Semantic under-determinacy, Content and Context

The aim of the thesis is to investigate the topic of semantic under-determinacy, i.e. the failure of the semantic content of certain expressions to determine a truth-evaluable utterance content. In the first part of the thesis, I engage with the problem of setting apart semantic under-determinacy as opposed to other phenomena such as ambiguity, vagueness, indexicality. As I will argue, the feature that distinguishes semantic under-determinacy from these phenomena is its being explainable solely in terms of under-articulation. In the second part of the thesis, I discuss the topic of how communication is possible, despite the semantic under-determinacy of language. I discuss a number of answers that have been offered: (i) the Radical Contextualist explanation which emphasises the role of pragmatic processes in utterance comprehension; (ii) the Indexicalist explanation in terms of hidden syntactic positions; (iii) the Relativist account, which regards sentences as true or false relative to extra coordinates in the circumstances of evaluation (besides possible worlds). In the final chapter, I propose an account of the comprehension of utterances of semantically under-determined sentences in terms of conceptual constraints, i.e. ways of organising information which regulate thought and discourse on certain matters. Conceptual constraints help the hearer to work out the truth-conditions of an utterance of a semantically under-determined sentence. Their role is clearly semantic, in that they contribute to “what is said” (rather than to “what is implied”); however, they do not respond to any syntactic constraint. The view I propose therefore differs, on the one hand, from Radical Contextualism, because it stresses the role of semantic-governed processes as opposed to pragmatics-governed processes; on the other hand, it differs from Indexicalism in its not endorsing any commitment as to hidden syntactic positions; and it differs from Relativism in that it maintains a monadic notion if truth.

Automatic induction of lexical features

This thesis concerns artificially intelligent natural language processing systems that are capable of learning the properties of lexical items (properties like verbal valency or inflectional class membership) autonomously while they are fulfilling their tasks for which they have been deployed in the first place. Many of these tasks require a deep analysis of language input, which can be characterized as a mapping of utterances in a given input C to a set S of linguistically motivated structures with the help of linguistic information encoded in a grammar G and a lexicon L: G + L + C → S (1) The idea that underlies intelligent lexical acquisition systems is to modify this schematic formula in such a way that the system is able to exploit the information encoded in S to create a new, improved version of the lexicon: G + L + S → L' (2) Moreover, the thesis claims that a system can only be considered intelligent if it does not just make maximum usage of the learning opportunities in C, but if it is also able to revise falsely acquired lexical knowledge. So, one of the central elements in this work is the formulation of a couple of criteria for intelligent lexical acquisition systems subsumed under one paradigm: the Learn-Alpha design rule. The thesis describes the design and quality of a prototype for such a system, whose acquisition components have been developed from scratch and built on top of one of the state-of-the-art Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) processing systems. The quality of this prototype is investigated in a series of experiments, in which the system is fed with extracts of a large English corpus. While the idea of using machine-readable language input to automatically acquire lexical knowledge is not new, we are not aware of a system that fulfills Learn-Alpha and is able to deal with large corpora. To instance four major challenges of constructing such a system, it should be mentioned that a) the high number of possible structural descriptions caused by highly underspeci ed lexical entries demands for a parser with a very effective ambiguity management system, b) the automatic construction of concise lexical entries out of a bulk of observed lexical facts requires a special technique of data alignment, c) the reliability of these entries depends on the system's decision on whether it has seen 'enough' input and d) general properties of language might render some lexical features indeterminable if the system tries to acquire them with a too high precision. The cornerstone of this dissertation is the motivation and development of a general theory of automatic lexical acquisition that is applicable to every language and independent of any particular theory of grammar or lexicon. This work is divided into five chapters. The introductory chapter first contrasts three different and mutually incompatible approaches to (artificial) lexical acquisition: cue-based queries, head-lexicalized probabilistic context free grammars and learning by unification. Then the postulation of the Learn-Alpha design rule is presented. The second chapter outlines the theory that underlies Learn-Alpha and exposes all the related notions and concepts required for a proper understanding of artificial lexical acquisition. Chapter 3 develops the prototyped acquisition method, called ANALYZE-LEARN-REDUCE, a framework which implements Learn-Alpha. The fourth chapter presents the design and results of a bootstrapping experiment conducted on this prototype: lexeme detection, learning of verbal valency, categorization into nominal count/mass classes, selection of prepositions and sentential complements, among others. The thesis concludes with a review of the conclusions and motivation for further improvements as well as proposals for future research on the automatic induction of lexical features.

