Double Object Constructions in Afro-Brazilian Portuguese : contact driven L2 learning and Maximize Minimal Means

Acknowledgments. Ana Calindro's research has been supported by the CAPES-PRINT Program (Brazilian Federal Foundation for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education-International Scholarships and Projects, process number: 88887.569099/2020-00).During the colonial period (16th - 19th centuries), Brazil was a multilingual country, home to Portuguese, Indigenous peoples, and Africans. Portuguese was learned as a second language by the Africans brought to Brazil by the slave trade, mainly under the influence of the Bantu languages the slaves spoke. From this language contact, an Afro-Brazilian Portuguese variety has emerged (ABP) which displays a ditransitive construction with an unmarked Goal dative, and V-Goal-Theme order, similar to Double Object Constructions (DOC) in English. We propose that the so-called DOC in ABP can be understood in terms of the Maximizing Minimal Means model (Biberauer 2018, 2019). In this model, Feature Economy and Feature/Input Generalization (Biberauer & Roberts 2017) constitute a major factor in L2 learning in contact scenarios. For the innovative ABP structure, the [+animate] and low applicative features of the Bantu substrate grammars are shown to have been key in the first generation's L2 acquisition of a marked Classical Portuguese V-Goal-Theme structure. The structure becomes established in subsequent L1 acquisition of ABP, with expansion beyond the original core structures

The COPLE2 Corpus: a Learner Corpus for Portuguese

We present the COPLE2 corpus, a learner corpus of Portuguese that includes written and spoken texts produced by learners of Portuguese as a second or foreign language. The corpus includes at the moment a total of 182,474 tokens and 978 texts, classified according to the CEFR scales. The original handwritten productions are transcribed in TEI compliant XML format and keep record of all the original information, such as reformulations, insertions and corrections made by the teacher, while the recordings are transcribed and aligned with EXMARaLDA. The TEITOK environment enables different views of the same document (XML, student version, corrected version), a CQP-based search interface, the POS, lemmatization and normalization of the tokens, and will soon be used for error annotation in stand-off format. The corpus has already been a source of data for phonological, lexical and syntactic interlanguage studies and will be used for a data-informed selection of language features for each proficiency level.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Linguistic innovations in the immigration context as initial stages of a partially restructured variety: Evidence from SE constructions in the Portuguese of the East Timorese diaspora in Portugal

Portuguese became one of the official languages of independent East Timor after ca. 25 years of Indonesian rule; this prevented the partial restructuring of an East Timorese variety of Portuguese in a similar way to that undergone by other Portuguese varieties (e.g., Mozambican, Angolan and Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese). We will discuss the idiosyncratic use of SE constructions in the speech of literate Portuguese-speaking East Timorese immigrants in Portugal, who will go back to East Timor and will be likely to lead language change. Given this particular link between East Timor and its diasporas, linguistic innovations in the immigration context can shed light on the initial stages of a future partially-restructured East Timorese Portuguese variety. SE constructions are highly polysemous and marked and the data show that innovative patterns are emerging, comprising deletion and generalization of the clitic as well as creative uses of these constructions, mainly observed in impersonal and spontaneous situation types. These innovative patterns can be attributed to L2 acquisition and to the interference of Tetum Dili.We gratefully acknowledge the support of the British Academy (Small Grant SG100616) for the data collection, which took place from June 2010 to March 2011

On the evolution of afro-bolivian spanish subject verb agreement: variation and change

Sobre l’evolució de la concordança subjecte-verb a l’espanyol afro-bolivià: variació i canvi. Aquest article analitza la variació de la concordança entre subjecte i verb en l’espanyol afro-bolivià, tot avaluant la interacció dels factors socials i lingüístics. Les descripcions qualitatives del fenomen (Lipski 2009) semblen indicar un procés de canvi, consistent en la sistemàtica substitució del trets basilectals estigmatitzats afro-bolivians per altres propis de la varietat més prestigiosa de l’espanyol utilitzada a Bolívia. La meva anàlisi quantitativa mostra que el fenomen està afectat significativament per factors socials diversos com són l’edat dels parlants i el seu nivell educatiu, així com factors lingüístics com el temps verbal i la persona/nombre del subjecte. L’estudi destaca el procés d’aproximació d’una varitat de l’espanyol a una altra de més prestigi. Els resultats indiquen que tot i que aquest canvi està causat per factors socials, segueix les mateixes línies que s’han observat en l’itinerari d’adquisició de la concordança subjecte-verb de l’espanyol com a L1 (Radford and Ploennig-Pacheco 1995) i com a L2 (Hawkins 2001

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo

Goal arguments of ir 'to go' and chegar 'to arrive' in three African varieties of Portuguese

In research on African varieties of Portuguese, especially Angolan and Mozambican Portuguese, it is often referred that Goal arguments of verbs of movement show a tendency to be headed by locative preposition em 'in', contrasting with the use of a 'to' and para 'to, toward' in European Portuguese. Language contact is generally considered the primary factor with respect to the use of the noncanonical pattern. Using spoken corpora of the urban varieties of Angolan, Mozambican and Santomean Portuguese, this paper develops a case-study of Goal arguments that occur with two frequently used verbs of inherently directed motion, ir 'to go' and chegar 'to arrive', to assess the contact-induced hypothesis and to explore alternative, semantic-based hypotheses. Overall, a cross-comparison of the varieties at stake and their main contact languages shows that the role of language contact is limited at best. A semantic analysis of em, on the other hand, shows promising results, since the occurrence of this preposition is favored by NPs that denote an entity with well-defined boundaries and is sensitive to the lexical semantics of the verbs, i.e., whether the verb describes a durative or non-durative change of place, and to the type of eventuality described by the predication