The preposition à. The relation of its meanings studied in Old French.

Mode of access: Internet.

The Processing of Preposition-Stranding Constructions in English

One of the prominent questions in modern psycholinguistics is the relationship between the grammar and the parser. Within the approach of Generative Grammar, this issue has been investigated in terms of the role that Principles of Universal Grammar may play in language processing. The aim of this research experiment is to investigate this topic. Specifically, this experiment aims to test whether the Minimal Structure Principle (MSP) plays a role in the processing of Preposition-Stranding versus Pied-Piped Constructions. This investigation is made with a self-paced reading task, an on-line processing test that measures participants’ unconscious reaction to language stimuli. Monolingual English speakers’ reading times of sentences with Preposition-Stranding and Pied-Piped Constructions are compared. Results indicate that neither construction has greater processing costs, suggesting that factors other than the MSP are active during language processing.

Preposition Stranding in Heritage Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese

Influential bodies of work in language acquisition studies single out heritage bilingualism as a discrete acquisition process within the bilingualism continuum. In regards to the acquisition of WH-/QU- interrogatives containing prepositional phrases (PP), the present study examined whether heritage speakers (HS) of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) produce preposition stranding (P-stranding) constructions in their heritage language, in contrast to monolingual and adult speakers of BP, where prepositions are pied-piped to form the interrogative. Participants were HS of BP born in the USA and in Brazil, monolinguals, and late bilingual adults. The experiment consisted of an elicited production task and a grammaticality judgment task, both carried out in BP and then in English. Results showed that HS born in the USA use P-stranding in QU- interrogatives productively and systematically, in contrast to the other three groups. Moreover, no evidence of protracted acquisition was found in this group. No signs of attrition were detected among bilinguals.

Parametric change in the grammatical encoding of indirect objects in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper examines the syntax of indirect objects (IO) in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Adopting a comparative perspective we propose that BP differs from European Portuguese (EP) in the grammatical encoding of IO. In EP ditransitive contexts, IO is found in two configurations - one projected by a (low) applicative head and another one involving a lexical/true preposition. We propose that the former property is contingent upon the presence of dative Case marking: namely, the morpheme `a` that introduces IO (a-DP), whose corresponding clitic pronoun is `lhe/lhes`. In contrast, important changes in the pronominal system, coupled with the increase in the use of the preposition `para` are taken as evidence for the loss of the low applicative construction in BP. Thus only the configuration with the lexical/true preposition is found in (Standard) BP. We argue that the innovative properties of IO in BP are due to the loss of the (3rd person) dative clitic and the preposition `a` as dative Case markers. Under this view, we further account for the realization of IO as a DP/weak pronoun, found in dialects of the central region of Brazil, which points to a similarity with the English Double Object Construction. Finally we show that the connection between the morphological expression of the dative Case and the expression of parameters supports a view of syntactic change according to which parametric variation is determined in the lexicon, in terms of the formal features of functional heads.

Prospective system analysis of stationary battery systems under the frame of Constructive Technology Assessment

Based on the report for the unit “Project IV” of the PhD programme on Technology Assessment under the supervision of Dr.-Ing. Marcel Weil and Prof. Dr. António Brandão Moniz. The report was presented and discussed at the Doctorate Conference on Technologogy Assessment in July 2013 at the University Nova Lisboa, Caparica campus.

A realização do sujeito em complementos infinitivos de verbos causativos e percetivos no português língua de herança

Dissertação de mestrado em Ciências da Linguagem

Análise contrastiva entre preposições romenas e portuguesas através do uso de recursos bilingues

Dissertação de mestrado em Português Língua Não Materna (MPLNM) Português Língua Estrangeira (PLE) e Língua Segunda (PL2)

