A construção medial no português do Brasil: usos no padrão reclamação digital

This thesis examines the medial construction of the Portuguese of Brazil (PB). It is a construction which describes a causative event in which a non-human subject participant is affected by an action that does not originate from itself. Thus, we are interested in investigating this type of construction, its specific characteristics, motivations and discursive context from its semantic- cognitive and discoursive - pragmatic functions. The research questions are: what is the prototypical structural configuration of the medial construction (MC) in the Portuguese of Brazil? What are its specific discoursive functions? What is the degree of MC transitivity based on the properties proposed by Hopper and Thompson (1980)? We assume that the medial construction has its own structure which particularizes its significant dimension, thus ensuring a certain distance between the one in charge of the event and the affected entity. The theoretical and methodological assumptions is founded on Usage-based Functional Linguistics (FURTADO DA CUNHA; BISPO; SILVA, 2013). It is a research of qualitative- interpretative nature that has prioritized the analysis of occurrences arising from texts produced by users of the Brazilian Portuguese language in effective communicative situation. The database for this study is electronic texts available on the website www.reclameaqui.com.br. The results revealed the existence of different configurations of the medial construction in the Brazilian Portuguese, having as prototypical the one formed by SN + V. From the morphosyntactic and semantic point of view, the construction expresses a subject affected by an action that does not part from itself. As for the pragmatic aspect, the construction expresses an event that seems to have the purpose to emphasize the affected argument and to ignore, intentionally or not, the agent or the causative, since it is irrelevant to the speaker/ listener in the contextual situation.

Provocative feature deletion: a syntactic model of agreement alternations in noun incorporation contexts

The relationship between noun incorporation (NI) and the agreement alternations that occur in such contexts (NI Transitivity Alternations) remains inadequately understood. Three interpretations of these alternations (Baker, Aranovich & Golluscio 2005; Mithun 1984; Rosen 1989) are shown to be undermined by foundational or mechanical issues. I propose a syntactic model, adopting Branigan's (2011) interpretation of NI as the result of “provocative” feature valuation, which triggers generation of a copy of the object that subsequently merges inside the verb. Provocation triggers a reflexive Refine operation that deletes duplicate features from chains, making them interpretable for Transfer. NI Transitivity Alternations result from variant deletion preferences exhibited during Refine. I argue that the NI contexts discussed (Generic NI, Partial NI and Double Object NI) result from different restrictions on phonetic and semantic identity in chain formation. This provides us with a consistent definition of NI Transitivity Alternations across contexts, as well as a new typology that distinguishes NI contexts, rather than incorporating languages.

Les verbes causatifs dans les textes scientifiques : essai de typologie

La causalité est une des notions les plus fondamentales de la vie humaine. La vulgarisation scientifique se base sur l’établissement fréquent de relations causales par le truchement d'indices linguistiques. Ainsi, la causalité y est perceptible à l'aide de marques explicites, se manifestant au niveau lexical. Dans de nombreuses situations, afin de valider la relation causale, il faut récupérer des termes plus ou moins explicites qui apparaissent au niveau morphosyntaxique. Viennent enfin les procédés implicites d’expression de la cause ou "la causalité non marquée" linguistiquement.  

Redes Interorganizacionais: um estudo sobre partilha e utilização do conhecimento em organizações da Rede Associativa Empresarial da Região Centro de Portugal

Tese de doutoramento em Psicologia, na especialidade de Psicologia das Organizações, do Trabalho e dos Recursos Humanos