Existing research on phrasal verbs is ample due to their prevalent existence in the English language and the difficulties they bring out as a result of their lack of transparency (Liu, 2011, p. 661). However, more research is necessary to cover new generations of English learners who cross paths with phrasal verbs. This study will provide empirical information on (i) whether Swedish students in 7th -9 th grade understand frequently used phrasal verbs better than nonfrequent ones, (ii) if phrasal verbs are easier to understand in productive- or perceptive tasks, (iii) if the students’ first languages (L1) interfere with this understanding, or (iv) if there is a difference in understanding phrasal verbs which are more common in AmE or BrE. The factors of second language acquisition taken into account in the analysis are explicit and implicit exposure of English, English varieties, crosslinguistic influences and idiomaticity. Chameliec & Weiss (2008, p. 381) define a phrasal verb as “a simple verb combined with an adverb or a preposition, or sometimes both, to make a new verb with a meaning that is different from that of the simple verb, e.g., go in for, win over, blow up”. The data was elicited with a questionnaire in three parts: one part about the participants background information and two parts on phrasal verb understanding, both in contextualized examples and without context. In the analysis, factors such as the construction of the questionnaire and choice of phrasal verbs need to be considered. The results demonstrate that Swedish junior high school students understand about 50% of the tested phrasal verbs in both parts of the questionnaire. More frequent ones are easier to understand, more so the AmE PVs, and the perceptive task generated a slightly higher percentage of correct answers. The textbooks did not have explicit sections on phrasal verbs, or even formulaic expressions in general. However, the books contained vocabulary boxes with a few different phrasal verbs, which also occurred in the texts. Since no explicit teaching method has been applied in these classes, doing so might increase the general frequency of correct answers. Furthermore, no conclusive results can be made regarding crosslinguistic influences, however, hypotheses on positive transfer can be made.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:08:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Heloa Ferreira Cristovao.pdf: 812841 bytes, checksum: 71e524e49439abe4acf2da511e7345ab (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-08-05 / A maioria dos gramáticos acolhe os verbos em duas sessões: uma que trata de aspectos morfológicos; em seguida, dentro de uma perspectiva sintático-semântica, que aborda os verbos quanto à predicação. Isso se configura um problema nesse modelo de análise, visto que, ao considerar os verbos como elementos discretos, em frases descontextualizadas, não se consideram as relações morfológicas, sintáticas, semânticas, pragmáticas e discursivas que só podem ser observadas a partir da língua em uso, dentro do jogo combinatório da linguagem. A partir dessas considerações, a concepção de língua que adotamos se coaduna com aquela proposta pelo Funcionalismo, que defende os estudos de fenômenos linguísticos a partir da análise das estruturas em uso real, priorizando as relações que se estabelecem no contexto comunicativo. Igualmente importante, foi o estudo da estrutura argumental da oração, formada pelo verbo e seus selecionados elementos obrigatórios (argumentos). Com relação aos verbos que serão objeto da pesquisa, orientamo-nos pela classificação realizada por Azeredo (2004, p.180), baseada na proposta de estudo de Cano Aguilar (1981) para a língua espanhola, que arrolou o grupo de verbos codificadores de extensão ou escala no português, entre eles: atravessar, percorrer, subir, abraçar, presidir, contornar, ocupar, preencher, inundar, medir 1 (ele mediu um terreno), medir 2 (o terreno mede 160 m), valer e durar (a viagem durou 80 dias). Em nossa pesquisa, analisaremos a transitividade de um recorte desse grupo, composto pelos verbos subir, ocupar, medir, durar, valer e seu uso na língua portuguesa, que, juntamente com a escolha do referencial teórico, justificam a importância deste estudo, visto que esse fenômeno é mais bem observado em condições reais de comunicação. O corpus é constituído de textos do âmbito jornalístico escrito e o levantamento de dados foi realizado por meio de ferramenta de pesquisa on-line no acervo digital da Revista Veja. Esperamos que o resultado desta pesquisa evidencie que um estudo que tenha como ponto de partida a língua em uso vá muito além das proposições das gramáticas / The most of grammarians welcome verbs in two sessions, namely: the first that deals with morphological