Differentiation in Male and Female Speech Styles

From the moment of their birth, a person's life is determined by their sex. Ms. Goroshko wants to know why this difference is so striking, why society is so concerned to sustain it, and how it is able to persist even when certain national or behavioural stereotypes are erased between people. She is convinced of the existence of not only social, but biological differences between men and women, and set herself the task, in a manuscript totalling 126 pages, written in Ukrainian and including extensive illustrations, of analysing these distinctions as they are manifested in language. She points out that, even before 1900, certain stylistic differences between the ways that men and women speak had been noted. Since then it has become possible, for instance in the case of Japanese, to point to examples of male and female sub-languages. In general, one can single out the following characteristics. Males tend to write with less fluency, to refer to events in a verb-phrase, to be time-oriented, to involve themselves more in their references to events, to locate events in their personal sphere of activity, and to refer less to others. Therefore, concludes Ms Goroshko, the male is shown to be more active, more ego-involved in what he does, and less concerned about others. Women, in contrast, were more fluent, referred to events in a noun-phrase, were less time-oriented, tended to be less involved in their event-references, locate events within their interactive community and refer more to others. They spent much more time discussing personal and domestic subjects, relationship problems, family, health and reproductive matters, weight, food and clothing, men, and other women. As regards discourse strategies, Ms Goroshko notes the following. Men more often begin a conversation, they make more utterances, these utterances are longer, they make more assertions, speak less carefully, generally determine the topic of conversation, speak more impersonally, use more vulgar expressions, and use fewer diminutives and more imperatives. Women's speech strategies, apart from being the opposite of those enumerated above, also contain more euphemisms, polite forms, apologies, laughter and crying. All of the above leads Ms. Goroshko to conclude that the differences between male and female speech forms are more striking than the similarities. Furthermore she is convinced that the biological divergence between the sexes is what generates the verbal divergence, and that social factors can only intensify or diminish the differentiation in verbal behaviour established by the sex of a person. Bearing all this in mind, Ms Goroshko set out to construct a grammar of male and female styles of speaking within Russian. One of her most important research tools was a certain type of free association test. She took a list comprising twelve stimuli (to love, to have, to speak, to fuck, a man, a woman, a child, the sky, a prayer, green, beautiful) and gave it to a group of participants specially selected, according to a preliminary psychological testing, for the high levels of masculinity or femininity they displayed. Preliminary responses revealed that the female reactions were more diverse than the male ones, there were more sentences and word combinations in the female reactions, men gave more negative responses to the stimulus and sometimes didn't want to react at all, women reacted more to adjectives and men to nouns, and that, surprisingly, women coloured more negatively their reactions to the words man, to love and a child (Ms. Goroshko is inclined to attribute this to the present economic situation in Russia). Another test performed by Ms. Goroshko was the so-called "defective text" developed by A.A. Brudny. All participants were distributed with packets of complete sentences, which had been taken from a text and then mixed at random. The task was to reconstruct the original text. There were three types of test, the first descriptive, the second narrative, and the third logical. Ms. Goroshko created computer programmes to analyse the results. She found that none of the reconstructed texts was coincident with the original, differing both from the original text and amongst themselves and that there were many more disparities in the male than the female texts. In the descriptive and logical texts the differences manifested themselves more clearly in the male texts, and in the narrative texts in the female texts. The widest dispersal of values was observed at the outset, while the female text ending was practically coincident with the original (in contrast to the male ending). The greatest differences in text reconstruction for both males and females were registered in the middle of the texts. Women, Ms. Goroshko claims, were more sensitive to the semantic structure of the texts, since they assembled the narrative text much more accurately than the other two, while the men assembled more accurately the logical text. Texts written by women were assembled more accurately by women and texts by men by men. On the basis of computer analysis, Ms. Goroshko found that female speech was substantially more emotional. It was expressed by various means, hyperbole, metaphor, comparisons, epithets, ways of enumeration, and with the aid of interjections, rhetorical questions, exclamations. The level of literacy was higher for female speech, and there were fewer mistakes in grammar and spelling in female texts. The last stage of Ms Goroshko's research concerned the social stereotypes of beliefs about men and women in Russian society today. A large number of respondents were asked questions such as "What merits must a woman possess?", "What are male vices and virtues?", etc. After statistical manipulation, an image of modern man and woman, as it exists in the minds of modern Russian men and women, emerged. Ms. Goroshko believes that her findings are significant not only within the field of linguistics. She has already successfully worked on anonymous texts and been able to decide on the sex of the author and consequently believes that in the future her research may even be of benefit to forensic science.

