To give you a book or to give a book to you: um estudo sobre a variação sintática na expressão linguística de eventos de transferência de posse na interlíngua português/inglês

Abstract

This thesis addresses the syntactic variation in the expression of transfer events by Brazilian learners of English from the theoretical and methodological perspective of Corpus Linguistics (MCENERY & HARDIE, 2012). It is also based on the theoretical assumptions of the Interlanguage Hypothesis (CORDER, 1993; ELLIS & BARKHUIZEN, 2005), Construction Grammar (BOAS, 2013; GOLDBERG, 1995), and Probabilistic Linguistics (BOD, HAY & JANNEDY, 2003). The research objectives were to: (I) verify whether Brazilians learners of English at different levels of proficiency (from intermediate to advanced) are sensitive to associations between specific verbs and constructions, as well as to the properties of recipients and themes (discourse accessibility, length, pronominality, animacy) which favor the selection of one of the English dative constructions (Mary gave Paul a book versus Mary gave a book to Paul); (II) investigate the transfer (ODLIN, 1989) of the L1 pattern <Subject Verb Obliquerecipient Objecttheme>, as in Maria deu para João um livro, to the learners` interlanguages; (III) contribute to descriptions of Brazilian Portuguese dative constructions based on corpus data. Answers to the research questions were sought through the analysis and comparison of data extracted from Brazilian Portuguese corpora (C-ORAL-BRASIL and Lácio-Web), British English corpora (ICE-GB), and Portuguese/English interlanguage corpora (Br-ICLE and LINDSEI-Br). The R software (GRIES, 2009a) was used to aid the corpora analyses. The results of this study indicate that: (I) Brazilians learners of English are able not only to acquire L2 argument structure constructions, but also to select them in their preferred contexts of use; (II) L1 constructions which display low frequency compared to other alternating constructions, as is the case with the Brazilian Portuguese pattern <Subject Verb Obliquerecipient Objecttheme> compared to <Subject Verb Objecttheme Obliquerecipient >, are not likely to be transferred to the learners` interlanguages after the intermediate level of proficiency in the target-language; (III) in Brazilian Portuguese, the variation in the order of complements of ditransitive verbs (Dar uma livro para João versus Dar para João um livro) and in the use or omission of the prepositions a and para (Dar para João um livro versus Dar a João um livro versus Dar João um livro) should be characterized in terms of their different frequencies of occurrences and associations with the oral and Written channels of language.