aspects, then within a syntactic-semantic perspective, which deals with verbs as the predication. This creates the problem of proposal analysis, given that when considering verbs as discrete elements in non-contextualized sentences, the relationships are not considered morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discoursive that can only be observed from the language in use, in game combinatorial language. From these considerations, the design language we adopt is consistent with that proposed by functionalism, which advocates the study of linguistic phenomena from the analysis of the structures in actual use, prioritizing the relationships established in the communicative context. Equally important was the study of argument structure of sentence, formed by the verb and its selected elements required (arguments). With respect to verbs that will be the object of research, we look to the classification performed by Azeredo (2004, p.180), based on the study proposal of Cano Aguilar (1981) for the Spanish language, that enrolled a group of verbs encoders of extent or scale in Portuguese, among them: cross, roam, rise, embrace, preside, contour, occupy, fill, flood, measure 1 (he measured a piece of land), measure 2 (the land measures 160 m), earn and last (the trip lasted 80 days). In our research, we analyze the transitivity of a clipping of this group, consisting of the verbs rise, occupy, measure, last, earn and their use in the Portuguese language, which, together with the choice of theoretical, justify the importance of this study, since this phenomenon is best observed in real communication. The corpus is composed of texts within the journalistic writing and data collection was conducted through a research tool on-line in digital collection of Veja Magazine. We hope that the result of this research it is clear that a study has as starting point the language used go far beyond the propositions of grammars

Menée dans une perspective comparative, cette recherche a pour ambition une description du lexique des noms d’affect dans le but de relever des zones convergentes et des zones divergentes dans deux langues apparentées généalogiquement – le français et le roumain - selon deux axes de réflexion : l’analyse diachronique de la dynamique de l’évolution du lexique affectif roumain imprégné de mots d’origine française et l’analyse synchronique des particularités combinatoires des noms d’affect. Une telle recherche a mis en évidence des cas très intéressants, des points où les deux systèmes se rapprochent, sans pour autant coïncider totalement. Mais, malgré les petites différences morphosyntaxiques et combinatoires spécifiques attestées dans l’expression des affects, ces derniers présentent globalement une homogénéité du fonctionnement linguistique. Ce fait n’est pas seulement intéressant en termes de syntaxe comparée, mais aussi par le fait que les noms d’affect qui réalisent le même scénario cognitif ont un comportement similaire dans les deux langues confrontées. / Conducted in a comparative perspective, this research aims to describe the lexicon of affect nouns in order to underline the converging areas and diverging areas in two genealogically related languages - French and Romanian - in two lines of thought: diachronic analysis concerning the dynamics of the evolution of the Romanian emotional vocabulary permeated with words of French origin and synchronic analysis of combinatorial features of affect nouns. Such research has highlighted some very interesting cases, the points where these two systems are similar, but not completely coincide. But despite the small specific morphosyntactic and combinatorial differences evidenced in the expression of emotions, they generally bear homogeneity of linguistic functioning. This fact is not only interesting in terms of comparative syntax, but also by the fact that the affect nouns performing the same cognitive scenario have similar behavior in both languages faced.

The goal of the diploma thesis is to design, implement and evaluate classifiers for automatic classification of semantic patterns of English verbs according to a pattern lexicon that draws on the Corpus Pattern Analysis. We use a pilot collection of 30 sample English verbs as training and test data sets. We employ standard methods of machine learning. In our experiments we use decision trees, k-nearest neighbourghs (kNN), support vector machines (SVM) and Adaboost algorithms. Among other things we concentrate on feature design and selection. We experiment with both morpho-syntactic and semantic features. Our results show that the morpho-syntactic features are the most important for statistically-driven semantic disambiguation. Nevertheless, for some verbs the use of semantic features plays an important role.

