Students in Sweden are exposed to English education in the classroom from a very young age. This paper sets out to see whether bilingual or multilingual students perform better than monolingual students when acquiring English as a second or third language in Sweden. The research questions look at whether or not complex noun phrase structures can be connected to the language background of the students. The Dynamic Model of Multilingualism along with Second Language Acquisition theories suggest that students who have already acquired a second language have achieved a multilingual competence that monolingual speakers do not have, and that this multilingual competence can benefit a learner in acquiring additional languages. 64 students submitted language background surveys and essays. 12 essays were chosen to represent three different language categories: monolingual, bilingual and multilingual. The method of comparing the essays was based on the use of complex noun phrases. Two analyses were carried out: 1) on the modification of noun phrases at phrase level, and 2) on the embedding and modification of embedded noun phrases at the clause level. The results of the study are not statistically significant, but they may indicate that bilingual students create the most complex noun phrases, though the monolingual students were not far behind. The multilingual students used the least modification and also the least embedded noun phrases. Further research in this area is warranted based on the results found here.

This is a corpus-based study on adjective use in eighty written compositions by Swedish learners of English from Grade 7 and Grade 9 in junior high school, and from Year 1 and Year 3 in senior high school. The aims of the study are to conduct an analysis of the use of attributive adjectives in noun phrases, and to investigate how attributive adjective use contributes to the syntactic complexity of noun phrases. This study proposes a hypothesis of the complexity of noun phrases in relation to different types of attributive adjectives, that is to say, an assumption that more complex types of attributive adjectives contain more compact information that requires more effort to learn and use.  The investigation shows that Swedish learners of English in junior and senior high school use an overwhelming number of noun phrases without premodifiers. The findings confirm that less proficient students use more adjectives as premodifiers in noun phrases than nouns as premodifiers. The results of the examination also reveal that students from the four school levels investigated use the most common attributive adjectives frequently, which accouts for more than half of the attributive adjectives used. However, a positive trend is that the use of more complex types of adjectives, such as derivational and participial adjectives, steadily increases in number when students advance in school level.  The comparision of the most common attributive adjectives in proportion to other adjectives used in the data from each grade shows that more proficient students use a richer variety of adjectives than less proficient students. Some pedagogical implications in this connection are the need to raise Swedish students’ awareness of different types of adjectives in language teaching and learning. Other pedagogical suggestions are the need to develop students’ skills in elaborating ideas and consolidating syntactic structures in their writing.       Keywords: syntactic development, noun premodification, attributive adjective, Swedish learners of English

