Using parent report to assess early lexical production in children exposed to more than one language

Limited expressive vocabulary skills in young children are considered to be the first warning signs of a potential Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (Ellis & Thal, 2008). In bilingual language learning environments, the expressive vocabulary size in each of the child’s developing languages is usually smaller compared to the number of words produced by monolingual peers (e.g. De Houwer, 2009). Nonetheless, evidence shows children’s total productive lexicon size across both languages to be comparable to monolingual peers’ vocabularies (e.g. Pearson et al., 1993; Pearson & Fernandez, 1994). Since there is limited knowledge as to which level of bilingual vocabulary size should be considered as a risk factor for SLI, the effects of bilingualism and language-learning difficulties on early lexical production are often confounded. The compilation of profiles for early vocabulary production in children exposed to more than one language, and their comparison across language pairs, should enable more accurate identification of vocabulary delays that signal a risk for SLI in bilingual populations. These considerations prompted the design of a methodology for assessing early expressive vocabulary in children exposed to more than one language, which is described in the present chapter. The implementation of this methodological framework is then outlined by presenting the design of a study that measured the productive lexicons of children aged 24-36 months who were exposed to different language pairs, namely Maltese and English, Irish and English, Polish and English, French and Portuguese, Turkish and German as well as English and Hebrew. These studies were designed and coordinated in COST Action IS0804 Working Group 3 (WG3) and will be described in detail in a series of subsequent publications. Expressive vocabulary size was measured through parental report, by employing the vocabulary checklist of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (CDI: WS) (Fenson et al., 1993, 2007) and its adaptations to the participants’ languages. Here we describe the novelty of the study’s methodological design, which lies in its attempt to harmonize the use of vocabulary checklist adaptations, together with parental questionnaires addressing language exposure and developmental history, across participant groups characterized by different language exposure variables. This chapter outlines the various methodological considerations that paved the way for meaningful cross-linguistic comparison of the participants’ expressive lexicon sizes. In so doing, it hopes to provide a template for and encourage further research directed at establishing a threshold for SLI risk in children exposed to more than one language.

Acoustic characterisation of the tonic syllable in portuguese

A particular problem for the automatic prediction of prosody in speech synthesis is the realisation of accented syllables since these are affected by many parameters and are perceptually very salient. For the Portuguese language, in Europe, a set of comprehensive quantitative characterisation data and rules is totally lacking. The present paper is intended to be a quantitative contribution to the solution of this problem. In this paper, a preliminary modelling of duration, intensity and variation of F0 in the tonic syllable will be presented. The dependencies of the model with the syllable position in the word and the word position in the phrase are also presented.

Exploration of portuguese-bengal cultural heritage throught museological studies

The Portuguese came to Bengal in the early 16th century for trading. Between 1575 and 1600, they established many colonies on the banks of river Ganga, like Chinsura, Hooghly (Porto Pequeno), Satagaon, Gopalpur and Bandel, covering the eastern part of India. During their stay, Portuguese built many churches, schools and charitable institutions. Churches of Augustinians and Jesuits became popular tourist destinations until today. Although by the 18th century, the Portuguese presence had almost disappeared from Bengal with the emergence of British imperialism, the 500 years old (approx.) Portuguese culture is still living in modern Bengal, in the form of tangible and intangible heritage. Traces of the Portuguese impact could be seen in Bengali language, literature, folk-tales, folksongs, cuisines, agriculture, religion, cinema and trade. Some of these are included in the academic curriculum of history at school, college and university levels. In this context, research has been undertaken in the past and is still ongoing in several universities. However, heritage studies under a museological point of view have not yet been initiated at the university level. Though Goa, Panaji, Calicut, Chennai and Nagapattanam were the Portuguese centers for long periods and research has been conducted there along with the establishment of some museums,

Measuring attachment to life in old age: the Portuguese version of the Positive Valuation of Life Scale (Positive VOL)

