of feminist literary criticism and particularly with the notion of "integrative feminism" and its applicability to the novels of Beresford-Howe, as well as entertaining complementary and divergent readings of this theory offered by such critics as Germaine Greer and Judith Stacey. Chapter Two considers the portrayal of sisters, daughters, and other female "helpers" in such novels as Of this Day's Journey (1947), The Invisible Gate (1949), My Lady Greensleeves (1955), A Population of One (1977), and Prospero's Daughter (1988). Chapter Three examines the portrayal of the institutionalized roles of mother and wife in such novels as The Unreasoning Heart (1946), My Lady Greensleeves 1955), The Book of Eve (1973), and Night Studies (1985). Chapter four extends the discussion of mothers and wives, with an emphasis on the protagonist's successful redefinition of those roles in The Marriage Bed (1981) and A Serious Widow (1991).

Le but de notre etude est de degager les caracteristiques du vocabulaire de Guy de Maupassant. En partant de l'outil de base de l'ecrivain, le mot, nous avons effectue une analyse statistique et stylistique du vocabulaire tire de quatre contes: "Farce normande", "Le vieux", "Aux champs" et "La veillee". Afin d'enrichir notre analyse, nous avons choisi quatre contes d'Alphonse Daudet a titre de comparaison: "Les etoiles", "Les vieux", "Les trois messes basses" et "Le sous-prefet aux champs". Notre recherche se divise en deux volets: une etude quantitative et une analyse stylistique. En premier lieu, nous avons traite le vocabulaire dans son ensemble. Afin de degager certaines tendances, nous avons soumis les resultats de nos depouillements a des operations statistiques et determine la signification de la distribution par ordre de frequence du vocabulaire de Maupassant et de Daudet. Puis nous avons elabore les listes des vingt mots les plus frequents dans les categories grammaticales suivantes: noms communs, noms propres, adjectifs, verbes, adverbes, mots grammaticaux et interjections. Dans l'etude qualitative, nous avons etudie de pres les mots caracteristiques de Maupassant. Afin d'etablir les parametres de l'univers romanesque de l'auteur, nous avons regroupe son vocabulaire sous divers champs semantiques. Enfin, l'impact des noms propres et des interjections a ete evalue dans la section intitulee "L'evocation du cadre". (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Abstract Not Available.