[pt] A dissertação Classes de palavras — da Grécia Antiga ao Google: um estudo motivado pela conversão de tagsets consiste em um estudo linguístico sobre classes gramaticais. A pesquisa tem como motivação uma tarefa específica da Linguística Computacional: a anotação de classes gramaticais (POS, do inglês part of speech ). Especificamente, a dissertação relata desafios e opções linguísticas decorrentes da tarefa de alinhamento entre dois tagsets: o tagset utilizado na anotação do corpus Mac-Morpho, um corpus brasileiro de 1.1 milhão de palavras, e o tagset proposto por uma equipe dos laboratórios Google e que vem sendo utilizado no âmbito do projeto Universal Dependencies (UD). A dissertação tem como metodologia a investigação por meio da anotação de grandes corpora e tematiza sobretudo o alinhamento entre as formas participiais. Como resultado, além do estudo e da documentação das opções linguísticas, a presente pesquisa também propiciou um cenário que viabiliza o estudo do impacto de diferentes tagsets em sistemas de Processamento de Linguagem Natural (PLN) e possibilitou a criação e a disponibilização de mais um recurso para a área de processamento de linguagem natural do português: o corpus Mac-Morpho anotado com o tagset e a filosofia de anotação do projeto UD, viabilizando assim estudos futuros sobre o impacto de diferentes tagsets no processamento automático de uma língua. / [en] The present dissertation, Part of speech — from Ancient Greece to Google: a study motivated by tagset conversion, is a linguistic study regarding gramatical word classes. This research is motivated by a specific task from Computational Linguistics: the annotation of part of speech (POS). Specifically, this dissertation reports the challenges and linguistic options arising from the task of aligning two tagsets: the first used in the annotation of the Mac-Morpho corpus — a Brazilian corpus with 1.1 million words — and the second proposed by Google research lab, which has been used in the context of the Universal Dependencies (UD) project. The present work adopts the annotation of large corpora as methodology and focuses mainly on the alignment of the past participle forms. As a result, in addition to the study and the documentation of the linguistic choices, this research provides a scenario which enables the study of the impact different tagsets have on Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems and presents another Portuguese NLP resource: the Mac-Morpho corpus annotated with project UD s tagset and consistent with its annotation philosophy, thus enabling future studies regarding the impact of different tagsets in the automatic processing of a language.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

[pt] Os profissionais que traduzem textos do inglês para o português deparam-se com uma exigência dos clientes quanto à tradução de diálogos: diversificar os verbos de elocução, com o intuito de evitar a repetição do verbo dizer. Em resposta, esta pesquisa visa à elaboração de um glossário dos verbos que introduzem discurso relatado, chamados de verbos de elocução. Para tanto, conduzimos um estudo descritivo com base em corpus, com o intuito de compilar um léxico dos verbos de elocução do português. Assim, esta pesquisa promoveu um amplo levantamento dos verbos de elocução, estabeleceu os padrões de uso nos quais esses verbos costumam ser empregados e, ainda, propôs uma classificação desses verbos em grupos de sentido. Nosso estudo traz, portanto, dois objetivos principais, que se traduzem em contribuições concretas: (i) a elaboração de um glossário dos verbos introdutores de discurso relatado para tradutores, chamado DISSE, e (ii) a descrição dessa classe de verbos no português, tomando um viés semântico e com base em grandes corpora. Como contribuições secundárias, mas não menos importantes e já em fase final de implementação, destacam-se (iii) a criação e a disponibilização de um corpus anotado quanto aos verbos do grande grupo de dizer, também chamados de verbos de comunicação e (iv) a colaboração na elaboração de sistemas capazes de identificar automaticamente citações em textos da língua portuguesa. / [en] Professionals that translate from English to Portuguese often face a certain demand from clients when it comes to translating dialogues: diversifying the verbs that introduce reported speech, in an attempt to avoid repeating the verb dizer (say) in Portuguese. In order to help solve such problem, this study aims at developing a glossary of verbs that introduce reported speech. To reach that aim, we conducted a corpus-based descriptive research, in order to compile a quotation verbs lexicon for the Portuguese language. Thus, this study promoted a wide collection of quotation verbs, as well as stablished patters of usage in which these verbs are commonly found and put forward a classification of these verbs into groups of meaning. This study proposes two main objectives, which have led to concrete contributions: (i) the elaboration of a reported speech verbs glossary for translators of Portuguese, which is called DISSE (said, in Portuguese), and (ii) the description of such verb class in Portuguese, with a semantic approach and based on large corpora. As secondary contributions, but far from unimportant and close to final implementation, it is possible to highlight (iii) the creation and the public availability of annotated corpora, including a semantic annotation for reported speech verbs and (iv) the collaboration with the preparation of systems capable of automatically identifying quotations in Portuguese-written texts.

