Repositório RCAAP

This essay study the question of translation, the vision about the foreigner men and his language. This work’s separated in two places, both based on presuppositions analysed by Paul Ricoeur, the first trying to understand the translation like a act of hospitality and posteriorly one analyse is done of the narrative like a mediation of foreign behalf of the life.

This paper aims to conduct a literature review of studies that have lexical frequency as a relevant factor in phonological variation, mainly the ones that are morphologically conditioned. To do so, we return to some of the leading exponents on the theoretical study of lexical frequency, including neogrammatical and diffusionist models, Phonology of Use and Optimality Theory. Finally, we report some studies in Brazilian Portuguese on the effects of frequency.

This study investigates the variable application of pretonic mid-vowel raising with no apparent motivation, as in s[e]nhor ~ s[i]nhor and g[o]verno ~ g[u]verno, in the speech of youths from Porto Alegre. The main objective is to verify if lexical items and word stems favor the raising process when compared to linguistic and social variables. In order to do so, we analyzed a sample from VARSUL (Linguistic Variation in Southern Brazil) database composed of youths born and raised in Porto Alegre using mixed-effect variable rule analysis (JOHNSON, 2009). The quantitative results indicated that only Lexical Item and Word Stem statistically favored the raising of /o/, revealing that the lexicon conditions the process. Regarding /e/ vowel, the limited number of tokens indicated that the raising applies on some isolated words with no phonetic conditioner in common. Besides that, we verified that the raising spreads diffusely through stems affecting some words but not all. The discussion about the results started with the premises of Lexical Diffusion (CHEN, WANG, 1975; OLIVEIRA, 1991, 1992, 1995) and advanced with Exemplar Theory (JOHNSON, 1997; PIERREHUMBERT, 2001, 2003) in order to explain the phonetic-phonological variation through token frequency of the alternating forms.

In this paper, we analyze the novel Sôbolos rios que vão, written by António Lobo Antunes. The novel’s title is inspired in a poem by Luís de Camões. We compare the representation of exiled men faced, at present, with a foreign place in these texts. Based on the reading of the poem, we perceive, in the novel, the oppositions between health and disease, childhood and maturity, previous time and current time.

Presentation of the issue Psycholinguistics

Presentation of Literature issue on Migrant writing in contemporary literature

The article analyzes the use of epistolary form and the approach to the concept of virtue in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or virtue rewarded (1740). In spite of Richardson’s undeniable importance to European literature, still very few is said about his role within the debates on moral philosophy crucial to the development of the social criticism of the Enlightenment. Understanding Richardson’s work, thus, in its singularity and in the light of more recent studies on the 18th Century is the way in which I intend to contribute with the studies of the novel of theEnlightenment.

More and more, the researches done concerning the Epistolary Gender, in Brazil, have gone ahead. Since 2000, when the first volume of the Mario de Andrade’s Correspondence Collection was published, organized by the Brazilian Studies Institute (USP), Epistolography has had a considerable systematization within the Literary Studies. Because of that, certain questions and doubts have come out to be solved. Starting with a question – Whom a letter belongs to? – I have written the main ideas of this paper, once this specific doubt has spread itself throughout the Correspondences’ organizers work. Questioning some particularly theories and texts, we can debate a letter’s destiny, its belonging – individual or not – as well as some legal and moral problems within such task.

This study proposes an analysis of the inferences resulting from metaphorical utterances on the interface between Neuroscience and Pragmatics, for the description and the explanation of the inferential processing resulting from the understanding of these utterances. On the one hand, from the point of view of Neuroscience, via Coarse-code Hypothesis (SHIBATA et al, 2007; EVIATAR and JUST, 2006) and Dynamic Spillover Hypothesis (PRAT et al., 2012), the cortical structures recruited to the metaphor processing have been described. On the other, from the point of view of Pragmatics, via Relevance Theory (RT), the nature of the inferences arising from the production of metaphorical utterances through the production of ad hoc concepts have been explained (WILSON & SPERBER, 2012). On the interface between these different disciplines, it has been evidenced that the inferences produced in processing metaphorical utterances can be described and explained in an interdisciplinary perspective, in a more complex manner (COSTA, 2007). Thus, we have designed an approach to metaphor, whose descriptive potential is based on the findings of Neuroscience, and whose explanatory potential is based on Pragmatics, through the production of ad hoc concepts. The findings corroborate the central thesis intended in this study, the one in which the objects of investigation, in this case the metaphor, if drawn on the interface, can be described and explained in a more complex manner, as properties of complex nature interact among themselves.

