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This work has as main objective to analyze the use of the Narrative Imperfect in European Portuguese, in order to verify if this use is present in the language. The analysis is based on data collected from a Portuguese language repository, CETEMPúblico. The study focuses on constructions, where the Imperfect Tense is found in order to verify to what extent European Portuguese presents or not occurrences of the Narrative Imperfect. After analyzing the data collected, it was observed that there are some occurrences, based on two of the aspectual classes with which the Imperfect Tense is combined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possible preservation of the phonological distinction between the voiceless postalveolar affricate/tS/and the voiceless post-alveolar fricative/S/- corresponding to the graphic forms and , respectively - in only a few dialects in the north of the country could be motivating different behaviors from children speaking different regional varieties of Portuguese in their first years of schooling. Since this study has not yet been done, this paper intends to analyze the written productions of Portuguese children from three linguistic areas of Portugal, represented here by children from the cities of Lisbon, Porto, and Chaves, about the spellings and , to understand whether there is any relationship between the preservation or non-preservation of this phonological distinction and the children's orthographic performance. Thus, the written productions of students belonging to the three dialectal regions mentioned above will be analyzed based on data from the EFFE-On corpus (Rodrigues, Lourenço-Gomes, Alves, Janssen & Gomes 2015) with the phonological distinction between/tS/and/S/having been preserved in some and neutralized in others. Therefore, it will be possible to measure the impact that the students' dialect can have on their orthographic performance, as well as perceive any differences in performance related to the grapheme vs. the digraph . Two groups of children were created for the analysis: a group with typical and another with atypical phonological development children. The differences observed point to a need to deepen the discussion concerning the sound aspect of language in the classroom, beginning in the first years of schooling - especially during the literacy phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In European Portuguese the unmarked pattern of clitic placement in finite sentences is enclisis, proclisis occurring under the local scope of specific items, namely overt CPs or items with negative, quantificational and focus content. In this study we will propose an analysis of proclisis in sentence coordination, an issue that only recently has received some attention in the field (Martins 2013, Matos & Colaço 2013). We will claim that proclisis in coordination may be induced either by the features of some single and correlative conjunctions, or by the discourse value of some correlative coordinate structures. Proclisis in coordination may also occur with a conjunction that is not a proclisis inducer, if this one is itself under the scope of a proclisis trigger. This fact suggests that there are contexts of long-distance proclisis in European Portuguese. However, we will show that all these cases may be subsumed under local proclisis, taking into account the properties of Conj as an underspecified category that, by Agree, shares the categorial nature of its specifier. The optionality of proclisis in long-distance contexts may also be explained. In fact, this optionality is only apparent and is an effect of the sentential level involved in coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech is a unique communication medium which involves a set of organs that work synchronously for sound production. The mechanisms involved are complex, and there are several techniques for speech study, from the acoustic point of view or from the morphological point of view. For the vocal tract study, magnetic resonance imaging has shown benefits, which are highlighted here. Presenting this imaging technique and demonstrating its use and contribution for speech production study, in particular for the European Portuguese Language, is the main goal of this work. Through the collection and analysis of images it was possible to obtain and build three-dimensional models of the vocal tract in various articulatory positions. Combining a synchronization technique using cardiac monitoring and with ultra-fast imaging acquisition we could also capture the undersampled dynamics and study the articulatory movements involved in the production of three syllables. The morphological and dynamic vocal tract imaging based on magnetic resonance is, given the results obtained, reliable and very important for the understanding of the speech mechanism. Additionally, this information has a multidisciplinary interest and allows various applications with great potential compared to the expected technological advances of this imaging technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]