In Alfa's second issue in 2017, we have gathered an excellent sample of the current development of language research in Brazil, in its diversity and scope.
The article by Grillo and Américo provides readers with the results of an archival research that made to emerge, as in an archaeological investigation, an unprecedented profile of Volóchinov's life and work. The survey was conducted in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in a dive into primary sources. In addition to perfectly illustrating the historiographical method, the study brings undeniable contributions to the various theoretical approaches that are based or dialog less or more closely with the Bakhtin Circle thought.
In the second article, based on the theoretical-methodological approach of French Discourse Analysis, Santos and Romualdo invest in the analysis of the discursivization of presidents Lula and Dilma in an archive composed by the weekly Carta Capital, Época, Isto É and Veja, during the 2010 electoral year. The authors identify a discursive effect of copresence of these two actors in the political scenario, which results sometimes in qualification or in disqualification of the candidate; it reveals the process of construction of political-mediatic discourse, so present in contemporary times.
An area as old as contemporary in linguistic studies is the domain in which the third article is located — Dialectology. Razky, Ribeiro and Sanches present us the research “paths” for the elaboration of the Amapá Linguistic Atlas, reporting the procedures and methodological challenges of an enterprise as complex as necessary. The study shows how little by little the great dream of Antenor Nascentes takes shape, to the extent that regions so far from the traditional focus of research begin, literally, to be “placed on the Brazilian linguistic map”.
Vasconcellos and Del Ré, authors of the fourth article, look at the language where it would seem that it is not or it could not manifest itself. Observing the effect of reading in the textual production of a child with cerebral palsy, they reveal a particular process of acquisition of reading/writing and, from specificity, contribute to a broader understanding of the Acquisition phenomenon.
The study of Alencar is located on the border between Grammar and Computing, illustrating an interface approach so characteristic of current linguistic studies — Computational Linguistics. The author successfully proposes a solution to a specific difficulty of FrGramm (a computational grammar of French based on the Lexical-Functional Grammar): the treatment of the passive and the compound past. The implemented change is tested with the aid of a syntactic analyzer proving to be effective in distinguishing between grammatical and ungrammatical constructions of the language.
In the fifth article of the present edition, we see another example of an equally profitable interface: one that uses solid knowledge about language and pedagogical practice to evaluate the adequacy of a technological product designed to assist Portuguese language teaching — a digital pedagogical game. It is needless to point the relevance of producing instruments for the evaluation of such tools, so that education professionals can have quality materials, consistent with what is known about the functioning of language and that bring an effective gain to the teaching-learning process.
The last two articles address lexicon issues, although differently. The text of Budny discusses a quite relevant question to the lexicological and lexicographic studies dedicated to the elaboration of bilingual dictionaries — the equivalence between units of the different languages. The focus of the study are phraseological units with zoonyms included in Portuguese-English bilingual dictionaries. They are expressions that create particular difficulties in the translation process, because of their metaphorical character, closely related to the specific culture. As the author shows, they are poorly represented and subject to an inadequate treatment in the works analyzed.
The paper by Meirelles and Cançado concludes this edition with a study on the relevance of proposing a semantic property of movement in the characterization of Portuguese verbs. The authors analyze the semantic and syntactic properties and lexicalization patterns of verbs traditionally classified as ‘verbs of motion’ in Portuguese. And, also, they determine how the value ‘movement’ is carried out in the structure of these predicates, in their argument structure. This results in a detailed typology identifying at least five classes with specific semantic representation.
We are sure to offer Alfa readers a rich set of studies, attuned to current and pressing issues: new looks and insights about our exciting object of study.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
May-Aug 2017