This diploma thesis aims to contribute to the proposed project concerning the update of the multi-media application EMSA (Elektronická mluvnice současné angličtiny, The electronic grammar of contemporary English). This project is based on the text of Mluvnice současné angličtiny na pozadí češtiny [Grammar of contemporary English against the background of Czech] by Professor PhDr. Libuše Dušková, DrSc. et al., which was digitalized and can be accessed at the website www.mluvniceanglictiny.cz. In the future, this application aims to contain supplementary texts, relevant bibliographic information, exercises, authentic examples acquired from electronic corpora, etc. The particular task of this diploma thesis is the critical revision of chapter 8.4 Modal verbs. The first step was the survey of relevant literature and identification of parts which are not explicitly covered by Dušková's original text. These findings are presented in the theoretical part of the thesis (chapter 1.); they are concerned mainly with theoretical definitions (e.g. the delimitation of central and marginal modals or kinds of modality) and information concerning the distribution and recent developments of modal verbs. The second main step was to compile these findings into texts which would be suitable for the use in the project...

Esta dissertação apresenta uma proposta de descrição da dêixis de pessoa na língua de sinais brasileira. Nas línguas de sinais, a dêixis de pessoa é realizada substancialmente por meio de dois tipos de sinais de apontamento: os pronomes pessoais e os verbos indicadores. O objetivo de minha pesquisa é dar início à descrição desses dois tipos de sinais, tomando por base o trabalho de Liddell (2003), que analisa a dêixis de pessoa na língua de sinais americana, no âmbito da gramática cognitiva (Langacker, 1991) e da teoria de espaços mentais (Fauconnier, 1994 [1985]; Fauconnier & Turner, 1998). Segundo Liddell, tanto os pronomes pessoais quanto os verbos indicadores têm a propriedade de ser realizados e localizados no espaço físico em frente e ao redor do corpo do sinalizador e de apontar, dentro desse espaço, para um local que está associado, no discurso, a uma representação mental do(s) seu(s) referente(s). Para o autor, os sinais dêiticos são formados por duas partes: uma lingüística, que é invariável, e uma outra que é dêitica, ou seja, que varia conforme a situação discursiva. Para fazer a descrição dos pronomes pessoais e dos verbos indicadores da língua de sinais brasileira, analisei (i) dados levantados do dicionário de Capovilla & Raphael (2001); (ii) dados que foram eliciados de colaboradores surdos, e (iii) dados de língua em uso que foram obtidos por meio de uma narrativa infantil contada por uma surda. Com os estudos empíricos realizados e a construção e uma transcrição da narrativa, foi possível (i) descrever a maneira como os surdos usam o espaço de sinalização, para construir, representar e caracterizar as personagens da história (ou interlocutores) que são apontados pelos sinais dêiticos; (ii) levantar os pronomes pessoais e os verbos indicadores da língua de sinais brasileira, e (iii) descrever algumas de suas características formais e as características pragmáticas de seu apontamento (dêitico ou anafórico), tanto nos contextos eliciados como em uso, nos discursos diretos da narrativa. / This dissertation presents a proposal of description of personal deixis in Brazilian Sign Language. In sign language, personal deixis is substantially performed by means of two kinds of pointing signs: personal pronouns and indicating verbs. The aim of my research is to introduce a description of these two kinds of signs, based on work by Liddell (2003), who has analyzed the deictic signs of American Sign Language (ASL) within the framework of cognitive grammar (Langacker, 1991) and mental space theory (Fauconnier, 1994 [1985]; Fauconnier & Turner, 1998). According to Liddell, both personal pronouns and indicating verbs have this property of being signed and located in the physical space in front to and around the signer\'s body; in this space, they can point to a locus associated, within the discourse, to a mental representation of their referents. For Liddell, deictic signs have two parts: a linguistic and invariable component; plus a deictic component, which depends on the discourse situation. In order to describe the personal pronouns and indicating verbs of Brazilian Sign Language, I analyzed data from (i) the dictionary by Capovilla & Raphael (2001); (ii) elicited tests with deaf collaborators, and (iii) language in use in the form of a child narrative told by a deaf collaborator. With the empirical studies carried out, as well as the construction and transcription of the narrative, it was possible to (i) describe how deaf people use the signing space in order to construe, represent and characterize the characters of the story that are pointed at by deictic signs; (ii) identify the personal pronouns and indicating verbs of Brazilian Sign Language, and (iii) describe some of their formal aspects and the pragmatic characteristics of their pointing (deictic or anaphoric), by looking at both the elicited contexts and those instances of direct speech in narrative.

