Diversos estudos vêm apontando o desaparecimento do pronome clítico dativo de terceira pessoa em paralelo com a substituição da preposição a pela preposição para (pra na língua falada) na introdução de objeto indireto (OI) no português brasileiro (PB). Este fenômeno começa a partir de dados do século XIX, no entanto, tais estudos partem, em sua maioria, de dados da linguagem adulta, sendo que poucos tratam deste fenômeno no âmbito da aprendizagem. Esta dissertação investiga tais apontamentos com relação ao OI, partindo de análise de dados de testes escritos por 767 alunos cursando desde a 5ª série do ensino fundamental de ciclo II (EF II) até o 3º ano do ensino médio (EM). As construções que serão destacadas deverão ser apenas as com verbos do tipo dandi e dicendi, verbos com dois complementos, limitando-se à 3ª pessoa. Partindo da relação que diversos trabalhos fazem entre o clítico dativo e a preposição a (se lhe, então a), verificarei o que o aprendiz usa no lugar do dativo lhe e se substituem a preposição para pela preposição a, no papel de encabeçadora de OI. Uma questão importante nesta dissertação é saber se o tipo de escolha para o preenchimento do OI é uma questão de aprendizagem; saberemos, assim, se a escola recupera na escrita o que parece estar desaparecendo na fala, e, se recupera, o quanto e como se dá essa recuperação. Concluímos que a escola interfere no uso do tipo de preposição que encabeça o SP na modalidade escrita da língua; porém o clítico dativo lhe não acompanha a alternância da preposição ao longo das séries escolares. O aluno não associa a correlação entre os dois fenômenos. Confirma-se a nossa hipótese principal de que no processo de letramento a escola tende a recuperar as perdas lingüísticas, mas nem todas elas são passíveis de serem recuperadas. / Several studies indicate the dative clitic pronoun disappearance in 3rd person in parallel with the preposition \"a\" substitution by preposition \"para\" (\"pra\" in spoken language) in the introduction of Indirect Object (OI) in Brazilian Portuguese. This phenomenon states from data of XIX century, however, such studies consider, the greater number, data of adult language, and few works deal with phenomenon in learning field. This dissertation investigates such notes with regard to OI, starting from data of written testes analysis by 767 students coursing since the 5th on secondary school until 3rd on high school. The constructions that will be focused are those with dandi and dicendi type verbs, verbs with two complements, limiting to 3rd person. Starting from relationship that several works do between the dative clitic and the preposition \"a\' (if \"lhe\", then \"a\"), I will verify what the student use in the place of dative \"lhe\" and if they substitute the preposition \"para\" by the preposition \"a\" in the introduction of OI role. An important point in this dissertation is to know if the type of choice to OI accomplishment is a learning issue; we will, thus, if the school recuperates, how much and how this recuperation happens. Concluding, the school interferes in the use of the type of preposition in the language writing; nevertheless the dative clitic \"lhe\" doesn\'t follow the alternate of the preposition along of school series. The student doesn\'t associate the correlate between the two phenomenons. It confirms the hypothesis main: the school tends to recuperate the linguistic lost, but neither all them can be recuperates.

