Linguistic and cognitive motivations for the typological primacy model of third language (L3) transfer: considering the role of timing of acquisition and proficiency in the previous languages

This article elucidates the Typological Primacy Model (TPM; Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2013) for the initial stages of adult third language (L3) morphosyntactic transfer, addressing questions that stem from the model and its application. The TPM maintains that structural proximity between the L3 and the L1 and/or the L2 determines L3 transfer. In addition to demonstrating empirical support for the TPM, this article articulates a proposal for how the mind unconsciously determines typological (structural) proximity based on linguistic cues from the L3 input stream used by the parser early on to determine holistic transfer of one previous (the L1 or the L2) system. This articulated version of the TPM is motivated by argumentation appealing to cognitive and linguistic factors. Finally, in line with the general tenets of the TPM, I ponder if and why L3 transfer might obtain differently depending on the type of bilingual (e.g. early vs. late) and proficiency level of bilingualism involved in the L3 process.

Association learning for emotional harbinger cues: When do previous emotional associations impair and when do they facilitate subsequent learning of new associations?

Neutral cues that predict emotional events (emotional harbingers) acquire emotional properties and attract attention. Given the importance of emotional harbingers for future survival, it is desirable to flexibly learn new facts about emotional harbingers when needed. However, recent research revealed that it is harder to learn new associations for emotional harbingers than cues that predict non-emotional events (neutral harbingers). In the current study, we addressed whether this impaired association learning for emotional harbingers is altered by one’s awareness of the contingencies between cues and emotional outcomes. Across 3 studies, we found that one’s awareness of the contingencies determines subsequent association learning of emotional harbingers. Emotional harbingers produced worse association learning than neutral harbingers when people were not aware of the contingencies between cues and emotional outcomes, but produced better association learning when people were aware of the contingencies. These results suggest that emotional harbingers do not always suffer from impaired association learning and can show facilitated learning depending on one’s contingency awareness.

Linguistic and cognitive motivations for the typological primacy model of third language (L3) transfer: timing of acquisition and proficiency considered

This article elucidates the Typological Primacy Model (TPM; Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2013) for the initial stages of adult third language (L3) morphosyntactic transfer, addressing questions that stem from the model and its application. The TPM maintains that structural proximity between the L3 and the L1 and/or the L2 determines L3 transfer. In addition to demonstrating empirical support for the TPM, this article articulates a proposal for how the mind unconsciously determines typological (structural) proximity based on linguistic cues from the L3 input stream used by the parser early on to determine holistic transfer of one previous (the L1 or the L2) system. This articulated version of the TPM is motivated by argumentation appealing to cognitive and linguistic factors. Finally, in line with the general tenets of the TPM, I ponder if and why L3 transfer might obtain differently depending on the type of bilingual (e.g. early vs. late) and proficiency level of bilingualism involved in the L3 process.

Learning of shared attention in sociable robotics

Sociable robots are embodied agents that are part of a heterogeneous society of robots and humans. They Should be able to recognize human beings and each other, and to engage in social, interactions. The use of a robotic architecture may strongly reduce the time and effort required to construct a sociable robot. Such architecture must have structures and mechanisms to allow social interaction. behavior control and learning from environment. Learning processes described oil Science of Behavior Analysis may lead to the development of promising methods and Structures for constructing robots able to behave socially and learn through interactions from the environment by a process of contingency learning. In this paper, we present a robotic architecture inspired from Behavior Analysis. Methods and structures of the proposed architecture, including a hybrid knowledge representation. are presented and discussed. The architecture has been evaluated in the context of a nontrivial real problem: the learning of the shared attention, employing an interactive robotic head. The learning capabilities of this architecture have been analyzed by observing the robot interacting with the human and the environment. The obtained results show that the robotic architecture is able to produce appropriate behavior and to learn from social interaction. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Optimal taxation with gradual learning of types

An important feature of life-cycle models is the presence of uncertainty regarding one’s labor income. Yet this issue, long recognized in different areas, has not received enough attention in the optimal taxation literature. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap. We write a simple 3 period model where agents gradually learn their productivities. In a framework akin to Mirrlees’ (1971) static one, we derive properties of optimal tax schedules and show that: i) if preferences are (weakly) separable, uniform taxation of goods is optimal, ii) if they are (strongly) separable capital income is to rate than others forms of investiment.