Unattended emotional intonations modulate linguistic prosody processing

Prosody or speech melody subserves linguistic (e.g., question intonation) and emotional functions in speech communication. Findings from lesion studies and imaging experiments suggest that, depending on function or acoustic stimulus structure, prosodic speech components are differentially processed in the right and left hemispheres. This direct current (DC) potential study investigated the linguistic processing of digitally manipulated pitch contours of sentences that carried an emotional or neutral intonation. Discrimination of linguistic prosody was better for neutral stimuli as compared to happily as well as fearfully spoken sentences. Brain activation was increased during the processing of happy sentences as compared to neutral utterances. Neither neutral nor emotional stimuli evoked lateralized processing in the left or right hemisphere, indicating bilateral mechanisms of linguistic processing for pitch direction. Acoustic stimulus analysis suggested that prosodic components related to emotional intonation, such as pitch variability, interfered with linguistic processing of pitch course direction.

Imperatives in concessive clauses: compatibility between constructions

In his pioneering paper on “Performative Subordinate Clauses,” Lakoff (1984) claimed that subordinate clauses expressing a reason or concession allow imperatives conveying statements (i.e. assertive illocutionary force). While this analysis has gone unchallenged to this day, the present paper shows that Lakoff’s analysis is inadequate, in that reason and concessive clauses show a sharp contrast in the kinds of imperative utterances they permit. Contra Lakoff, concessive clauses with although, though and except (that) do allow imperative constructions conveying directive illocutionary forces to occur, whereas by contrast those with even though tend to disallow both types of imperatives. These findings can be explained in terms of compatibility between “component” constructions constituting a complex sentence. It is argued that the compatibility between imperatives (both directive and assertive types) and concessive adverbials (excluding even though) can be attributed to the latter’s loose integration into a matrix clause required by the former. Furthermore, it is argued that the incompatibility of even though with imperatives arises primarily from the incompatibility between the tight integration of even though and the loose integration required by imperatives, together with the associated incompatibility between the non-rectifying function of even though and the rectifying conjunction favored by imperatives.

Disrupted Turn Adjacency and Coherence Maintenance in Instant Messaging Conversations

This article reports on a study of coherence in text-based log files from 120 two-party Instant Messaging (IM) conversations among a group of international students at a design school. The goals of the study were to investigate whether disrupted turn adjacency was an obstacle to coherence and to identify the linguistic strategies employed to maintain coherence. Additional signs of problematic coherence creation were also investigated, focusing on explicit signs of miscommunication. In this particular context, disrupted turn adjacency was not found to be a problem. Whereas devices for textual cohesion can be important, links between utterances can also be identified based on timing and distinctions between different types of feedback, as well as sequencing. The additional signs of miscommunication were all related to different aspects of problematic grounding. The article concludes with suggestions for design improvements to the IM tool.