No presente trabalho, analiso o comportamento funcional dos verbos vir e virar, no português brasileiro contemporâneo, desde a sua atuação em estruturas simples à formação de estruturas complexas. Desenvolvida sob o paradigma do funcionalismo lingüístico, esta dissertação baseiase em dados de língua falada, coletados a partir do banco de dados do projeto PEUL e NURC. A fim de sustentar a hipótese que permeia o objetivo deste trabalho, também foram coletados dados de língua escrita e falada através do mecanismo de busca Google e, também, do corpusdoportugues.org. A partir da amostra constituída, verifico a possibilidade de derivação de um uso a outro, os quais são organizados em padrões funcionais. Desta forma, são demonstrados casos em que, à medida que novas estruturas são colocadas em uso, os verbos, em análise, apresentam, gradativamente, um desgaste semântico, seguindo, assim, uma linha unidirecional de desenvolvimento. Em oposição aos estudos de gramaticalização que, segundo os autores, visam a um percurso unilinear quanto ao desenvolvimento de um léxico em que podemos reconhecer pontos e estabelecer derivações entre esses pontos, testo a validade da teoria multissitêmica, que nega o processo de derivação. As discussões tecidas culminam com a formulação de questionamento relativo à direção de mudança assumida pelos itens: vir e virar percorreriam um caminho unidirecional ou multidirecional de desenvolvimento? Apresento, então, evidências de que ao mesmo tempo em que há a derivação, apresentando, assim, um desgaste gradativo de desenvolvimento, há também a simultaneidade de processos. Ainda, com base nos dados expostos, observo o uso de uma estrutura que permanece fora do âmbito da literatura lingüística. Tratase das estruturas que apresentam seqüências verbais, aqui rotuladas de serialização verbal, em que o verbo que ocupa a primeira posição da sentença apresentase quase ou totalmente dessemantizado, podendo assumir uma categorização sintática de VERBOS QUASESERIAIS ou de VERBOS SERIAIS. / In the present work, I analyze the functional behavior of the verbs to come (VIR) and to turn (VIRAR), in the contemporary Brazilian Portuguese, from their performance in simple structures to the formation of complex structures. This dissertation is developed under the paradigm of the linguistic functionalism and it is based on data from spoken language, these were collected from the data base of PEUL and NURC projects. In order to support the hypothesis that permeates the aim of this work, there had been also collected from the written and spoken language through the mechanism of Google search and, also, corpusdoportugues.org. I verify the possibility of derivation between one use or another when facing the collected samples, which are organized in functional standards. In such a way, cases are demonstrated where to the measure that new structures are placed in use, the analyzed verbs present semantic erosion in a gradual way, thus following a unidirectional line of development. In opposition to the grammaticalization studies that, according to authors, they aim a unidirectional route about the development of a lexicon, that is a representation through a line, in which we can recognize points and establish derivations among these points, I test the validity of the multissistemic theory when denying the derivation process. The studies point to an unknown/incognito formation presents among the investigated theories in this work: would to come (VIR) and to turn (VIRAR) go through a unidirectional or multidirectional way of development? In accordance with the achieved occurrences/tokens, I notice that at the same time where it has the hypothesis of that a use has derived from another one, presenting, then, a development gradual erosion, there also. Still, based on the displayed data, I observe the use of a structure that remains outside of the scope of linguistic literature. These structures are formed from a minimum sequence of V1 and V2, in which V1 corresponds to one of the verbs to come (VIR) and to turn (VIRAR) and V2 is relatively free. In this work, these types of constructions are dealt with as a verbal case of 6 serialization, and V1 is presented almost or total dessemanticized, which assumes a syntactic categorization of ALMOSTSERIAIS VERBS or SERIAL VERBS.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-02-04T10:41:54Z No. of bitstreams: 1 danieledesouzaleitemolina.pdf: 1596778 bytes, checksum: 6be4b71981dbef447d38df98ca986b76 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-02-05T10:52:22Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 danieledesouzaleitemolina.pdf: 1596778 bytes, checksum: 6be4b71981dbef447d38df98ca986b76 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-05T10:52:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 danieledesouzaleitemolina.pdf: 1596778 bytes, checksum: 6be4b71981dbef447d38df98ca986b76 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-31 / Este trabalho investiga o reconhecimento, por crianças adquirindo o PB, da raiz como a parte do verbo que veicula seu significado permanente, apesar das variações flexionais disponibilizadas pelos afixos. Estudos sugerem que crianças em fase inicial de aquisição lexical tomam como palavras diferentes vocábulos que se distinguem em sua forma fonológica (JUSCZYK; ASLIN, 1995; BORTFELD et al., 2005; SHI; LEPAGE, 