A case study approach to classroom experiential learning of problem structuring methods

The proposed research aims at consolidating two years of practical experience in developing a classroom experiential learning pedagogic approach for the problem structuring methods (PSMs) of operational research. The results will be prepared as papers to be submitted, respectively, to the Brazilian ISSS-sponsored system theory conference in São Paulo, and to JORS. These two papers follow the submission (in 2004) of one related paper to JORS which is about to be resubmitted following certain revisions. This first paper draws from the PSM and experiential learning literatures in order to introduce a basic foundation upon which a pedagogic framework for experiential learning of PSMs may be built. It forms, in other words, an integral part of my research in this area. By September, the area of pedagogic approaches to PSM learning will have received its first official attention - at the UK OR Society conference. My research and paper production during July-December, therefore, coincide with an important time in this area, enabling me to form part of the small cohort of published researchers creating the foundations upon which future pedagogic research will build. On the institutional level, such pioneering work also raises the national and international profile of FGVEAESP, making it a reference for future researchers in this area.

A prática docente de Myriam Coeli na década de 1960

The present work has as objective to reconstitute the biographical profile and pedagogical practices of the teacher Myriam Coeli de Araújo Dantas da Silveira, in the Professionalizing scholl of the Federal Net of the Rio Grande do Norte, in the 60 s years. The choice of the period is justified by being this the time of important changes in the Education, as an example we have the implementation of the Law of Lines of direction and Bases of the National Education, the 4.024/1961. This teacher contributed for the formation of the potiguar s society scholar, acting in the press, the journalism and the teaching, activity that I analyzed in this study. How the pedagogical practices of her had happened in the 60 s years? This question guided the research and, in the search to answer it I used as source the Public Archive of the Rio grande do Norte, the Historical and Geographic Institute of the Rio grande do Norte, the periodicals of the time, photographs, sketch books of Myriam Coeli and interviews with familiar, former-pupils and contemporaries of this master. I verified that her performance always was based in the educational changes lived deeply for her, carrying through a series of activities in the school as: elaboration of the annual program of Portuguese Language, organization of literary competitions and an practice based on the effective norms without leaving to unite respect and the understanding for the pupils. Of this form, the analysis is not summarized only to the practices of a teacher, but the configuration, in part, of the Rio Grande do Norte educational history in a determined period, the 60 s years

Política de formação continuada de professores :cenários, diretrizes e práticas

Politics of Continued Formation of Tachers: settings, directives and pratices is constituted in a study from politics of continued formation of teachers materialized for the actual government. It has for purpose to analyse aspects of experience of continued formation in techers service that work at initial levels of fundamental education desenvolved in Natal through Program Management of School Learning (GESTAR) at the period from 2002 to 2005. The empiric field of study privileged the experience of formation in service developed by GESTAR in a school located at the procedures that materialized the search, we can point out: bibliographic review of literature that analyses the new demands for education in view of occurred transformations at the word setting and studies about the thematic continued formation of teachers; documentary search about the politics of continue formation of teachers and the GESTAR program from municipal net of study of Natal, four teachers and pedagogic coordinater of searched school. The study established a positive evaluation by the teachers that took part at the program in Natal and they pointed out that politics strategy of continued formation in service made possible the study of contents of Portuguese Language and Mathernatics associated to a new form for working them in the classroom, understanding of certain contents that they had difficulties before, understanding that activitus realized should have meaning for the student, favouring the understanding of subject studied. Among some limits noticed, we can point out: absence of reading of the material by the teachers, difficulty of the teachers in reconcile the diary activities wiht the individual studies at distance, no realization of a systematic following of the pedagogic practical of teachers use the exam how the only instrument of evaluation used by the teachers and difficulties of them in going on with the pedagogic proposal of GESTAR after the end of this program

Um estudo sobre o ensino-aprendizagem das demonstrações matemáticas

Demonstrations are fundamental instruments for Mathematics and, as such, are frequently used by mathematicians, math teachers and students. In fact, demonstrations are part of every Mathematics teaching environment, because Mathematics considers something true when it can be demonstrated. This is in contrast to other fields of knowledge that employ observation and experimentation to validate truth. This dissertation presents a study of the teaching and learning of demonstrations in Mathematics, describing a Teaching Module applied in a course on the Theory of Numbers offered by the Mathematics Department of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte for mathematics majors. The objective of the dissertation was to propose and test a Teaching Module that can serve as a model for teaching demonstrations. The Teaching Module consisted of the following five steps: the application of a survey to determine the students‟ profiles and their previous knowledge of mathematical language and techniques of demonstration; the analysis of a series of dialogues containing arguments in everyday language; the investigation and analysis of the structure of some important techniques of demonstration; a written assessment; and, finally, an interview to further verify the principal results of the Teaching Module. The analysis of the data obtained though the classroom activities, written assessments and interviews led to the conclusion that there was a significant amount of assimilation of the issue at the level of relational understanding, (SKEMP, 1980). These instruments verified that the students attained considerable improvement in their use of mathematical language and of the techniques of demonstration presented. Thus, the evidence supports the conclusion that the proposed Teaching Module is an effective means for the teaching/learning of mathematical demonstration and, as such, provides a methodological guide which may lay the foundations for a new approach to this important subject