Linkage in narratives: A comparison between monolingual speakers of French and Italian, and early and late French-Italian bilinguals

In the course of language acquisition learners have to deal with the task of producing narrative texts that are coherent across a range of conceptual domains (space, time, entities) -- both within as well as across utterances. The organization of information is analyzed in this study, on the basis of retellings of a silent film, in terms of devices used in the coordination and subordination of events within the narrative sequence. The focus on subordination reflects a core grammatical difference between Italian and French, as Italian is a null-subject language while French is not. The implications of this contrast for information structure include differences in topic management within the sequence of events. The present study investigates in how far Italian-French bilingual speakers acquire the patterns of monolingual speakers of Italian. It compares how early and late bilinguals of these two languages proceed when linking information in narratives in Italian.

The Spanish variety of Malaga: From real to mental to virtual speech

Internet has affected our lives and society in manifold ways, and partly, in fundamental ways. Therefore, it is no surprise that one of the affected areas is language and communication itself. Over the last few years, online social networks have become a widespread and continuously expanding medium of communication. Being a new medium of social interaction, online social networks produce their own communication style, which in many cases differs considerably from real speech and is also perceived differently. The focus of analysis of my PhD thesis is how social network users from the city of Malaga create this virtual style by means of phonic features typical of the Andalusian variety of Spanish and how the users’ language attitude has an influence on the use of these phonic features. The data collection was fourfold: 1) a main corpus was compiled from 240 informants’ utterances on Facebook and Tuenti; 2) a corpus constituted of broad transcriptions of recordings with 120 people from Malaga served as a comparison; 3) a survey in which 240 participants rated the use of said phonetic variants on the following axes: “good–bad”, “correct–incorrect” and “beautiful–ugly” was carried out; 4) a survey with 240 participants who estimated with which frequency the analysed features are used in Malaga was conducted. For the analysis, which is quantitative and qualitative, ten variables were chosen. Results show that the studied variants are employed differently in virtual and real speech depending on how people perceive these variants. In addition, the use of the features is constrained by social factors. In general, people from Malaga have a more positive attitude towards non-­‐standard features if they are used in virtual speech than in real speech. Thus, virtual communication is seen as a style serving to create social meaning and to express linguistic identity. These stylistic practices reflect an amalgam of social presuppositions about usage conventions and individual strategies for handling a new medium. In sum, the virtual style is an initiative deliberately taken by the users, to create their, real and virtual, identities, and to define their language attitudes towards the features of their variety of speech.

What to Expect in the Intake Interview? Impression Management Tactics of Psychotherapy Patients

The therapeutic alliance consists of a mutual dependency between patient and therapist. Whereas earlier studies have focused on the therapists' behavioral influence, the present study examined patients' impression management tactics. The motivation to manage the impressions one has on others is particularly strong during first contact. Patients' behavioral influence was thus examined in the intake interview. Twelve possible impression management tactics were defined on the basis of theoretical conceptions of the therapeutic alliance and discussions with practicing psychotherapists. After a comprehensive training, judges rated 60 videotaped interviews. Interjudge agreement was fair to good. Influence attempts could be observed in roughly 30% of all patients' utterances. The most frequent tactics were Supplication, Provoking a response from the therapist, and Self-promotion. Patients could be grouped into three different clusters of tactic employers: Negative self-presenters, positive self-presenters, and response provokers. Male and female patients did not differ with respect to the total amount of tactics used and to the choice of specific tactics. However, when the therapist was female, male patients used significantly more tactics overall and significantly more often the tactic Negative reports about third persons. Being sensitive to patients' behavioral influence can help therapists to better understand their interactional goals and to better tailor the therapeutic alliance.

