The task of analyzing a collection of documents generated over time is daunting. A natural way to ease the task is by summarizing documents into the topics that exist within these documents. The temporal aspect of topics can frame relevance based on when topics are introduced and when topics stop being mentioned. It creates trends and patterns that can be traced by individual key terms taken from the corpus. If trends are being established, there must be a way to visualize them through the key terms. Creating a visual system to support this analysis can help users quickly gain insights from the data, significantly easing the burden from the original analysis technique. However, creating a visual system for terms is not easy. Work has been done to develop word embeddings, allowing researchers to treat words like any number. This makes it possible to create simple charts based on word embeddings like scatter plots. However, these methods are inefficient due to loss of effectiveness with multiple time slices and point overlap. A visualization method that addresses these problems while also visualizing diachronic word embeddings in an interesting way with added semantic meaning is hard to find. These problems are managed through TimeLink. TimeLink is proposed as a dashboard system to help users gain insights from the movement of diachronic word embeddings. It comprises a Sankey diagram showing the path of a selected key term to a cluster in a time period. This local cluster is also mapped to a global topic based on an original corpus of documents from which the key terms are drawn. On the dashboard, different tools are given to users to aid in a focused analysis, such as filtering key terms and emphasizing specific clusters. TimeLink provides insightful visualizations focused on temporal word embeddings while maintaining the insights provided by global topic evolution, advancing our understanding of how topics evolve over time. / Master of Science / The task of analyzing documents collected over time is daunting. Grouping documents into topics can help frame relevancy based on when topics are introduced and hampered. The creation of topics also enables the ability to visualize trends and patterns. Creating a visual system to support this analysis can help users quickly gain insights from the data, significantly easing the burden from the original analysis technique of browsing individual documents. A visualization system for this analysis typically focuses on the terms that affect established topics. Some visualization methods, like scatter plots, implement this but can be inefficient due to loss of effectiveness as more data is introduced. TimeLink is proposed as a dashboard system to aid users in drawing insights from the development of terms over time. In addition to addressing problems in other visualizations, it visualizes the movement of terms intuitively and adds semantic meaning. TimeLink provides insightful visualizations focused on the movement of terms while maintaining the insights provided by global topic evolution, advancing our understanding of how topics evolve over time.

In the past few decades, the investigation of grammatical change using electronic corpora has made headway internationally. Although linguists previously believed that grammatical changes progress too slowly to observe, this method enables linguists to investigate even recent, or ongoing, changes. However, no comprehensive study of recent and ongoing grammatical changes in Afrikaans has appeared yet. Also, when comments about ongoing changes are made, it is usually based on anecdotal evidence, with a focus on English influence. In this study, the method of short-term diachronic comparable corpus linguistics is used to investigate grammatical changes in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010. Four corpora were collected to this end, representing language use from 1911-1920, 1941-1950, 1971-1980 and 2001-2010. Additionally, quantitative grammaticography is used to take into account possible effects of prescriptive sources. Two research questions are adressed in this study: the first inquires into the nature and extent of grammatical changes in selected grammatical categories in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010; the second wants to clarify the differences and similarities between internal and external language change, and in the light thereof establish to which extent external change, and specifically English influence, is relevant for grammatical changes in Standard Afrikaans during the past century. The theoretical framework within which language use and change is investigated in this study is cognitive linguistics, specifically emergent grammar and the exemplar model. Changes that become apparent from the data are described and explained in terms of processes of change and forces of change, and linked to the principles of cognitive linguistics. Three broad grammatical categories are investigated: temporal reference, pronouns and the genitive. Even though there is an extent of stability in each of the categories, there are also several bigger and smaller changes that give an overview of the nature of grammatical change in written Standard Afrikaans in the past century. These changes can be divided into different categories. The first type of change has to do with formalisation and colloquialisation – in broad strokes, there are signs of formalisation between the first two periods, during