2008; JUSCZYK; HOUSTON; NEWSOME, 1999). Nesse sentido, a morfologia representaria um impasse para a aquisição lexical, já que os processos morfológicos (de derivação e, principalmente, de flexão) originam palavras fonologicamente distintas, porém relacionadas quanto ao significado. Como fundamentação teórica, assumimos a proposta de conciliação (CORRÊA, 2006; 2009a; 2011) entre a teoria linguística do Programa Minimalista (CHOMSKY, 1995 e obras posteriores) e o modelo de processamento psicolinguístico voltado para a aquisição da linguagem do Bootstrapping Fonológico (MORGAN; DEMUTH, 1996; CHRISTOPHE et al., 1997) com vistas a caracterizar a passagem de uma análise de base fonológica e distribucional do input para o tratamento sintático de enunciados linguísticos. Consideramos também a hipótese do Bootstrapping Sintático (GLEITMAN, 1990), segundo a qual a estrutura sintática (a grade argumental) guia o mapeamento do significado da sentença. Buscamos verificar, portanto, em que idade as crianças adquirindo o PB mapeiam variações de um mesmo verbo como tendo o mesmo conceito base. Partimos da hipótese de que é por meio do reconhecimento de afixos verbais recorrentes na língua em aquisição que a criança procede à segmentação interna do verbo em raiz e afixos, atribuindo à raiz verbal o conceito permanente. Com a técnica de Seleção de Imagem, obtivemos resultados que sugerem que, aos três anos de idade, crianças tendem a mapear uma ação a um novo verbo, porém, sobrecarga de memória parece limitar esse mapeamento. As crianças dessa faixa etária aparentam indecisão quanto ao significado das variações flexionais desse verbo. Já aos quatro anos de idade, dados robustos com as técnicas de Seleção de Imagem e de Encenação de Ações sugerem que crianças mapeiam uma ação a um novo verbo e que tratam as variações desse verbo como tendo o mesmo significado base. Além disso, uma atividade experimental realizada com uma técnica mais refinada, a de Fixação Preferencial do Olhar, aponta para o mapeamento de uma ação a um novo verbo e o tratamento de variações flexionais como tendo o mesmo conceito base por crianças mais novas, com idade em torno de dois anos. Com base no escopo teórico assumido neste trabalho, tais resultados apontam para o tratamento de uma pseudopalavra como verbo a partir de pistas distribucionais. Os resultados podem ser interpretados, ainda, como evidência da segmentação interna do verbo e do consequente reconhecimento da raiz verbal como a parte que veicula o significado base do vocábulo, adquirido a partir de pistas observacionais. / This work investigates the acknowledgement by children acquiring BP (Brazilian Portuguese) of the root as the part of the verb that has the permanent meaning, despite inflectional variations of affixes. Previous works suggest that children on an initial period of lexical acquisition treat words that have different phonological forms as completely different words (JUSCZYK; ASLIN, 1995; BORTFELD et al., 2005; SHI; LEPAGE, 2008; JUSCZYK; HOUSTON; NEWSOME, 1999). In this sense, morphology could represent trouble to lexical acquisition, as morphological processes (derivation and, mainly, inflection) create phonologically different words, but these words are related in meaning. We assume, as theoretical foundation, the proposal of conciliation (CORRÊA, 2006; 2009a; 2011) between a linguistic theory of the Minimalist Program (CHOMSKY, 1995 and latter works) and the psycholinguistic processing model aimed at language acquisition of Phonological Bootstrapping (MORGAN; DEMUTH, 1996; CHRISTOPHE et al., 1997) with the purpose to characterize the passage from a phonological and distributional analysis of the input to the syntactic treatment of linguistic statement. We also consider the Syntactic Bootstrapping hypothesis, which defends that syntactic structure guides the mapping of sentences’ meaning. We seek thus to verify in which age children acquiring BP map variations of the same verb as having the same base concept. We assume the hypothesis that is by recognizing recurrent verbal affixes on the language that is being acquired that child proceeds to the verbal internal segmentation between root and affixes, assigning the permanent concept to the root. The results we obtained with Picture Identification Tasks suggest three-year-old children tend to map an action into a novel verb, although memory seems to limit this mapping. Children of this age group appear to be uncertain about the meaning of the new verb’s variations. The methodological techniques of Picture Identification Task and Act Out provide robust data that four-year-old children map an action into a novel verb and treat variations of this novel verb as having the same base meaning. Besides, an experimental activity with Split-Screen Preferential Looking Paradigm, a finer technique, points out to the mapping of an action into a novel verb and the treatment of the verbal variations as having the same base concept by younger children, a two-year-old range group. According to the theoretical approach assumed in this work, our results point out to the treatment of a non-word as a verb due to distributional cues. The results can also be interpreted as evidence of the verbal internal segmentation and the consequent acknowledgement of the verbal root as the part of the word that has the base meaning, acquired by observational cues.

