Submitted by Nara Lays Domingues Viana Oliveira (naradv) on 2015-08-13T14:24:45Z No. of bitstreams: 1 AndersonBertoldiLinguistica.pdf: 1093382 bytes, checksum: 67276822830f904d7688524dbfd24b12 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-08-13T14:24:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 AndersonBertoldiLinguistica.pdf: 1093382 bytes, checksum: 67276822830f904d7688524dbfd24b12 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-01-05 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / A presente tese teve como objetivo avaliar os desafios a serem enfrentados no desenvolvimento de recursos lexicais multilíngües segundo o paradigma FrameNet. Abordouse aqui a Semântica de Frames com uma teoria da lingüística cognitiva e a forma como a FrameNet trata o conceito de frame semântico em sua base de dados. Para tratar dos desafios no uso de frames semânticos para a descrição de informação jurídica em diferentes línguas, optou-se por investigar o frame Criminal_process. Em um primeiro momento, identificaram-se, com o auxílio de um dicionário jurídico bilíngüe, os equivalentes em português das unidades lexicais do inglês relacionadas ao processo penal. Em um segundo momento, essas unidades lexicais foram contrastadas para verificar se o conhecimento jurídico evocado pela unidade lexical em inglês era o mesmo conhecimento jurídico evocado pelo seu equivalente em português. A abordagem contrastiva permitiu a criação de frames jurídicos descrevendo o processo penal brasileiro. Constatou-se que os frames semânticos apresentam diferentes níveis de equivalência. Este trabalho procurou explicar as divergências de frames semânticos por meio da diferenciação entre frames inatos e frames aprendidos. Uma vez que constatada a falta de equivalência perfeita de frames entre as línguas, é necessário se repensar o uso dos frames semânticos como interlíngua em recursos lexicais multilíngües, especialmente se esses recursos representarem conhecimento jurídico. Este trabalho apontou como uma possível solução para a falta de equivalência entre frames o uso de um recurso ainda pouco abordado pela FrameNet: os tipos semânticos. Os tipos semânticos poderiam ser utilizados em uma base de dados jurídica multilíngüe para marcar o papel social exercido por cada participante dos eventos jurídicos. / This Ph.D. dissertation discusses the challenges to be faced in developing multilingual lexical resources according to the FrameNet paradigm. This work was based on Frame Semantics. The starting point was the Criminal_process frame. First, the equivalents in Portuguese for the lexical units were identified using a bilingual legal dictionary. Second, the lexical units were contrasted in order to verify the legal knowledge evoked by lexical units in English was the same legal knowledge evoked by their equivalents in Portuguese. Based on the contrastive study, legal frames representing the Brazilian legal system were created. This work could verify that semantic frames present different levels of equivalence. The differences in frame equivalence were analyzed according to the difference between innate and learned frames. Considering that the semantic frames do not present a perfect equivalence among languages, it is necessary to rethink the use of semantic frames as interlingual index to connect multilingual resources, especially legal lexical resources. This dissertation considers the possibility of using semantic types as a possible solution in a future.

