http://hdl.handle.net/11422/105 Sat, 25 Jul 2026 22:03:32 GMT 2026-07-25T22:03:32Z http://hdl.handle.net/11422/29804 Title: A sintaxe dos advérbios altos, mediais e baixos no português do Brasil: uma análise cartográfica Author(s)/Inventor(s): Alves, Matheus Gomes Advisor: Martins, Adriana Leitão Abstract: This study assumes that AdvPs are specifiers of functional projections that are rigidly ordered and constitute the Universal Hierarchy (UH) (Cinque, 1999). Within the UH, a distinction is drawn between high, medial, and low AdvPs, which display different syntactic and semantic properties across natural languages. Against this background, the general aim of this dissertation is to contribute to the description of adverbial syntax in natural languages. Specifically, it seeks to (i) identify restrictions on the modification and linearization of high, medial, and low adverbs from Cinque’s (1999) UH in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) sentences with inflected thematic verbs, (ii) investigate the interpretations triggered by high, medial, and low adverbs when occurring in different positions in such sentences, (iii) propose new diagnostic tests for high, medial, and low adverbs, and (iv) examine items that qualify as candidates for high, medial, and low adverbs in BP. Grammaticality Judgments are adopted as the methodological tool of this dissertation. The results related to the first two objectives indicate that AdvPs in the UH may be underspecified with respect to the criterial feature they bear. In the class of high AdvPs, francamente ‘frankly’ is compatible with [+declarative] and [+manner], uma vez ‘once’ with [+past] and [+repetition], and então ‘then’ with [+future], [+evidential], and [+frame]. Among medial AdvPs, normalmente ‘normally’ combines [+habitual] and [+manner], tendencialmente ‘tendentially’ [+tendential] and [+manner], novamente ‘again’ [+event repetition] and [+process repetition], frequentemente ‘frequently’ [+event frequency] and [+process frequency], com gosto ‘willingly’ [+volition] and [+manner], and rapidamente ‘quickly’ [+event acceleration] and [+process acceleration]. Low AdvPs are likewise shown to be compatible with more than one feature, namely agora mesmo ‘just now’ [+retrospection] and [+approximation], brevemente ‘shortly’ [+duration] and [+approximation], quase ‘almost’ [+prospection] and [+completiveness], and bem ‘well’ [+evaluation] and [+manner]. Four diagnostic tests are proposed to identify these readings (Cancellation, Substitution, Entailment, and Co-occurrence), complemented by two criteria for manner readings (paraphrasability with “an X manner” and precedence). From a derivational perspective, features of projections hierarchically higher than TAnteriorP in the UH are checked by simple Merge, whereas features of lower projections are checked via verb movement and VP phrasal movement. Finally, with respect to the third and fourth objectives, the results support a tripartite conception of the UH, in which high, medial, and low AdvPs constitute distinct natural classes with respect to their syntactic behavior, further distinguished by the Elliptical Answer Test, the Direct Modification of Nouns Test, and the Direct Modification of Gradable APs Test, thereby contributing to the view of adverbs as a derived and heterogeneous class. Publisher: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Type: Tese Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11422/29804 2026-02-24T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11422/29772 Title: Análise do mismatch negativity como índice de discriminação dialetal Author(s)/Inventor(s): Santos, Pedro Henrique Sousa dos Advisor: França, Aniela Improta Abstract: Linguistic perception is a topic studied across various disciplines. In the case of Variationist Sociolinguistics, the focus is not purely on the perception of sounds, but on what is associated with them: social meaning. To understand how sociolinguistic perception of dialect discrimination works, this research used Electroencephalography, with the Event-Related Potentials (ERP) methodology, in order to analyze whether the presentation of sociolinguistically variable stimuli in the paradigm called ‘oddball’, with native speakers from Rio de Janeiro, would elicit the bioelectrical component Mismatch Negativity (MMN). The variable linguistic phenomenon analyzed was the palatalization of alveolar stops /t, d/ before /i/, in the word ‘tio’, which has a salient variant not used in the speech community of Rio de Janeiro. As a control stimulus, the phenomenon of variable pre-stressed nasalization in the word ‘canal’ was used, whose variants coexist in the city of Rio de Janeiro. After the EEG experiment, explicit (questionnaires on attitudes and knowledge of the region) and implicit (Implicit Association Test – IAT) behavioral tests were also conducted, in order to understand how the neural data correlates with participants' behavior. As a result, we identified an initial peak between 200 and 300 ms corresponding to the classic MMN, which was not modulated by the change in the variant during the identity MMN (iMMN) computation. However, two other peaks were identified: one at 296–358 ms, present in both phenomena analyzed (palatalization and nasalization), and another later and distributed one at 316–388 ms, which only occurred in the case of palatalization and was interpreted as the later perception that the variant does not belong to the Rio