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Portuguese Is a Language That Term Paper

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It is suggested that some of the linguistic facts are also better explained by a creole or creole-like history. The case is not conclusive, but the weight of evidence tends to support a creole-like origin for popular BP (Guy, 1981).

Studies have also been done regarding the nature of language, memory, and reading skills of bilingual students and to determine the relationship between reading problems in English and reading problems in Portuguese. The study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 37 bilingual Portuguese-Canadian children, aged 9 -- 12 years. English was their main instructional language and Portuguese was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program at school where they were taught to read and write Portuguese. The children were administered word and pseudo word reading, language, and working memory tasks in English and Portuguese. The majority of the children (67%) showed at least average proficiency in both languages. The children who had low reading scores in English also had significantly lower scores on the Portuguese tasks. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudo word reading, working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The Portuguese-Canadian children who were normally achieving readers did not differ from a comparison group of monolingual English speaking normally achieving readers except that the bilingual children had significantly lower scores on the English syntactic awareness task. The bilingual reading disabled children had similar scores to the monolingual reading disabled children on word reading and working memory but lower scores on the syntactic awareness task. However, the bilingual reading disabled children had significantly higher scores than the monolingual English speaking reading disabled children on the English pseudo word-reading test and the English spelling task, perhaps reflecting a positive transfer from the more regular grapheme phoneme conversion rules of Portuguese. (Da Fontoura & Siegel, 1995, p. 139)

Tarallo (1983), conducted research that analyzes competing strategies in spoken Brazilian Portuguese (=SBP). It demonstrates that in SBP is done through a deletion rule, not through wh-movement. In contrast, revitalization in the written language follows the standard analysis of revitalization as postulated by Chomsky in 1977. The competing revitalization strategies found in SBP are: (1) the gap-leaving variant, superficially identical to standard written language relatives (it applies in subject and direct object relatives); (2) the presumptive pronoun strategy which surfaces with the gap position filled with a pronoun (it applies throughout the syntactic scale); and (3) the PP-chopping strategy which also involves a gap (it applies only to lower syntactic slots). The dissertation analyzes a wide variety of material: forty-five hours of tape-recorded interviews with informants from urban Sao Paulo; media speech data; and diachronic data. The deletion analysis is motivated by similar patterns of pro-drop effective in main clauses and in subordinates other than relatives. Patterns of pronominal retention and deletion outside relative clauses directly match the gap/pronounce alternation found inside relatives. On the socio-stylistic level, this work demonstrates that: (1) lower-class speakers favor the use of presumptive pronoun, unlike middle-class and upper class speakers, who favor the PP-chopping strategy, and (2) spontaneous style favors presumptive pronouns. The diachronic data analysis situates PP chopping as the result of a drastic change in the pronominal system in the 19th century. This change entailed pro-drop reaching down to direct object, and prepositional phrase positions, a change that was first implemented in main clauses

Lorenzino (1998), the primary goal of this dissertation is to explore the question of the genesis and development of the Angolar Creole Portuguese of Sao Tome and Principe (Gulf of Guinea), off the coast of West Africa. Angolar is the language spoken by descendants of maroon slaves who escaped from Portuguese plantations on Sao Tome beginning in the mid-sixteenth century (1535-1550). Due to the isolation of these maroon communities, their language kept the general structure of Santomense Creole Portuguese, the majority creole spoken on the plantations. Communication between the Portuguese and slaves, and among the slaves themselves, must have been constrained by factors such as first languages, exposure to some form of contact...
...Modern divergences between Angolar and Santomense are the outcome of the lexical expansion and further restructuring which Santomense underwent as the result of its closer contact with Portuguese spoken on the plantations as opposed to differences in grammar and pronunciation, which Angolar retained from early Santomense. Lastly, the research indicated that in contrast, Angolar is the result of the partial reflexification that Santomense underwent due to the later influence of Kimbundu- speaking Maroons. In this respect, the Angolares' existence away from the plantations was more likely to have favored the maintenance of African languages than remaining on the plantations, where exposure to Portuguese and the increasing role of Santomense as the medium of communication among slaves forced Africans to give up their native languages faster (p.1).

