Purificação Silvano

• PhD
• Professor at University of Porto

Discourse markers (DMs) are linguistic expressions that convey different semantic and pragmatic values, managing and organizing the structure of spoken and written discourses. They can be either single‐word or multiword expressions (MWE), made up of conjunctions, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. Although DMs are the focus of many studies, some q...

Recent advances in natural language processing have raised expectations for generative models to produce coherent text across diverse language varieties. In the particular case of the Portuguese language, the predominance of Brazilian Portuguese corpora online introduces linguistic biases in these models, limiting their applicability outside of Bra...

Recent advances in natural language processing have raised expectations for generative models to produce coherent text across diverse language varieties. In the particular case of the Portuguese language, the predominance of Brazilian Portuguese corpora online introduces linguistic biases in these models, limiting their applicability outside of Bra...

Event extraction is an NLP task that commonly involves identifying the central word (trigger) for an event and its associated arguments in text. ACE-2005 is widely recognised as the standard corpus in this field. While other corpora, like PropBank, primarily focus on annotating predicate-argument structure, ACE-2005 provides comprehensive informati...

The main objective of this study is to contribute to multilingual discourse research by employing ISO-24617 Part 8 (Semantic Relations in Discourse, Core Annotation Schema-DR-core) for annotating discourse relations. Centering around a parallel discourse relations corpus that includes English, Polish, and European Portuguese, we initiate one of the...

Previous literature on the typology of gerund clauses in Portuguese has overlooked a peculiar type of clauses which are always introduced by como (‘as’) and display an array of characteristics that set them apart from all other gerund clauses (and from other, somehow similar, constructions in different languages). In this paper, we provide an in-de...

Understanding the relation between the meanings of words is an important part of comprehending natural language. Prior work has either focused on analysing lexical semantic relations in word embeddings or probing pretrained language models (PLMs), with some exceptions. Given the rarity of highly multilingual benchmarks, it is unclear to what extent...

Limited accessibility to language resources and technologies represents a challenge for the analysis, preservation, and documentation of natural languages other than English. Linguistic Linked (Open) Data (LLOD) holds the promise to ease the creation, linking, and reuse of multilingual linguistic data across distributed and heterogeneous resources....

The present chapter scrutinises invariable question tags in British English and European Portuguese from a contrastive point of view. Most previous research focuses on variable question tags and, if contrastive, compares other languages. This study shows that invariable question tags are more frequent and varied in European Portuguese than in Briti...

Using language models to detect or predict the presence of language phenomena in the text has become a mainstream research topic. With the rise of generative models, experiments using deep learning and transformer models trigger intense interest. Aspects like precision of predictions , portability to other languages or phenomena , scale have been c...

Narratives are present in many forms of human expression and can be understood as a fundamental way of communication between people. Computational understanding of the underlying story of a narrative, however, may be a rather complex task for both linguists and computational linguistics. Such task can be approached using natural language processing...

Linguistic Linked Open Data (LLOD) are technologies that provide a powerful instrument for representing and interpreting language phenomena on a web-scale. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate how LLOD technologies can be applied to represent and annotate a corpus composed of multiword discourse markers, and what the effects of this a...

This paper describes two different approaches to sentiment analysis. The first is a form of symbolic approach that exploits a sentiment lexicon together with a set of shifter patterns and rules. The sentiment lexicon includes single words (unigrams) and is developed automatically by exploiting labeled examples. The shifter patterns include intensif...

Reasoning about spatial information is fundamental in natural language to fully understand relationships between entities and/or between events. However, the complexity underlying such reasoning makes it hard to represent formally spatial information. Despite the growing interest on this topic, and the development of some frameworks, many problems...

This paper describes an approach to the construction of a sentiment analysis system that uses both automatic and manual processes. The system includes a domain-specific sentiment lexicon, modifier patterns and rules that are used to derive the sentiment values of sentences in new texts. The lexicon that includes single words (unigrams) is obtained...

