The aim of this thesis is to design and implement a cognitively plausible theory of sentence processing which incorporates a mechanism for modeling a prediction and verification process in human language understanding, and to evaluate the validity of this model on specific psycholinguistic phenomena as well as on broad-coverage, naturally occurring text. Modeling prediction is a timely and relevant contribution to the field because recent experimental evidence suggests that humans predict upcoming structure or lexemes during sentence processing. However, none of the current sentence processing theories capture prediction explicitly. This thesis proposes a novel model of incremental sentence processing that offers an explicit prediction and verification mechanism. In evaluating the proposed model, this thesis also makes a methodological contribution. The design and evaluation of current sentence processing theories are usually based exclusively on experimental results from individual psycholinguistic experiments on specific linguistic structures. However, a theory of language processing in humans should not only work in an experimentally designed environment, but should also have explanatory power for naturally occurring language. This thesis first shows that the Dundee corpus, an eye-tracking corpus of newspaper text, constitutes a valuable additional resource for testing sentence processing theories. I demonstrate that a benchmark processing effect (the subject/object relative clause asymmetry) can be detected in this data set (Chapter 4). I then evaluate two existing theories of sentence processing, Surprisal and Dependency Locality Theory (DLT), on the full Dundee corpus. This constitutes the first broad-coverage comparison of sentence processing theories on naturalistic text. I find that both theories can explain some of the variance in the eye-movement data, and that they capture different aspects of sentence processing (Chapter 5). In Chapter 6, I propose a new theory of sentence processing, which explicitly models prediction and verification processes, and aims to unify the complementary aspects of Surprisal and DLT. The proposed theory implements key cognitive concepts such as incrementality, full connectedness, and memory decay. The underlying grammar formalism is a strictly incremental version of Tree-adjoining Grammar (TAG), Psycholinguistically motivated TAG (PLTAG), which is introduced in Chapter 7. I then describe how the Penn Treebank can be converted into PLTAG format and define an incremental, fully connected broad-coverage parsing algorithm with associated probability model for PLTAG. Evaluation of the PLTAG model shows that it achieves the broad coverage required for testing a psycholinguistic theory on naturalistic data. On the standardized Penn Treebank test set, it approaches the performance of incremental TAG parsers without prediction (Chapter 8). Chapter 9 evaluates the psycholinguistic aspects of the proposed theory by testing it both on a on a selection of established sentence processing phenomena and on the Dundee eye-tracking corpus. The proposed theory can account for a larger range of psycholinguistic case studies than previous theories, and is a significant positive predictor of reading times on broad-coverage text. I show that it can explain a larger proportion of the variance in reading times than either DLT integration cost or Surprisal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

The current approaches for the induction of medical procedural knowledge suffer from several drawbacks: the structures produced may not be explicit medical structures, they are only based on statistical measures that do not necessarily respect medical criteria which can be essential to guarantee medical correct structures, or they are not prepared to deal with the incremental arrival of new data. In this thesis we propose a methodology to automatically induce medically correct clinical algorithms (CAs) from hospital databases. These CAs are represented according to the SDA knowledge model. The methodology considers relevant background knowledge and it is able to work in an incremental way. The methodology has been tested in the domains of hypertension, diabetes mellitus and the comborbidity of both diseases. As a result, we propose a repository of background knowledge for these pathologies and provide the SDA diagrams obtained. Later analyses show that the results are medically correct and comprehensible when validated with health care professionals.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The aim of this thesis is to study the effect that linguistic context exerts on the activation and processing of word meaning over time. Previous studies have demonstrated that a biasing context makes it possible to predict upcoming words. The context causes the pre-activation of expected words and facilitates their processing when they are encountered. The interaction of context and word meaning can be described in terms of feature overlap: as the context unfolds, the semantic features of the processed words are activated and words that match those features are pre-activated and thus processed more quickly when encountered. The aim of the experiments in this thesis is to test a key prediction of this account, viz., that the facilitation effect is additive and occurs together with the unfolding context. Our first contribution is to analyse the effect of an increasing amount of biasing context on the pre-activation of the meaning of a critical word. In a self-paced reading study, we investigate the amount of biasing information required to boost word processing: at least two biasing words are required to significantly reduce the time to read the critical word. In a complementary visual world experiment we study the effect of context as it unfolds over time. We identify a ceiling effect after the first biasing word: when the expected word has been pre-activated, an increasing amount of context does not produce any additional significant facilitation effect. Our second contribution is to model the activation effect observed in the previous experiments using a bag-of-words distributional semantic model. The similarity scores generated by the model significantly correlate with the association scores produced by humans. When we use point-wise multiplication to combine contextual word vectors, the model provides a computational implementation of feature overlap theory, successfully predicting reading times. Our third contribution is to analyse the effect of context on semantically similar words. In another visual world experiment, we show that words that are semantically similar generate similar eye-movements towards a related object depicted on the screen. A coherent context pre-activates the critical word and therefore increases the expectations towards it. This experiment also tested the cognitive validity of a distributional model of semantics by using this model to generate the critical words for the experimental materials used.