which the standard variety was being established, causing some features associated with formality to increase (e.g. passive constructions). However, at the end of the century there are signs of colloquialisation between the last two periods, where some formal features decrease (e.g. the formal second person pronoun u "you"), and some informal features increase (e.g. nou "now" as discourse marker). The second type of change is analogy, causing greater regularity and/or uniformity in a paradigm. For instance, obsolescent preterite forms (had "had", wis "knew") were replaced by regular forms (het/het gehad, het geweet). The last of the Dutch genitive was also replaced by the Afrikaans genitive with se "'s" and van "of". The third type of change is driven by speakers' desire to be expressive. Some of the pronouns specialise increasingly, meaning that they are used less and less for functions other than their main function, and other options are used less and less for that function. Examples of this is the third person pronoun dit "it", the shortened forms jul "you/your" and hul "they/their", and the indefinite pronouns almal "everybody", alles "everything" and elkeen "each one". A next type of change is actually a combination of different processes and forces: grammaticalisation. There are several instances of grammaticalisation: the use of gaan "go" for future reference, the use of dis "it's" rather than dit is "it is", the use of mens "human" rather than 'n mens "a human" as generic pronoun, the use of indefinite pronouns with enig- "any" like enigiets "anything", enigiemand "anybody", enigeen "anyone", and the use of the genitive particle se "'s". The last type of change is externally motivated change. Contrary to the view the Afrikaans literature in general promotes, there is only one instance of confirmed English influence in the data of this study: the increasing use of -self with reflexive pronouns, rather than the bare object form. However, there are instances of extra-linguistic influence, like standardisation that caused large scale variation reduction between the first and the second period, and the influence of feminism that can be seen in decreasing linguistic sexism, particularly with regard to generic pronouns. The conclusion in the end is that the process of internally motivated change and contact-induced change is not different – an innovation can originate from another language (overt transfer), or an internal innovation can be promoted through bi- or multilingualism (covert transfer); however, the same principles, processes and forces of change are at play, irrespective of how many languages are involved.

In the past few decades, the investigation of grammatical change using electronic corpora has made headway internationally. Although linguists previously believed that grammatical changes progress too slowly to observe, this method enables linguists to investigate even recent, or ongoing, changes. However, no comprehensive study of recent and ongoing grammatical changes in Afrikaans has appeared yet. Also, when comments about ongoing changes are made, it is usually based on anecdotal evidence, with a focus on English influence. In this study, the method of short-term diachronic comparable corpus linguistics is used to investigate grammatical changes in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010. Four corpora were collected to this end, representing language use from 1911-1920, 1941-1950, 1971-1980 and 2001-2010. Additionally, quantitative grammaticography is used to take into account possible effects of prescriptive sources. Two research questions are adressed in this study: the first inquires into the nature and extent of grammatical changes in selected grammatical categories in written Standard Afrikaans from 1911 to 2010; the second wants to clarify the differences and similarities between internal and external language change, and in the light thereof establish to which extent external change, and specifically English influence, is relevant for grammatical changes in Standard Afrikaans during the past century. The theoretical framework within which language use and change is investigated in this study is cognitive linguistics, specifically emergent grammar and the exemplar model. Changes that become apparent from the data are described and explained in terms of processes of change and forces of change, and linked to the principles of cognitive linguistics. Three broad grammatical categories are investigated: temporal reference, pronouns and the genitive. Even though there is an extent of stability in each of the categories, there are also several bigger and smaller changes that give an overview of the nature of grammatical change in written Standard Afrikaans in the past century. These changes can be divided into different categories. The first type of change has to do with formalisation and colloquialisation – in broad strokes, there are signs of formalisation between the first two periods, during which the standard variety was being established, causing some features associated with formality to increase (e.g. passive constructions). However, at the end of the century there are signs of colloquialisation between the last two periods, where some formal features decrease (e.g. the formal second person pronoun u "you"), and some informal features increase (e.g. nou "now" as discourse marker). The second type of change is analogy, causing greater regularity and/or