Os verbos que expressam eventos de transferência/movimento no PB são formados a partir de Raízes que envolvem, em sua semântica, um agente, um elemento transferido/movido e um recebedor/alvo. Geralmente, esses verbos formam construções sintáticas ditransitivas, em que o agente é expresso por meio do sujeito, o elemento transferido/movido por meio de um objeto direto e o recebedor/alvo por meio de um objeto indireto. Nesses contextos sintáticos, o objeto indireto tem suscitado, na literatura pertinente, algumas discussões sobre sua natureza, como: argumento ou adjunto, e, ainda, complemento dativo ou complemento oblíquo. Essas discussões demonstram a indefinição do estatuto sintático-semântico desse elemento para as teorias linguísticas. Entendemos que essas discussões estão ligadas à concepção de estrutura da gramática assumida pelos diferentes pesquisadores e, também, ao modo como estes entendem que as noções de estrutura argumental e de estrutura sintática interagem dentro dessa concepção. Em outras palavras, o debate surge, pois, na caracterização da relação gramatical do objeto indireto com o verbo, é fundamental que o pesquisador disponha de uma teoria da estrutura argumental que lhe permita estabelecer o mapeamento e o licenciamento dos argumentos na sintaxe. Assumimos, neste trabalho, a estrutura da gramática tal como esta é concebida pela Morfologia Distribuída (Distribuited Morphology, doravante, DM) (Halle & Marantz 1993). Segundo a DM, os morfemas são constituídos por traços sintáticosemânticos disponibilizados pela Gramática Universal. Os verbos consistem de morfemas-l (Raízes) em determinadas relações estruturais com morfemas-f, licenciadores de estruturas sintáticas de natureza verbal. Não pressupondo um mapeamento determinístico das propriedades semânticas das Raízes na sintaxe, a DM consegue explicar a possibilidade de um mesmo verbo ocorrer em mais de uma estrutura sintática, sem precisar recorrer, por exemplo, a duas entradas lexicais para esse mesmo verbo. Dessa forma, constitui-se em um modelo mais vantajoso para explicar fenômenos relacionados à estrutura argumental e à realização de argumentos do que modelos baseados na entrada lexical, o que justifica nossa opção teórica. Além disso, essa teoria nos permite participar das discussões mencionadas acima sobre o objeto indireto. Assumimos que esse elemento tem o estatuto de argumento dos verbos de transferência/movimento (VT/M) no PB, sendo um complemento dativo. Pressupostos como a inserção tardia de fonologia em Spell-Out (uma operação póssintática) e a subespecificação do item de vocabulário, assinaladas pela DM, dão conta de explicar os casos em que o objeto indireto não é realizado fonologicamente, ocorrendo na estrutura sintática como um argumento nulo anafórico ou como um argumento implícito sem referência anafórica, bem como os casos em que esse elemento não ocorre na estrutura sintática derivada pelo verbo dar. / Verbs which express transfer/motion events in Brazilian Portuguese are formed by Roots that involve, in their semantics, an agent, a transferred/motioned element and a receiver/goal. In general, these verbs form ditransitive syntactic constructions, in which the agent is expressed through the subject, the transferred/motioned element through de direct object and the receiver/goal through the indirect object. In these syntactic contexts, the indirect object has aroused, in the relevant literature, some discussions about its nature: argument or adjunct, and, yet, dative complement or oblique complement. These discussions show the indefinition of the syntactic-semantic status of this element inside linguistic theories. We understand that these discussions are connected to the conception of grammar structure assumed by the different researchers, and, also, to the way they understand argument structure and syntactic structure interact inside this conception. In other words, the debate arises for, in the characterization of the grammatical relation of the indirect object with the verb, it is crucial that the researcher has an argument structure theory that allows him to establish the arguments mapping and licensing in syntax. In this research, we assume the Distributed Morphologys (DM) (Halle & Marantz 1993) grammar structure. According to DM, morphemes consist of syntacticsemantic features supplied by the Universal Grammar. Verbs consist of l-morphemes (Roots) in specific structural relations with f-morphemes, which license verbal syntactic structures. Since DM does not presupposes a deterministic Roots semantic properties mapping in syntax, it gets to explain how is it possible that one verb occur in more than one syntactic