Code-switching: a touchstone of models of bilingual language production

The goal of the present thesis was to investigate the production of code-switched utterances in bilinguals’ speech production. This study investigates the availability of grammatical-category information during bilingual language processing. The specific aim is to examine the processes involved in the production of Persian-English bilingual compound verbs (BCVs). A bilingual compound verb is formed when the nominal constituent of a compound verb is replaced by an item from the other language. In the present cases of BCVs the nominal constituents are replaced by a verb from the other language. The main question addressed is how a lexical element corresponding to a verb node can be placed in a slot that corresponds to a noun lemma. This study also investigates how the production of BCVs might be captured within a model of BCVs and how such a model may be integrated within incremental network models of speech production. In the present study, both naturalistic and experimental data were used to investigate the processes involved in the production of BCVs. In the first part of the present study, I collected 2298 minutes of a popular Iranian TV program and found 962 code-switched utterances. In 83 (8%) of the switched cases, insertions occurred within the Persian compound verb structure, hence, resulting in BCVs. As to the second part of my work, a picture-word interference experiment was conducted. This study addressed whether in the case of the production of Persian-English BCVs, English verbs compete with the corresponding Persian compound verbs as a whole, or whether English verbs compete with the nominal constituents of Persian compound verbs only. Persian-English bilinguals named pictures depicting actions in 4 conditions in Persian (L1). In condition 1, participants named pictures of action using the whole Persian compound verb in the context of its English equivalent distractor verb. In condition 2, only the nominal constituent was produced in the presence of the light verb of the target Persian compound verb and in the context of a semantically closely related English distractor verb. In condition 3, the whole Persian compound verb was produced in the context of a semantically unrelated English distractor verb. In condition 4, only the nominal constituent was produced in the presence of the light verb of the target Persian compound verb and in the context of a semantically unrelated English distractor verb. The main effect of linguistic unit was significant by participants and items. Naming latencies were longer in the nominal linguistic unit compared to the compound verb (CV) linguistic unit. That is, participants were slower to produce the nominal constituent of compound verbs in the context of a semantically closely related English distractor verb compared to producing the whole compound verbs in the context of a semantically closely related English distractor verb. The three-way interaction between version of the experiment (CV and nominal versions), linguistic unit (nominal and CV linguistic units), and relation (semantically related and unrelated distractor words) was significant by participants. In both versions, naming latencies were longer in the semantically related nominal linguistic unit compared to the response latencies in the semantically related CV linguistic unit. In both versions, naming latencies were longer in the semantically related nominal linguistic unit compared to response latencies in the semantically unrelated nominal linguistic unit. Both the analysis of the naturalistic data and the results of the experiment revealed that in the case of the production of the nominal constituent of BCVs, a verb from the other language may compete with a noun from the base language, suggesting that grammatical category does not necessarily provide a constraint on lexical access during the production of the nominal constituent of BCVs. There was a minimal context in condition 2 (the nominal linguistic unit) in which the nominal constituent was produced in the presence of its corresponding light verb. The results suggest that generating words within a context may not guarantee that the effect of grammatical class becomes available. A model is proposed in order to characterize the processes involved in the production of BCVs. Implications for models of bilingual language production are discussed.

