From: Margarita Correia <margarita.correiagmail.com>
Subject: A denominação das qualidades em português - contributos para a compreensão da estrutura do léxico português
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Institution: Universidade de Lisboa
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2000
Author: Margarita Correia
Dissertation Title: A denominação das qualidades em português - contributos para a compreensão da estrutura do léxico português
João Malaca Casteleiro
The main goal of this work is to describe how qualities are named with
nouns in European Portuguese (EP), especially with deadjectival nouns.
'Denomination' is conceived as the relation between a lexical item and a
mental image corresponding to, and representing a given category. Although
nouns are the most typical 'namers', other categories (adjectives, verbs)
can also name entities of other kinds (qualities, actions, relations, etc.).
There is a focus on quality nouns (QNs) constructed in EP, or which can be
analysed in this language, because the study of constructed words is a
privileged domain for the observation of the construction of lexical
descriptive and referential meaning.
The theoretical framework is the SILEX model of constructional morphology,
conceived by Danielle Corbin and developed by members of SILEX (Syntaxe,
Interprétation et LEXique - UMR CNRS). The main aspects of this theoretical
framework are presented in Part I. According to this model, constructed
words have a linguistic predictable meaning, given by their morphological
structure. Therefore there is a relation between each lexical item and its
reference, which is possible to turn clearer. In this sense, this work may
contribute to an understanding of the global structure of the EP lexicon.
Part II, «Delimitação do objecto de estudo e aspectos metodológicos»,
consists of three chapters (2, 3, 4). Part III, «Descrição morfossemântica
dos nomes de qualidade em português» also consist of three chapters (5, 6, 7).
In Chapter 2, different types of classification of nominal subcategories
are presented. The concept of 'abstract noun' is also discussed to,
finally, concentrate on the main characteristics of QNs, a type of abstract
The distinction between nouns and adjectives is crucial to this work. In
Chapter 3, a distinction between members of these categories is proposed,
using syntactic, semantic and morphological criteria, both inflectional and
derivational. A view of the internal structure of these categories is also
Chapter 4 focuses on the validity of the linguistic data used: the validity
of data from dictionaries is argued and defended.
All descriptions in Part III are made from the perspective that linguistic
categories have prototypical structures. In chapter 5, different types of
morphological structures presented by QNs are determined and classified,
and a list of the actual productive processes and suffixes for the
construction of QNs, as well as a description of the way the author
foresees the internal structure of the category of QNs, are presented.
Chapter 6 describes the less typical members of this category, converted
deadjectival nouns, denominal and deverbal nouns. How predicative meaning
comes to these kinds of nouns and why EP uses such structures in order to
name qualities are issues dealt with in this chapter.
Chapter 7 describes the deadjectival QNs resulting from suffixation, the
centre of QN's category, focusing on the reasons for the selection of
specific suffixes, and which differences of meaning result from the
correlation between the word-formation rule, the base and the involved
affix. The way in which each specific suffix reveals the quality named is
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