Bilingual Education and the Law

A public hearing was held before the Joint Committee on Education, Arts and Humanities on May 13, 1999 at the Massachusetts State House. It was Chaired by House Representative Harold Lane and Senator Robert Antonioni. Two House Bills, H3444 sponsored by Representative Mary S. Rogeness and H3441 Sponsored by Ronald Mariano, proposed changes to the Bilingual Education Laws, and one House Bill H3037, sponsored by Antonio F. D. Cabral, Marc Pacheco and Jarret Barrios, prohibited the Board of Education from making certain changes to the Bilingual Education Law. We testified in favor of HB3037 and against HB3444 and HB3441

NOMINAL, PRONOMINAL AND ZERO SUBJECT IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE

This dissertation is a quantitative study of the variation of the type of subject--pronominal and zero--and position--before and after the verb--in the speech of thirty people from the city of Rio de Janeiro. Chapter 1 introduces the problem, its theoretical assumptions, scope and limitations. Chapter 2 is about field methodology and the speech community. Chapter 3 deals with the multivariate concept of subject, its structure and position in Portuguese. It points out the environments where the variation occurs. Chapters 4 and 5 present and discuss the linguistic and social factors which might constrain the variation: personal reference, same and switch subject reference, subject animacy, verb inflection and form for both type and subject position; clause type for subject type alone and subject structure, preceding context, type of verb aspectual character for subject position alone. Three social factors--age, sex and socio-economic level of speakers were also examined. Results of the analysis indicate that: (1) pronominal subjects tend to be used more in a potentially ambiguous situation like when the subject has a second person reference, a switch reference or is in a relative clause; (2) pronominal subjects are more topical than zero subjects, tending to occur more often with animate subjects, just given subjects referents and first and second personal reference; (3) nominal subjects tend to occur out of their canonical preverbal position when they are unlike basic subjects, that is, when they are new, indefinite, and inanimate; (4) the choice between SV and VS syntax is constrained by pragmatic considerations--the less topical the subject is, the higher is the probability that it will be postposed; (5) there is a general lack of effect of the social factors on the choice of subject type and position

NOMINAL, PRONOMINAL AND ZERO SUBJECT IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE

This dissertation is a quantitative study of the variation of the type of subject--pronominal and zero--and position--before and after the verb--in the speech of thirty people from the city of Rio de Janeiro. Chapter 1 introduces the problem, its theoretical assumptions, scope and limitations. Chapter 2 is about field methodology and the speech community. Chapter 3 deals with the multivariate concept of subject, its structure and position in Portuguese. It points out the environments where the variation occurs. Chapters 4 and 5 present and discuss the linguistic and social factors which might constrain the variation: personal reference, same and switch subject reference, subject animacy, verb inflection and form for both type and subject position; clause type for subject type alone and subject structure, preceding context, type of verb aspectual character for subject position alone. Three social factors--age, sex and socio-economic level of speakers were also examined. Results of the analysis indicate that: (1) pronominal subjects tend to be used more in a potentially ambiguous situation like when the subject has a second person reference, a switch reference or is in a relative clause; (2) pronominal subjects are more topical than zero subjects, tending to occur more often with animate subjects, just given subjects referents and first and second personal reference; (3) nominal subjects tend to occur out of their canonical preverbal position when they are unlike basic subjects, that is, when they are new, indefinite, and inanimate; (4) the choice between SV and VS syntax is constrained by pragmatic considerations--the less topical the subject is, the higher is the probability that it will be postposed; (5) there is a general lack of effect of the social factors on the choice of subject type and position

O sujeito na fala fílmica brasileira

The present study, based on a corpus of contemporary Brazilian film dia- logues (Sub-Corpus Carioca Urbano, Corpus I-Fala, Luso-Brazilian Film Dialogues as a resource for L1 & L2 Learning and Linguistic Research), illustrates how Brazilian Portuguese (BP) has undergone a process of change in the representation of referential subjects, with preference for overt pronominal subjects, passing from being a null subject language to being a partial null subject language. Thus, the current work revisits De Rosa (2017) by including 3rd person subjects and using film dialogue transcriptions (not scripts) and discusses the presence of null and overt subjects in the corpus, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The study also compares the filmic data to spontaneous speech and shows a basically conservative nature of the former