Encoding hieroglyphic texts is time-consuming. If a text already exists as hand-written transcription, there is an alternative, namely OCR. Off-the-shelf OCR systems seem difficult to adapt to the peculiarities of Ancient Egyptian. Presented is a proof-of-concept tool that was designed to digitize texts of Urkunden IV in the hand-writing of Kurt Sethe. It automatically recognizes signs and produces a normalized encoding, suitable for storage in a database, or for printing on a screen or on paper, requiring little manual correction. The encoding of hieroglyphic text is RES (Revised Encoding Scheme) rather than (common dialects of) MdC (Manuel de Codage). Earlier papers argued against MdC and in favour of RES for corpus development. Arguments in favour of RES include longevity of the encoding, as its semantics are font-independent. The present study provides evidence that RES is also much preferable to MdC in the context of OCR. With a well-understood parsing technique, relative positioning of scanned signs can be straightforwardly mapped to suitable primitives of the encoding.

對於大部分的人而言，寫作是一種深度的表達過程，需要詳盡而深入的描述能力及精準而嚴謹的語意呈現。對於非英語為母語的學習者(ESL/EFL)來說，英語寫作尤其是一個困難的過程，常常會因為單字、搭配字(collocation)、句型結構等方面的認知不足，或是受到母語認知的牽制影響，而造成用詞、語法、甚至語意的錯誤。 近年來，語料庫的發展帶來了豐富的語言資源，不僅可以對語言的使用提供許多統計分析上的資訊，也可以做為語言學習者在特定詞語使用上的參照對象。目前語料庫的詞語使用參照以concordance技術為主，提供以特定字詞為基準的上下文例句排列，這種功能對ESL/EFL學習者於寫作過程所提供的參照仍然相當有限；而對於不同的查詢條件，若沒有良善的輸入和比對機制，往往搜尋上的數量和例句品質無法滿足學習者的參照需求；除此之外，對於檢索結果語料庫也沒有評估與排序的概念，學習者往往需要在大量的資訊中篩選出有用的資訊；綜觀以上幾點，目前語料庫技術無法滿足不同程度的ESL/EFL寫作者在參照協助上的需求。 本研究提出一種文句推薦方法，針對ESL/EFL寫作者在寫作過程上的認知不足或不確定，從語料庫中尋找出可用的參照例句，進而提供針對性的協助。我們的文句推薦方法包含三個模組，第一模組是一個彈性的表達元素模組，能針對寫作過程中的語言資訊需求，以規定的表達元素呈現作者的認知需求。第二模組是一個檢索模組，指從語料庫中比對尋找符合作者語意需求的例句。第三模組是一個排序的模組，針對找出的例句，評估其符合作者語意需求的程度，並將之排序，以提升例句參照的使用效率。 本研究依據文句推薦方法實做雛形系統，以British National Corpus和科學人雜誌語料庫(Science America)當例句來源，並依據論文的客觀評估和學習者的問卷調查兩種評估方式來評量雛形系統的成效。經由上述兩種評估方式，本研究驗證雛形系統能針對ESL/EFL於寫作過程中給予一定程度的協助成效，證明本研究的文句推薦方法確實能達成寫作協助的既定目標。 / For most people, writing is a process of profundity. It requires well description of capabilities and excellent semantic of representations. For ESL/EFL (English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language) learners, English writing is a particularly difficult process. They have error in words, syntax or semantics because their expressions are constrained by their mother tongue or by lacking of the awareness of vocabularies, collocation, or sentence-structures. In recent years, according to the development of corpus technique, we have rich resource in language. The resource can not only provide many statistical analyses of informations in language research but also can be used as a reference in the use of specific words for the learners. Current corpus technique use concordance which displays the words with their surrounding text to present sentences, but that approach provides very limited references in the writing process for ESL/EFL learners. Also considering the different inquired queries, if we have no well-defined input and retrieval module, the quantity and quality of results could not meet the demand for the learners. In addition, corpus technique doesn’t provide the ranking and evaluating skills to the retrieval results. As a result of that, learners often require filtering a large number of information to find something useful. In view of the above points, current corpus technique is unable to satisfy different degrees of ESL/EFL learners in the writing process. This paper presents a Sentence Recommendation Approach technique. With regard to the inadequate knowledge in the writing process for ESL/EFL learners, we search for useful sentences from the corpus and provide them to learners. Our Sentence Recommendation Approach technique has three modules: one is Expression Element Module. It allows the learners to use some expression elements to represent their demand. Another is Retrieval Module. It means the process of searching the corresponding sentences based on the expression elements in Expression Element Module. The last is Sort Module. It means the process of ranking the results derived from the Retrieval Module. Our research establishes the experimental system to verify the performance of our Sentence Recommendation Approach technique. We use British National Corpus and Science America Corpus for the source of sentences. The evaluation is divided into our objective evaluation and the questionnaire evaluation. Both of them prove that our experimental system does some favor in the writing process for ESL/EFL learners. In other words, our Sentence Recommendation Approach technique really helps the learners in the writing process.

