Revista de Estudos da Linguagem

5-22

Authors: Ilza Maria Tavares Gualberto

The aim of this text was to investigate how subjects with differentprevious knowledge (low, medium and high) constructmacropropositions in the reading of an informative text about athe history of “The Great Navigations”. In order to make themacroproposition construction clear, semantic macrorules by vanDIJK were used (1977). Through this work we tried to analyse theinfluence of previous knowledge on the semantic transformation –macrorules – made by the reader during the processs ofmacrostructure construction.

53-78

Authors: Hércules Tolêdo Corrêa

This study has the objective of verifying how university studentsunderstand the same newspaper text from the absence x presenceof different kinds of titles as well as questions previous to thereading. The starting point was the classification of the titles ascanonic and skewed: the first are those that carry the most importantinformation of the text, its main idea, working as a kind of summaryof the summary; the latter are those that promote information ofless importance to the category of the main idea of the text.A pre-experiment was carried out with the aim of verifying thehypothesis that a given title expressed the global macropropositionof a text, thus constituting a canonic title. After that an experimentwith seventy-five (75) students of the Language Course at a privatecollege in Belo Horizonte was undertaken with the objective ofverifying the extent of influence of the titles of different kinds andthe initial questions in the understanding, acting on the constructionof macropropositions and macrostructures.The results of the experiment showed that the titles and theinitial questions influence the construction of textual macrostructuresystematically, that leads to different interpretations of the same text.Canonic and skewed titles and the presence x absence of titles andinitial questions alter the interpretation of the same text in differentways.

97-114

Authors: Ida Lúcia Machado

Dans cet article nous proposons une approche discursive duphénomène parodique, à partir d’un corpus constitué par des petitesunités énonciatives, ou, en d’autres termes, par des titres de journauxet de périodiques français. En considérant que le titre, en général,est un énoncé qui pourrait entrer dans une zone propre à l’événement rapporté (Charaudeau, 1997), nous montrons que lemode de raisonnement de ces courts énoncés repose sur troispoints clés: la simplicité, la motivation et la dramatisation. Celanous permet d’approcher les procédés parodiques, en mettant enévidence des opérations qui visent le défigement d’ expressionsfigées (Fiala & Habert, 1989) et la “fabrication” de l’ironie. Finalement,nous examinons les effets recherchés par la parodisation de titresde presse, soit des effets comiques et des effets ludiques.

127-153

Authors: Thaïs Cristófaro Silva

This paper presents an analysis of the vocalic system of BrazilianPortuguese based on the method of Cardinal Vowels (Abercrombie(1967), Jones (1980)). First we present a basic description of theprinciples of the method of Cardinal Vowels since such a techniqueis not available in Portuguese. Following the theoretical descriptionwe present the application of the method to describe the oralvowel system of Brazilian Portuguese. Finally, we suggest sometopics for further research.

5-52

Authors: Luiz Carlos de Assis Rocha

The morphological phenomenon of nominalization is a lexicalstandard which consists of the fomation of abstract substantivesfrom verbs (consagrar/consagração, fingir/fingimento). Based onthe principles of Generative Morphology, this article aims to betterdefine the phenomenon, as well as to develop some aspects relatedto this linguistic mechanism, such as: the question of the derivationof the zero suffix (the problem of regressives), the study of whatmay be called the iterative -ção suffix and the relation betweennominalization and discourse type.

113-124

Authors: Seung- Hwa Lee

Diminutive formations are very productive in BrazilianPortuguese (BP). There are two ways to derive diminutive formsout of nominal words (i.e. nouns and adjectives/adverbs): -inho(a)suffixation e -zinho(a) suffixation. The latter is attached at thestem with the thematic vowel (-a, -o, -e, which represent themorphological class in nominal words, like gender and number)and the former is attached at the stem without the thematic vowel.There are many divergences in the literature to explain thediminutive formations which are treated: i) as derivational suffixes;ii) as phonological words; iii) -inho suffixation as derivation,-zinho suffixation as (phonological) compounding, etc.In this paper, I will argue that diminutive formation inBrazilian Portuguese (BP) is treated differently from the derivation/compound formation and the inflection in the process of wordformation – that is, diminutive formation has independent status.

147-158

Authors: Andréa Machado de Almeida Mattos

This paper aims at a methodological discussion of journal studieswithin the scope of Applied Linguistics, specifically those studiesreferring to the teaching/learning of a second language. First, theclassic dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative studies isaddressed, placing journal studies in the qualitative paradigm.Second, the paper presents a methodological discussion of suchstudies, through a review of work published in this area.

171-181

Authors: Rogério Christofoletti

This article aims to bring some contributions to the discussion ofthe epistemological status of French Discourse Analysis. Becausethere isn’t a single answer to this question yet, this work will studyseveral authors and their observations about the French DiscourseAnalysis and its epistemologicals limits.

211-237

Authors: Kanavillil Rajagopalan

The pivotal claim of this paper is that ethical issues are invariablypresent in Linguistics even at those moments when one is discussingwhat are presumably ‘purely theoretical’ problems. The reason whymany linguists have difficulty in recognising this is that they areencumbered by a host of dogmas in relation to how a scientificarea of study is constituted. Among these dogmas is the idea thatthe raw materials of the science of language are the so-called ‘hardfacts’ – entities that are, by definition, devoid of any ultimateinterests. It is further believed that all that Linguistics attempts todo is to describe them, or, following Chomsky’s recommendation,explain the whys and wherefores of things, but always in waysthat are purely internal to the phenomena in question.