Purpose This study aims to present the psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the Positive Valuation of Life Scale (Lawton et al. in J Aging Ment Healt 13:3–31, 2001). Method Sample included 207 community-dwelling elders (129 women; MAge = 77.2 years, SD = 7.5). The data collection included the translated and adapted Portuguese version of Positive Valuation of Life Scale, Life Satisfac- tion Index Z, Meaning in Life Questionnaire and Geriatric Depression Scale. Results From exploratory factor analysis, two factors emerged, existential beliefs and perceived control, ex- plaining 49 % of the total variance. Both factors were positively related with meaning in life and life satisfaction and negatively related with depression (p\0.05). The values obtained for internal consistency for the total scale and for each subscale were good (a [ 0.75). Conclusion The Portuguese version of Positive VOL Scale represents a reliable and valid measure to capture the subjective experience of attachment to one’s life. The two-factor structure is an update to Lawton’s previous work and in line with findings obtained in the USA (Dennis et al. in What is valuation of life for frail community-dwelling older adults: factor structure and criterion validity of the VOL, Thomas Jefferson University, Center for Applied Research on Aging and Health Research, 2005) and Japan (Nakagawa et al. in Shinrigaku Kenkyu 84:37–46, 2013). Future research is required to investigate VOL predictors and the potential changes toward the end of the life span.

Is phraseology the third articulation of language? Fresh insights into a theoretical conundrum