This study investigates, theoretically and empirically, the role of animacy in the development of gender systems. The theoretical background is a grammaticalisation approach to language change. Concerning gender, this presupposes that classifications begin as semantic distinctions in the realm of animacy with flexible, contextually based agreement between the gender-marking elements. This kind of gender is called contextual gender. In the course of time, these classifications will spread into other areas, they become desemanticized and the agreement relation grammaticalizes into one of government where the inherent gender of the head noun controls the gender of the agreeing elements, irrespective of contextual factors When this leads to a great number of violations of the principles of contextual agreement in the realm of animacy, a new cycle of semantic classification will begin, creating layers of classifications. For German and Swedish two different layers are discerned respectively. The empirical starting point of this project was the observation of two opposite developments in the area of female person reference in Germany and Sweden. As a consequence of feminist critique of language, mainly targeted at the use of socalled masculine generics, in Germany the use of female gender-specific nouns increased substantially, the major means being female derivation with –in, so-called motion. Although similar means for female derivation exist in Swedish, i.e. -inna and -ska, the number of derivations used is decreasing. In order to isolate socio-cultural and historical facts from language-internal mechanisms behind the diverging tendencies, a historical sketch of the development of equal rights, of language criticism and of the development of the female suffixes is drawn for the respective countries. It is obvious, that the German strategy to achieve gender-fair language use is established by making women visible by means of motion, while in Sweden the use of gender-neutral forms for a long period of time has been regarded as a sign of equality. This ‘neutral’ use of former masculine and male-specific forms has been made possible by the merging of the two nominal genders masculine and feminine into uter (Sw. utrum). A contrastive study of comparable German and Swedish newspaper texts shows that the lack of motion in Swedish is partly compensated by composition and attribution with gender-specific lexemes. Still, the 64% gender-specific noun phrases in Swedish cannot compare with the 95% in German. But the use of gender-specific forms for well over half of the person references calls into doubt the general opinion shared by most Swedes that Swedish has a gender-neutral person reference system. Linguistic asymmetry persists as long as gender-specification is restricted to one half of the gendered population, whatever the means for specification. The almost exclusive use of gender-specific forms in German is seen as indicative of a grammaticalisation process. Haspelmaths invisible hand explanation of grammaticalisation is used to show how the development of -in in German fulfils just about every requirement on a grammaticalisation process – language-external as well as -internal – while -inna and -ska neither are promoted sufficiently by the speech community nor does there exist a paradigm that could accommodate them. In contrast to Swedish, where the suffixes remain strictly derivational, it is demonstrated that -in is turning into an inflectional marker. The German gender sub-system for person reference is developing into a semantically based system with genderflexible person denominations. A study of the pronouns agreeing with non-personal-agents in a parallel corpus of EU-documents shows that other aspects than purely referential or formal ones impinge on the choice of agreement forms. Non-personal-agents in certain contexts expose both agency and intentionality, which turns them into suitable agreement partners for animate pronouns. In Swedish, all animate pronouns are sexed, leaving a “Leerstelle” for these inanimate but agentive and intentional referents. In German, this problem is covered by the polysemy of the personal pronouns. Non-personal-agents are shown to be one possiblesource for the spreading of a linguistic innovation from the realm of animacy into inanimate contexts via semantic and thematic roles that share important features with animates proper. The last study makes use of different types of German monolingual corpora in order to investigate the agreement between inanimate nouns with female inherent gender – from non-personal-agents and abstracts to concrete nouns – and agent nouns which can potentially expose agreement by female derivation. Although the results are rather heterogeneous, they allow the formulation of the hypothesis that agreement is more likely to occur with nouns for which a metaphorical bridge to stereotypical conceptions of femininity can be constructed and that key collocations with high frequency such as die Kirche als Trägerin or die DNA als Trägerin der Erbinformation contribute significantly to the spread of the agreement pattern.

This study investigated the relative clause formation and the coding of tense in the English interlanguage of thirty-two Palestinian students at the six colleges of the Islamic University of Gaza.Three composition topics were designed to elicit the learners' expression of the various English tenses and relative clauses.Findings: The data show that Palestinian learners' switching of tense results from using English morphology to express an aspectual system similar to that of Palestinian Arabic. The English past tense and present tense are used to mark Palestinian perfective and imperfective aspects, respectively. The subject-verb agreement marker and the concord markers 's/is and 'm/am are omitted in relative clauses and when there is a change in aspect.In the area of relative clauses, the data show that relative clauses are ninety percent independent of the Palestinian Arabic structuring of relative clauses. The learners use resumptive pronouns not only in clauses where the predicate incorporates a noun, adjective, or a prepositional phrase, but also before verbs. Conclusions:1. There is a large amount of influence from the Palestinian aspectual system on the learners' use of English tense.2. Subject-verb agreement problems can be solved when the problem of tense shift is solved, because of the cooccurrence of these phenomena.3. EFL teachers in Gaza Strip should not over-react to their students' tense usage in narrative passages and should not require them to write in a particular tense in an artificial manner.4. The learners' errors should be tolerated and should not be considered as indications of faulty learning.