Textos y contextos en narraciones orales de migrantes provincianos

La tesis se centra en el estudio de las narraciones orales de migrantes provincianos, afincados en el conurbano platense, desde 1940. Las narraciones orales se denominan, en esta tesis, de retroalimentación ya que narradores y receptores recrean su origen, sus estrategias de reinserción en una nueva comunidad y de supervivencia de sus tradiciones. Estos textos han sido considerados de acuerdo con su problemática genérica (Bajtin; 1979) como narraciones de ficción (cuentos, chistes, fábulas) y de no-ficción (crónicas personales, anécdotas) y, asimismo, observar procesos de entextualización, cuando una misma narración presenta caracteres de ambas clasificaciones. De este modo, cada texto delimita su género en la situación de narración (Bauman y Briggs: 2003) Dichas narraciones deben ser analizadas por sus contextos de enunciación (Bausinger: 1988, 8-28). Los contextos de enunciación, según Hermann Bausinger, son textual, la conversación en sí misma, situacional, las circunstancias de emisores y receptores, social, del grupo de narración, de su grupo de pertenencia y de los grupos con los que interactúa, y societal, en cuanto a las relaciones con la sociedad mayoritaria son fundamentales al punto de que dos versiones de una misma narración se analizan de acuerdo con contextos de enunciación diferentes, con significaciones sociales disímiles. Dentro de los contextos de enunciación, la tesis propone el análisis del contexto ideológico (Coto: 2008), como signo de la intersubjetividad entre narradores y receptores. El contexto ideológico se analiza a partir de la selección de lexemas relevantes con sus definiciones contextuales, para constituir redes de enunciados, que revelan la ideología de narradores y receptores. La tesis propone establecer una matriz ideológica individual y grupal, observando los lexemas recurrentes en versiones de una misma narración, sus adiciones, supresiones y cambios de significación. Además, los textos puede compararse de acuerdo con sus relaciones intratextuales, intertextuales y extratextuales, en el marco de la genética textual (Palleiro: 2004). Finalmente, la tesis propone una metodología de análisis de las narrativas orales, en el marco de la cultura popular, tradicional y folklórica, con la observación de estrategias narrativas y macrorreglas (Van Dijk: 1983), estilo y (Kerbrat-Orecchioni: 1983) y representatividad sociolingüística. (Van Dijk: 1999 y Magariños: 1993). Estas consideraciones prueban la importancia de esta tesis para los intelectuales dedicados al análisis del discurso y a la interpretación de discursos sociales de grupos minoritarios, es decir, docentes, narradores orales, sociólogos y antropólogos. Asimismo, puede ser muy útil para animadores culturales y comunicadores sociales. La tesis postula continuar estos estudios, observando las relaciones entre narrativas de ficción y de no ficción, como el rumor, la leyenda urbana y la crónica periodística

La producción discursiva en la traducción de textos pragmáticos francés/castellano : Estudio traductológico a través de los enunciados elípticos con anomalías

Esta tesis doctoral se inscribe dentro de la Traductología, interdisciplina que estudia tanto los procesos implicados en el complejo fenómeno de la traducción como los productos discursivos en la lengua hacia la cual se traduce. Su objetivo general consiste en contribuir a la investigación sobre el macroproceso de traducción en el par de lenguas francés/español, y en especial sobre la producción discursiva puesto que la literatura especializada coincide en destacar que ésta es la fase menos conocida [Lederer, 2005, 126; Toury, 2004, 244, 245]. Nuestro trabajo explora la producción discursiva, limitándola a traducciones absolutas [Gouadec, 1989: 21-30] de textos pragmáticos [Delisle, 1984: 22], cuya función esencial es el pasaje integral de la información. Dentro de dos corpora del campo de la Bioética constituidos por textos originales en francés y sus traducciones al castellano, hemos considerado como hipótesis general que los productos discursivos resultantes de la traducción absoluta de textos pragmáticos francés/castellano, presentan transferencias sintáctico-discursivas gobernadas por el universal de interferencia. Es decir que el planteo rector es que la memoria lingüístico-discursiva en la fase de reexpresión está atravesada por el mecanismo de interferencia. Las hipótesis específicas que se desgranan de la principal indican que la producción discursiva resultante de la traducción de textos pragmáticos francés/castellano exhibe enunciados elípticos anómalos gobernados por el universal de interferencia del discurso de partida [francés] o del sistema de la lengua materna del traductor [castellano]. Nuestra investigación parte entonces de la lectura del texto traducido [TT] y lo compara con el texto original [TO]; esta comparación es parcial puesto que indaga sobre las anomalías de producción; es indirecta pues observa la relación cohesión-coherencia-sentido en el discurso de llegada a través de las anomalías, especialmente de los enunciados elípticos; por último, analiza las anomalías dentro de la teoría de la interferencia y de la teoría de la elipsis [Toury, 2004: 121-124]. Sobre estas bases, hemos generado un instrumento que estudia los binomios textuales seleccionados según las siguientes aproximaciones: la sintaxis de la lengua meta [tipo de elipsis, elemento elidido, construcción de la elipsis, recuperabilidad]; la sintaxis del discurso meta [cohesión-coherencia], la comparación del binomio TT-TO [análisis de la producción del segmento problema en TO; el análisis de la producción del segmento solución en TT; posible extensión de las consecuencias de la anomalía microestructural; verificación del principio traducir toda la información]; los mecanismos de producción [elevación de la frecuencia de uso de recursos o elementos; control lingüístico de la lengua-cultura meta; control lingüístico-discursivo]; el resultado [visibilidad de interferencia; fenómeno sintáctico visible; alcance discursivo; producción palimpséstica; entropía informativa]. La elaboración de este andamiaje analítico aplicado a nuestros corpora nos ha permitido avanzar en el conocimiento de los mecanismos que participan en la producción discursiva en traducción y creemos que puede aplicarse, con las modificaciones de cada caso, para la descripción y quizás explicación de otros factores lingüístico-discursivos presentes en los textos traducidos