The intimate genres - the diary, autobiography and the letter - are gaining more and more space among readers, because, among other things, they promote a real illusion. As a result, these texts have gained enough space in publishing, becoming more and more visible in bookstores. The same applies to the letters of literary authors who have aroused great interest in the literary criticism in understanding the fundamentals of this form of expression and its relationship to literary creation. Undeniably, one must recognize that the letters of great writers often transcend the mere daily report, revealing a great poetic and informational content to be analyzed in order to understand the process of literary creation. In such cases, the correspondence of great writers is not only because his autobiographical historical or cultural values, but also because it is an autonomous form of expression that is capable of express multiple reflection on the literature and the writing process. Assuming that personal experience and literary experience appear concomitantly in Caio Fernando Abreu’s letters, this article analyzes the author’s poetic letters from metalinguistic reflections on the nature of literary writing and the writer’s work. Thus, by studying Caio Fernando Abreu’s correspondence, this article draws the view of the function of literature that of this gaúcho writer had, the writer’s image and the writing process. With this study we intend to demonstrate that the letters are a rich material that can be used to understand the author’s literary universe.

Machado de Assis’ letters have been read in a new way since an edition published in 2008, which was coordinated by Sérgio Paulo Rouanet, and compiled by Irene Moutinho and Sílvia Eleutério. This article approaches Machado de Assis’ correspondence in the 1860’s, and analyses an open letter that the author wrote to José Feliciano de Castilho in 1865. In this letter, Machado analyses José Mendes Leal’s comedy Os primeiros amores de Bocage (1865). Thus, the text presents a testimony of criticism written in the epistolographic genre by the Brazilian author. It is possible to note that this letter goes beyond conventionalism, as it shows critical engagement. Furthermore, it allows us to observe a young Machado de Assis that writes the text in order to establish social relationships, as well as to relate to a certain literary tradition.

This paper focuses on the nature of mental imagery as a component of human cognition. Imagery has been considered as mere epiphenomena and unable to alter belief. However, recent evidence in neuroscience and psycholinguistics suggest that the mental image can be accessed and interact with higher order processes of cognition in the determination of speaker meaning. If this is true, then mental imagery can play a role during the comprehension procedure for metaphoric utterances. To understand the reasons why mental images have been discarded from linguistic theories of utterance comprehension, past philosophical ideas about the mental image are discussed. Many have questioned the existence of the image, stating that they are, in fact, constituted by propositional components. These perspectives fit within a theory of the mind that conforms to an amodal symbol system in which the relation between perceptual input and mental representation is an arbitrary one. This paper is suggesting that the mind follows a perceptual symbol system, and that the relation is an analogous one. Therefore, through an extension of relevance theory, it is possible to flesh out the meaning of metaphors by incorporating this embodied view of the mind.

Assuming that Pragmatics is the area of linguistics that prioritizes the study of the principles that guide human communication processes considering the contexts in which interactions are placed, and that its cognitive-inferential aspects posits that the understanding of the meaning of a statement (whether oral or written) considers the mental and the social circumstances of those who produced it, this paper will use as theoretical concepts some aspects introduced by Sperber and Wilson in their Relevance Theory (1995), such as the definition of “context” as a dynamic psychological construct of assumptions about the world. Considering also that the case study is a consolidated and adequate research methodology to discuss specific situations, we will analyze an episode submitted to a Brazilian Court. In this situation, the intention was to exclude from the internet videos that were discriminatory to practitioners and social practices of African-Brazilian religions, in order to discuss the importance of the introduction of Pragmatics studies, especially of cognitive-inferential trends, in the literacy process of the legal professionals.

Computerized solutions for solving concrete everyday problems are structured through deductive algorithms. However, even before designing algorithms, there is an abductive step guided by the goal to be achieved, which is usually neglected. Following Rauen’s (2014) Goal Conciliation Theory, I intend in this study to describe and explain the process of formulation, execution and checking of ante-factual abductive hypotheses in developing a computerized solution.

Although Erico Verissimo’s novels are not epistolary strict sense, the letter appears as an important element in the structure of writer’s fictional work. In this article we intend to show that, as a narrative feature, these letters reveal not only the depths of the characters, but also introduce historical and social issues which are relevant to the literary representation. As theoretical orientation we work with the notes of Watt (2010) and Lajolo (2002).