Cette thèse étudie la polysémie du pronom on dans une perspective contrastive français-arabe. L’objectif de cette étude consiste à résoudre le problème de l’irrégularité dans la traduction arabe de on. Ce problème provient d’une variété d’emplois contradictoires de on en français, d’où sa polysémie. La polysémie de on a été examinée d’après le modèle interprétatif de la psychomécanique du langage de Gustave Guillaume complété par une approche énonciative. Ce cadre théorique a révélé comment, par une remontée vers l’ontogénèse de on, ce dernier est devenu un pronom intra-verbal malgré son origine substantivale. Par ailleurs, il est fait usage du Tenseur Binaire Radical (TBR) qui représente le signifié de puissance de on en langue. Ce signifié de puissance est illustré par un double mouvement qui va d’une pluralité indéfinie à une pluralité indéterminée, le point de transition étant moi-locuteur. Ainsi, le signifié de puissance de on a permis d’identifier et d’ordonner 13 signifiés d’effet, en tenant compte de la catégorie du nombre et de la notion de personne. Ces critères permettent de distinguer entre les valeurs de la 3e personne, celles de la personne 4 et les valeurs discursives d’un côté, et les effets de sens de l’autre. Mais pour traduire on, l’analyse contrastive du corpus bilingue a révélé que les traducteurs privilégient plutôt les effets de sens véhiculés par ce pronom. L’étude se termine donc par une proposition d’un ensemble de correspondants arabes pour chacun des 13 signifiés d’effet de on. Enfin, pour que la traduction de ce pronom soit adéquate, il faut que le groupe on + verbe soit considéré comme une unité de traduction. / This dissertation examines the polysemy of the pronoun on from a contrastive, French-Arabic perspective. The objective of the study is to resolve a problem of irregularity in most Arabic translations of on. This problem seems to be rooted in the variety of contradictory usage of on in French which reflects its polysemy. The polysemy of on was examined through Gustave Guillaume’s interpretative model of psychomechanics of language. Then, an enunciative approach was employed to complement the theoretical framework. As a result, the ontogenesis of on revealed how the pronoun became intra-verbal, despite its substantive etymology. Moreover, the study employed the Radical Binary Tensor that represents the potential meaning of on in tongue. This potential meaning is illustrated by a double movement: from an indefinite plurality to an indeterminate plurality, where the point of transition is moi-locuteur. Further, the obtained potential meaning facilitated the identification, and ordination, of 13 effective meanings for on by taking into consideration the notion of person and the category of number. Those criteria distinguish between the values of the 3rd person, person 4, and the discursive values on one hand, and the expressive effects on the other. The contrastive analysis of a bilingual corpus revealed a preference on the part of translators to deal with on based on its expressive effects. Finally, the study proposed a set of Arabic correspondents to each of on’s 13 effective meanings. Ultimately, the research concluded that an accurate translation of on can only be possible by considering the group on + verb as a unit of translation.

The thesis deals with the differences in Czech and German language in the word-formation, specifically the issue of composite. The main part is devoted to the word-formation of both languages possibilities of vocabulary enrichment are given, important terms of the word-formation are defined and word forming kinds are introduced. It is further processed the theory of composite concepts from different authors. The aim of this work is to demonstrate that in German language appear significantly more composites than sketched options of their Czech equivalents and create a list of Czech equivalent structures. As the basis for this analysis are used texts from the field of hotel industry and tourism in Austria, which are available online on the websites of tourist portals (www.oberoesterreich.at and www.niederoesterreich.at).