Este trabalho estuda a caracterizacao semântica dos argumentos dativos. Entendemos como “dativos” NPs que sao o primeiro objeto de construcões de duplo objeto (como, p. ex., John gave Mary a book “Joao deu um livro para Maria”), certos cliticos pronominais (como, p. ex., Maria me deu o livro) e NPs com marcacao morfologica de caso (como, p. ex., Hann gaf mér bókina “Ele me deu o livro”). Essencialmente, propõe-se, neste trabalho, que dativos sejam argumentos que estao envolvidos em eventos em que sao afetados. Iniciamos esse estudo a partir das caracterizacões tradicionais de argumentos dativos, de acordo com as quais essa seria uma funcao sintatica talhada para expressar o “possuidor” em um evento que envolve mudanca (potencial) de posse. Examinamos, com detalhe, as propostas feitas para dar conta da alternância dativa do inglês – principalmente, a conhecida restricao o “possuidor prospectivo” – e como essas propostas poderiam ser estendidas para cobrir os dados do português brasileiro. Essa proposta implica que, se o dativo é possuidor, o objeto direto deve ser o argumento possuido, descrevendo assim a relacao entre esses dois argumentos e os caracterizando. Levantamos, em seguida, algumas dificuldades para essas abordagens, mostrando, entre outros problemas, que muitos verbos que tomam argumentos dativos nao envolvem “posse”. Tendo mostrado que a abordagem baseada em posse falha em predizer quais verbos tomam dativos, buscamos uma caracterizacao semântica alternativa desses argumentos, procurando estabelecer uma comparacao dessa posicao sintatica com os objetos diretos. Apresentamos uma hipotese pouco explorada para o inglês, mas que parece ter respaldo translinguistico, de que dativos expressariam argumentos afetados. Essa proposta é criticada por alguns autores, pois “afetacao” parece ser um conceito difuso. Por isso, muitas vezes se diz que esta nao é uma nocao que possa ser empregada para cobrir classes coerentes de fenômenos, sendo substituida por outros conceitos, vistos como mais relevantes. Tomamos um caminho diferente desses trabalhos: a partir de uma semântica baseada na teoria de “reticulados”, buscamos articular o conceito de “afetacao” com outros geralmente empregados no estudo da semântica lexical dos verbos por meio de uma hierarquia implicacional. Assim, propomos que afetacao, mudanca, movimento, incrementalidade, “entrada” e “saida” de existência, afetacao psicologica, benefaccao e malefaccao sejam conceitos inter-relacionados, que estao em jogo na realizacao de argumentos. À luz dessa teoria, baseada na hierarquia implicacional que estabelece “graus” de afetacao, capturamos as observacões tradicionais sobre os dativos do inglês e as nossas observacões anteriormente levantadas sobre os dados do português brasileiro, bem como os dados que nao tinham uma explicacao natural em abordagens prévias. Nossa proposta, ainda, faz predicões a respeito da distribuicao de NPs com dativo marcado morfologicamente. / This work aims to discuss the semantic characterization of dative arguments. We take “dative” to be NPs that are the first direct object in double object contructions (e.g., John gave Mary a book), some clitic pronouns (for example, Maria me deu o livro “Maria gave me the book”) and morphologically case-marked NPs (for instance, Hann gaf mér bókina “He gave me the book”). Mainly, we propose datives are arguments that are involved in events in which they are affected. We start this study from the classical accounts of dative arguments, according to which this syntactic function is suitable to express the possessor in an event of “(potential) change of possession”. We examine in detail the proposal regarding English dative alternation – mainly the so-called “prospective possessor” constraint – and how it could be extended to account for data from