This paper presents a theoretical research that has as its object of analysis Google´s search engine. It starts with a hypothesis, inaugurated by Yus through Cyberpragmatic, explaining that the Relevance Theory is able to give a scientific explanation to human activities all over the Net, considering that according the mentioned theorist, the researches concerning to cognitive procedures of human mind in physicals scenarios necessarily imply a parallelism over virtual environments. Therefore, due to the blurring of the distinction between virtual and real, the relevance, in addition to guiding communication mediated by Internet, also guides any online human activity. Among the human activities on Net, this research focuses the relevance sought by the system for an user as a place of analysis, in view of that the result of Google search engine fits exactly on that area. From an operational point of view, the defended hypothesis refers that tools provided by Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson), associated with the findings of Cyberpragmatic (Yus), have ability to analyze and describe the Google search engine. Moreover, this study assumes that the search engine ‹metarepresents› a goal of an user who uses its search interface, maximizes the relevance of its input (inquiry, search) supplying outputs (search engine results) according to the relevance of each user, increasing the cognitive effects and decreasing the processing effort applied to reach the goal which motivated the search. In support of this assumption, it presents the technological advances concerning Google search engine, with the introduction of its new algorithm - Hummingbird - and Semantic Web, besides the recognition of user behavior on Internet and the personalization of search results in order to attend, in a relevant way, to the needs and intentions of users, in an attempt to contextualize the user experience.

The present article is focused in letters that Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) wrote from 1913 to 1916, a period marked by his intelectual and esoteric crisis, and also by the production of cultural projects needed to take away the cultural stagnation from the timid Portuguese capitol. Important letters are from this period, marked by sincerity and confession to the addresses, as Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues (1891-1971) and Mário de Sá-Carneiro (1890-1916), unlike of what happens in the next years after 1927, when Pessoa writes to the members from the Presença magazine, choosing to keep informations as a secret. It’s what happens at the knowing letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, wrote in January 13th, 1935, in which he denies to belong to some secret order, unlike it’s found in a autobiographical write, not published during his lifetime. I take, as main theoretical frame of reference to the study of letters, Crabbé Rocha’s proposals, in the book A epistolografia em Portugal. In many Pessoa’s letters poems transcripts are found. This way, the study about Pessoa’s letters allows to understand the symbolic and metaphoric aspects contained in the poems. To the analysis about the esoteric speech contained in Pessoa’s letters, I use Manuela Parreira da Silva, Dalila Pereira da Costa e Yvette Centeno’sstudies.

This paper argues that a ‘minimal semantic’ theory does not account for the levels of appeal to context needed to evaluate truth at the propositional level. Specifically, it is argued that, beyond pronominal appeals allowed for by minimalists, pragmatics can permeate propositional content in a number of ways. These include saturation, free enrichment, and strengthening and loosening of constituent concepts. The first relates to how context aids referencing of indexicals; the second to unarticulated constituents (for example, ‘he paid’ with the unarticulated constituent being ‘the bill’) and the third to how context can fix ambiguities that may arise from attributing a specific meaning to a concept (For example, metaphorical as opposed to literal). By showing that pragmatic processes operate at the propositional level, it is concluded that a view which sees semantics as being primary to determining meaning at the propositional level and pragmatic processes as secondary is erroneous. Instead, a more plausible argument is that the two processes are parallel, which has two significant implications. The first is that propositions can only be fully assessed at utterance level. The second is that advocates for a computational, modular account of how the mind is modelled may need to revise their theory, based on the parallel processing argument.

This paper aims to exemplify the importance of joining two areas, namely Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, for dealing with the challenges of the brand-new area of study on teaching Brazilian Portuguese as a foreign language to refugees in Brazil. In this context, it seems appropriate to consider the demands and goals of this population when learning Portuguese as a foreign language. The analyses were based on two posters, which were published by the media as part of the materials used to report on the popular protests against the football World Cup held in Brazil in 2014.

Wilson (2004) designs an example to explain the notion of cognitive effects employing three assumptions as initial cognitive context: (1) “I’ll (probably) catch the bus” (2) “If I catch the bus, I’ll get to the lecture” and (3) “If I don’t catch the bus, I’ll miss the lecture” and two possible achievements: case A, the individual catches the bus and gets to the lecture, and case B, the individual does not catch the bus and misses the lecture. In the example, Wilson (2004) has to preview at least two opposite options in the initial cognitive context to use only modus ponens as an elimination rule, suggesting that this arrangement is necessary in all uses of conditionals. In this article we argue that the biconditional architecture can be applied to the example, decreasing the initial processing cost and keeping the logical adequacy. We also argue that a goal conciliation architecture can explain not only cases where options like yes/no can be anticipated, but also situations where options like yes/no-alternatives are viable, increasing the empirical plausibility of the analysis.