Éminent naturaliste du XIXe siècle, Charles Darwin publie en 1859 ce qui s'avérera être l’un des textes fondateurs des sciences de la vie : On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (ou OS). Ce volumineux ouvrage pose les assises conceptuelles de la théorie darwinienne de l'évolution. Cette dernière suscite encore de nos jours la controverse : certains la nient (créationnisme, dessein intelligent, etc.) alors que d'autres la poussent à l'extrême (eugénisme, darwinisme social, etc.). Vu la grande portée de l'OS, le problème de sa traduction en français se présente de lui-même. Ce champ d'étude reste pourtant largement inexploré. Nous avons donc choisi, dans le présent travail, d’étudier les traductions françaises de l’OS. Notre étude s’inscrivant dans un axe de recherche qui s’intéresse aux modes de conceptualisation métaphorique en usage dans les domaines biomédicaux, ainsi qu’aux problèmes de traduction qu’ils soulèvent, nous avons choisi de nous concentrer plus particulièrement sur les modes de conceptualisation métaphorique présents dans le texte de l'OS, et sur la manière dont ils ont été traduits en français. Pour mener à bien ce projet, nous avons élaboré une méthodologie à partir de celle déjà utilisée avec succès dans des études antérieures menées au sein du même axe de recherche que le nôtre. En plus de l’annotation et l’interrogation informatisée de notre corpus, cette méthodologie consiste en la mise en relation, au plan informatique, de plusieurs traductions d’un même texte. De par sa complexité technique, son élaboration constitue l’un des objectifs majeurs de notre étude. Les résultats obtenus nous ont permis de confirmer deux de nos trois hypothèses : 1) la totalité des modes de conceptualisation identifiés dans notre corpus anglais se retrouvent également dans chacune des traductions, et 2) aucun mode de conceptualisation métaphorique ne peut être dégagé des traductions françaises qui n’est pas déjà présent dans l’original anglais. En plus de nous permettre de comparer chaque traduction à l’original anglais, ces résultats nous ont également permis de comparer entre elles les différentes traductions françaises de l’OS. Ce mémoire de maîtrise comporte six chapitres, qui correspondent tour à tour à : notre cadre théorique, l'état de la question, nos hypothèses et nos objectifs, notre méthodologie, nos résultats et la discussion de ces résultats. / In 1859, prominent British naturalist Charles Darwin published On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (OS). In this book, Darwin introduces his theory of evolution. Since its inception, however, the Darwinian theory of evolution has been shrouded in controversy, rejected outright by some (proponents of creationism, intelligent design, etc.) or highjacked by others (proponents of eugenics, social Darwinism, etc.). Yet the profound impact of the theory extends well beyond the English-speaking world. Despite this, the French translations of this important book have rarely been studied. Therefore, in the current study, we have chosen to fill this gap and study the French translations of the OS. Our study is conducted within a framework that is mainly concerned with conceptual metaphors in biomedical discourse, as well as the problems they cause in the process of translation. We have thus chosen to focus on the identification of conceptual metaphors in the OS, and the ways in which they were translated into French. For this project, we developed a methodology involving the electronic annotation and interrogation of our corpus, namely the OS and its French translation. It also involves the creation of electronic links between a translation and its source text. This methodology is based on a previous one, already used successfully in other studies. Due to its complexity, its development constitutes one of the major objectives of our study. The results thus obtained have made it possible to confirm two of our three hypotheses: 1) all conceptual metaphors identified in the original English text of the OS can be found in each of the French translations, and 2) no conceptual metaphor can be found in any of the French translations that is not already present in the original English text. The results obtained allowed us to compare each translation to the original text, but also to compare the translation amongst themselves. This Master’s thesis includes six chapters, which correspond in turn to our: theoretical framework, literature review, hypotheses and objectives, methodology, results, and discussion.