Is phraseology the third articulation of language? Fresh insights into a theoretical conundrum Jean-Pierre Colson University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) Although the notion of phraseology is now used across a wide range of linguistic disciplines, its definition and the classification of phraseological units remain a subject of intense debate. It is generally agreed that phraseology implies polylexicality, but this term is problematic as well, because it brings us back to one of the most controversial topics in modern linguistics: the definition of a word. On the other hand, another widely accepted principle of language is the double articulation or duality of patterning (Martinet 1960): the first articulation consists of morphemes and the second of phonemes. The very definition of morphemes, however, also poses several problems, and the situation becomes even more confused if we wish to take phraseology into account. In this contribution, I will take the view that a corpus-based and computational approach to phraseology may shed some new light on this theoretical conundrum. A better understanding of the basic units of meaning is necessary for more efficient language learning and translation, especially in the case of machine translation. Previous research (Colson 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014), Corpas Pastor (2000, 2007, 2008, 2013, 2015), Corpas Pastor & Leiva Rojo (2011), Leiva Rojo (2013), has shown the paramount importance of phraseology for translation. A tentative step towards a coherent explanation of the role of phraseology in language has been proposed by Mejri (2006): it is postulated that a third articulation of language intervenes at the level of words, including simple morphemes, sequences of free and bound morphemes, but also phraseological units. I will present results from experiments with statistical associations of morphemes across several languages, and point out that (mainly) isolating languages such as Chinese are interesting for a better understanding of the interplay between morphemes and phraseological units. Named entities, in particular, are an extreme example of intertwining cultural, statistical and linguistic elements. Other examples show that the many borrowings and influences that characterize European languages tend to give a somewhat blurred vision of the interplay between morphology and phraseology. From a statistical point of view, the cpr-score (Colson 2016) provides a methodology for adapting the automatic extraction of phraseological units to the morphological structure of each language. The results obtained can therefore be used for testing hypotheses about the interaction between morphology, phraseology and culture. Experiments with the cpr-score on the extraction of Chinese phraseological units show that results depend on how the basic units of meaning are defined: a morpheme-based approach yields good results, which corroborates the claim by Beck and Mel'čuk (2011) that the association of morphemes into words may be similar to the association of words into phraseological units. A cross-linguistic experiment carried out for English, French, Spanish and Chinese also reveals that the results are quite compatible with Mejri’s hypothesis (2006) of a third articulation of language. Such findings, if confirmed, also corroborate the notion of statistical semantics in language. To illustrate this point, I will present the PhraseoRobot (Colson 2016), a computational tool for extracting phraseological associations around key words from the media, such as Brexit. The results confirm a previous study on the term globalization (Colson 2016): a significant part of sociolinguistic associations prevailing in the media is related to phraseology in the broad sense, and can therefore be partly extracted by means of statistical scores. References Beck, D. & I. Mel'čuk (2011). Morphological phrasemes and Totonacan verbal morphology. Linguistics 49/1: 175-228. Colson, J.-P. (2011). La traduction spécialisée basée sur les corpus : une expérience dans le domaine informatique. In : Sfar, I. & S. Mejri, La traduction de textes spécialisés : retour sur des lieux communs. Synergies Tunisie n° 2. Gerflint, Agence universitaire de la Francophonie, p. 115-123. Colson, J.-P. (2012). Traduire le figement en langue de spécialité : une expérience de phraséologie informatique. In : Mogorrón Huerta, P. & S. Mejri (dirs.), Lenguas de especialidad, traducción, fijación / Langues spécialisées, figement et traduction. Encuentros Mediterráneos / Rencontres Méditerranéennes, N°4. Universidad de Alicante, p. 159-171. Colson, J.-P. (2013). Pratique traduisante et idiomaticité : l’importance des structures semi-figées. In : Mogorrón Huerta, P., Gallego Hernández, D., Masseau, P. & Tolosa Igualada, M. (eds.), Fraseología, Opacidad y Traduccíon. Studien zur romanischen Sprachwissenschaft und interkulturellen Kommunikation (Herausgegeben von Gerd Wotjak). Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, p. 207-218. Colson, J.-P. (2014). La phraséologie et les corpus dans les recherches traductologiques. Communication lors du colloque international Europhras 2014, Association Européenne de Phraséologie. Université de Paris Sorbonne, 10-12 septembre 2014. Colson, J-P. (2016). Set phrases around globalization : an experiment in corpus-based computational phraseology. In: F. Alonso Almeida, I. Ortega Barrera, E. Quintana Toledo and M. Sánchez Cuervo (eds.), Input a Word, Analyse the World: Selected Approaches to Corpus Linguistics. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, p. 141-152. Corpas Pastor, G. (2000). Acerca de la (in)traducibilidad de la fraseología. In: G. Corpas Pastor (ed.), Las lenguas de Europa: Estudios de fraseología, fraseografía y traducción. Granada: Comares, p. 483-522. Corpas Pastor, G. (2007). Europäismen - von Natur aus phraseologische Äquivalente? Von blauem Blut und sangre azul. In: M. Emsel y J. Cuartero Otal (eds.), Brücken: Übersetzen und interkulturelle Kommunikationen. Festschrift für Gerd Wotjak zum 65. Geburtstag, Fráncfort: Peter Lang, p. 65-77. Corpas Pastor, G. (2008). Investigar con corpus en traducción: los retos de un nuevo paradigma [Studien zur romanische Sprachwissenschaft und interkulturellen Kommunikation, 49], Fráncfort: Peter Lang. Corpas Pastor, G. (2013). Detección, descripción y contraste de las unidades fraseológicas mediante tecnologías lingüísticas. In Olza, I. & R. Elvira Manero (eds.) Fraseopragmática. Berlin: Frank & Timme, p. 335-373. Leiva Rojo, J. (2013). La traducción de unidades fraseológicas (alemán-español/español-alemán) como parámetro para la evaluación y revisión de traducciones. In: Mellado Blanco, C., Buján, P, Iglesias N.M., Losada M.C. & A. Mansilla (eds), La fraseología del alemán y el español: lexicografía y traducción. ELS, Etudes Linguistiques / Linguistische Studien, Band 11. München: Peniope, p. 31-42. Leiva Rojo, J. & G. Corpas Pastor (2011). Placing Italian idioms in a foreign milieu: a case study. In: Pamies Bertrán, A., Luque Nadal, L., Bretana, J. &; M. Pazos (eds), (2011). Multilingual phraseography. Second Language Learning and Translation Applications. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag (Colección: Phraseologie und Parömiologie, 28), p. 289-298. Martinet, A. (1966). Eléments de linguistique générale. Paris: Colin. Mejri, S. (2006). Polylexicalité, monolexicalité et double articulation. Cahiers de Lexicologie 2: 209-221.