structure, without needing to appeal to two lexical entries for this same verb, for example. Thus, DM is a more advantageous model to explain argument structure and argument realization related phenomenon than lexical entry based models, what justifies our theoretical choice. Furthermore, this theory allows us to take part in the discussions listed above about the indirect object. We assume that this element is an argument of the transfer/motion verbs in Brazilian Portuguese and that it is a dative complement. Assumptions like phonology late insertion in Spell-Out (a pos-syntactic operation) and vocabulary item specification, pointed out by DM, get to explain the cases in which the indirect object is not phonologically realized, and occur in the syntactic structure as an anaphoric null argument, or as an implicit argument, without anaphoric reference. Besides that, these theoretical resources also get to explain the cases in which this element does not occur in the syntactic structure derived by the verb give.

Grandes transformações sociais, econômicas e políticas ocorriam no Brasil republicano do final do século XIX. Nesse contexto, forças sócio-políticas operavam na proposta de civilização do país que se apoiava na difusão das instituições de ensino como estratégia para se equiparar à modernização e ao progresso dos países europeus. Assim, os Grupos Escolares foram criados em contraposição às escolas isoladas do período monárquico, inovando no cenário brasileiro com a implantação do ensino graduado e com o método intuitivo, servindo de propaganda ao novo governo instaurado. Alguns estudos têm mostrado que, dentro desse panorama da virada do século XIX, uma mudança na colocação pronominal em orações infinitivas preposicionadas se implanta no Português Brasileiro, o qual se distanciava do padrão lusitano e do uso vernacular da época. Considerando o crescimento da próclise do vernáculo brasileiro (OLIVEIRA, 2013) e a ênclise majoritária dos intelectuais republicanos paulistas (SANTOS SILVA, 2012) nesse contexto sintático, este trabalho investigará se os Grupos Escolares Paulistas adotavam um único padrão linguístico quanto à posição do pronome em infinitivas preposicionadas. Para essa análise, serão estudados ofícios e relatórios escritos em 1902 e 1906 por diretores de 34 grupos e inspetores da educação do estado de São Paulo. Para uma boa análise qualitativa dos dados, será adotado o paradigma indiciário de Ginzburg (1989), juntamente a um estudo etnográfico dos grupos e de seu conteúdo programático que permitirá identificar o pano de fundo da difusão desse novo tipo de escola e entender a simbólica importância dessa instituição de ensino para a sociedade republicana. Dessa forma, será possível entrelaçar o ponto de vista linguístico com a sócio-história dos Grupos Escolares paulistas na virada do século XIX para o XX. / Significant social, economic and political changes took place in the Brazilian Republic in the end of 19th century. In this context, socio-political forces operated in the civilization proposal of country supported in the dissemination of educational institutions as a strategy to match the modernization and progress of European countries. So School Groups were created in opposition to distant schools of the monarchy period, innovating in the Brazilian scenario with the implementation of graduate education and the intuitive method, serving as an advertisement of the new government. Some studies have shown that a change was implanted in the clitic placement in prepositional infinitive sentences in Brazilian Portuguese in the turn of 19th century, which distanced from both the standard European Portuguese and the Brazilian vernacular use. Considering the increase of proclisis of Brazilian vernacular (OLIVEIRA, 2013) and the majority enclitic of republican intellectuals of São Paulo (SANTOS SILVA, 2012) in this syntactic context, this study will investigate if the School Groups of São Paulo adopted a single linguistic standard about the clitic placement in prepositional infinitive sentences. For this analysis, formal texts written in 1902 and 1906 by directors of 34 School Groups and education inspectors of São Paulo will be studied. For a satisfactory analysis, the evidential paradigm of Ginzburg (1898) will be adopted, along with an ethnographic study of School Groups and their curriculum that will identify the background of the propagation of this new kind of school and understand the symbolic matter of this educational institution for the republican society. So the linguistic point of view can be interlace with the socio-history of School Groups of São Paulo in the turn of 20th century.

