The formation of the meaning in cognate verbs in Portuguese and Spanish: a generative-constructionist study

Authors

  • Rafaela do Nascimento Melo Aquino Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Isabella Lopes Pederneira Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
  • Miriam Lemle Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2020.v16nEsp.a39397

Keywords:

Argument structure. Compositionality. Syntax-semantics interface. Generative Theory. Construcionist approaches

Abstract

By examining the syntactic and semantic behavior of cognate words in Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish, we intend to contribute to the understanding of the division of tasks of grammar submodules at the interface between semantics and syntax. The work is guided by the constructionist theories of Distributed Morphology and the Exoskeletal Model. The question at hand is what is constant and what is variable in semantic readings of syntactic contexts of homophonous verbs in these two related languages. We have selected the pairs of mexer/mecer (wiggle), bater/batir (beat), and chegar/llegar (come) verbs to be examined in well-defined syntactic contexts. The comparative survey of syntactic and semantic coincidences and dissidences between verbs in both languages is the data set used to clarify the nature of the syntactic-semantic interface. In this corpus, there was a wide range of syntactic contexts used in all verbs except the intransitive of mecer in Spanish and the transitive of chegar/llegar in both languages. At the end of this survey, it was found that syntactic contexts are shared, but in semantic uses languages differ, results that converge to the constructionist models of Generative Grammar.

Author Biographies

Rafaela do Nascimento Melo Aquino, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
Doutoranda do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística

Isabella Lopes Pederneira, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
Professora do Departamento de Letras Vernáculas

Miriam Lemle, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
Professora do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística
Professora Emérita da UFRJ

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Published

2020-11-07

Issue

Vol. 16 (2020): Special Issue - Celebrating over 50 years of the Graduate Linguistics Program at UFRJ and of the Professor Emeritus Miriam Lemle’s career

Section

Articles

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