Research seminar: André Coneglian, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Title: Have we found out where all adjectives have gone?

Abstract

In 1977, R. M. W Dixon published a highly influential essay, titled ‘Where have all adjectives gone?’, in which he discussed languages with varying sizes of adjective classes, and what characterizes an adjective. Since then, much research has been done from various perspectives and with respect to a myriad of features.

Brazilian Portuguese is a language that presents a very large adjectival lexicon: evidence from lexicography suggests that there are between 14.000 and 17.000 adjectival lexemes in the contemporary use of the language.

In this Seminar, I will present an overview of the adjectival lexicon in Brazilian Portuguese from the perspective of vocabulary constitution, examining a set of the most frequent adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese according to the following parameters:

• morphological and phonological properties,
• tendencies of lexicalization of concepts,
• the distinction between qualifying and relational adjectives,
• textual distribution of these lexemes.

Based on this, I discuss how adjectives, in combination with nouns, are useful for creating ad hoc categories in discourse in very strategic ways for the verbalization of experience (Chafe, 2012).

The seminar is held in English, and interpreted into Swedish Sign Language.