Brazilian Portuguese. This proposal implicates that, if the dative is the “possessor”, the direct object must be the possessed argument, describing, thus, the relationship between these two arguments and characterizing them. We point out some difficulties for these approaches, showing among other problems that some verbs that can take a dative do not involve change of possession. After showing that the possession-based approach fails to correctly predict the verbs which take dative arguments, we attempt to find an alternative semantic characterization of datives, establishing a comparison between this syntactic function and direct objects. We present an underexplored hypothesis for English, which seems to be supported by cross linguistic data, according to which datives express affected arguments. This proposal is criticized by some authors since “affectedness” seems to be a diffuse notion, which would not be useful to account for coherent classes of phenomena. Therefore, “affectedness” is usually replaced by other notions considered more relevant to argument realization. We take a different way from these works: based on a “lattice” theory, we attempt to articulate the concept of “affectedness” with other notions generally used by lexical semantic researches by means of an implicational hierarchy. As a result, we propose that “affectedness”, change, motion, incrementallity, “coming” and “letting” to exist, psych “affectedness”, benefaction and malefaction are interrelated concepts, which are involved in argument realization patterns. In the light of this theory, based on an implicacional hierarchy of “degrees” of affectedness, we account for the standard observations about English double object construction and our previous observations about data from Brazilian Portuguese. Moreover, our proposal makes additional predictions regarding the distribution of morphologically casemarked datives.

Este trabalho estuda a caracterizacao semântica dos argumentos dativos. Entendemos como “dativos” NPs que sao o primeiro objeto de construcões de duplo objeto (como, p. ex., John gave Mary a book “Joao deu um livro para Maria”), certos cliticos pronominais (como, p. ex., Maria me deu o livro) e NPs com marcacao morfologica de caso (como, p. ex., Hann gaf mér bókina “Ele me deu o livro”). Essencialmente, propõe-se, neste trabalho, que dativos sejam argumentos que estao envolvidos em eventos em que sao afetados. Iniciamos esse estudo a partir das caracterizacões tradicionais de argumentos dativos, de acordo com as quais essa seria uma funcao sintatica talhada para expressar o “possuidor” em um evento que envolve mudanca (potencial) de posse. Examinamos, com detalhe, as propostas feitas para dar conta da alternância dativa do inglês – principalmente, a conhecida restricao o “possuidor prospectivo” – e como essas propostas poderiam ser estendidas para cobrir os dados do português brasileiro. Essa proposta implica que, se o dativo é possuidor, o objeto direto deve ser o argumento possuido, descrevendo assim a relacao entre esses dois argumentos e os caracterizando. Levantamos, em seguida, algumas dificuldades para essas abordagens, mostrando, entre outros problemas, que muitos verbos que tomam argumentos dativos nao envolvem “posse”. Tendo mostrado que a abordagem baseada em posse falha em predizer quais verbos tomam dativos, buscamos uma caracterizacao semântica alternativa desses argumentos, procurando estabelecer uma comparacao dessa posicao sintatica com os objetos diretos. Apresentamos uma hipotese pouco explorada para o inglês, mas que parece ter respaldo translinguistico, de que dativos expressariam argumentos afetados. Essa proposta é criticada por alguns autores, pois “afetacao” parece ser um conceito difuso. Por isso, muitas vezes se diz que esta nao é uma nocao que possa ser