Entende-se por gramaticalização a passagem de um item lexical para um item gramatical, ou de um menos gramatical para um mais gramatical. Vinculando este trabalho ao arcabouço teórico da Gramaticalização numa abordagem funcionalista, discutimos a mudança lingüística empreendida pelo verbo esperar até alcançar seu padrão funcional de marcador conversacional sob forma da expressão espera aí. Como ponto de partida, elegemos uma amostra do falar culto paulista a partir de materiais provenientes do acervo CAPH (Centro de Apoio à Pesquisa em História FFLCH-USP), da midiateca do IEA (Instituto de Estudos Avançados-USP) e de entrevistas já organizadas pela equipe do Projeto NURC/SP (Projeto Norma Urbana Culta de São Paulo). Evidenciamos o papel discursivo do interlocutor como gatilho para a emergência do padrão funcional mais inovador. Esta dissertação vincula-se ao Grupo de Pesquisa Mudança Gramatical do Português Gramaticalização (CNPq-USP). / It is assumed that grammaticalization is the passage from a lexical to a grammatical item or from a less grammatical to a more grammatical one. We link this research to a theoretical framework of the Grammaticalization in a functionalist approach, we also argue about the linguistic change undertaken by the verb esperar (wait) until it reaches its functional standard of a conversational marker that is formed by the expression espera aí. A starting point, we elect a sample of the Paulistas (from São Paulo) standard spoken language material proceeding from the CAPH (Center of Support to the Research in History - FFLCH-USP), from the midia-library of the IEA (Institute of Advanced Studies) and the Project NURC/SP (Project Cultured Urban Norm of São Paulo) organized interviews. We evidence the discursive role of the interlocutor as the trigger for the rising of the more innovative functional standard. This dissertation is linked to the Group to Research Portuguese Grammatical Change - Grammaticalization (CNPq-USP).

Embora a língua árabe com a poesia altamente desenvolvida na época da Jahiliyya (período que antecede ao Islã) tivesse seu indiscutível lugar na Península Arábica, foi somente com o advento e expansão do Islamismo que ela ganhou a projeção que a levou para além de suas fronteiras linguísticas históricas. Através dos séculos, a religião continuou a desempenhar um papel primordial na expansão da língua árabe, visto ser esta a língua litúrgica do islamismo, entretanto, ultimamente, outros fatores têm contribuído para um interesse maior pelo idioma, pouco, porém, tem sido feito para facilitar a sua aprendizagem, especialmente entre os lusófonos. Esta pesquisa, preocupada com a falta de apoio didático para a aprendizagem e o aprofundamento no conhecimento linguístico que, via de regra, se adquire com a decodificação de textos no idioma almejado, propõe a elaboração de um dicionário monodirecional de verbos árabe-português. O dicionário proposto nessa dissertação singulariza os mil e um verbos mais frequentes nos corpora jornalístico e literário e será compilado tendo por base princípios descritivos científicos da lexicografia moderna, não estando limitado a uma teoria particular, entretanto, privilegiando a lexicografia pedagógica de Welker (2004 e 2008). Em seu trabalho, Welker (2008) discute a lexicografia pedagógica (LP), apresentando técnicas que, se seguidas, auxiliarão os consulentes em sua tarefa de compreensão e decodificação de textos em língua estrangeira. Esse arcabouço teórico é interpretado sob a ótica da Escola de Filologia de Kufa que considerava o verbo como o originador do universo léxical árabe. Essa posição é sustentada por vários arabistas modernos que reconhecem que, embora nem todas as palavras possam ser rastreadas a uma raiz verbal, a maioria de seus lexemas deriva-se de um verbo simples. O levantamento do corpus verbal será primordialmente baseado nos trabalhos de Moshe Brill (1940) e Jacob Landau (1959) que, seguindo os parâmetros da linguística de corpus, compilaram as palavras mais frequentes na mídia e literatura árabes. Devido ao escopo do árabe padrão moderno como a lingua franca entre todos os países árabes, e por ser esta a vertente mais usada no ensino de árabe para estrangeiros, escolheu-se essa variante para este trabalho. / Even though the Arabic language with the poetry highly developed during the Age of Jahiliyya (period that precedes the coming of Islam) had its indisputable place in the Arabian Peninsula, it was only with the advent and expansion of Islam that it gained the projection to beyond its historical borders. Through the centuries, religion continued to play a primordial role in the expansion of the Arabic language, as this is the liturgical language of Islam, but, recently, other factors have contributed to a greater interest in the language, few things, however, have been done to facilitate its learning, especially among the Brazilians. This research, concerned with lack of didactic support for the learning and deepening of linguistic knowledge that, as a general rule, is acquired with the decoding of texts in the desired language, proposes the elaboration of a mono-directional dictionary