CPLP : a cultura como principal factor de coesão

CPLP – A Cultura Como Principal Factor de Coesão é uma dissertação que analisa a história da Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP), no sentido de descobrir qual será o elemento mais preponderante na sua unidade e coesão. Incentivar a difusão da língua portuguesa, da criação intelectual e artística, e contribuir para o reforço da solidariedade e fraternidade entre todos os povos que têm essa língua como um dos fundamentos da sua identidade específica são os seus objectivos. Investigou-se o grau e o modo do cumprimento desses propósitos. Da comparação dos dados ressaltou uma conclusão inequívoca: a cultura é o elo mais forte na coesão da CPLP, embora não se vislumbrem estratégias assumidas com rigor quer da política da língua portuguesa, quer da política das culturas lusófonas. Confirmou-se que a CPLP nasceu como Comunidade de língua e culturas e não como comunidade económica. Tentou-se caracterizar a «identidade» lusófona. Para tal, percorreu-se a história da expansão, os processos de colonização, as características de miscigenação física e intercultural, enquanto se chamavam as mais recentes teorias sociológicas para uma caracterização do conceito de cultura «lusófona»: «ecológica de saberes», «de fronteira», «intercultural» e «tradutora de culturas». São apontadas melhorias estratégicas.

A OIT, Portugal e a Lusofonia

Sumaria este artigo o contexto do aparecimento da OIT em 1919, descreve a estrutura central e deconcentrad da Organização, realça o seu modo de funcionamento tripartido e os principais traços da sua atividade ao longo de mais de noventa anos de existência. Sistematiza as relações de Portugal com a OIT, relevando o período do Estado Novo em que País froi criticado por ausência de liberdade sindical e o período posterior à Revolução de 1974. As relações intensidicaramse no quadro democrático, consuzindo à abertura de um escritório da OIT m Lisboa que, em articulação com a CPLP, promove o papel da língua portuguesa no seio da Organização e na cooperação técnica com os oito países lusófonos espalhados pelos continentes com cerca de 250 milhões de falantes.

Como os nossos filhos aprendem a falar? : percurso de aquisição da Língua Portuguesa falada no Brasil

Esta investigação teve como objetivo descrever o percurso de aquisição da Língua Portuguesa falada no Brasil. Como base teórica, adotamos um referencial múltiplo, com abordagem das teorias behaviorista, inatista, cognitivista piagetiana, sócio-interacionista e emergentista, no intuito de buscar em cada uma delas as contribuições que nos auxiliassem no estudo da aquisição da linguagem. Trata-se de um estudo longitudinal em que registramos quinzenalmente em áudio o desenvolvimento linguístico de duas crianças brasileiras, desde a idade de 1;00 até 5;00. Os dados obtidos receberam transcrição fonética e/ou ortográfica e foram analisados nos aspectos fonológico, morfológico e sintático. Na área da fonologia, apresentamos o percurso de aquisição dos fonemas, os fonemas de difícil pronunciação e as estratégias de reparo usadas pelas crianças. Na morfologia, descrevemos o processo de aprendizagem dos morfemas flexivos nominais e verbais. Na sintaxe, apresentamos o caminho percorrido pelas crianças na construção das orações simples e dos diversos tipos de orações compostas. De modo geral, observamos um processo de aprendizagem lenta e gradual, em que provavelmente interatuam fatores de ordem biológica, cognitiva, social e linguística, marcado por elevações e regressões indicativas de uma auto-regulação do sistema-que-aprende.

As relações lusófonas e o Acordo Ortográfico

No contexto internacional é de considerar que, no que tange a uma maior interacção entre os povos, é necessário ter em conta que a propagação da língua é factor-chave. A língua faz com que os povos se entendam e construam conhecimentos, pois, no contacto de culturas, o pensar, o agir, o falar e o conviver, ao mesmo tempo que diferenciam, também servem para unir os mais distintos povos, sendo que não se deve recear essas diferenças ou diversidades culturais porque não representam uma ameaça. No que concerne à língua, a utilização de um idioma comum – o português – deve ser encarada como um elo de comunicação entre os vários países e povos lusófonos, a exemplo daquilo que se passa com o inglês e o francês nas respectivas comunidades. A língua portuguesa oferece um vasto leque de possibilidades, ou seja, possui um potencial muito forte e ligado a vários sectores, desde o económico, o social, o cultural e jurídico até ao técnico-científico. Porém, para que a língua portuguesa se venha a universalizar, acredita-se que seja necessária uma maior vontade política por parte dos governantes.

Does experience in creative art influence the written self-expression of the deaf child?

This paper discusses whether participation in creative art affects the hearing impaired child's self expression in written language.

The importance of direct language instruction for hearing impaired children

This paper discusses the importance of direct and intense language instruction for hearing impaired children in developing language and communication skills. The author presents a variety of activities for teacher use.