Un cuerpo poético para Marosa Di Giorgio

El trabajo intenta dar cuenta de la poesía de Marosa Di Giorgio como escritura que sigue procesos corporales de acrecentamiento, deformación y mutación, tanto en sus textos propiamente "escritos" como en su realización vocalizada (grabaciones) y su puesta en escena (erformances)

Textos y contextos en narraciones orales de migrantes provincianos

La tesis se centra en el estudio de las narraciones orales de migrantes provincianos, afincados en el conurbano platense, desde 1940. Las narraciones orales se denominan, en esta tesis, de retroalimentación ya que narradores y receptores recrean su origen, sus estrategias de reinserción en una nueva comunidad y de supervivencia de sus tradiciones. Estos textos han sido considerados de acuerdo con su problemática genérica (Bajtin; 1979) como narraciones de ficción (cuentos, chistes, fábulas) y de no-ficción (crónicas personales, anécdotas) y, asimismo, observar procesos de entextualización, cuando una misma narración presenta caracteres de ambas clasificaciones. De este modo, cada texto delimita su género en la situación de narración (Bauman y Briggs: 2003) Dichas narraciones deben ser analizadas por sus contextos de enunciación (Bausinger: 1988, 8-28). Los contextos de enunciación, según Hermann Bausinger, son textual, la conversación en sí misma, situacional, las circunstancias de emisores y receptores, social, del grupo de narración, de su grupo de pertenencia y de los grupos con los que interactúa, y societal, en cuanto a las relaciones con la sociedad mayoritaria son fundamentales al punto de que dos versiones de una misma narración se analizan de acuerdo con contextos de enunciación diferentes, con significaciones sociales disímiles. Dentro de los contextos de enunciación, la tesis propone el análisis del contexto ideológico (Coto: 2008), como signo de la intersubjetividad entre narradores y receptores. El contexto ideológico se analiza a partir de la selección de lexemas relevantes con sus definiciones contextuales, para constituir redes de enunciados, que revelan la ideología de narradores y receptores. La tesis propone establecer una matriz ideológica individual y grupal, observando los lexemas recurrentes en versiones de una misma narración, sus adiciones, supresiones y cambios de significación. Además, los textos puede compararse de acuerdo con sus relaciones intratextuales, intertextuales y extratextuales, en el marco de la genética textual (Palleiro: 2004). Finalmente, la tesis propone una metodología de análisis de las narrativas orales, en el marco de la cultura popular, tradicional y folklórica, con la observación de estrategias narrativas y macrorreglas (Van Dijk: 1983), estilo y (Kerbrat-Orecchioni: 1983) y representatividad sociolingüística. (Van Dijk: 1999 y Magariños: 1993). Estas consideraciones prueban la importancia de esta tesis para los intelectuales dedicados al análisis del discurso y a la interpretación de discursos sociales de grupos minoritarios, es decir, docentes, narradores orales, sociólogos y antropólogos. Asimismo, puede ser muy útil para animadores culturales y comunicadores sociales. La tesis postula continuar estos estudios, observando las relaciones entre narrativas de ficción y de no ficción, como el rumor, la leyenda urbana y la crónica periodística