Ce travail porte sur la construction d’un corpus étalon pour l’évaluation automatisée des extracteurs de termes. Ces programmes informatiques, conçus pour extraire automatiquement les termes contenus dans un corpus, sont utilisés dans différentes applications, telles que la terminographie, la traduction, la recherche d’information, l’indexation, etc. Ainsi, leur évaluation doit être faite en fonction d’une application précise. Une façon d’évaluer les extracteurs consiste à annoter toutes les occurrences des termes dans un corpus, ce qui nécessite un protocole de repérage et de découpage des unités terminologiques. À notre connaissance, il n’existe pas de corpus annoté bien documenté pour l’évaluation des extracteurs. Ce travail vise à construire un tel corpus et à décrire les problèmes qui doivent être abordés pour y parvenir. Le corpus étalon que nous proposons est un corpus entièrement annoté, construit en fonction d’une application précise, à savoir la compilation d’un dictionnaire spécialisé de la mécanique automobile. Ce corpus rend compte de la variété des réalisations des termes en contexte. Les termes sont sélectionnés en fonction de critères précis liés à l’application, ainsi qu’à certaines propriétés formelles, linguistiques et conceptuelles des termes et des variantes terminologiques. Pour évaluer un extracteur au moyen de ce corpus, il suffit d’extraire toutes les unités terminologiques du corpus et de comparer, au moyen de métriques, cette liste à la sortie de l’extracteur. On peut aussi créer une liste de référence sur mesure en extrayant des sous-ensembles de termes en fonction de différents critères. Ce travail permet une évaluation automatique des extracteurs qui tient compte du rôle de l’application. Cette évaluation étant reproductible, elle peut servir non seulement à mesurer la qualité d’un extracteur, mais à comparer différents extracteurs et à améliorer les techniques d’extraction. / We describe a methodology for constructing a gold standard for the automatic evaluation of term extractors. These programs, designed to automatically extract specialized terms from a corpus, are used in various settings, including terminology work, translation, information retrieval, indexing, etc. Thus, the evaluation of term extractors must be carried out in accordance with a specific application. One way of evaluating term extractors is to construct a corpus in which all term occurrences have been annotated. This involves establishing a protocol for term selection and term boundary identification. To our knowledge, no well-documented annotated corpus is available for the evaluation of term extractors. This contribution aims to build such a corpus and describe what issues must be dealt with in the process. The gold standard we propose is a fully annotated corpus, constructed in accordance with a specific terminological setting, namely the compilation of a specialized dictionary of automotive mechanics. This annotated corpus accounts for the wide variety of realizations of terms in context. Terms are selected in accordance with specific criteria pertaining to the terminological setting as well as formal, linguistic and conceptual properties of terms and term variations. To evaluate a term extractor, a list of all the terminological units in the corpus is extracted and compared to the output of the term extractor, using a set of metrics to assess its performance. Subsets of terminological units may also be extracted, providing a level of customization. This allows an automatic and application-driven evaluation of term extractors. Due to its reusability, it can serve not only to assess the performance of a particular extractor, but also to compare different extractors and fine-tune extraction techniques.