Feeding students’ creativity with language arts: a project developed at ESEV (2013-15)

Children live at a time when the rapid turnover of information and the ongoing changes in the technological, social, cultural, political and economic spheres make it more difficult for teachers to prepare lessons that enhance students’ interest and motivation. There is so much to be learnt outside of the classroom’s four walls that traditional methods of teaching may not be the most effective way to teach today’s learners. When it comes to classes of Portuguese language, teachers are faced with the challenge of teaching culture, literature, grammar and skills such as reading, writing and speaking in a way that involves students as active participants, that is, in a way that engages while also instructing. It means that several strategies need to be adopted, from games to the use of new technologies or, among others, an interdisciplinary approach with maths, (social) sciences and arts, for instance. In an attempt to motivate gifted and talented children that were attending elementary school in a small town near Viseu, in Portugal, The School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu was asked to be part of a project in 2013, in a collaborative partnership that proved successful and that was re-enacted in 2015. It is in light of the above that, in this paper, we aim to: a) describe the support that the School of Education provided to these participants, children who were between six and fourteen, by presenting Portuguese language activities that intended to stimulate creative thinking and artistic production; and b) discuss the results of the project, by analysing the students’ productions across verbal and visual modes (ie. script writing and dubbing an excerpt of an animation film, interviews, news reports, drawings, the creation and recitation of poems…). Future activities are on the table, meaning that the School of Education’s commitment to feeding the students’ creativity has shown promising results. Creativity in Portuguese classes is not a guarantee of success but it certainly is food for thought.

Das representações sociais à educação intercultural: identidade/alteridade de alunos autóctones e estrangeiros numa escola multicultural