Cette recherche est centrée sur l'étude des valeurs aspectuelles des noms de sentiment (N_sent) et des verbes collocatifs dans les constructions verbo-nominales (CVN). L'aspectualité est étudiée en tant que catégorie lexico-grammaticale, au niveau syntagmatique (au sein des CVN) mais elle englobe également le lexique et la syntaxe de la phrase. Le travail est mené dans une perspective contrastive français – russe et ce, sur des corpus informatisés de données issues des deux langues. Nous avons constitué deux types de corpus : comparable (comportant les textes originaux, 60 M de mots, de la base de Frantext et Ruscorpora) et parallèle (coprus de traduction, 10 M de mots, aligné avec le logiciel Alinea d'O. Kraif). Les questions qui sous-tendent ce travail concernent les trois points suivants. En premier lieu, nous nous interrogeons si les CVN de sentiment peuvent véhiculer l'aspect. Nous vérifions cela grâce à l'analyse de la combinatoire syntaxique et lexicale de ces constructions. En deuxième lieu, nous nous posons la question de savoir s'il existe une relation aspectuelle entre le N_sent et le verbe collocatif. Cette affinité aspectuelle peut être révélée à partir des traits aspectuels inhérents des N_sent (duratif/ponctuel) et les propriétés aspectuelles des verbes (accompli/inaccompli/global en français vs imperfectif/perfectif en russe) : vivre (duratif) dans le bonheur (duratif) / žit' (imperfectif) v sčast'e (duratif) ; s'enflammer (ponctuel) de colère (ponctuel) / vspyxnut' (perfectif) ot gneva (ponctuel). En troisième lieu, notre travail sur les corpus bilingues français-russe nous amène à des problématiques d'ordre contrastif. Nous estimons que l'approche contrastive permet de mieux expliciter les similitudes et les différences aspectuelles au sein des CVN dans les deux langues, ainsi que de mettre en évidence les différences dans l'expression de l'aspect en français et en russe. Pour ce faire, nous analysons les équivalents des CVN dans les deux langues : les équivalents aspectuels et les équivalents structuraux. Ainsi, notre méthodologie nous a amenée à des conclusions intéressantes qui pourront s'avérer utiles en linguistique contrastive et en traductologie, ainsi qu'en linguistique de corpus et en didactique des langues. La contribution de ce travail de thèse consiste en plusieurs points que nous synthétisons ci-dessous : - À notre connaissance, beaucoup de travaux ont été faits sur l'aspect des verbes et peu sur l'aspect des noms. Nous avons proposé une étude de l'aspectualité à partir du nom en tant que « base » de la construction verbo-nominale. Cette étude a mis en contraste les deux traditions linguistiques (russe et française) dans l'étude des N_sent et de leur aspect. - Nous avons effectué une étude détaillée et systématique de la combinatoire des N_sent, ce qui nous a permis d'identifier leur aspect au sein des CVN. - Le travail sur les deux types de corpus nous a permis de récolter des données quantitatives sur les CVN dans les deux langues, sur les textes originaux et traduits. L'analyse qualitative de ces corpus nous a permis de faire des études spécifiques pour chaque type de corpus. Ainsi, le corpus comparable permet d'effectuer la recherche sur l'aspectualité des CVN, tandis que le corpus parallèle fournit des éléments nécessaires pour l'étude des équivalents fonctionnels de traduction (essentiellement de type formel). Les équivalents formels russes des CVN françaises sont en majorité aussi des CVN pour tous les N_sent étudiés, sauf strax (peur). Ce dernier est traduit le plus souvent en tant que verbe (bojat'sja, ispugat'sja (craintre, s'épouvanter). On trouve également parmi ces équivalents en russe des constructions impersonnelles (mne strašno (à moi peureusement)). / This dissertation work is realised as a contrastive analysis which aims the identification of the aspectual differences between two linguistic systems, French and Russian. Our methodology is based on the analysis of two types of data corpora : comparable and parallel. The subject of this research concerns the study of aspectuel values of Nouns of emotion and their collocative verbs, especially in the Verb+Noun constractions. We have chosen these structures as a location of the field of aspectuality which, beeing lexicon-grammar categorie, touches the lexicon as well as the syntax of a phrase. The identification of the aspectual values of these combinations comes from their lexical and syntactic combinatory. It is composed of different parameters (settings) : aspectuel features of the Noun (bi-nominal structures, adjectives-modifiers and determinants) and aspectual features of the Verb (grammatical aspect, lexical aspect and phases). Our scientific contribution consists in a study of the aspectuality as a linguistic category touching the Nouns of emotion in French and in Russian. The main results of this research tend to confirm our hypotheses about inherent aspect of the seven Noun of emotion studied in French and in Russian (admiration/vosxiščenie, amour/ljubov', angoisse/trevoga, bonheur/sčast'e, colère/gnev, joie/radost', peur/strax) and their aspectual relations with Verbs whithin Verb+Noun constructions.