empregada para cobrir classes coerentes de fenômenos, sendo substituida por outros conceitos, vistos como mais relevantes. Tomamos um caminho diferente desses trabalhos: a partir de uma semântica baseada na teoria de “reticulados”, buscamos articular o conceito de “afetacao” com outros geralmente empregados no estudo da semântica lexical dos verbos por meio de uma hierarquia implicacional. Assim, propomos que afetacao, mudanca, movimento, incrementalidade, “entrada” e “saida” de existência, afetacao psicologica, benefaccao e malefaccao sejam conceitos inter-relacionados, que estao em jogo na realizacao de argumentos. À luz dessa teoria, baseada na hierarquia implicacional que estabelece “graus” de afetacao, capturamos as observacões tradicionais sobre os dativos do inglês e as nossas observacões anteriormente levantadas sobre os dados do português brasileiro, bem como os dados que nao tinham uma explicacao natural em abordagens prévias. Nossa proposta, ainda, faz predicões a respeito da distribuicao de NPs com dativo marcado morfologicamente. / This work aims to discuss the semantic characterization of dative arguments. We take “dative” to be NPs that are the first direct object in double object contructions (e.g., John gave Mary a book), some clitic pronouns (for example, Maria me deu o livro “Maria gave me the book”) and morphologically case-marked NPs (for instance, Hann gaf mér bókina “He gave me the book”). Mainly, we propose datives are arguments that are involved in events in which they are affected. We start this study from the classical accounts of dative arguments, according to which this syntactic function is suitable to express the possessor in an event of “(potential) change of possession”. We examine in detail the proposal regarding English dative alternation – mainly the so-called “prospective possessor” constraint – and how it could be extended to account for data from Brazilian Portuguese. This proposal implicates that, if the dative is the “possessor”, the direct object must be the possessed argument, describing, thus, the relationship between these two arguments and characterizing them. We point out some difficulties for these approaches, showing among other problems that some verbs that can take a dative do not involve change of possession. After showing that the possession-based approach fails to correctly predict the verbs which take dative arguments, we attempt to find an alternative semantic characterization of datives, establishing a comparison between this syntactic function and direct objects. We present an underexplored hypothesis for English, which seems to be supported by cross linguistic data, according to which datives express affected arguments. This proposal is criticized by some authors since “affectedness” seems to be a diffuse notion, which would not be useful to account for coherent classes of phenomena. Therefore, “affectedness” is usually replaced by other notions considered more relevant to argument realization. We take a different way from these works: based on a “lattice” theory, we attempt to articulate the concept of “affectedness” with other notions generally used by lexical semantic researches by means of an implicational hierarchy. As a result, we propose that “affectedness”, change, motion, incrementallity, “coming” and “letting” to exist, psych “affectedness”, benefaction and malefaction are interrelated concepts, which are involved in argument realization patterns. In the light of this theory, based on an implicacional hierarchy of “degrees” of affectedness, we account for the standard observations about English double object construction and our previous observations about data from Brazilian Portuguese. Moreover, our proposal makes additional predictions regarding the distribution of morphologically casemarked datives.