WH-Constructions in Cape Verdean Creole

This dissertation concerns two types of wh-constructions – interrogative and relative clauses – of Cape Verdean Creole (CVC), a Portuguese-based Creole language spoken on the archipelago of Cape Verde, specifically the variety spoken on Santiago Island, in the coast of West Africa. Chapter 2 focus on some aspects of the syntax of CVC, claiming that the possibilities of S-V inversion are very limited and that verbs stay in Vº, except for the Present tense form of the copula verb e ‘to be’, which is the spell out of the formal feature [Present] of T. It is proposed that CVC exhibits a clause functional structure that is similar to English: [CP [TP [NegP [AspP [VP … ]]]]]. In this chapter, it is also suggested that a non Split-CP, based on the formal features [±D, ±V, ±Q, ±Wh, ±T], correctly accounts for the distribution of the complementizers in CVC. Chapter 3 presents the wh-question formation strategies exhibited by CVC, showing that some of them involve Move, while others do not. Considering CVC data, it is said that the language has two clausal typing processes: an ambiguous complementizer ki ([±Q, ±Wh]), whose checking domain is strictly local; and an unambiguous complementizer Ø ([+Q, +Wh]), whose checking domain is not strictly local. The first one derives fronted wh-questions and the second one accounts for wh-in- -situ. Chapter 4 describes the relativization strategies displayed by CVC, focusing on the fact that PP pied-piping is ruled out and that resumption is possible both inside and outside syntactic islands. It is suggested a revision of Bianchi’s (2002a) head raising analysis for the structure of relative clauses. Chapter 5 discusses the properties of the defective copy strategy ([wh[+PL] … el]) and presents evidence in favor of a distinction between this type of wh-strategy and resumption ([wh[+PL] … es]). It is argued that the language requires an overt pronominal form (3SG) to occur in the complement position of the preposition because CVC types the clause with a complementizer ki [uCat +D] and does not allow for preposition incorporation. The set of formal features of the lower copy is ‘shrinked’, i.e. the features are deleted but not erased, being accessible to PF. This analysis of the defective copy xiv strategy predicts that it only applies to PPs and that it is an autonomous process involving wh-movement, which is distinct from resumption.

Prepositionsbruk på olika färdighetsnivåer i svenska

Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on kartoittaa ruotsin prepositioiden käyttöä suomen-kielisten oppijakielessä. Ennen kaikkea olen kiinnostunut selvittämään, esiintyykö prepositioiden käytössä eroja eri taitotasojen välillä. Tarkemmin sanottuna tutkin, mitä eri prepositioita oppijat käyttävät ja millaisissa funktioissa. Tämän lisäksi tavoitteena on selvittää, mitkä prepositiot vaikuttavat olen oppijoille vaikeimpia ja mitkä taas helpoimpia. Tutkin myös sitä, millaiset kontekstit todennäköisimmin ennustavat prepositioiden oikeaoppista käyttöä ja mitkä taas helposti johtavat virheisiin. Virheiden osalta tarkastelen, millaiset virheet näyttäisivät olevan suomenkielisille oppijoilla tyypillisiä. Materiaalini on osa laajempaa tutkimusmateriaalia Topling-nimisestä projektista. Materiaali koostuu lukiolaisten ja yliopisto-opiskelijoiden kirjoittamasta 137 aineesta, kertomuksista ja mielipideteksteistä, jotka kaikki on arvioitu Eurooppalaisen viitekehyksen taitotasoskaalan mukaan. Tutkittavat aineet sijoittuvat taitotasoille A1, A2, B1 ja B2. Käytetyt tutkimusmenetelmät ovat pääasiassa kvantitatiivisia, mutta myös kvalitatiivisia menetelmiä on hyödynnetty määrällisen analyysin tukena. Ei-normatiivinen analyysi osoittaa, että kolme selvästi yleisintä prepositiota oppijakielessä ovat i, till ja på tässä järjestyksessä. Muita tavallisia prepositioita ovat för, med, av, om ja från. Alimmilla taitotasoilla esiintyy lähes yksinomaan vain kahdeksaa tavallisinta prepositiota, kun taas ylemmillä taitotasoilla esiintyy runsaasti myös muita prepositioita. Tavallisin funktio prepositiolausekkeelle on paikanadverbiaalit, joiden osuus kaikista funktioita kuitenkin laskee alimmalta taitotasolta ylimmälle. Päinvastainen kehityssuunta pätee ”muihin funktioihin”, joiden osuus lisääntyy alimmalta tasolta ylimmälle. Kaiken kaikkiaan prepositioiden käyttö eri funktioissa näyttää kehittyvän konkreettisista funktioista abstraktimpiin funktioihin. Normatiivisesta analyysistä käy ilmi, että taitotaso korreloi voimakkaasti prepositioiden käytön oikeellisuuden kanssa sekä ei-obligatorisissa että obligatorisissa konteksteissa. Keskimäärin parhaiten osataan prepositiot med, av ja från, kun taas eniten vaikeuksia tuottaa prepositio på. Eri funktioista parhaiten hallitaan paikanilmaukset sekä ”muut funktiot”. Ylivoimaisesti eniten vaikeuksia kaikilla taitotasoille tuottaa preposition valinta. Erityisen vaikeaa oppijoille on valita prepositioiden i ja på välillä, kun kyse on ajan- ja paikanilmauksista. Ylimääräisiä prepositioita esiintyy lähinnä tietyissä paikanilmauksissa. Preposition poisjättöä taas tavataan prepositioverbien yhteydessä. Kaikkien tutkimuskysymysten osalta suurimmat taitotasojen väliset erot esiintyvät tasojen A2 ja B1 välillä.