Os fenómenos migratórios têm contribuído para a configuração de uma realidade sociocultural diversa que marca as sociedades do século XXI. Portugal não é exceção, sendo um dos países onde mais aumentou proporcionalmente a imigração legal permanente, fenómeno coexistente com a emigração da sua população. Neste contexto de migrações reconfiguram-se identidades, não apenas para os migrantes mas também para os autóctones, cuja (re)construção balança entre a semelhança e a diferença. Sem esta relação, a identidade fica comprometida, pois ela existe fundamentalmente pelo reconhecimento dos outros. A liberdade cultural e linguística é também uma dimensão do desenvolvimento humano, pelo que tem vindo a ganhar proeminência a promoção da diversidade linguística e cultural, e a consequente educação intercultural, que se assume como espaço privilegiado de reflexão e ação. Defende-se que a verdadeira integração dos imigrantes terá de ser multilingue e não pode ser realizada apagando as suas diferenças, nem obrigando-os a abandonar as suas línguas nativas e culturas. O domínio da Língua Portuguesa é uma das vias mais poderosas para a integração dos estrangeiros a residir em Portugal, tanto como garantia da autonomia individual que faculta o exercício de uma cidadania ativa, como de harmonia social ao nível coletivo. A escola portuguesa, atenta a este facto, vê reconhecida, por parte do Ministério da Educação, a Língua Portuguesa como fator de integração. Todavia, esse reconhecimento contrasta com a indiferença perante as línguas maternas dos alunos estrangeiros, ignorando-se, assim, um importante elemento das suas pertenças identitárias. Neste âmbito, alguns autores afirmam que a escola portuguesa nem sempre tem praticado uma verdadeira educação intercultural, adotando, pelo contrário, parte das características hegemónicas da cultura dominante, o que se traduz, por conseguinte, no esmagamento simbólico (coletivo) das culturas minoritárias. O nosso estudo usa as Representações Sociais como formas de conhecimento prático que permitem a compreensão do mundo e a comunicação, proporcionando coerência às dinâmicas sociais. Procurámos fazer, através delas, uma leitura da valorização da diversidade linguística e cultural na escola, uma vez que as Representações Sociais que se têm do Outro justificam a forma como se interage com ele e imprimem direção às relações intra e intergrupais. A investigação que aqui apresentamos procura dar primazia à “voz” do aluno como fonte de conhecimento, aos fenómenos, a partir das experiências interindividuais e intergrupais, e à forma como as pessoas experienciam e interpretam o mundo social que constroem interativamente. Para esse efeito, recolhemos dados através de entrevistas semidiretivas individuais junto de dez alunos autóctones e dez alunosestrangeiros de uma mesma escola. Complementarmente, realizámos entrevistas aos Encarregados de Educação de oito dos alunos entrevistados, quatro de cada grupo, aos cinco Diretores de Turma desses alunos e ao Diretor da escola. Do ponto de vista metodológico, a presente investigação desenvolveu-se de acordo com uma abordagem de natureza qualitativa, relacionada com um paradigma fenomenológico-interpretativo – os fenómenos humanos e educativos apresentam-se, na sua complexidade, intimamente relacionados e a sua compreensão exige a reconciliação entre a epistemologia e o compromisso ético. Procurando uma leitura global dos resultados obtidos, e à semelhança de alguns estudos, a nossa investigação demonstra que, ao não se promover proativamente uma educação intercultural – designadamente a sua função de crítica cultural e o combate a estereótipos e preconceitos que essencializam as diferenças do Outro culturalmente diverso –, a escola não prepara os alunos para a sociedade contemporânea, culturalmente diversa, dinâmica e com um elevado nível de incerteza, nem para uma abordagem positiva e frontal dos conflitos em toda a sua complexidade. À escola impõem-se ainda muitos desafios relativos às muitas diversidades que acolhe no seu seio, de forma a que todos aqueles que constituem a comunidade escolar – designadamente os alunos, sejam eles estrangeiros ou autóctones – se sintam parte integrante dela, respeitados tanto pelas suas raízes, como pelas múltiplas pertenças dinamicamente em (re)construção, como, ainda, pelos seus projetos de futuro. A informação, por si só, não promove a ação. Revela-se necessária a adoção de estratégias de intervenção que concretizem a informação nas práticas escolares quotidianas, que promovam encontros positivamente significativos, que favoreçam a igualdade social e o reconhecimento das diferenças e, ainda, que previnam atitudes discriminatórias. Para essas estratégias de intervenção serem uma constante no quotidiano das nossas escolas, a didática intercultural deve ser incentivada e operacionalizada, tanto na prática pedagógica como na formação inicial e contínua dos professores.

How teachers' perceptions affect the academic and language assessment of immigrant children

Recent research evidences inconsistencies in teachers' practice regarding skills assessment of L2 students. Scientific evidence supports that less experienced teachers have lower orientation toward multiple task-tests for non-native students. Research questions: Whether school teachers as having different teaching training and unequal teaching experience with non-native students perceive differently a four-skills scale. Purpose of the study: This study intends to analyse the importance degree between the four skills/tasks: reading, writing, speaking and listening, in the perspective of school teachers. Method: 77 teachers, aged 32-62, with (and without) experience in teaching and adapting materials for immigrant students, divided into six groups according to their scientific domain. Assessment tools included a scale for judgement of four academic tasks adapted from the original “Inventory of Undergraduate and Graduate Level: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening Tasks (Rosenfeld, Leung & Ottman, 2001). Main Findings: 1) different degrees of importance attributed by teachers on tasks that should be included in academic and language test for immigrant students; 2) perceptions of teachers are determined by predictors in this order: scientific domain, experience with multicultural classes and lower prediction from teaching service and age; 3) different results between american and portuguese samples answering the same questionnaire.

