The diploma thesis is a part of a good enough sentence processing research. In the theoretical part, I describe the origin of this approach and main research areas - garden- path sentences and noncanonical sentences. The practical part of the thesis introduces three experiments which partially replicate experiments of F. Ferreira (2003), results of these experiments, interpretation and comparation to the results of experiments in English. The Czech results show that Czech speakers unlike English speakers tend to use only heuristic of plausibility and do not use the NVN strategy.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:24:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Juliana Correia_confrontada.pdf: 810061 bytes, checksum: d7bed4b410799a2af28ae6ef9880027b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-05-04 / The aim of this study was to verify the progression of wiritten narrative stories made by children from a public and a private school in Recife, in four different production situations: free production, production from engravings presentation, from a told story and from reading of an illustrated book. The work was carried through with 160 children, being 80 of public school and 80 of particular. Each child produced four stories, in a total of 640 stories. The stories had been analyzed and categorized in accordance with the categories of stories proposals by Rego (1985). After the analysis of the results, could be concluded that it had a progression related to the level of text production in function of the teaching advance, clearly seen in private school children. The best situation for public school students was from a told story, while reading of an illustrated book made private school children write more sofisticated stories. There was significant statistics differences between public and private schools in all four situations. / O objetivo do presente estudo foi verificar a progressão das narrativas escrita de histórias por crianças da 1ª à 4ª série do Ensino Fundamental de uma escola pública e uma particular da cidade do Recife em diferentes situações de produção: produção livre, produção a partir da apresentação de gravuras, a partir do conto e reconto e a partir da leitura de um livro ilustrado. O trabalho foi realizado com 160 crianças, sendo 80 da escola pública e 80 da particular. Cada criança produziu quatro histórias, num total de 640 histórias. As histórias foram analisadas e categorizadas de acordo com categorias adaptadas à proposta de Rego (1985). Após a análise dos resultados, pôde-se concluir que houve progressão em relação ao nível de elaboração das narrativas de histórias em função do avanço na escolarização, sendo esse avanço verificado com maior evidência entre as crianças da escola particular. A situação de produção que mais favoreceu a elaboração de histórias completas nos alunos da escola pública foi a partir do conto e reconto, enquanto que, na escola particular, a escrita a partir do livro mostrou-se mais favorável para o surgimento de histórias mais elaboradas. Houve diferença estatisticamente significante entre as escolas pública e particular, nas quatro situações de produção.

Relationship between thought and language -- Whorf's hypothesis of linguistic determinism -- Linguistic relativism -- Sociopolitics, oppression, and language.

This study investigates student and instructor perceptions of the causes and effects of anxiety and motivation's effect on a student's ability to learn a second language. The study focused on the participant's perceptions of the causes and effects of anxiety, and relationships between anxiety and motivation, in both short-term and long-term learners.

Zwei Theorien über die Verarbeitung von Metaphern postulieren die Beteiligung unterschiedlicher kognitiven. Die erste, die „Implicit Comparison View“, behauptet, dass Metaphern durch einen Prozess des analogen Denkens verstanden werden (z. B. Gentner et al., 2001; Gentner & Bowdle, 2008). Eine zweite Ansicht, die „Category Inclusion View“, sieht das Verstehen einer Metapher als einen Prozess, bei dem die lexikalische Bedeutung des metaphorischen Vehikels spontan moduliert wird, um eine ad-hoc, zielorientierte Kategorie zu schaffen (z. B. Glücksberg, 2008; Sperber & Wilson, 2008). Obwohl es eine große Anzahl an Experiment gibt, die die Vorhersagen dieser beiden Theorien testen (z. B. Bowdle & Gentner, 2005; Gernsbacher et al., 2001; Jones & Estes, 2005; Jones & Estes, 2006; McGlone & Manfredi, 2001; Wolff & Gentner, 2011) ist es bis jetzt nicht möglich gewesen, das Problem der Metaphernverarbeitung zu lösen zugunsten einer der beiden Theorien. Diese Dissertation versucht genau das zu tun, indem die Verarbeitung von zwei Arten deutscher nicht-nominaler Metaphern untersucht werden: verbale Metaphern und Verb-Objekt-Metaphern. Dies wurde gemacht durch eine Untersuchung der Rolle des Kontexts während der Verarbeitung von nicht-nominalen Metaphern. Dabei wurde auf die Literatur zur situierten und inkrementellen Sprachverarbeitung zurückgegriffen (siehe Huettig et al., 2011; Huettig et al., 2012; Kamide, 2008; Knoeferle & Guerra, 2016). Insgesamt die Ergebnisse von 14 verschiedenen Experimeten als besser zu vereinbaren mit der „Category Inclusion View“ als mit der „Implicit Comparison View“. / Two main sets of theories of metaphor comprehension posit the involvement of different cognitive mechanisms. The first one, the Implicit Comparison View, claims that metaphors are understood through a process of analogical reasoning in which the elements of a metaphoric expression (in the example above my cat, which is known as the ‘topic’ and princess, which is known as the ‘vehicle’) are scanned for relational similarities (e.g. Gentner et al., 2001; Gentner & Bowdle, 2008). A second view, the Category Inclusion View, sees metaphor comprehension as a process in which the lexical meaning of the metaphoric vehicle is spontaneously changed to represent a newly created, goal-oriented category (e.g. Glucksberg, 2008; Sperber & Wilson, 2008). Despite there being a large body of experimental data testing the predictions made by these theories (e.g. Bowdle & Gentner, 2005; Gernsbacher et al., 2001; Jones & Estes, 2005; Jones & Estes, 2006; McGlone & Manfredi, 2001; Wolff & Gentner, 2011), it has not been possible to settle this debate and tip the scale in favor of one or the other view. This dissertation attempts to do just that by examining the processing of two types of German non-nominal metaphors: Verbal metaphors and verb-object metaphors. This was done by investigating the role of context during metaphor comprehension in order to further specify the available theories, and, more generally, by drawing on the literature on situated and incremental language processing (see Huettig et al., 2011; Huettig et al., 2012; Kamide, 2008; Knoeferle & Guerra, 2016, for reviews). Overall the results of 14 experiments are interpreted as being more consistent with the Category Inclusion View than with the Indirect Comparison View.

An important yet untested assumption within personality psychology is that more important person characteristics are more densely reflected in language. We investigated how ratings of importance and other term properties are associated with one another and with a term’s frequency of use. Research participants were asked to provide terms that described individuals they knew, which resulted in a set of 624 adjectives. These terms were independently rated for importance, social desirability, observability, stateness versus traitness, level of abstraction, and base rate. Terms rated as describing more important person characteristics were in fact used more often by the participants in the sample and in a large corpus of online communications (close to 500 million words). More frequently used terms and more positive terms were also rated as being more abstract, more traitlike, and more widely applicable (i.e., having a greater base rate). We discuss the implications of these findings with regard to person perception in general.

This is a study to investigate the association between the cultural sensitivity in the acculturation process and the second language learning process. This study is also a partial replication of the study by William Acton (1979) who developed the Professed Difference in Attitudes Questionnaire (PDAQ), which is utilized as a measurement instrument in this study. Acton's concept of socio-cultural equidistant is interpreted from the intercultural communication point of view. The results of the hypothesis testing are inconclusive and incongruous with Acton's study.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.