Este trabalho estuda a caracterizacao semântica dos argumentos dativos. Entendemos como “dativos” NPs que sao o primeiro objeto de construcões de duplo objeto (como, p. ex., John gave Mary a book “Joao deu um livro para Maria”), certos cliticos pronominais (como, p. ex., Maria me deu o livro) e NPs com marcacao morfologica de caso (como, p. ex., Hann gaf mér bókina “Ele me deu o livro”). Essencialmente, propõe-se, neste trabalho, que dativos sejam argumentos que estao envolvidos em eventos em que sao afetados. Iniciamos esse estudo a partir das caracterizacões tradicionais de argumentos dativos, de acordo com as quais essa seria uma funcao sintatica talhada para expressar o “possuidor” em um evento que envolve mudanca (potencial) de posse. Examinamos, com detalhe, as propostas feitas para dar conta da alternância dativa do inglês – principalmente, a conhecida restricao o “possuidor prospectivo” – e como essas propostas poderiam ser estendidas para cobrir os dados do português brasileiro. Essa proposta implica que, se o dativo é possuidor, o objeto direto deve ser o argumento possuido, descrevendo assim a relacao entre esses dois argumentos e os caracterizando. Levantamos, em seguida, algumas dificuldades para essas abordagens, mostrando, entre outros problemas, que muitos verbos que tomam argumentos dativos nao envolvem “posse”. Tendo mostrado que a abordagem baseada em posse falha em predizer quais verbos tomam dativos, buscamos uma caracterizacao semântica alternativa desses argumentos, procurando estabelecer uma comparacao dessa posicao sintatica com os objetos diretos. Apresentamos uma hipotese pouco explorada para o inglês, mas que parece ter respaldo translinguistico, de que dativos expressariam argumentos afetados. Essa proposta é criticada por alguns autores, pois “afetacao” parece ser um conceito difuso. Por isso, muitas vezes se diz que esta nao é uma nocao que possa ser empregada para cobrir classes coerentes de fenômenos, sendo substituida por outros conceitos, vistos como mais relevantes. Tomamos um caminho diferente desses trabalhos: a partir de uma semântica baseada na teoria de “reticulados”, buscamos articular o conceito de “afetacao” com outros geralmente empregados no estudo da semântica lexical dos verbos por meio de uma hierarquia implicacional. Assim, propomos que afetacao, mudanca, movimento, incrementalidade, “entrada” e “saida” de existência, afetacao psicologica, benefaccao e malefaccao sejam conceitos inter-relacionados, que estao em jogo na realizacao de argumentos. À luz dessa teoria, baseada na hierarquia implicacional que estabelece “graus” de afetacao, capturamos as observacões tradicionais sobre os dativos do inglês e as nossas observacões anteriormente levantadas sobre os dados do português brasileiro, bem como os dados que nao tinham uma explicacao natural em abordagens prévias. Nossa proposta, ainda, faz predicões a respeito da distribuicao de NPs com dativo marcado morfologicamente. / This work aims to discuss the semantic characterization of dative arguments. We take “dative” to be NPs that are the first direct object in double object contructions (e.g., John gave Mary a book), some clitic pronouns (for example, Maria me deu o livro “Maria gave me the book”) and morphologically case-marked NPs (for instance, Hann gaf mér bókina “He gave me the book”). Mainly, we propose datives are arguments that are involved in events in which they are affected. We start this study from the classical accounts of dative arguments, according to which this syntactic function is suitable to express the possessor in an event of “(potential) change of possession”. We examine in detail the proposal regarding English dative alternation – mainly the so-called “prospective possessor” constraint – and how it could be extended to account for data from Brazilian Portuguese. This proposal implicates that, if the dative is the “possessor”, the direct object must be the possessed argument, describing, thus, the relationship between these two arguments and characterizing them. We point out some difficulties for these approaches, showing among other problems that some verbs that can take a dative do not involve change of possession. After showing that the possession-based approach fails to correctly predict the verbs which take dative arguments, we attempt to find an alternative semantic characterization of datives, establishing a comparison between this syntactic function and direct objects. We present an underexplored hypothesis for English, which seems to be supported by cross linguistic data, according to which datives express affected arguments. This proposal is criticized by some authors since “affectedness” seems to be a diffuse notion, which would not be useful to account for coherent classes of phenomena. Therefore, “affectedness” is usually replaced by other notions considered more relevant to argument realization. We take a different way from these works: based on a “lattice” theory, we attempt to articulate the concept of “affectedness” with other notions generally used by lexical semantic researches by means of an implicational hierarchy. As a result, we propose that “affectedness”, change, motion, incrementallity, “coming” and “letting” to exist, psych “affectedness”, benefaction and malefaction are interrelated concepts, which are involved in argument realization patterns. In the light of this theory, based on an implicacional hierarchy of “degrees” of affectedness, we account for the standard observations about English double object construction and our previous observations about data from Brazilian Portuguese. Moreover, our proposal makes additional predictions regarding the distribution of morphologically casemarked datives.

