Comparing heritage speakers and late L2-learners of European Portuguese: verb movement, VP ellipsis and adverb placement

This study compares the performance of Portuguese-German heritage children and adult L2 speakers of European Portuguese whose L1 is German with respect to two aspects of grammar, adverb placement and VP-ellipsis, which depend on a core syntactic property of the language, verb movement. The results show that both groups have acquired V-to-I and adverb placement, showing no influence of a V2 grammar. Performance in the VP-ellipsis task is more complex: heritage children produce VP-ellipsis at the level of controls, as opposed to L2 speakers; however, both L2 and heritage speakers show that crosslinguistic influence may produce a preference for pronoun substitution over VP-ellipsis in a task asking for redundancy resolution. Nevertheless, given that overall results show that heritage children perform at the level of L1 children, we take our results to support approaches to heritage bilingualism which suggest the development of an intact grammar in childhood.

The modern English verb-adverb combination /

Includes bibliographical references (p.[7]-8)

A statistical analysis of regional variation in adverb position in a corpus of written Standard American English

This paper investigates whether the position of adverb phrases in sentences is regionally patterned in written Standard American English, based on an analysis of a 25 million word corpus of letters to the editor representing the language of 200 cities from across the United States. Seven measures of adverb position were tested for regional patterns using the global spatial autocorrelation statistic Moran’s I and the local spatial autocorrelation statistic Getis-Ord Gi*. Three of these seven measures were indentified as exhibiting significant levels of spatial autocorrelation, contrasting the language of the Northeast with language of the Southeast and the South Central states. These results demonstrate that continuous regional grammatical variation exists in American English and that regional linguistic variation exists in written Standard English.

Alright: a distinctive pathway of change from the 18th century to the present day

The origins of the vast majority of the words we use in contemporary English go back as far as Old or Middle English. In contrast, alright and all right in their present-day application appear to be the result of a more recent evolution, as there is no evidence of their use, not even in the two-word form, in the published fiction before the 18th century. Furthermore, there are not in the research literature, at least to my knowledge, any previous linguistic studies on this specific subject matter. The present article is simply an attempt to describe the various processes of diachronic change that brought about the emergence of alright.

Temporaalisesta adverbista diskurssipartikkeliksi

Summary: From temporal adverb to discourse particle

Uses of also in oral semi-informal German

In recent grammars and dictionaries also (`therefore, so, well¿) continues to be preferably presented as an adverb with a conclusive-consecutive connective function that essentially corresponds to its use in formal written German. Its function as a modal particle is documented, however, since the beginnings of what is known as Partikelforschung, though not all its uses have been systematically investigated contrasting oral and written German, either in mode or concept. In this article we analyse the uses of also in semi-informal oral interactions on the basis of empirical data (from a subsample of the VARCOM corpus). Specifically, we will analyse the presence and frequency of also at the beginning of a sentence or sequence, the functions it serves as a logical-semantic connector or discourse and interaction marker and the interrelations between these functions, in order to contrast these results with the description of also provided by current reference works.

Analyse de l'emploi de cependant

Ordet cependant översätts till ‘emellertid’ eller ‘dock’ på svenska. Men vad betyder ordet och hur används det? Denna fråga utgör den viktigaste forskningsfrågan för pro gradu-avhandlingen. De franska ordböckerna Le Petit Robert (2015), Larousse (2015) och Le Trésor de la langue francaise (2015) definierar att cependant uttrycker motsättning. Studier av ordets historiska utveckling visar ändå att cependant har använts i forn- och medelfranskan för att uttrycka två processers samtidighet (Marchello-Nizia 2007). Den här föråldrade betydelsen kan ännu hittas i litterära sammanhang. I avhandlingen analyseras cependant med hjälp av en korpus bestående av 150 textavsnitt som har samlats från tre olika källor i september och oktober 2014: 50 avsnitt från textdatabasen Frantext, 50 från dagstidningen Le Monde och 50 från Europaparlamentets förhandlingsreferat. I alla avsnitt används cependant. Textavsnitten studeras i samband med teorier som behandlar ordets betydelse: ordets kategoriseringar samt dess roll i skapandet av koncessivitet och polyfoni. Ytterligare studeras ordets placering i texten. Cependant kategoriseras som adverb, konnektiv och diskursmarkör. Alla dessa benämningar beskriver ordet från olika synvinklar: adverb anger ordets grammatiska ordklass, konnektiv beskriver ordets funktion som ett förbindande element mellan ord och meningar, och diskursmarkör betecknar ordets roll i interaktionell analys. I avhandlingen studeras på vilket sätt cependant uttrycker koncessivitet med hjälp av Morels (1996) definitioner och koncessivitetstyper. Analysen visar att koncessivitet egentligen inte kan delas in i olika typer. Istället är dess mest grundläggande egenskap den latenta relationen där två kontroversiella processer samordnas för att antyda den naturliga relationen mellan de ickekontroversiella processerna. Ordets sätt att uttrycka polyfoni studeras med hjälp av olika polyfoniteorier. Genom att göra en kvalitativ analys på min korpus kom jag fram till att det mest passande sättet att studera cependant ur ett polyfoniskt perspektiv är att analysera de olika synpunkter som uttrycks i en text (ett sätt som beskrivs i Nølke et al. 2004). Studien visar att cependant används på olika sätt i olika textgenrer och att ordet uttrycker både koncessivitet och polyfoni. Dessutom indikerar analysen att koncessivitet kan uppfattas som ett polyfoniskt fenomen.