of Arabic-Portuguese verbs. The dictionary proposed in this thesis singles out the most frequent one thousand and one verbs in the journalistic and literary corpora and will be compiled according to the scientific descriptive principles of modern lexicography, not limited to particular theory, but the pedagogical lexicography of Welker (2004; 2008) will be favoured. Welker (2008) discusses the pedagogical lexicography (PL), presenting techniques that, if followed, will help the dictionary user in the task of comprehending and decoding texts in foreign language. This theoretical background is interpreted through the view of the Philological School of Kufa that considered the verb as the originator of the Arabic lexical universe. This position is undertaken by several modern Arabists who acknowledge that, although not all words can be traced back to a verbal root, the majority of the languages lexemes come from a simple verb. The verbal corpus will be based on the works of Moshe Brill (1940) and Jacob Landau (1959) who, following the parameters of the corpus linguistics, compiled a list of the most frequent words in the Arabic media and literature. Due to the scope of the Modern Standard Arabic as the lingua franca in all Arab countries, and because this is the most used variety in the teaching of Arabic to foreigners, it was chosen as the variant for this research.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-03-29T11:33:16Z No. of bitstreams: 1 sabrinaanacletoteixeira.pdf: 903908 bytes, checksum: 8a5b0ca66d22526e087950117bd1db22 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-04-24T02:45:42Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 sabrinaanacletoteixeira.pdf: 903908 bytes, checksum: 8a5b0ca66d22526e087950117bd1db22 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-24T02:45:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 sabrinaanacletoteixeira.pdf: 903908 bytes, checksum: 8a5b0ca66d22526e087950117bd1db22 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-26 / Este estudo investiga o processo de categorização de palavras pertencentes às categorias lexicais N(ome) e V(erbo). Nosso objetivo é verificar se crianças em estágio inicial de aquisição do PB são sensíveis às categorias funcionais de determinantes e pronomes e se elas podem usar esses itens funcionais para categorizar palavras novas como nomes ou verbos. A perspectiva teórica adotada visa a conciliar um modelo de processamento voltado para a aquisição da linguagem – Bootstrapping Fonológico (MORGAN; DEMUTH, 1996; CHRISTOPHE et al., 1997) – e uma teoria linguística que considera uma interface entre o sistema linguístico e outros sistemas – sistemas sensório-motor e conceptual-intencional (CHOMSKY, 1995, 1999; HAUSER; CHOMSKY; FITCH, 2002). Tal conciliação permite-nos explicar como as crianças extraem a estrutura sintática subjacente à sua língua do continuum da fala, a partir das pistas distribucionais e prosódicas. Trabalhos anteriores com bebês alemães (HÖHLE et al., 2004) e canadenses de língua francesa (SHI; MELANÇON, 2010) obtiveram resultados que indicam que bebês de 14 meses usam os determinantes para categorizar palavras novas como nomes. Nossa hipótese é que bebês aos 13 meses identificam os determinantes e os pronomes como grupos distintos dentro da categoria dos itens funcionais e que esses itens podem guiar o processo de categorização de nomes e verbos. Os resultados de um experimento usando a técnica de Olhar Preferencial apontam para o uso dos determinantes e dos pronomes para a categorização de palavras novas como nomes e verbos, respectivamente, no PB por bebês brasileiros de 13 meses. / This study investigates the categorization process of words that belong to lexical categories N(oun) or V(erb). Our goal is to verify if children in the early stages of the acquisition of BP are sensitive to function categories such as determiners and pronouns and if they can use these function items to categorize novel words as nouns or verbs. The theoretical approach adopted aims at conciliating a processing model of language acquisition – Phonological Bootstrapping (MORGAN and DEMUTH, 1996; CHRISTOPHE et al., 1997) with a linguistic theory that considers an interface between linguistic system and other systems – sensory-motor and conceptual-intentional systems (CHOMSKY, 1995, 1999; HAUSER; CHOMSKY and FITCH, 2002). This conciliation allows us to explain how children extract the syntactic structure of their language from the speech through distributional and prosodic cues. Previous studies with German (HÖHLE et al., 2004) and French Canadian (SHI and MELANÇON, 2010) infants indicate that fourteen-month-old infants use determiners to categorize novel words as nouns. Our hypothesis is that thirteen-month-old infants identify determiners and pronouns as belonging to distinct groups within function categories and that these items can guide the categorization process of nouns and verbs. Results of an experiment using the Preferential Looking Paradigm suggest the use of determiners and pronouns to categorize novel words either as nouns or verbs in BP by thirteen-month-old Brazilian infants.