La thèse "Corpus aligné bilingue français - russe : le cas de par" présente une étude descriptive des emplois abstraits de la préposition par en français et de ses équivalents russes dans le cadre de la linguistique de corpus (J. Sinclair). L’exploration des exemples authentiques du corpus bilingue aligné constitué par nos soins, ainsi que des corpus existants permet, pour le français, d’esquisser des critères de distinction plus nette entre les sens "de cause à effet", "de fin à moyen", "de support à manière" de par, et, pour la perspective comparative, de construire un continuum de ses équivalents russes : cas morphologiques, prépositions, prépositions complexes, transformations sémantico - syntaxiques touchant à l’intégrité de la phrase. Compte tenu des particularités des prépositions en tant que catégorie lexico - grammaticale, on fait aussi appel aux instruments descriptifs élaborés dans le cadre de l’approche énonciative (J. J. Franckel, D. Paillard) : identité de la préposition, sa définition à l’aide du schéma X R (préposition) Y, distinction entre les prépositions de zonage et de discernement. / The thesis "Aligned bilingual French - Russian corpus : the case of par" presents a study describing several abstract meanings of the preposition par in French and of its Russian equivalents in the framework of Corpus Linguistics (J. Sinclair). Exploring authentic examples from our aligned bilingual corpus as well as from existing corpora allows us to propose criteria for distinguishing more clearly between "cause to effect", "aim to means", "support to manner" meanings of par in French, and to reveal a continuum of its equivalents in Russian language : morphologic cases, prepositions, complex prepositions, semantic and syntax transformations of the whole sentence. Taking into account particularities of prepositions as lexico -grammatical category, we also refer to descriptive tools proposed in the framework of enunciative linguistics (J. J. Franckel, D. Paillard) : identity of a preposition, its definition by the scheme X R (preposition) Y, distinction between the prepositions of zoning and of differentiation.

Abstract The study focuses on the t-ending infinitive in North Saami and the first infinitive short form in Finnish in the context of the verbs leat ’be’ and olla ’be’, respectively. The study compares the use of the infinitives in structures that are the same in both languages and structures that occur in one language but have no equivalent in the other. The same structure may also have divergent meanings in the two languages. The study investigates the grammatical structure of infinitives as well as the use and meaning of infinitival phrases in the following environments: 1) infinitival phrases as subjects, 2) basic infinitives in the context of nouns and adjectives, 3) cases of the lei/oli infinitive (a variant of the conditional perfect in Saami and a structure that implicates 'being close' in Finnish), 4) the relative infinitive and 5) the supine structure in Saami. The material for the study comes from North-Saami and Finnish fiction that was published in 1979–1997: it comprises texts from 18 authors in both languages. The study is qualitative. It moves from Saami to Finnish and also vice versa, being thus of bidirectional character. Its emphasis, however, is on Saami. The data include original texts in both languages as well as translations from Saami into Finnish by the researcher. The study examines infinitive structures in North Saami and Finnish, separately as well as together, and reports on their similarities and differences based either on syntactic analysis, semantic analysis or both. / Tiivistelmä Tutkimuksen kohteena on pohjoissaamen ja suomen perusinfinitiivimuoto yhdessä saamen leat ’olla’-verbin ja suomen olla-verbin kanssa. Tutkimuksessa verrataan kielten perusinfinitiivin käyttöä rakenteissa, jotka ovat kummassakin kielessä samoja, ja rakenteissa, joilla ei ole vastinetta toisessa kielessä. Sama rakenne voi olla kielissä myös merkitykseltään erilainen. Tarkastelun kohteena on infinitiivin kieliopillinen rakenne ja infinitiivilausekkeen käyttö sekä merkitys seuraavissa tapauksissa: 1) infinitiivilauseke subjektina 2) perusinfinitiivi substantiivin ja adjektiivin yhteydessä 3) lei/oli infinitiivi -tapaukset (saamen konditionaalin perfektin variantti ja suomen ’lähellä olemista’ merkitsevä rakenne) 4) relatiivi-infinitiivi ja 5) saamen supiinirakenne. Tutkimusmateriaali on peräisin vuosina 1979–1997 ilmestyneestä pohjoissaamen- ja suomenkielisestä kaunokirjallisuudesta: mukana ovat 18 kirjoittajan tekstit kummastakin kielestä. Tutkimus on luonteeltaan kvalitatiivinen. Se etenee saamesta suomeen ja välillä päinvastoin ja on luonteeltaan kaksisuuntaista. Tutkimuksen painotus on kuitenkin saamen kielessä. Molempien kielten tutkimusaineisto on originaalitekstiä, mutta tutkimusaineisto sisältää myös tutkijan omia käännöksiä saamesta suomeen. Tutkimus tarkastelee infinitiivirakenteita yhdessä ja erikseen pohjoissaamessa ja suomessa ja raportoi kielten yhtäläisyyksistä ja eroista joko syntaktisen tai semanttisen analyysin tai molempien perusteella.