Attitudes Towards and Uses of the Japanese Adverbzenzen by Swedish Learners of Japanese

The word zenzen is an adverb that is used frequently in daily conversational Japanese. From the Meiji period (1868-1912) until the early Showa period (1924-1989) the word was used together with both affirmative and negative words to form expressions. In the early Showa period the grammatical rules in education changed so that the only acceptable use was together with a negative word. From the 1990’s onward, the use together with an affirmative word has made a comeback especially among younger Japanese people. However even though the usage together with an affirmative word has made a comeback and was considered normal once in history, in today’s society it is still considered as slang and thus not recommended usage in formal situations. Foreign language learners however, tend not to learn a language only by textbooks but also by imitating the language of native Japanese speakers and Japanese popular culture. This may lead to a confusion regarding what words are acceptable to use in conversations. Therefore in this study, an online survey that examines the usage and attitudes regarding the word zenzen aimed at Japanese language learners at Swedish universities was conducted. The results of the survey showed that although a majority of the learners showed a good understanding of the usage, more than half of the learners displayed a feeling of confusion regarding the usage of the word. The gender comparison regarding the usage showed no major differences. Having lived in Japan, having Japanese friends whom you speak Japanese with regularly and length of Japanese study was associated with an increased understanding of the usage. Regular consumption of Japanese popular culture, however, was not associated with an increased understanding of the usage. A literature analysis was also conducted to examine the attitudes regarding the usage of zenzen in a variety of books with topics including business language and books aimed at Japanese language teachers. The results showed that zenzen used together with a negative word was considered as the norm while zenzen used together with an affirmative word was not recommended to be used in formal situations. When recommending proper usage of the word zenzen together with an affirmative word to foreign learners of Japanese, hijou-ni and totemo was seen as better alternatives to zenzen in a formal situation.

As construções adverbiais em mente: análise funcionalista e implicações para o ensino de língua materna

This research aims at investigating the constructions with adverbials in ly, based on the view of contemporaneous linguistic functionalism, such as proposed by Givón, Hopper, Thompson, Traugott, Furtado da Cunha, as well as the cognitivist notion of language, through construction grammar support upon the patterns of Goldberg and the prototypes theory. The cognitive functional approach adopted here considers the change as a proper and inherent phenomenon of language and understands the linguistic phenomenon as resulting from effective use of language. Another aspect to be considered to the realization of this study is the fact that the formation adjective + ly is a word construction mechanism really productive, which generates interests on linguistic description. In a particular way, our leading objective is to exam the constructions with adverbials in ly in the context of language in use, in its oral and written forms, looking for to apprehend the meaning multiple manifestations forged in the use. Bearing this in mind, we worked with data from the Corpus Discurso & Gramática (Natal). There are, in the data, adverbs ended in ly that take the signification of mode, as foreseen in traditional models, but there are also other significations, for instance, the modalizador in its different manifestations. The results show that this adverb is a linguistic mark that carries in its constitution the multissêmico and multifunctional character, which interferes extremely in the ordination of this category, assuming a position sometimes pre-verbal, sometimes post-verbal. Other aspect observed refers to the relationship between the adverb and the verb, with emphasis on the compatibility or restriction between them, option which is related to the semantic aspect. The data in analysis legitimate the use in different constructions with adverb ended in ly in various genres, as follows: personal experience narrative, retold narrative, local description, proceeding account, opinion account, both in oral as in written language

Gramaticalização de juntivos adversativos na história do português

Pós-graduação em Estudos Linguísticos - IBILCE

Multifuncionalidade e gramaticalização de Já no português falado culto

Pós-graduação em Estudos Linguísticos - IBILCE

A ordem SV/VS no português como L2 na fronteira Brasil/Paraguai: uma investigação sociofuncionalista na interface variação/aquisição

Pós-graduação em Estudos Linguísticos - IBILCE

Análise comparativa do processo de gramaticalização das perífrases conjuncionais agora que e já que

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)