Ce travail aura pour but d’explorer l’interface sémantique-syntaxe des « constructions » avec les prédicats secondaires, résultatifs et dépictifs. Une attention particulière sera donnée au problème du choix des sujets (ou des hôtes) de prédication pour ces deux types de prédicats, ainsi qu’à la classe aspectuelle lexicale du verbe à la base de la construction.Dans la première partie, nous introduisons divers patterns de la construction résultative et expliquons le principe de base qui régit la syntaxe de ces constructions, à savoir la Restriction sur l’objet direct. D’abord nous réviserons la sémantique des adjectifs gradables, étant donné que les propriétés de l’échelle d’une propriété introduite par l’adjectif définissent la structure événemen-tielle/aspectuelle des constructions résultatives, notamment la distinction entre les constructions résultatives à contrôle et à marquage exceptionnel casuel. Après avoir écarté un nombre de prétendus contre-exemples à la Restriction DOR, nous réaffirmerons sa validité, notamment en tant que diagnostic de l’inaccusativité en anglais. Après avoir étudier le problème des objets non-sélectionnés, nous verrons pourquoi le russe n’a pas ce type de construction, et, conjointement, pourquoi il ne doit pas être classifié comme une langue satellite-framed, étant donné que le paramètre qui autorise les constructions résultatives dans une langue est également responsable pour la classification des langues en satellite-framed ou verb-framed.La deuxième partie sera consacré aux prédicats dépictifs, notamment aux contraintes qui pèsent sur le choix du contrôleur pour ce type de prédication secondaire, ainsi qu’aux propriétés des adjectifs dépictifs en comparaison avec d’autres types d’adjoints participant-oriented. Nous étudions la distribution des adjectifs formes longues et formes courtes en russe, conditionnée par les propriétés d’accord qui les distinguent et esquissons un processus historique à l’origine de leur distribution dans la langue d’aujourd’hui. / The aim of this dissertation is to explore the syntactic-semantic interface of ‘constructions’ which contain secondary predicates – either depictive or resultative. The main problems will be to deal (i) with the selection of the subjects (or hosts) of these types of predicates and (ii) with the aspectual class of the verbs used in these sentences.In the first part, the various patterns implied in resultative clauses will be examined, leading to the conclusion that the basic principle that governs the syntax of these clauses can be identified with the ‘Restriction on direct objects’ – or RDO. First, the semantics of gradable adjectives will be revisited, taking into account the scalarity properties these adjectives contain, which determine the eventive/ aspectual structures of resultative sentences and the distinction between Control structures and Exceptional Case Marking sentences. After invalidating many would-be counter-examples to the RDO, its validity will be reasserted, notably as a diagnostic of unaccusativity in English. Next, after analysing the problem of unselected object arguments, the reason will be shown why Russian does not possess this type of structure, and why it cannot be characterised as a ‘satellite-framed’ language either – given that the parameter which allows specific resultative structures in any language also determines its classification as satellite-framed or verb-framed.The second part of the dissertation is devoted to depictive predicates – in particular (i) to the constraints that determine the choice of the Controller in this type of secondary predication, and (ii) to the relevant properties of depictive adjectives in contra-distinction to other types of adjuncts, often identified as ‘participant-oriented’. Finally, the distribution of those Russian adjectives which possess long and short forms, which is conditioned by specific agreement or concord properties, is examined, leading to a tentative reconstruction of a diachronic process which has led to their distribution in today's Russian.