Den här studien undersöker det ryska verbprefixet v(o)- och cirkumfixet v(o)- -sja i det konkreta fysiska rummet. Syftet med den kontrastiva studien är att undersöka och beskriva betydelser. Tvåspråkig data från en samtida rysk-svensk ordbok analyseras med Krongauz metod. En lista över verbaffixens betydelser byggs upp genom att jämföra lexikala betydelser och morfosyntaktiska konstruktioner för verben i båda språken. Resultatet visar att affixens betydelser kan delas in i följande kategorier: Spatiala rörelser in i ett slutet rum, Spatiala rörelser till en avgränsad yta, Spatiala rörelser mot en närhet, Vidhäftning och Platser i det fysiska rummet. / This present study investigates the Russian verbal prefix v(o)- and circumfix v(o)- -sja in the concrete physical space. The aim of the contrastive study is to explore and describe meanings. Bilingual data, extracted from a contemporary Russian-Swedish dictionary, is analysed by using Krongauz’s method. A list of meanings of the Russian verbal affixes is built by comparing similarities and differences between lexical meanings and morphosyntactic structures for the verbs in both languages. The result shows that the meanings of the affixes can be divided into the following categories: Spatial movements into an enclosed space, Spatial movements onto a delimited surface, Spatial movements towards a vicinity, Adhesion and Locations in physical space.

La Linguistica dei corpora - che fa uso di corpora elettronici annotati per lo studio delle lingue - è un approccio ormai diffuso e consolidato. I corpora paralleli, in particolare, in cui i testi in una lingua A sono allineati con la traduzione in lingua B, sono uno strumento molto utile nell’analisi contrastiva. La mancata disponibilità di corpora paralleli di qualità per le lingue di nostro interesse - russo e italiano - ci ha portati a volere ampliare e migliorare il corpus parallelo italiano-russo presente come corpus pilota nel Nacional’nyj Korpus Russkogo Jazyka (Corpus Nazionale della Lingua Russa). Il presente lavoro ha avuto pertanto uno scopo applicativo e uno teorico. Da un lato, dopo aver studiato le questioni imprescindibili per la progettazione di un corpus di qualità, sono stati stabiliti i criteri per l’ampliamento e inseriti nuovi testi, consentendo così al corpus parallelo di passare da 700.000 a più di 4 milioni di parole, entità che consente ora di condurre ricerche scientificamente valide. In seguito, sono state proposte tre analisi corpus-based così da mettere in luce le potenzialità del corpus ampliato: lo studio dei verbi prefissali di memoria russi e la loro resa in italiano; il confronto tra il causativo analitico italiano “fare + infinito” e il causativo russo; l’analisi comparata di quindici versioni italiane de Il Cappotto di N. Gogol’. Le tre analisi hanno consentito di avanzare innanzitutto osservazioni di carattere metodologico in vista di un ulteriore ampliamento e miglioramento del corpus parallelo italiano-russo. In secondo luogo, la prospettiva corpus-based si è dimostrata utile per approfondire lo studio di questi temi dal punto di vista teorico. / Corpus Linguistics - which exploits electronic annotated corpora in the study of languages - is a widespread and consolidated approach. In particular, parallel corpora, where texts in a language are aligned with their translation in a second language, are an extremely useful tool in contrastive analysis. The lack of good parallel corpora for the languages of our interest - Russian and Italian - has led us to work for improving the Italian-Russian parallel corpus available as a pilot corpus in the Russian National Corpus. Therefore, this work had a twofold aim: practical and theoretical. On the one hand, after studying the essential issues for designing a high-quality corpus, all the criteria for expanding the corpus were established and the number of texts was increased, allowing the Italian-Russian parallel corpus, which counted 700.000 words, to reach more than 4 million words. As a result, it is now possible to conduct scientifically valid research based on this corpus. On the other hand, three corpus-based analyses were proposed in order to highlight the potential of the corpus: the study of prefixed Russian memory verbs and their translation into Italian; the comparison between the Italian analytic causative "fare + infinitive" and Russian causative verbs; The comparative analysis of fifteen Italian versions of The Overcoat by N. Gogol'. These analyses first of all allowed to advance some methodological remarks considering a further enlargement and improvement of the Italian-Russian parallel corpus. Secondly, the corpus-based approach has proved to be useful in deepening the study of these topics from a theoretical point of view.