uniformity in a paradigm. For instance, obsolescent preterite forms (had "had", wis "knew") were replaced by regular forms (het/het gehad, het geweet). The last of the Dutch genitive was also replaced by the Afrikaans genitive with se "'s" and van "of". The third type of change is driven by speakers' desire to be expressive. Some of the pronouns specialise increasingly, meaning that they are used less and less for functions other than their main function, and other options are used less and less for that function. Examples of this is the third person pronoun dit "it", the shortened forms jul "you/your" and hul "they/their", and the indefinite pronouns almal "everybody", alles "everything" and elkeen "each one". A next type of change is actually a combination of different processes and forces: grammaticalisation. There are several instances of grammaticalisation: the use of gaan "go" for future reference, the use of dis "it's" rather than dit is "it is", the use of mens "human" rather than 'n mens "a human" as generic pronoun, the use of indefinite pronouns with enig- "any" like enigiets "anything", enigiemand "anybody", enigeen "anyone", and the use of the genitive particle se "'s". The last type of change is externally motivated change. Contrary to the view the Afrikaans literature in general promotes, there is only one instance of confirmed English influence in the data of this study: the increasing use of -self with reflexive pronouns, rather than the bare object form. However, there are instances of extra-linguistic influence, like standardisation that caused large scale variation reduction between the first and the second period, and the influence of feminism that can be seen in decreasing linguistic sexism, particularly with regard to generic pronouns. The conclusion in the end is that the process of internally motivated change and contact-induced change is not different – an innovation can originate from another language (overt transfer), or an internal innovation can be promoted through bi- or multilingualism (covert transfer); however, the same principles, processes and forces of change are at play, irrespective of how many languages are involved.

Esta dissertação objetiva descrever diacronicamente o gerúndio, desde o latim até o português arcaico, a fim de apontar como e quando suas funções foram ampliadas à custa do particípio presente. Para levar a pesquisa a cabo, recorreu-se a dois difundidos métodos da Linguística Diacrônica: o método de análise documental indutiva e o método histórico-comparativo. O primeiro consiste em analisar traços e fenômenos linguísticos diretamente nos textos antigos para, ao cabo, sistematizar e interpretar os dados analisados. O segundo, mais teórico e mais abstrato, consiste em reconstruir traços de uma língua ancestral por meio da comparação indutiva de traços das línguas descendentes. Esta pesquisa consta de cinco corpora três de textos latinos e dois de textos portugueses medievais , nos quais se analisam não só o gerúndio, como também o particípio presente. Os corpora são estes: 1) Antología del Latín Vulgar, de Díaz e Díaz (1962); 2) Glosas Emilianenses, Glosas Silenses e documentos privados ibéricos, coligidos em Pidal (1950); 3) Os documentos do Tombo de Toxos Outos, de Pérez Rodríguez (2004); 4) 150 cantigas portuguesas de escárnio e maldizer; 5) Um Flos Sanctorum Trecentista, de Machado Filho (2009). Para a aplicação do método histórico-comparativo, recorre-se ao português e às outras quatro línguas neolatinas majoritárias: francês, italiano, castelhano e romeno. Os resultados mostram que a disputa entre o gerúndio e o particípio presente já ocorria desde os primeiros momentos da literatura latina, até que, por volta do século II d.C., antes de a relativa unidade do latim se romper, o gerúndio o sobrepujasse no latim popular. / This dissertation aims to describe diacronically the gerund, from Latin to Old Portuguese, in order to point out how and when its functions were enlarged at the expense of the present participle. In order to conduct this research, two diffused methods of Diachronic Linguistics were used: the method of inductive documental analysis and the historical-comparative method. The first consists in analyzing linguistic features and phenomena directly in the old texts in order to systematize and interpret the analyzed data. The second, more theoretical and more abstract, consists in reconstructing features of an ancestral language by the inductive comparison of features of the descendant languages. This research consists of five corpora three of Latin texts and two of Portuguese medieval texts , in which the gerund, as well as the present participle, are analyzed. The corpora are these: 1) Antología del Latín Vulgar, by Díaz y Díaz (1962); 2) Glosas Emilianenses, Glosas Silenses and private Iberian documents, collected in Pidal (1950); 3) Os documentos do Tombo de Toxos Outos, of Pérez Rodríguez (2004); 4) 150 Portuguese derision and cursing poems; 5) Um Flos Sanctorum Trecentista, by Machado Filho (2009). For the application of the historical-comparative method, the Portuguese and the other four Neo-Latin languages are used: French, Italian, Castilian and Romanian. The results show that the dispute between the gerund and the present participle had already taken place from the earliest moments of Latin literature, until, by the second century AD, before the relative unity of Latin broke, the gerund had surpassed it in popular Latin.