Este trabalho apresenta uma análise semântica dos verbos e adjetivos do Guarani Paraguaio baseada nos pressupostos da Semântica Formal. Mais especificamente, este trabalho se propõe a analisar a interação de verbos e adjetivos com um morfema de grau da língua, a partícula . São analisados neste trabalho adjetivos, verbos e construções causativas com verbos deadjetivais a partir de suas possíveis leituras com o morfema . Demonstra-se aqui que o morfema funciona como um modificador da relação de predicação entre o adjetivo ou o evento e um argumento nominal. Essa relação está dada em termos de uma estrutura de graus, de acordo com a semântica escalar proposta por Kennedy (1999b) e Kennedy & McNally (2005). Essas teorias partem do pressuposto de que adjetivos mapeiam entidades em graus de estruturas abstratas de uma propriedade, as escalas, e por isso adjetivo contém uma variável de grau d em sua entrada lexical. Essa variável é quantificada através de um morfema de grau. Proponho aqui que além do modificador que satura a variável de grau dada no seu léxico, o adjetivo também pode receber um modificador de grau quando houver uma escala de quantidade, dada composicionalmente de acordo com o modelo de Bochnak (2010). Nesse sentido, não atuaria sobre a variável de grau dada pelo léxico do adjetivo, mas sobre uma escala de quantidade construída na sintaxe. Em relação a verbos, modificaria a relação de mapeamento do evento sobre entidades, medido por uma estrutura de graus. Uma das vantagens desta proposta é que isso permitiria que adjetivos fossem modificados simultaneamente por e outros modificadores de grau que atuam sobre a escala de intensidade de adjetivos, o que de fato ocorre na língua. Para sustentar minha hipótese de análise, apresento alguns dados do Guarani Paraguaio em que o morfema co-ocorre com outros intensificadores de grau. Em relação aos verbos deadjetivais, mostrarei que estes não possuem uma leitura atélica como os verbos deadjetivais do Inglês e do Português Brasileiro. Isso serve de evidência para concluir que não modifica a escala de propriedade dada pelo adjetivo formador do verbo, mas que atua no mapeamento do evento na estrutura de graus dada por seu argumento nominal. Em suma, este trabalho mostra que opera sempre sobre escalas de quantidade e nunca sobre a variável de grau do léxico de verbos e adjetivos. / This dissertation presents a semantic analysis of verbs and adjectives Paraguayan Guarani based on the assumptions of Formal Semantics. More precisely, this study aims to analyze the interaction of verbs and adjectives with the particle , a degree morpheme of the language studied here. In this dissertation, I analyze adjectives, verbs and causative constructions with deadjectival verbs and the possible readings of the modification of towards these predicates. It is shown here that the morpheme acts as a modifier of the relationship between the adjective or the event and a nominal argument. This relation is described in terms of a degree structure, according to the semantic of scales proposed by Kennedy (1999b) and Kennedy & McNally (2005). This theory is based on the assumption that adjectives map entities onto degrees of abstract structures of properties - the scales and, for this, adjectives have a degree argument in their lexical entry. The degree variable is saturated by a degree morpheme. I propose here that besides the modifier that saturates the degree variable of the lexicon, the adjective can also be modified by another degree modifier that operates on a quantity scale, which is compositionally given, according to Bochnak (2010). In this sense, does not saturate the degree variable given by the lexicon of the adjective or the verb, but it applies to a quantity scale that is built in syntax. Regarding verbs, modifies the mapping of the event onto entities, which is measured by a degree structure. One of the advantages of this account is that it allows that and other degree intensifiers modify adjectives simultaneously. And it actually happens in Guaraní. In order to support my analysis, I present some data of Paraguayan Guaraní that illustrate how combines to other degree modifiers. I also show that deadjectival verbs cannot have an atelic reading similar to Brazilian Portuguese and English deadjectival verbs. This is used as an evidence to point out that does not modify the property scale of the verb introduced by the adjective, but it only acts on the mapping of the event onto the degree structure of its nominal argument. In conclusion, this work shows that always operates on quantity scales and never on the degree variable of the lexicon of verbs and adjectives.