The relationship between phonological awareness and word reading accuracy in Oriya and English: A Study of Oriya-speaking fifth-graders

This study investigated the relationships between phonological awareness and reading in Oriya and English. Oriya is the official language of Orissa, an eastern state of India. The writing system is an alphasyllabary. Ninety-nine fifth grade children (mean age 9 years 7 months) were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, word reading and pseudo-word reading in both languages. Forty-eight of the children attended Oriya-medium schools where they received literacy instruction in Oriya from grade 1 and learned English from grade 2. Fifty-one children attended English-medium schools where they received literacy instruction in English from grade 1 and in Oriya from grade 2. The results showed that phonological awareness in Oriya contributed significantly to reading Oriya and English words and pseudo-words for the children in the Oriya-medium schools. However, it only contributed to Oriya pseudo-word reading and English word reading for children in the English-medium schools. Phonological awareness in English contributed to English word and pseudo-word reading for both groups. Further analyses investigated the contribution of awareness of large phonological units (syllable, onsets and rimes) and small phonological units (phonemes) to reading in each language. The data suggest that cross-language transfer and facilitation of phonological awareness to word reading is not symmetrical across languages and may depend both on the characteristics of the different orthographies of the languages being learned and whether the first literacy language is also the first spoken language.

Do children with Williams syndrome really have good vocabulary knowledge? Methods for comparing cognitive and linguistic abilities in developmental disorders

The comparison of cognitive and linguistic skills in individuals with developmental disorders is fraught with methodological and psychometric difficulties. In this paper, we illustrate some of these issues by comparing the receptive vocabulary knowledge and non-verbal reasoning abilities of 41 children with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder in which language abilities are often claimed to be relatively strong. Data from this group were compared with data from typically developing children, children with Down syndrome, and children with non-specific learning difficulties using a number of approaches including comparison of age-equivalent scores, matching, analysis of covariance, and regression-based standardization. Across these analyses children with Williams syndrome consistently demonstrated relatively good receptive vocabulary knowledge, although this effect appeared strongest in the oldest children.

To 'be', and not to 'have': auxiliary selection in unaccusative verbs in Italian

This paper investigates the characteristics of unaccusative verbs in Italian with respect to the consistency with which these verbs select the auxiliaries ‘be’ (essere) and ‘have’ (avere) in compound tense forms. The study builds on the gradient approach to split intransitivity (Sorace 2000) by exploring the behaviour of 29 intransitive Italian verbs with respect to their core-peripheral features: auxiliary selection acceptability ratings and associated variance measures. Although there is clear support for the gradient approach in relation to the general order of semantic categories along the unaccusativity gradient, the results reveal that the ordering of subclasses within the Change group conflict with that currently proposed in the literature. In addition, the findings demonstrate the aspectual and lexical semantic characteristics of internally-caused change-of-state verbs in Italian require further investigation before their auxiliary selection behaviour can be properly understood. Furthermore, contrary to the gradient account, Existence verbs, the most stative and therefore the most peripheral subclass in the unaccusativity hierarchy, exhibit behaviour more characteristic of core unaccusative verbs. This study examines a wider range of semantic subclasses of unaccusative verbs than has hitherto been reported and identifies the core-peripheral boundary for Italian.1

L1 transfer in the acquisition of manner and path in Spanish by native speakers of English

In this article the authors argue that L1 transfer from English is not only important in the early stages of L2 acquisition of Spanish, but remains influential in later stages if there is not enough positive evidence for the learners to progress in their development (Lefebvre, White, & Jourdan, 2006). The findings are based on analyses of path and manner of movement in stories told by British students of Spanish (N = 68) of three different proficiency levels. Verbs that conflate motion and path, on the one hand, are mastered early, possibly because the existence of Latinate path verbs, such as enter and ascend in English, facilitate their early acquisition by British learners of Spanish. Contrary to the findings of Cadierno (2004) and Cadierno and Ruiz (2006), the encoding of manner, in particular in boundary crossing contexts, seems to pose enormous difficulties, even among students who had been abroad on a placement in a Spanish-speaking country prior to the data collection. An analysis of the frequency of manner verbs in Spanish corpora shows that one of the key reasons why students struggle with manner is that manner verbs are so infrequent in Spanish. The authors claim that scarce positive evidence in the language exposed to and little or no negative evidence are responsible for the long-lasting effect of transfer on the expression of manner.

It was never good world sence minister must have wyves”: clerical celibacy, clerical marriage, and anticlericalism in Reformation England

The impact of the Reformation was felt strongly in the nature and character of the priesthood, and in the function and reputation of the priest. A shift in the understanding of the priesthood was one of the most tangible manifestations of doctrinal change, evident in the physical arrangement of the church, in the language of the liturgy, and in the relaxation of the discipline of celibacy, which had for centuries bound priests in the Latin tradition to a life of perpetual continence. Clerical celibacy, and accusations of clerical incontinence, featured prominently in evangelical criticisms of the Catholic church and priesthood, which made a good deal of polemical capital out of the perceived relationship of the priest and the efficacy of his sacred function. Citing St Paul, Protestant polemicists presented clerical marriage as the only, and appropriate remedy, for priestly immorality. But did the advent of a married priesthood create more problems than it solved? The polemical certainties that informed evangelical writing on sacerdotal celibacy did not guarantee the immediate acceptance of a married priesthood, and the vocabulary that had been used to denounce clergy who failed in their obligation to celibacy was all too readily turned against the married clergy. The anti-clerical lexicon, and its usage, remained remarkably static despite the substantial doctrinal and practical challenges posed to the traditional model of priesthood by the Protestant Reformation.