Esta dissertação teve como objetivo articular um estudo do determinante diante das formas possessivas com base em um corpus histórico jornalístico composto de anúncios e cartas de leitores e redatores extraídos de jornais paulistas do século XIX. Focalizamos as formas possessivas seu/seus/sua/suas pré-nominais, observando a presença versus ausência do artigo definido e seus diferentes contextos. Nossas hipóteses buscaram resolver algumas questões teóricas relacionadas à estrutura do DP possessivo no PB, entre elas a da opcionalidade aparente do determinante e a da variação na realização de Número no interior da estrutura. Desenvolvemos respostas e análises às questões a partir da associação de dois quadros teóricos: a teoria dos Princípios & Parâmetros (CHOMSKY 1981, 1986) incluindo alguns refinamentos do Programa Minimalista (CHOMSKY 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004), e os pressupostos elaborados dentro da Sociolinguística Variacionista (cf. WEINREICH, LABOV e HERZOG (WLH) (1968); LABOV (1972, 1994, 2000)). Consideramos também estudos posteriores que conciliaram a mudança paramétrica internalista da língua (ROBERTS (2007)) com fatores extragramaticais que determinam o percurso das formas linguísticas no tempo histórico (KROCH (1989, 1994, 2000)). Para o estudo da estrutura do DP possessivo usamos a análise sobre os Bare Nouns de Cyrino & Espinal (2014). Os resultados obtidos mostraram que a média geral de ausência do determinante diante de DPs possessivos se manteve a mesma nos dois períodos analisados, configurando uma variação estável. Concluímos que não houve, portanto, indícios de oscilação no uso de uma ou outra variante que pudesse demonstrar o avanço de uma delas em detrimento de outra. / The aim of this thesis is to describe the possessive DP structure and investigate the use of the determiner in possessive noun phrases in Paulista Brazilian Portuguese from the 19th century. For our description and analysis, we use advertisements and letters from readers and writers drawn from a historical and journalistic corpus. This research tries to verify if there is a parametric change and the contexts affected by the change and to propose an analysis for the observed facts. We adopt a minimalist approach based on Chomsky (1995, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004), within the Principles and Parameters Model (CHOMSKY 1981, 1986). We also adopt a variationist sociolinguistical approach (cf. WEINREICH, LABOV and HERZOG (WLH) (1968); LABOV (1972, 1994, 2000)) and studies of internalist parametric change (ROBERTS (2007)) and social factors (KROCH (1989, 1994, 2000)) to determine the way the possible change takes place. In order to explore possessive DP structure we use the Bare Nouns analyses by Cyrino & Espinal (2014). During the period considered, the use of the article was variable, setting a stable variation.