Automatic identification of whole-part relations in Portuguese

Dissertação de Mestrado, Ciências da Linguagem, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade do Algarve, 2014

A supervised machine learning method for word sense disambiguation of Portuguese nouns

Dissertação de Mestrado, Ciências da Linguagem, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade do Algarve, 2010

Through Eurocentric logics : The construction of difference in foreign news discourse on Venezuela

This study aims to explore the construction of difference in foreign news discourse on culturally similar but politically different non-Western subjects. Applying critical discourse analysis (CDA) together with a critique of Eurocentrism, the study examines difference in newspaper constructions of government supporters and oppositional groups in Venezuela. Discursive differences are evident in the strategies used for constructing the two groups with regard to political rationality and violence. Government supporters are associated with social justice, Venezuela’s poor, dogmatic behavior, and the use of political violence. The opposition, in contrast, is constructed as following a Western democratic rationale that stresses anti-authoritarianism. This group is primarily associated with victims of violence. While the opposition is conveyed as being compatible with Eurocentric values and practices, government supporters to great extent deviate from these norms. Such constructions serve to legitimize politico-ideological undercurrents of Eurocentrism, as the defense of liberalism.

Trans-national cooperation: an asset in the Portuguese overseas trade. Foreigners operating in the Portuguese overseas trade, 1580-1590

This paper aims to discuss the role of foreign merchants, operating from Portugal, in the Portuguese overseas trade, during the first ten years of Iberian Union. The focus is not in products or routes, but in the mechanisms of association of such merchants. Iberian Union created a legal framework which prohibited the interference and trade of Portuguese agents in the Spanish Empire and vice-versa. Due to the imperialist wars of the Habsburgs, the Portuguese Empire also suffered from Dutch and English rivalry both in the Indic and in the Atlantic and also from the embargos of Dutch and English products and ships in Iberian ports. In such conjuncture, how did merchants related with each other? What was the impact of the political union of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in trading associations? The used data sources are the notarial contracts of Lisbon for the same period. The paper highlights the role of Castilian merchants in the Portuguese trade, but it also stresses that Iberian partnerships have prevailed before 1580. The role of other merchants, such as Flemish/Dutch, Germans, Italians and French, is also considered. The paper discusses how and why did these merchants join in trans-national partnerships and what was their role in the Portuguese trade network at the time.

Adaptation and validation of HIV Antibody Testing Attitude Scale in Portuguese

Introduction; The awareness of HIV positiveness is important for health of the individual and of the comunity. The identicatio of HIV antibodies is possible both using conventional lab tests and quick result tests. In the bibliography it was made clear that there are no instruments in Portuguese to assert the reactions to the HIV quick tests and it was therefore considered it would be useful to adapt and validate a scale in Portuguese, since the language is the official language of 7 different countries and spoken by more than 250 milion people, Objectives: the purpose is to validate a version in European Portuguese of the HIV Antibody Testing Attitude Scale. Methods: the study refers to methodological research for the adaptation and validation of an instrument of attitude measurement. A translation and back-translation was prepared and a trial test was then carried out. A total of 317 students, lectures and co-workers of a Portuguese University was interviewes. Ethical principles were taken into consideration. the pool was obtained in the seven components of the University campus. Results: 3 trials of factorial testing of the main components of 5, 4 and 3 factors. It ended up a solution of 3 factors that explains 50.82% of the variability. In the analysis of the inter-items correlation values of between 0.018 and 0.749 were observed. The internal consistency reveals an alpha Cronbach coefficient of 0.860 as a whole, and in between 0,865 and 0.659 in the 3 factors. Conclusions: this version of the instrument shows that the psychometric properties allow its use in the Portuguese speaking countries.

Terminologia para as técnicas analíticas de eletromigração em capilares

This is a contribution that presents a translation of the work Terminology for Analytical Capillary Electromigration Techniques by Riekkola and collaborators (Pure Appl. Chem., Vol. 76, No. 2, 443-451, 2004) from IUPAC© for the Portuguese Language. Additional terms that had not been defined in native Portuguese were included for the benefit of the local community. Additional notes were also included to clarify some important concepts and to highlight the differences between techniques.