Conectores adversativos na fala do natalense: uma análise funcionalista com implicações para o ensino

This work analyzes the behavior of the adversative connectors in the speech of the user of Natal, with views to suggest implications for the grammar teaching in the high school Portuguese languages classes. It is an investigation that sits on the functionalist paradigm, specifically in the protected ideas for Givón. For so much, data of situations of speech from the corpus Discurso e gramática lingual falada e escrita da cidade do Natal (FURTADO DA CUNHA, 1998). The sample embraces a total of forty interviews, of which the occurrences are cut out whose registrations mark the existence of adversatives constructions in narratives of personal experience and in the opinion reports, modality of oral language, of the mentioned database. The work revisits authors of the grammar, Cunha (1986); Bechara (2006); Perini (2006), among others; authors that contemplate referring approaches to the use of opposition connectors as: Barreto (1999); Tavares (2003); Longhin (2003); Silva (2005); Rocha (2006); Neves (2000, 2006). The results of the panoramic analysis reveal as adversity connectors in use for the habitant of Natal, for recurrence order, the mas, e, aí, agora, só que, no entanto and já. Analyzed the results, the same ones are compared with the treatment presented by the traditional grammar, with application of functional iconicity principle, markdness principle and the prototype of the category is chosen. In the differentiated analysis of the item " agora ", structural profile of the constructions is analyzed that involve the item, semantic profile, times, manners and aspects of the verbs that they wrap up in the constructions in reference, trajectory of grammaticalization and comparison with the prototype of the category. Finally, they are suggested implications of whole the study for the teaching of Portuguese language, in the high school classes

Linguagem e argumentação na produção escrita de vestibulandos

In this study, we analyzed the argumentative processes of written texts produced by UERN (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte) vestibulandos : (students who apply for University Entrance Examinations in Brazil). It has as its corpus twenty compositions by such students. These compositions, collected in UFRN COMPERVE (Permanent Commission of vestibular examinations) and written in 2005 examination, were selected in a random way. The theoretical support is based on Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (1999; 2002), Reboul (2004), Bakhtin (1992), Faraco (2003), Platão e Fiorim (2003) e Geraldi (1997), and other scholars. The work aimed to investigate how vestibulandos make use of argumentative techniques in order to construct their arguments in the vestibular examination. In the analysis of the corpus we considered that the used argumentative techniques, the relationship with the thesis, the sense effects students wanted to produce and the type of the required speech. It showed that in the, discourse construction of argumentative texts, students made use, with more frequency, of the following argumentative techniques: pragmatic arguments, arguments of the definition, comparison arguments, division arguments, example arguments, argument of the model and authority arguments as means to support their theses. However it was not carried out in a conventional way, reason why it leads us to believe that schools, as part of human activity, responsible for education and for the insert of learners in the literate world, have a fundamental role concerning the offer of conditions, so that, the teaching of Portuguese Language leads students to a systematic and explicit preparation of the knowledge, regarding the social and functions of the language, as well as of the strategies of the construction of argumentative texts. This can lead learners to develop communicative competence and to feel more confident when working with text production

Referenciação anafórica :as anáforas não-correfereciais no livro didático da língua portuguesa

On recent years, it has been observed an increasing interest on referentiation processes, which involves an important field of Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis studies. The existence of a significant number of international and national publications which focus on this perspective corroborate this finding. Given the textbook importance as a teaching instrument, and the relevance of the referentiation processes to text production and comprehension, we realize that the study of these two topics articulation is taken as a relevant research theme, with consequences to the improvement of Portuguese Language teaching. Taking this into consideration, we intend to analyze the non-coreference anaphors in texts of Portuguese Language textbooks from fifth to eighth grades, adopted in many schools of Pau dos Ferros RN, considering the frequency, genre, kind of anaphor and manifestation form. This study is classified as a documental and qualitative research. We have found out that the indirect anaphor was used in more than a half of the corpus. We have found out, as well, that the literary and press genres do not favor the use of labeling and metadiscursive anaphors. On the other hand, concerning the indirect anaphor, it is clear its abundant use in the literary genre. In what concerns the manifestation forms, we have verified that on labeling and metadiscursive anaphors it is significant the predominance of demonstrative pronouns working as determiners. On the indirect anaphor, we have verified that most of the occurrences do not present a determiner, and for the ones which present it, the majority occurs under the form of definite and indefinite articles. We believe that this work can contribute to the activities which involve questions related to text production and comprehension, since the referentiation processes are intimately related to them