Éminent naturaliste du XIXe siècle, Charles Darwin publie en 1859 ce qui s'avérera être l’un des textes fondateurs des sciences de la vie : On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (ou OS). Ce volumineux ouvrage pose les assises conceptuelles de la théorie darwinienne de l'évolution. Cette dernière suscite encore de nos jours la controverse : certains la nient (créationnisme, dessein intelligent, etc.) alors que d'autres la poussent à l'extrême (eugénisme, darwinisme social, etc.). Vu la grande portée de l'OS, le problème de sa traduction en français se présente de lui-même. Ce champ d'étude reste pourtant largement inexploré. Nous avons donc choisi, dans le présent travail, d’étudier les traductions françaises de l’OS. Notre étude s’inscrivant dans un axe de recherche qui s’intéresse aux modes de conceptualisation métaphorique en usage dans les domaines biomédicaux, ainsi qu’aux problèmes de traduction qu’ils soulèvent, nous avons choisi de nous concentrer plus particulièrement sur les modes de conceptualisation métaphorique présents dans le texte de l'OS, et sur la manière dont ils ont été traduits en français. Pour mener à bien ce projet, nous avons élaboré une méthodologie à partir de celle déjà utilisée avec succès dans des études antérieures menées au sein du même axe de recherche que le nôtre. En plus de l’annotation et l’interrogation informatisée de notre corpus, cette méthodologie consiste en la mise en relation, au plan informatique, de plusieurs traductions d’un même texte. De par sa complexité technique, son élaboration constitue l’un des objectifs majeurs de notre étude. Les résultats obtenus nous ont permis de confirmer deux de nos trois hypothèses : 1) la totalité des modes de conceptualisation identifiés dans notre corpus anglais se retrouvent également dans chacune des traductions, et 2) aucun mode de conceptualisation métaphorique ne peut être dégagé des traductions françaises qui n’est pas déjà présent dans l’original anglais. En plus de nous permettre de comparer chaque traduction à l’original anglais, ces résultats nous ont également permis de comparer entre elles les différentes traductions françaises de l’OS. Ce mémoire de maîtrise comporte six chapitres, qui correspondent tour à tour à : notre cadre théorique, l'état de la question, nos hypothèses et nos objectifs, notre méthodologie, nos résultats et la discussion de ces résultats. / In 1859, prominent British naturalist Charles Darwin published On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (OS). In this book, Darwin introduces his theory of evolution. Since its inception, however, the Darwinian theory of evolution has been shrouded in controversy, rejected outright by some (proponents of creationism, intelligent design, etc.) or highjacked by others (proponents of eugenics, social Darwinism, etc.). Yet the profound impact of the theory extends well beyond the English-speaking world. Despite this, the French translations of this important book have rarely been studied. Therefore, in the current study, we have chosen to fill this gap and study the French translations of the OS. Our study is conducted within a framework that is mainly concerned with conceptual metaphors in biomedical discourse, as well as the problems they cause in the process of translation. We have thus chosen to focus on the identification of conceptual metaphors in the OS, and the ways in which they were translated into French. For this project, we developed a methodology involving the electronic annotation and interrogation of our corpus, namely the OS and its French translation. It also involves the creation of electronic links between a translation and its source text. This methodology is based on a previous one, already used successfully in other studies. Due to its complexity, its development constitutes one of the major objectives of our study. The results thus obtained have made it possible to confirm two of our three hypotheses: 1) all conceptual metaphors identified in the original English text of the OS can be found in each of the French translations, and 2) no conceptual metaphor can be found in any of the French translations that is not already present in the original English text. The results obtained allowed us to compare each translation to the original text, but also to compare the translation amongst themselves. This Master’s thesis includes six chapters, which correspond in turn to our: theoretical framework, literature review, hypotheses and objectives, methodology, results, and discussion.

