19 International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics ...

G E N E R A L S E S S I O N
The present study was designed and conducted with the aim to provide an account of the issues
related to EFL teachers language awareness, beliefs, and misapprehensions. In particular, the basic
objectives of the study were:
-to identify and record the EFL teachers’ current views and beliefs about language awareness and
determine how much agreement there is on the matter;
-to specify the EFL teachers’ attitudes to teaching methodologies;
-to reflect on the EFL teachers’ attitudes to teaching processes;
-to provide an account of issues related to students’ development of the productive skills;
-to provide an account of issues related to students’ development of the receptive skills;
- to record the EFL teachers’ views on the strategies employed by their students in acquiring mastery
of EFL.
Questionnaires, which were the basic research instrument, were distributed to a total of 150 EFL
teachers employed in the public school sector in Northern Greece.
The data emanated from the study highlighted the significance of language awareness, which is
metacognitive in nature. The participants acknowledged and were conscious of the need for language
awareness in the EFL classroom and for training seminars closely related to the issues linked with
personal conceptualization of language awareness and the need for reflection on teaching processes.
Concluding, a proposal is made for developing teacher training courses in response to the EFL
teachers’ need for devoting more attention to aspects of teaching methodologies and class
management. The need for training linked to the EFL teachers’ establishment and maintenance of
professional standards has been raised; It involves identification of the need for teacher knowledge of
the language system, and of the importance of developing the four skills. It also includes awareness
activities for teachers in order for them to be able to create and handle a wide range of opportunities
for their students’ language learning in an EFL classroom (Tsui, 2003).
The syntax of demonstratives. A parametric analysis.
Cristina Guardiano
Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia
cristina.guardiano@unimore.it
The contribution proposes an interpretation of the crosslinguistic syntactic behavior of the
demonstrative elements within the nominal domain, in a parametric perspective. On the basis of the
empirical evidence coming from a sample of Indo-European and non Indo-European languages
(Longobardi&Guardiano 2008), I will show that the different configurations available are predictable on
the basis of the setting of four syntactic parameters (and their interaction with other properties) that
determine: the positions of demonstratives in the DP, their interpretation according to such positions,
their co-occurrence with the (definite) article. The universal DP structure that I assume has been
sketched and defined within the general framework of the ‘DP hypothesis’ (see for instance Bernstein
2001, Longobardi 2001, Longobardi&Guardiano 2008).
Introduction
Starting from the fact that ‘all languages have demonstratives’, I will propose a crosslinguistic
definition of the category, based on the following criteria:
a) Semantic features. The semantic properties associated with the demonstrative elements belong to
the ‘definiteness sphere’: demonstratives select referents that are available or deducible from the
extralinguistic (deixis) or linguistic context (locality).
b) Syntactic positions. The languages of our database will be classified in a number of different ‘types’,
according to two criteria:
i) the position of the demonstrative with respect to the noun, adjectives, genitives and
complements of the noun;
ii) its co-occurrence with the definite article.
c) Minimal comparison with other DP-constituents. The semantic and syntactic properties of
demonstratives will be minimally compared with two elements that are typically related to the
‘definiteness/person’ area, and to the D position: the definite article and the third person pronoun.
Basic position and movement
I suggest that the ‘universal’ position where the demonstrative is generated is in a ‘low area’ of the DP
(where other ‘definiteness’ elements are presumably generated):
D Gen1 Adjs Dem Gen2 NP
The other configurations available are predictable as the consequence of:
<strong>19</strong> th ISTAL 17