Esta tese apresenta, por um lado, uma descrição sumária do funcionamento dos sufixos latinos -men e -mentum em relação à sua produção lexical, às suas características morfológicas e semânticas e a informação semântica estrutural de suas palavras derivadas, no Latim. Por outro, analisa, de modo exaustivo, como o sufixo -mentum desenvolveu-se nas principais línguas românicas: Castelhano, Francês, Italiano e Romeno, para poder contrastar com o Português. Apresentamos primeiramente uma proposta de origem para o sufixo latino - mentum, diferente da bibliografia existente sobre o assunto, que indica que -mentum advém de um alargamento de -men. Para isso, montamos um corpus de análise das palavras latinas, identificando as bases nominal e verbal das palavras em -men e em -mentum; em seguida, analisamos a datação dessas palavras para, ao final, verificar o significado do sufixo em cada uma delas, resultando numa proposta de genealogia dos sufixos -men / -mentum. Na segunda parte desta tese, apresentamos a derivação panromânica do sufixo latino -mentum. Montamos um corpus para cada língua pesquisada, de modo exaustivo, com indicação de data de entrada, étimo, origem e aspecto semântico. Em cada capítulo, analisamos todos os itens, exceto no Português, em que não realizamos pesquisa feita previamente em Freitas (2008), sobre a semântica dessas palavras. Em todas as línguas, propusemos uma árvore genealógica do sufixo estudado sob um aspecto semântico, mostrando o caminho feito pelo sufixo por meio de seus significados. Ao final, propomos um modelo de análise etimológica para as línguas românicas e uma genealogia do sufixo -mentum, do Latim às românicas. / This thesis presents, on the one hand, a brief description of the functioning of Latin suffixes -men and -mentum related to their lexical production, their morphological and semantic characteristics as well as the structural semantic information of their derived words in Latin. On the other hand, it analyses exhaustively the development of the suffix -mentum in the main Romance languages: Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian, so that we can contrast them with Portuguese. First, we present a proposal for the origins of the Latin suffix -mentum, different from the existing bibliography on the subject, which suggests that -mentum comes from an enlargement of -men. Thus, we have organised a corpus for the analysis of the Latin words, identifying the nominal and verbal bases of words ending in -men and -mentum; then, we analyse the datings of these words, so that we can verify the meaning of the suffix in each one of them, which results in a proposal for the genealogy of both suffixes -men / -mentum. In the second part of the thesis, we present the PanRomance derivation of Latin suffix -mentum. We have organized an exhaustive corpus for each language, indicating the first datings, etymon, origin and semantic aspect. In each chapter, we have analysed every item, but for Portuguese, in which we have not made the research previously presented in Freitas (2008) about the semantics of these words. For every language we have proposed a genealogical tree for the suffix, in its semantic aspect, showing the routes taken by the suffix through its meanings. Finally, we have proposed a model for etymological analysis for Romance languages, and a genealogy of the suffix -mentum, from Latin to Romance languages.

Os estudos voltados à tradução têm se expandido sobremaneira nos últimos anos, bem como o interesse dos estudiosos pela convergência de diferentes áreas com as quais a tradução dialoga em suas múltiplas interfaces entre elas a Tradução Especializada, a Tradução Literária, a Terminologia, a Terminologia Diacrônica e a Linguística de Corpus. Diante dessa profusão de pontos de vista, o presente estudo foi conduzido de modo a estabelecer um diálogo muito próximo entre a tradição dos estudos tradutórios de Terminologia em textos especializados e os recentes estudos tradutórios de Terminologia em textos não-técnicos (ZAVAGLIA et al., 2010). Defendemos, nesta pesquisa, com base no aporte teórico proposto pela TCT de Cabré (1999) e pela Etno-terminologia de Barbosa (2006), que a livre circulação de termos das áreas de especialidade em textos não-especializados, a exemplo da literatura, não é recente, o que, segundo nosso entendimento, demanda uma documentação