La communication multimodale, qui est primordiale dans les relations interpersonnelles, reste encore très limitée dans les interfaces homme-machine actuelles. Parmi les différentes modalités qui ont été adoptées par les recherches en interaction homme-machine, la modalité posturale a été moins explorée que d’autres modalités comme la parole ou les expressions faciales. Les postures corporelles sont pourtant indispensables pour interpréter et situer l’interaction entre deux personnes, que ce soit en termes de contexte spatial ou de contexte social. Les briques de base que sont les dispositifs et les modalités d’interaction (par exemple la kinect ou les avatars) sont pourtant disponibles. Il manque cependant des modèles informatiques reliant ces médias et modalités aux fonctions de communication pertinentes dans les interactions interpersonnelles comme celles liées à l’espace ou aux émotions.L’objectif de cette thèse est de concevoir un premier modèle informatique permettant d’exploiter les postures dans les interactions homme-machine. Cela soulève plusieurs questions de recherche : comment représenter symboliquement des postures exprimées durant des interactions interpersonnelles ? Comment spécifier les comportements posturaux de personnages virtuels ? Quelles doivent être les caractéristiques d’un modèle d’interaction corporel permettant des interactions entre un personnage virtuel et un utilisateur dans différents contextes physiques ou sociaux ?L’approche proposée consiste dans un premier temps à prendre comme point de départ des corpus vidéo filmés dans différentes situations. Nous avons défini un schéma de codage pour annoter manuellement les informations posturales à différents niveaux d’abstraction et pour les différentes parties du corps. Ces représentations symboliques ont été exploitées pour effectuer des analyses des relations spatiales et temporelles entre les postures exprimées par deux interlocuteurs.Ces représentations symboliques de postures ont été utilisées dans un deuxième temps pour simuler des expressions corporelles de personnages virtuels. Nous nous sommes intéressés à un composant des émotions particulièrement pertinent pour les études sur les postures : les tendances à l’action. Des animations impliquant deux personnages virtuels ont été ainsi conçues puis évaluées perceptivement.Enfin, dans un troisième temps, les expressions corporelles d’un personnage virtuel ont été conçues dans une application mixte faisant intervenir un personnage virtuel et un utilisateur dans un cadre d’interaction ambiante. Les postures et gestes du personnage virtuel ont été utilisées pour aider l’utilisateur à localiser des objets du monde réel.Cette thèse ouvre des perspectives sur des études plus spécifiques de l’interaction corporelle nécessitant par exemple des annotations automatiques via des dispositifs de capture de mouvement ou la prise en compte des différences individuelles dans l’expression posturale. / Multimodal communication is key to smooth interactions between people. However, multimodality remains limited in current human-computer interfaces. For example, posture is less explored than other modalities, such as speech and facial expressions. The postural expressions of others have a huge impact on how we situate and interpret an interaction. Devices and interfaces for representing full-body interaction are available (e.g., Kinect and full-body avatars), but systems still lack computational models relating these modalities to spatial and emotional communicative functions.The goal of this thesis is to lay the foundation for computational models that enable better use of posture in human-computer interaction. This necessitates addressing several research questions: How can we symbolically represent postures used in interpersonal communication? How can these representations inform the design of virtual characters' postural expressions? What are the requirements of a model of postural interaction for application to interactive virtual characters? How can this model be applied in different spatial and social contexts?In our approach, we start with the manual annotation of video corpora featuring postural expressions. We define a coding scheme for the manual annotation of posture at several levels of abstraction and for different body parts. These representations were used for analyzing the spatial and temporal relations between postures displayed by two human interlocutors during spontaneous conversations.Next, representations were used to inform the design of postural expressions displayed