speech community. This later peak was not modulated by the information from the IAT nor by the explicit questionnaire; however, the peak shared between the two phenomena was modulated by having friends who use the variant from outside Rio, which suggests that having positive affect toward people who speak that way would increase the capacity for perception of the stimulus when it is in the deviant position. Therefore, these data reveal a temporality of access to sociolinguistic information that provides a basis for new research at the interface between Sociolinguistics and Neuroscience, in addition to offering evidence that sociolinguistic information is accessed after the linguistic information from auditory input. Thus, this research expands the field of interface between the two areas and the understanding of how the brain deals with human language. Publisher: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Type: Dissertação Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11422/29772 2026-02-24T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11422/29758 Title: Um estudo sobre a variação da coda (s) com falantes da baixada Fluminense-RJ Author(s)/Inventor(s): Gregório, Gabriel Magalhães da Silva Advisor: Melo, Marcelo Alexandre Silva Lopes de Abstract: This study investigates the variable use of coda (s), drawing on production data collected from a new speech sample composed of speakers from the Baixada Fluminense region in the state of Rio de Janeiro, referred to as the Baixada-RJ Sample. Whereas previous studies on this variable have been based primarily on speech samples consisting of residents of the city of Rio de Janeiro, the aim of the present study is to examine which factors condition the different realizations of the coda fricative, with particular attention to the posterior variant, which has frequently been associated with speakers from peripheral areas and with lower levels of formal education. Accordingly, this study adopts the theoretical assumptions of the Theory of Variation and Change (Weinreich, Labov & Herzog, 1968; Labov, 1972), grounded in the principle that the linguistic system exhibits orderly heterogeneity, as well as those of Exemplar Models (Bybee, 2003, 2010; Pierrehumbert, 2003; Cristófaro-Silva & Gomes, 2020), which posit that the phonetic form of words stored in the lexicon encodes information indexing social characteristics. Data from twenty speakers in the new sample were analyzed using mixed-effects logistic regression models implemented in the R software environment (R Core Team, 2025). The results indicate that the posterior realization of coda (s) is strongly conditioned by structural factors (following phonetic context and stress), social factors (sex/gender and level of education), and lexical factors within the group of speakers examined in this study. Moreover, when these findings are compared with those from other speech samples mapping speakers from the city of Rio de Janeiro, it is observed that, despite originating from a peripheral region, the group analyzed appears to mirror the linguistic norms of middle-class speakers from the city, suggesting the possible integration of the Baixada Fluminense into a continuum of urban linguistic norms. Publisher: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Type: Dissertação Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11422/29758 2026-02-10T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11422/29757 Title: Análise cognitiva de dados verbais e verbo-gestuais em usos da dêixis locativa no português e no inglês Author(s)/Inventor(s): Lima, Thaís Lourenço Advisor: Ferrari, Lilian Vieira Abstract: Since the end of the 20th century, the fields of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) and Gesture Studies have been converging with mutual and growing interest (Cienki, 2016). In this new field of research, one of the topics that stands out most within the theoretical framework of CL is Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). Therefore, in this study, we propose to describe the prototypical and metaphorical uses of the locative deictics “aí,” “ali,” and “lá” in Brazilian Portuguese and their counterpart in American English, “there,” based on verbal and multimodal data. We correlate gesture and speech in order to investigate gestural patterns associated with each type of use of the deictics. We also draw on current studies on multimodality, with an emphasis on gesture and conceptualization (Kendon, 2004; Cienki, 2013; Pinheiro and Avelar, 2017) and gesture and metaphor (Cienki, 1998; Cienki and Müller, 2008; Avelar, Ferrari, and Pacheco, 2022). Verbal data were extracted from the D&G corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English; audiovisual data were collected from Red Hen Lab and videos available on YouTube. The results showed prototypical and metaphorical uses in both languages. The analysis of verbo-gestural data indicated a prevalence of pointing gestures in more concrete uses, with differentiation in the dimension of gesture space in PB deictics and greater balance in English. In metaphorical uses, in addition to pointing gestures, the analysis demonstrated the occurrence of different gestural modes of representation (Müller, 1998a, 1998b, 2014), with a predominance of the “drawing” mode. Publisher: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Type: Dissertação Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11422/29757 2026-02-12T00:00:00Z