[pt] O presente estudo busca investigar o uso de verbos modais na produção escrita de universitários brasileiros em inglês como língua estrangeira (ILE), contrastando-o com o emprego realizado por alunos universitários americanos e britânicos que têm o inglês como primeira língua. Para tanto, lança-se mão do arcabouço teórico da lingüística de corpus (Sinclair, 1991; McEnery & Wilson, 1996; Hunston, 2002; Berber Sardinha, 2004; McEnery, Xiao & Tono, 2006) e de recursos tecnológicos, especialmente o programa computacional WordSmith Tools (Scott, 1999), para analisar dois corpora. O corpus de estudo consiste em uma fração do Br-ICLE (The Brazilian Portuguese Sub-corpus of the International Corpus of Learner English), coletada em quatro universidades do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, totalizando 51.430 palavras, enquanto o de referência corresponde a uma parte do LOCNESS (Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays), somando 165.135 palavras. Adotando uma abordagem textual à escrita (Hyland, 2002) e uma abordagem estatística para quantificar os resultados, a investigação tem como foco os verbos modais centrais (Biber et al., 1999), a saber, can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will e would. Os resultados indicam que os falantes brasileiros de inglês empregam menos verbos modais do que seus pares americanos e britânicos. Mais especificamente, nota-se que will e would são usados com freqüência significativamente menor na escrita em ILE de brasileiros. Diferenças entre os modais também são encontradas quando se analisa o padrão de uso destes verbos. Os resultados da pesquisa evidenciam, de certa forma, a diferença na produção escrita dos dois grupos estudados, o que pode contribuir para o ensino de língua inglesa no contexto brasileiro. / [en] The present study aims at investigating and contrasting the use of modal verbs in the writing of Brazilian undergraduates majoring in English as a foreign language (EFL), contrasting it to that of British and American university students who speak English as a first language. To this end, it makes use of both the theoretical background of Corpus Linguistics (Sinclair, 1991; McEnery & Wilson, 1996; Hunston, 2002; Berber Sardinha, 2004; McEnery, Xiao & Tono, 2006) and of technological resources, especially the computer program WordSmith Tools (Scott, 1999), to analyze two corpora. The research corpus consists of a section of the Br-ICLE (The Brazilian Portuguese Sub-corpus of the International Corpus of Learner English) which has been collected in four universities in the city of Rio de Janeiro, totaling 51,430 words, while the reference one corresponds to a part of the LOCNESS (Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays), accounting for 165,135 words. Adopting a textual approach to writing (Hyland, 2002) and using statistical tests to quantify the results, the investigation focuses on central modal verbs (Biber et al., 1999), namely, can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will and would. Results indicate that the Brazilian speakers of English make less use of modal verbs than their American and British counterparts. More specifically, it is observed that both will and would present significantly lower frequencies in Brazilian EFL writing. Differences among modals are also found when the patterns of use of these verbs are taken into account. Research results show that there are certain differences in the written production of the two groups, which may contribute to the teaching of English in the Brazilian context.

The following paper has been dedicated to the verb like, which is one of the verbs in the English language that can take either a to-infinitive or an -ing participle as a complement. The purpose of the paper is to examine if there are any differences in distribution and meaning between the two complements. The focus also lies on the different verbs occurring as complements, and the contrast between the verbs occurring as to-infinitives and as -ing participles. There are many theories which have been proposed on the subject that lie as a basis for the investigation. The analysis was carried out by means of an investigation of sentences taken from the COBUILDDIRECT corpus, and includes both spoken and written British and American English. The outcome of the analysis has demonstrated that there is usually agreement between the theories and the results; however, there is not always a difference of meaning between the two complements. Moreover, the analysis suggests that there is a difference of verbs occurring as to-infinitives and -ing participles; the would like to construction represents a fixed expression and often occurs together with performative verbs. Finally, the conclusion has been drawn that there is a small but visible difference between the occurrences of the spoken and the written subcorpora when discussing both meaning and verbs occurring as complements. Since the to-infinitive complement is more common than the -ing participle in newspapers, books, and spoken English, the difference includes both detached and involved style as well as a regional difference between British and American English.