Meaning behind the Language

Brucki & Rocha (2004) discussed and researched verbal fluency is a very useful test, which can be used to evaluate executive functions and language. The category test can be used to evaluate semantic memory. A number of versions of the category test based on letter and semantic categories have been used. The most extensive experience has been obtained with FAS (oral fluency by letters F, a and S) and the animal category. Deficits in this task have been observed in patients with focal cortical brain lesions, mainly frontal injury, as well as temporal injury, Parkinson's disease), schizophrenia (5,6), and sub-cortical and Alzheimer dementia (7-12). Finally, the category fluency test seems to be more sensitive than the phonological test, even during the initial course of Alzheimer's disease, discriminating between early Alzheimer's disease and normal controls. The population of Brazil is aging and current low literacy and educational levels continue to be problems hampering the correct evaluation of subjects with suspected cognitive impairment. However, normative data are needed for use in comparison with other studies, and descriptive analysis can help to understand cognitive processes in poorly educated individuals. Many studies have revealed the influence of education on total scores.

Marti' (2008), wrote research on a decomposition analysis of three kinds of plural indefinites in two related languages, European Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. The three indefinites studied are bare plurals, the unos (Spanish)/uns (Portuguese) type, and the algunos (Spanish)/alguns (Portuguese) type. The paper concentrated on four properties: semantic plurality, positive polarity, and event distribution. The logic underlying the analysis was that of compositionality, applied at the sub-word level: as items become bigger in form (with the addition of morphemes), they also acquire more semantic properties. The research proposed the "indefinite hierarchy," which established a set of components for languages to build their indefinites with, in a particular order.

This research by Mo'ia (2000), deals with the semantics of temporal locating adverbials, comprising two main topics: first, the identification of this class of expressions, by distinguishing between it and other classes -- namely temporal measure adverbials and time -denoting expressions whose semantic proximity he semantic -syntactic identification of temporal locating adverbials, as opposed to the two mentioned "bordering" categories of temporal measure adverbials and time -denoting expressions, requires choices concerning their internal structure and their semantic function. Thus, temporal locating adverbials are analyzed as containing a (basic or derived) time -denoting expression as immediate constituent, and as having a double semantic role on one side, defining a frame for temporal location out of the interval expressed by their time -denoting complement and, on the other, defining a (location) relation between that (location) frame and the located entities. As a consequence, the apparently ambivalent measure/locating adverbials -- like for the last three hours, or from nine to five -- are considered as mere temporal locating adverbials, and the apparently ambivalent locating/time-denoting expressions like yesterday, last week, or before 1980 -- are regarded as mere time -- denoting expressions. The outcome of this categorization is argued to be a manifestly simple, structured and well -defined system (of adverbial temporal location), with evident generalization power.

Schmitt & Munn (2002), conducted research that discussed the syntax and semantics of bare arguments in Brazilian Portuguese; the researchers stated by explaining that Portuguese considered a romance language, allows for the use of bare plurals in argument positions. Akin to English. However, in contrast to its English counterpart, it also allows bare singular arguments. In the research, they provide information that shows the difference between English, BP, and Italian. Differences are accounted for not only bare nominal syntax and semantics that are often ignored by those whom have previously researched the subject matter. Alternatively, are simply not properly depicted. This analysis affirms the need for semantic parameters, and instead places the locus of variation in the morpho-syntax.

Muller (2002), conducted research investigating the semantics of definite and indefinite generic expressions in BP.…
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Sources Used in Documents:

References

Azevedo, M. (1974). On the Semantics of Estar + Participle Sentences in Portuguese. Linguistics, 12(135), 25-34.

Brucki, S., & Rocha, M. (2004). Category fluency test: effect of age, gender, and education on total scores, clustering and switching in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking subjects. Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological research, 37, 1771-1777.

Da Fontoura, H.A., & Siegel, L.S. (1995). Reading, Syntactic, and working memory skills of bilingual Portuguese-English Canadian Children. Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, 7(1), 139-153.

Guy, G.(1981). Linguistics Variation in Brazilian Portuguese: Aspects of the Phonology, Syntax, and Language History. Dissertations available from ProQuest. Paper AAI8117786.

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