terminológica por parte do tradutor leigo prévia ao ato tradutório. Utilizando como corpus de estudo a peça de teatro francesa Les Plaideurs de Jean Racine de 1668, ainda sem tradução para o português do Brasil, conduzimos este trabalho seguindo um roteiro que se inicia com a coleta de candidatos a termos jurídicos relacionados ao Ancien Régime presentes na peça auxiliados pelas técnicas da Linguística de Corpus (BERBER SARDINHA, 2004), a confecção de fichas terminológicas bilígues (AUBERT, 1996) e (CAMACHO, 2004) que determinam as delimitações conceituais dos candidatos levantados por meio de uma pesquisa em Terminologia Diacrônica, finalizando-se com propostas de equivalentes em português do Brasil para as unidades terminológicas levantadas em língua francesa segundo os parâmetros teóricos trazidos por Aubert (1998, 2006) com suas Modalidades de Tradução. Ao final desta pesquisa, pudemos constatar que cabe também ao tradutor de textos não-técnicos uma atenção especial à profusão de registros que podem existir nesses tipos de textos, aqui exemplificados por meio da literatura universal e clássica, o que traz a necessidade de trabalho conjunta entre as áreas da Terminologia e da Tradução, rompendo com parâmetros estritamente formais. / Translation studies have been greatly expanding during the last few years as well as the interest of researchers in the convergence of Translation itself and other different areas such as Specialized Translation, Literary Translation, Terminology, Diachronic Terminology and Corpus Linguistics. Given this profusion of points of view, this study aimed at establishing a very close dialogue between the traditional association of translation studies and terminology of specialized texts and the recent association of translation studies and terminology of non-technical texts (ZAVAGLIA et al, 2010). According to the proposals by Cabré (1999) and Barbosa (2006), we argue that the free movement of specialized areas terms in non-specialized texts such as literature is not something new which, in our opinion, demands a terminological documentation by the nontechnical text translator before the act of translation. Using Jean Racines French play Les Plaideurs (1668) as our corpus of study not yet translated into Brazilian Portuguese , legal terms related to the Ancien Régime present in the play were firstly collected aided by the techniques of Corpus Linguistics (BERBER SARDINHA, 2004). Secondly, based on the foundations of Diachronic Terminology, bilingual terminological records (AUBERT, 1996 & CAMACHO, 2004) were elaborated, which determined the conceptual boundaries of the collected candidates. Finally, proposals of equivalents in Brazilian Portuguese were suggested according to Auberts Modalities of Translation (1998, 2006). At last, we found that it is also necessary that the nontechnical text translator gives special attention to the variety of language registers that may exist in these types of texts, exemplified here by means of universal and classic literature, which brings the need for joint working between the areas of Terminology and Translation, breaking strictly formal parameters.

This thesis is an investigation of Middle English insanity language. It analyses change in the Middle English lexical field of INSANITY, the semantic structure of lexemes wod and mad, and compares INSANITY conceptual metaphors in Middle English and present-day English. The INSANITY lexical field is an ideal one to study language change, due to socio-cultural changes since the Middle Ages such as advances in medical knowledge, the development of the field of psychiatry and legal changes protecting people with a mental illness from discrimination. The general theoretical aims were to examine a) change in conceptual metaphor, and b) semantic and lexical change with a particular focus on the decline in use of adjective wod. The theoretical frameworks are cognitive linguistics, prototype theory, and conceptual metaphor theory, and the data is derived from Middle English corpora and other sources. The INSANITY database I created for this study consisted of 1307 instances of mad, wod and near-synonyms in context. The main results can be divided into three groups. Firstly, the lexical field study demonstrates that various intra-linguistic and socio-cultural phenomena effect lexical change. Using