This essay is a corpus study, the aim of which is to investigate the usage of two near-synonymous verb pairs that descend from Germanic and Romance languages. The four verbs begin, commence, hate, and detest were chosen for the study. The analysis is based on occurrences of the verbs in five subcorpora in the COBUILDDIRECT corpus; two subcorpora consist of British and American books and three subcorpora are composed of British and Australian newspapers. Occurrences were also collected from the novel Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë. The primary aims of the essay are to investigate the frequency and occurrence of the verbs in different text types as well as in British and American books, to reveal if the verbs are synonymous and whether they occur with the same collocates. Furthermore, the novel Wuthering Heights gives a diachronic view of the usage of the verbs. This analysis suggests that a usage of the verbs of Germanic origin is more frequent than the verbs of Romance origin. The Romance verbs are more common in novels and books, but also in the British newspaper The Times. Furthermore, the usage of commence and detest seems to be restricted to certain contexts which are connected to the field of the English language in which the verbs occurred at first. The Germanic verbs are clearly favoured in all kinds of texts investigated, even though Wuthering Heights has a high number of occurrences of commence. On the topic of synonymy, begin and commence have been found to be further apart from each other than hate and detest. This is due to the fact that begin and commence are constructed grammatically different, as well as a restriction in contextual usage of commence. Despite this, commence is used more freely in American books than in British books. The synonymy of hate and detest is connected to the fact that detest expresses a stronger feeling than hate, which makes the two verbs near-synonymous but also gradable. The verbs in the two pairs also collocate with different words, which underlines that they are not real synonyms. These findings support the claim that one should not call the verb pairs synonyms but near-synonyms, and that one has to be careful when choosing a verb.

This study investigates how Persian compound verbs are processed in the mental lexicon, through which we can infer how they are stored, organized, and accessed. The study focuses on investigating Persian compound verbs in light of psycholinguistic theories on polymorphemic word processing as well as linguistic theories of complex predicates. The psycholinguistic section details three experiments addressing the following three research questions: (1) whether compound verb constituents show significant priming in the masked-priming paradigm; (2) whether priming effects are constrained by semantic transparency; and (3) whether priming effects are due to morphological relatedness. This study revealed several findings: (1) compound verbs in Persian are decomposed into their constituents at early stages of processing, (2) at early stages of processing, decomposition is based on purely orthographic similarity, (3) although both transparent and opaque compound constituents were facilitated while processing, transparency had an impact on processing in the early stages of processing. Finally, the findings seem to support a parallel input effect or competing alternative effect for the verbal constituent of the transparent compound verb, as reflected in the slower facilitation for the verbal constituent compared to the nominal constituent. In theoretical studies on Persian complex predicates, the compound verb formation can be either lexical or syntactic. The overall evidence reflected in the linguistic data for Persian complex predicates presented in this dissertation as well as the results of the experimental studies carried out in this research seem to point towards lexical compounding in Persian compound verb formation. The evidence comes from (1) the nominalization of the compound, i.e. the possibility of using the compound verb as a noun; (2) the atelicity feature, i.e. the possibility of using the compound verb after the progressive expression dar haale ‘in the process of’, which indicates an incomplete action; and (3) the nonreferentiality of the nominal constituent in the compound verb, i.e. the nominal constituent cannot be followed by a pronoun that refers to it. On the other hand, the results of the experimental studies reported in this dissertation seem to support a lexical approach to compound verbs in Persian. The technique used in these experimental studies was masked priming paradigm, which investigates the prelexical and lexical processing. The results reveal constituent priming effects under masked priming technique. This indicates that Persian compound verb constituents are accessed at the prelexical stage of processing. Syntactic calculations are said to be done at later stages of processing. Therefore, the early processing of compound verb constituents leads us to the argument for the lexicality of Persian compound verbs.