A alternância dos sufixos –ção e –mento no Português Brasileiro (PB): uma integração entre teoria linguística e Psicolinguística

Abstract

This work is concentrated in the alternation between the nominalizing suffixes -ção and – mento in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). According to Haspelmach (2002), alternation is a linguistic phenomenon that consists of the speaker's ability to extract the same information through the use of different items.This work is based, in part, on the limits of the Linguistic Theory and, on the other, in the limits of Psycholinguistics, focusing on the articulation between the Distributed Morphology theory (HALLE & MORRIS, 1993; EMBICK, D., & MARANTZ, A.,2008) and Psycholinguistic theories of the Mental Lexicon, such as those of (HAY, 2002) in the study of words formed with the suffixes -ção e –mento. It is intended to provide a language model based on the integration between Linguistics and Psycholinguistics which accounts for explaining the online processing of derived forms with these two suffixes, both in production and in understanding. The articulation between formal language models and linguistic processing models is crucial for explaining the processing of words formed with the suffixes -ção e –mento. The alternation between these suffixes is explained by the conception of language as being a cognitive system embedded in linguistic performance systems, involving factors such as frequency of use and intentionality. Using an experimental paradigm known as lexical decision, experiments were performed to know how complex words formed with the suffixes-ção e –mento are represented, retrieved and processed in BP. The goal was to check if there are rules that license certain suffixes and prevent others in some formations. The conclusions point to the importance of the articulation between the Gerativist model of the language represented by Distributed Morphology (HALLE & MORRIS, 1993) and the mental lexicon model (LEVELT, 1989) representing the Psycholinguistic theory.The results of the experiments showed that the more a verbal form is known, the more quickly the derivation of a new word will be processed. Moreover, factors such as intentionality and trait of causation of verbal forms also influence the phenomenon of alternation between suffixes – ção and – ment.