case studies amongst others of the decline of wod in the Wycliffite Bible and of Caxton's translations from French, and a systematic variation across genre, I argue that the important factors are i) the arrival of new medical loanwords such as frensy, lunatic and malencolie; ii) the early re-emergence of the vernacular in medical texts starting in the twelfth century, and the development of a new medical register; iii) the so-called medieval 'inward turn'; iv) changes in the neighbouring lexical field of ANGER. Secondly, the semasiological study of wod and mad shows that the meanings of these two lexemes are structured and change in line with the central tenets of prototype theory, i.e. as described for diachronic prototype semantics by Geeraerts (1997). The path of mad's semantic development does not parallel that of wod after the thirteenth century. Mad's senses do not have the emphasis on wildness and fury that the senses of wod do. A particularly interesting finding is the semantic change from a sub-sense of adverb mad and adjective mad, 'unrestrained', leading in present-day English to a new delexicalised and grammaticalised sense of mad, where its use as an intensifier enhances scalar quantity and quality. Thirdly, the conceptual metaphor study demonstrates that predominantly the same conceptual metaphors are seen in both Middle English and present-day English, with some exceptions such as the concept of insanity being related to moral decline, as evidenced in the dearth of FALLING metaphors for insanity in present-day English. Conceptual metaphors such as INSANITY IS ANOTHER PLACE are evidenced in present-day English expressions such as out of her senses, or not in my right mind. In 1422, Thomas Hoccleve could write of a dysseveraunce between himself and his wit, or about his wyld infirmitie, which threw him owt of my selfe, illustrating the same underlying concepts. Other INSANITY conceptual metaphors which remain unchanged are GOING ASTRAY, LACK OF ORDER, LACK OF WHOLENESS, DARKNESS, FORCE, PRISON and BURDEN. Because of its unique approach in combining onomasiological and semasiological approaches with a conceptual metaphor study, this study reveals not only specific patterns of change, but differences in the rate of change on the lexical and conceptual levels. Lexical change driven by the need to be expressive, and reflecting socio-cultural changes such as changes in medical knowledge, can be seen to happen rapidly over the Middle English period. However, underlying conceptual change is barely discernible even over a much longer period of time from Middle English to present-day English. This research is significant because it provides a basis for future analysis of insanity language in other periods and contexts. It also contributes to the study of semantic change in general, highlighting the insights that can be gained by combining different types of data-driven analyses.

English has an extraordinary number of labile verbs, that is, verbs that can be used both transitively with a causative sense and intransitively with an inchoative sense. This corpus-based study investigates the evolution of the verb grow from exclusively intransitive to labile in British English in the Late Modern English period. A random sample of 500 instances of the verb grow was drawn from the period 1710-1780 as well as from the period 1850-1920 of the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts in order to track diachronic changes. The instances in the samples were categorized according to their verb pattern and type of complement (if any), and instances of the past participle grown were also categorized based on the auxiliary used (be/have/none). The study suggests that grow came to be used transitively when resultative intransitive constructions (e.g. be grown (over)) were reanalyzed as passives; that the use of noun phrase complements with copular grow decreased and became archaic to make the distinction between copular and transitive uses less ambiguous; and that the fact that the be-auxiliary was replaced by the have-auxiliary in perfect constructions helped avoid ambiguity between intransitive and transitive uses of grow. Thus, the study provides some empirical evidence for Visser's (1963) hypothesis that the change from be- to have-perfects played a central role in the acquisition of lability.