[pt] Esta tese, que se constitui na interface entre a Psicolinguística e os Estudos da Tradução, tem como objetivo investigar questões associadas a custo de processamento na tradução de DPs em inglês, com núcleo nominal precedido de dois ou três modificadores substantivos, adjetivos ou mistos, para o português. Além disso, busca-se refinar, a partir da integração entre as duas áreas, uma caracterização do processo tradutório com base em evidências da tradução dos DPs e de custo associado ao mesmo, de modo a contemplar tanto aspectos mais globais quanto microestruturais. Para tanto, faz-se uma revisão da literatura sobre os estudos processuais de tradução, com o intuito de verificar os tipos de pesquisa realizados na área, os objetos de investigação e os principais modelos do processo tradutório. São abordadas, também, a estrutura do DP e as características da pré-modificação em inglês, com vistas a avaliar em que medida as diferenças estruturais entre as duas línguas acarretam dificuldades para a tradução desse tipo de sintagma e, consequentemente, custo de processamento. Dentre os fatores que podem acarretar custo, examinam-se, em especial, os atrelados à estrutura do DP, como a diferença de posição entre núcleos e modificadores em inglês e português – o que exigiria a aplicação de uma operação de conversão –, número e tipo de modificadores e a potencial ambiguidade estrutural de alguns tipos de DPs, podendo implicar reanálise. São verificados, também, custos associados à tarefa tradutória em um nível mais global, considerando-se a interrupção do fluxo tradutório, as modificações realizadas nos DPs e as fases em que elas ocorrem. Para verificar custo de processamento associado aos DPs, foram elaboradas três atividades experimentais, que fazem uso de técnicas utilizadas nos Estudos da Tradução (Translog e Camtasia) e também em Psicolinguística (PsyScope). A atividade aplicada a tradutores experientes pretende investigar o processo de tradução de DPs com múltipla modificação tendo em vista as pausas relacionadas à tradução da estrutura, os tipos de modificação realizados e as fases do processo tradutório em que ocorrem (redação ou revisão). Ademais, procura-se avaliar se o comportamento global dos participantes se repete no nível local, relativo à tradução dos DPs. As atividades aplicadas aos tradutores novatos buscam investigar a noção da diferença entre núcleos e modificadores em estruturas de DP com múltiplos modificadores e, também, a consideração de elementos de desambiguização, como posição do adjetivo e gênero dos modificadores, ao se avaliar a adequabilidade de uma tradução. Os resultados sugerem que o número de modificadores e tipo de modificador estão relacionados a custo de processamento da estrutura em inglês. Os resultados também mostram que os tradutores experientes e novatos conseguem identificar corretamente o núcleo da estrutura e utilizam estratégias de minimização de custo, como realizar modificações ao longo do fluxo do processo tradutório, optar por estruturas não ambíguas e que não causem algum tipo de estranhamento na língua-alvo. Percebe-se, portanto, uma atenção à organização da estrutura em português e uma preocupação em produzir e optar por construções menos custosas para o tradutor e o potencial público leitor. / [en] This thesis, which lies at the interface between Psycholinguisticsand Translation Studies, is aimed at investigating issues related to processing cost involved in the translation of complex DPs with multiple premodification (by two or three noun and adjective modifiers) in English. In addition, based on an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis is also aimed at characterizing the translation process based on evidences regarding DPs and cost related to it. Therefore, in order to verify the types of research conducted in the field of Translation Process Research, as well as the main translation process models, the literature on Translation Process Researchis reviewed. DP structures and the characteristics of premodification in English are also mentioned, so that it can be possible to evaluate the degree to which structural differences between the English and Portuguese languages cause difficulties concerning the translation of this type of phrase and, consequently, processing cost attributed to it. Among the factors that may lead to processing cost, we especially analyze cost related to the DP structure, such as the difference of head and modifier positions in English and Portuguese (making it necessary to switch the order of the items in the structure), the number and types of modifiers and the potential syntactic ambiguity present in some types of DPs, which could possibly lead to phrasereanalysis. We also verify cost related to the global translation process, considering the interruption of the translation process flow, the editing procedures applied to DPs and the phases of the translation process in which they take place. In order to analyze cost related to the DPs, three experiments were designed by employing the techniques used in Translation Process Research (Translog and Camtasia) and in Psycholinguistics research(PSyscope).The activity conducted with experienced translators is aimed at investigating the process involved in the translation of DPs with multiple modifiers regarding the pauses related to the translation of the structure, the types of editing procedures adopted and the phases of the translation process in which they occur (drafting or revision phase). The activities conducted with novice translators are aimed at evaluating if they are aware of the differences regarding heads and modifiers in DP structures with multiple modifiers in both languages and if, when evaluating the plausibility of a translation, they take into account morphosyntactic aspects related to the adjective position and gender of the modifiers in order to avoid possible ambiguity. The results suggest that the number and type of modifiers are related to processing cost involved in the DP structure in English. The results also show that the experienced and novice translators are able to correctly identify the head of the structure and make use of strategies in order to reduce cost, such as adopting editing procedures during the flow of translation process, choosing non-ambiguous structures in the Portuguese renderings or avoiding any option that could call the attention forbeing awkward. It is, therefore, possible to observe that the participants pay attention to the organization of the structure in Portuguese and they are also worried about rendering or choosing structures that are less cognitively demanding for the translator and the reader.

The objective of the thesis is to describe and compare the modifying uses of two adjectives which can appear both as premodifiers as well as bare postmodifiers, namely available and responsible. Both modifying positions are examined with respect to the textual environment, the complexity of noun phrases and adjective phrases in which the adjectives function, reference and other features in order to outline the patterns in which these two adjectives appear. The data for the analytical part have been extracted from the British National Corpus using the basic query and limiting the search to the written part of the corpus. After manual assessment of the initial samples of 500 concordance lines, 154 concordance lines containing the adjective available and 147 containing the adjective responsible proved to be suitable for the analysis. The final samples of the data are further categorized and analysed concerning the complexity of the noun phrase, premodification, postmodification and complementation of the adjectives, semantic preference of the head nouns, and the motivation for the pre- or postnominal placement of the modifiers. Key words: adjective, adjective phrase, premodification, postmodification, complementation, attributive function, predicative function, postpositive function, bare adjective,...

This thesis deals with the modification of nouns by bare past participles in the pre- and post- head positions and uses authentic examples from the written component of The British National Corpus. The aim is to describe the possibility of corpus excerption of this construction and to qualitatively compare participles in both positions using examples with context. In the first step, a simple search query was entered to retrieve bare past participles in the postnominal position with the result of 21,437 concordance lines which were then manually filtered. The resulting 14,529 lines were used to obtain a random sample of 400 lines which was again manually filtered. The resulting Sample 1 of 247 lines was described quantitatively in terms of the left and right context of the noun phrase and in terms of the head nouns. Sample 1 contained 118 unique participles, from which 10 were randomly selected for a qualitative description (Sample 2; 70 concordance lines per position, 140 lines in total). Sample 2 was then described in terms of the presence or absence of determiners, in terms of the types of definiteness, reference and restrictivity. An interesting feature is the presence of quantifiers, and the generally implied quantificational meaning of the construction. Semantics and the possibility to occur...