by virtual characters. For studying postural expressions, we selected one promising, relevant component of emotions: the action tendency. Animations were designed featuring action tendencies in a female character. These animations were used as a social context in perception tests.Finally, postural expressions were designed for a virtual character used in an ambient interaction system. These postural and spatial behaviors were used to help users locate real objects in an intelligent room (iRoom). The impact of these bodily expressions on the user¡¯s performance, subjective perception and behavior was evaluated in a user studyFurther studies of bodily interaction are called for involving, for example, motion-capture techniques, integration with other spatial modalities such as gaze, and consideration of individual differences in bodily interaction.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcia Veirano Pinto.pdf: 1445134 bytes, checksum: 95dc02d452625122498fd694e181ba98 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-09-18 / This study aimed at investigating how learners of English as a Foreign Language use the vague words things, thing, anything, something and everything and at developing a methodology for rational and informed integration of films on DVD to lessons of English as a Foreign Language, with a view to contributing to the better use of such words during face to face interaction. The methodology uses technology available in schools today and seeks to meet the demands of learners for greater exposition to and practice on spoken language in use. The combination of different research areas such as Corpus Linguistics, Pragmatics, and Systemic-Functional Linguistics applied to the use of films as learning material and the Postmethod Pedagogy seemed to be well-suited to the achievement of this aim, once it enabled the identification and analysis of language patterns, as well as the designing of classroom activities with a focus on the pragmatic aspects of these words. The results of the analysis showed that the most common uses of vague words like things, thing, anything, something and everything are usually not present in most textbooks available today and thus there is a need for developing materials that take into account their most typical uses. The study presented here intends to be an original contribution to the existing body of corpus-based research for language teaching and learning, as it describes the patterns of the vague words things, thing, anything, something and everything in learner and native speaker corpora and develops a methodology that aims at helping teachers prepare materials that are suitable to cover the pragmatic uses of such patterns / O trabalho teve como objetivo principal descrever o uso de things, thing, anything, something e everything em corpora de falantes nativos do inglês e em corpora de alunos de inglês como língua estrangeira para preparar atividades de ensino dos padrões principais dessas palavras com base nessa descrição, integrando filmes em DVD e tecnologia disponível em salas de aula presenciais. Para tanto, foram integradas várias áreas de pesquisa como a Lingüística de Corpus, a Pragmática e a Lingüística Sistêmico-Funcional ao uso de filmes como material didático e à Pedagogia do Pós-Método, enfocando o uso das palavras things, thing, anything, something e everything as quais, dentre outras, contribuem de forma significativa para a naturalidade da comunicação dado seu significado genérico. Os resultados da análise indicaram que os empregos mais comuns das palavras de estudo não são os comumente abordados pelos materiais didáticos disponíveis no mercado, o que leva, por vezes, ao seu uso inadequado, especialmente no tocante ao registro e ao contexto da situação. As atividades propostas foram, até a presente data, bem avaliadas por meio de comentários feitos pelos professores de ILE que lidaram com elas ao participarem de curso de extensão atualmente ministrado na COGEAE/ PUC-SP (resultante de um desdobramento desta pesquisa). O trabalho aqui descrito pretende ter contribuído para as pesquisas em Lingüística de Corpus, mais especificamente para a área de Lingüística de Corpus e Ensino, ao descrever o uso das palavras things, thing, anything, something e everything em corpora de aprendiz e a desenvolver uma metodologia que permita aos professores de ILE explorarem corpora especializados de forma prática e eficaz, além de propor a aplicação de corpora em sala de aula presencial de ILE de forma a privilegiar o enfoque pragmático da linguagem