Em uma consulta a gramáticas já desde fins do século XVIII , a livros didáticos e a manuais de morfologia da língua portuguesa, encontra-se, geralmente, uma lista de vários sufixos considerados diminutivos. Contudo, muito raramente se encontram explicações acerca das mudanças linguísticas que possibilitaram que tais sufixos alcançassem as formas que possuem, ou sobre o comportamento sincrônico desses sufixos sobretudo quando a sincronia em questão é uma sincronia pretérita , ou, ainda, quanto à descrição diacrônica ou histórica desses sufixos, no período que se estende do século XIII ao XX, quer tendo como foco a forma, quer o funcionamento, quer a semântica. Desse modo, a partir da identificação dos sufixos que atuam como diminutivos em língua portuguesa e considerando o fato de essa língua ser uma língua românica, esta pesquisa apresenta, inicialmente, uma caracterização de sufixos diminutivos latinos quanto à origem, à forma e à significação, ao que segue a descrição das principais mudanças ocorridas nesses sufixos desde o latim vulgar até algumas línguas românicas, como o português, o espanhol, o francês, o provençal e o italiano, sendo as formas resultantes nestas últimas quatro línguas ainda descritas em relação à sua forma e à sua semântica. Na sequência, os sufixos diminutivos existentes em português foram caracterizados desde o século XIII ao XX, século a século em seus aspectos formais (fonéticos e morfológicos), funcionais e semânticos, fase essa em que se identificaram, também, características que esses sufixos possuem em comum com os latinos e com os românicos, em especial com os das línguas mencionadas. Para isso, foram constituídos corpora de diminutivos relativos a cada um dos séculos aqui contemplados, tendo por base a análise de palavras encontradas em dois corpora eletrônicos, o Corpus Informatizado do Português Medieval (CIPM) para textos compreendidos entre os séculos XIII e XV e o Corpus do Português para textos entre os séculos XIV e XX. Com base na análise dos diminutivos identificados, foi possível concluir que os sufixos diminutivos existentes em português são provenientes da língua latina quer por herança, quer por empréstimo a outras línguas românicas ou ao latim clássico , os quais conservam, ainda, algumas das características dos diminutivos naquela língua, como manutenção do gênero da palavra primitiva, diversidade semântica e formação de nomes próprios diminutivos. Os dados analisados indicam, também, que, embora sejam muitos, os sufixos diminutivos em português são muito pouco produtivos nessa língua, com exceção dos sufixos em -t- a partir do século XIX e, principalmente, do sufixo -inho, muito frequente e o mais produtivo em todas as sincronias descritas, podendo, assim, ser caracterizado como o sufixo diminutivo por excelência da língua portuguesa, com previsão de que ainda continuará sendo por muitos séculos. / Consulting grammars since the end of the eighteenth century , textbooks and manuals on morphology of the portuguese language, a list of several suffixes, considered as diminutives, is usually presented. Nevertheless, explications not only on linguistic changes, that justify the current forms of such suffixes, but also on their synchronic functioning particularly when the synchrony concerned is a past one , or on their diachronic or historical description, from the 13th to the 20th century, are rare, focusing either on form, functioning or semantics. Thus, from the identification of the suffixes, that function as diminutives in portuguese language, a romance language, this research presents, in a first moment, a characterization of the latin diminutive suffixes, concerning origin, form and signification; in a second one, it describes the main changes occurred in these suffixes, from vulgar latin to portuguese, spanish, french, provencal and italian, whose forms except in portuguese are described concerning form and semantics; then, the portuguese diminutive suffixes were characterized, from the 13th to the 20th century, one century at a time considering the formal aspects (phonetics and morphology), functional and semantical aspects, moment in which the portuguese diminutive suffixes were compared to latin and to its mentioned sister romance languages, in order to verify the features they have in common. For this comparison, corpora about diminutive suffixes were established, from the 13th to the 20th century, century by century. Such corpora, from which the words analyzed were taken, included the Corpus Informatizado do Português Medieval (CIPM) concerning the texts from the 13th to the 15th century and the Corpus do Português concerning the texts from the 14th to the 20th century. After the analysis of the portuguese diminutive suffixes identified in such corpora, it was verified that the portuguese diminutive suffixes come from the latin language either through heritage or through loan of other romance languages or classical latin , still keeping some features of the diminutives of the popular latin, such as: preservation of the gender of the primitive word, semantic diversity and composition of diminutive proper name. These analyzed data show as well that the diminutive suffixes, although plentiful, are very little productive in portuguese, except the suffixes in -t-, from the 19th century on, and, chiefly, the suffix -inho, very frequent and the most productive in all described synchronies, being considered, therefore, as the diminutive suffix of the portuguese language par excellence, with great probability to continue for ages.