Om något är sant eller inte är upp till forskningen och vetenskapen att undersöka. Trots det kan mycket information upplevas som sanning även om det bara är en åsikt, egen erfarenhet eller myt. Den här studien undersöker hur privatpersoner online skapar sanningar utifrån en osanning. Undersökningen är baserad på en tråd från diskussionsforumet ”Flashback”. Tråden har en frispråkig och destruktiv diskurs om personer från Somalia. Analysen är baserad på olika sätt att få något att upplevas som trovärdigt, exempelvis modalitet, hänvisningar och objektivitet. Resultatet visar att de flesta åsikterna och upplevelserna är modifierade på olika sätt för att framstå som mer trovärdiga och om något är trovärdigt ökar det chansen att någon annan anammar samma åsikt eller åtminstone tror att den är sann. / Whether something is true or not is a matter for science and research to investigate. Although, a lot of information can pass by as true even though it might just be an opinion, personal experience or myth. This study investigate how private persons online create a truth out of something untrue. The investigation is based on a thread from the forum for discussion named ”Flashback”. The thread have an outspoken and destructive discourse about people from Somalia. The analysis is based on different ways to make something appear as reliable, for example modality, referencing and objectivity. The result shows that most opinions and experiences are in different ways modified to seem more reliable, and if something is reliabile it increases the chanses of someone else to acquire the same opinion, or at least believe it to be true.

Speech-language pathologists are challenged with providing children with treatment that results in the greatest amount of improvement in the least amount of time. To aid in this challenge, we examined how quickly and efficaciously seven children with a specific language impairment (SLI) learned verbs compared to seven children with typical language (TL) development. Each child was taught the meaning and use of six nonsense verbs. Nonsense verbs were used to ensure that the target verbs had never been heard by any of the participants before the experiment and allowed us to control verb exposure. Each participant received up to four training sessions of 30-minutes each. During these sessions, the examiner utilized naturalistic conversational techniques and play activities with carefully selected sets of toys that corresponded to the meaning of the target words. The training sessions were ended when children demonstrated 100% accuracy in their understanding of the verbs and 50% accuracy in their production during a probe task. All sessions were audio-recorded and the experimenters and childs utterances were reliably coded. Analysis revealed that the two groups received the same input from the experimenter in terms of the number and type of exposures to the verbs. We examined the childrens nonsense verb productions for their rate and quality. Rate of verb acquisition was measured by counting: 1) the number of sessions required before the criteria for learning was met; 2) the number of exposures before childs first spontaneous production of each target verb; and 3) the number of exposures before childs first elicited production of each target verb. Quality of verb acquisition was measured by counting: 1) the number of alternative real verbs substituted for a nonsense verb and 2) the accuracy of transitive target verb usage. Although the results were not statistically significant for any of the measures tested, there was a trend for children with SLI to learn the target nonsense verbs more slowly but just as