El español de los inmigrantes de los Andes bolivianos en el Norte Grande de Chile : convergencias y divergencias dialectales en el marco de una situación de contacto

Cette thèse a été financée par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (numéro de référence 767-2010-1310)

The relative perceptual weight of two Swedish prosodic contrasts

Abstract. In addition to 9 vowel and 18 consonant phonemes, Swedish has three prosodic phonemic contrasts: word stress, quantity and tonal word accent. There are also examples of distinctive phrase or sentence stress, where a verb can be followed by either an unstressed preposition or a stressed particle. This study focuses on word level and more specifically on word stress and tonal word accent in disyllabic words. When making curriculums for second language learners, teachers are helped by knowing which phonetic or phonological features are more or less crucial for the intelligibility of speech and there are some structural and anecdotal evidence that word stress should play a more important role for intelligibility of Swedish, than the tonal word accent. The Swedish word stress is about prominence contrasts between syllables, mainly signaled by syllable duration, while the tonal word accent is signaled mainly by pitch contour. The word stress contrast, as in armen [´arːmən] ‘the arm’ - armén [ar´meːn] ‘the army’, the first word trochaic and the second iambic, is present in all regional varieties of Swedish, and realized with roughly the same acoustic cues, while the tonal word accent, as in anden [´anːdən] ‘the duck’ - anden [`anːdən] ‘the spirit’ is absent in some dialects (as well as in singing), and also signaled with a variety of tonal patterns depending on region. The present study aims at comparing the respective perceptual weight of the two mentioned contrasts. Two lexical decision tests were carried out where in total 34 native Swedish listeners should decide whether a stimulus was a real word or a non-word. Real words of all mentioned categories were mixed with nonsense words and words that were mispronounced with opposite stress pattern or opposite tonal word accent category. The results show that distorted word stress caused more non-word judgments and more loss, than distorted word accent. Our conclusion is that intelligibility of Swedish is more sensitive to distorted word stress pattern than to distorted tonal word accent pattern. This is in compliance with the structural arguments presented above, and also with our own intuition.

Um olhar sociológico sobre a criança e o brincar: espaço e tempo de construção, reinvenção e aprendizagem

This research I discuss the play, also talking with the other subjects that make up the universe in which the play is inserted, such as family, school and culture. The fundamental proposition of this dissertation assumes that the absence of play in children's lives affect their physical structure, psychological, biological, cultural, social, historical and theirs development. The initial questions were: What are the spacetimes reserved in the school for play? What is the importance of play in the development of children? Does the school recognize the importance of play in its social space? How the children perceive and use the spacetimes to play at school? Are there spacetimes at school to play? This is a theoretical and empirical research of exploratory study. The research‟s field was the Municipal School Professor Ulysses Góes, located in district of Nova Descoberta, in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte and, as research techniques, I used: participant observation, photography, structured interviews with students and questionnaires with teachers. The results indicate that for most of children, the school allows the play, few disagree with this preposition.Teachers recognize the importance of play in school, but for various reasons do not provide your practice. The dissertation points the possibility of new studies and developments for the theme.