La producción discursiva en la traducción de textos pragmáticos francés/castellano : Estudio traductológico a través de los enunciados elípticos con anomalías

Esta tesis doctoral se inscribe dentro de la Traductología, interdisciplina que estudia tanto los procesos implicados en el complejo fenómeno de la traducción como los productos discursivos en la lengua hacia la cual se traduce. Su objetivo general consiste en contribuir a la investigación sobre el macroproceso de traducción en el par de lenguas francés/español, y en especial sobre la producción discursiva puesto que la literatura especializada coincide en destacar que ésta es la fase menos conocida [Lederer, 2005, 126; Toury, 2004, 244, 245]. Nuestro trabajo explora la producción discursiva, limitándola a traducciones absolutas [Gouadec, 1989: 21-30] de textos pragmáticos [Delisle, 1984: 22], cuya función esencial es el pasaje integral de la información. Dentro de dos corpora del campo de la Bioética constituidos por textos originales en francés y sus traducciones al castellano, hemos considerado como hipótesis general que los productos discursivos resultantes de la traducción absoluta de textos pragmáticos francés/castellano, presentan transferencias sintáctico-discursivas gobernadas por el universal de interferencia. Es decir que el planteo rector es que la memoria lingüístico-discursiva en la fase de reexpresión está atravesada por el mecanismo de interferencia. Las hipótesis específicas que se desgranan de la principal indican que la producción discursiva resultante de la traducción de textos pragmáticos francés/castellano exhibe enunciados elípticos anómalos gobernados por el universal de interferencia del discurso de partida [francés] o del sistema de la lengua materna del traductor [castellano]. Nuestra investigación parte entonces de la lectura del texto traducido [TT] y lo compara con el texto original [TO]; esta comparación es parcial puesto que indaga sobre las anomalías de producción; es indirecta pues observa la relación cohesión-coherencia-sentido en el discurso de llegada a través de las anomalías, especialmente de los enunciados elípticos; por último, analiza las anomalías dentro de la teoría de la interferencia y de la teoría de la elipsis [Toury, 2004: 121-124]. Sobre estas bases, hemos generado un instrumento que estudia los binomios textuales seleccionados según las siguientes aproximaciones: la sintaxis de la lengua meta [tipo de elipsis, elemento elidido, construcción de la elipsis, recuperabilidad]; la sintaxis del discurso meta [cohesión-coherencia], la comparación del binomio TT-TO [análisis de la producción del segmento problema en TO; el análisis de la producción del segmento solución en TT; posible extensión de las consecuencias de la anomalía microestructural; verificación del principio traducir toda la información]; los mecanismos de producción [elevación de la frecuencia de uso de recursos o elementos; control lingüístico de la lengua-cultura meta; control lingüístico-discursivo]; el resultado [visibilidad de interferencia; fenómeno sintáctico visible; alcance discursivo; producción palimpséstica; entropía informativa]. La elaboración de este andamiaje analítico aplicado a nuestros corpora nos ha permitido avanzar en el conocimiento de los mecanismos que participan en la producción discursiva en traducción y creemos que puede aplicarse, con las modificaciones de cada caso, para la descripción y quizás explicación de otros factores lingüístico-discursivos presentes en los textos traducidos