Discourse markers carry information about the discourse structure and organization, and also signal local dependencies or epistemological stance of speaker. They provide instructions on how to interpret the discourse, and their study is paramount to understand the mechanism underlying discourse organization. This paper presents a new language resou...

While research has mostly focused on the pragmatics of variable tag questions, fewer studies have explored invariable tags, either for their own sake or in contrast with other tag types within and across languages. It will be argued that invariable tag questions are as much part of the tag question system as variable tag questions, and that a unifi...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the semantic behavior of adjectives that have been designated as temporal and aspectual in the literature, regarding the readings they can display. For this purpose, sixteen of these adjectives were selected and fifty occurrences of each one were randomly chosen and investigated. Overall, we observed a significan...

This volume contains a peer reviewed selection of invited contributions, papers and posters that were presented at the 2018 venue of Going Romance (XXXII) in Utrecht (a four day program that included two thematic workshops). The papers all discuss data and formalized analyses of one or more Romance languages or dialects, in either synchronic or dia...

In this paper, we put forward a semantic analysis of constructions of prepositional phrases introduced by the preposition para with a locative meaning combined with the verbs ser, estar and ficar. In this proposal, we characterise these constructions regarding the properties individual-level/ stage-level, modal reading, and vagueness of the locatio...

In this paper we investigate three different types of infinitive constructions involving para in European Portuguese, viz. purpose clauses, complement clauses in which para behaves as a true complementizer and complement clauses in which para behaves as a preposition pertaining to the main sentence. We begin with a brief characterization of the Por...

A unidade curricular Oficina de Gramática da Língua Portuguesa (OGLP) prepara futuros professores para o ensino da gramática nos níveis de escolaridade obrigatória. Rompendo com as limi-tações naturais de práticas pedagógicas cristalizadas, o trabalho pedagógico da OGLP tem procurado operacionalizar uma «conceção isomórfica de formação como projeto...

The main objective of this paper is to highlight the relevance of teaching, and evaluating, some semantic contents to students of elementary and secondary schools. We put forward a proposal which includes some semantic concepts that are not taught at all or are taught, but in a shallow manner. From these, we select three to illustrate some of their...

This paper addresses different problems related to gerund clauses in European Portuguese. In the first part, we analyze from a semantic point of view examples of gerund clauses with compound gerund that occur after the main clause, taking into account parameters such as the rhetorical and temporal relations that are established between the situatio...

Neste trabalho, descrevemos diversas interpretações que os verbos «subir» e «descer» podem assumir em Português Europeu (PE) e relacionamos essas interpretações com as preposições que podem coocorrer nas predicações em análise. Neste sentido, começamos por apresentar os dados referentes à análise das ocorrências destes verbos em corpus jornalístico...

Este livro é dedicado a Óscar Lopes e reúne um conjunto de trabalhos que foram apresentados no Colóquio Internacional em sua homenagem por ocasião do seu centésimo aniversário. Os estudos de Óscar Lopes não só marcaram o início da investigação em semântica formal em Portugal como abriram muitos caminhos novos pela sua perspetiva inovadora na abord...

We put forward a proposal based on the notion of path scale (e.g., Kennedy & Levin 2008) to account for the semantics of inherently directed motion verbs ir (‘go’) and vir (‘come’) combined with prepositional phrases (PPs) with the thematic role of Goal, headed by the prepositions para (‘to/toward’) and até (‘to’) in European Portuguese. We describ...

RESUMO. O presente trabalho, que se situa no campo da Linguística Aplicada ao Ensino, dá continuidade a investigação que relaciona análise linguística e textos produzidos em contexto educativo e de formação de professores. A vertente da investigação que está relacionada com a análise textual de enunciados que constituem instruções de prova para os...

After an introductory chapter that provides an overview to theoretical issues in tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality, this volume presents a variety of original contributions that are firmly empirically-grounded based on elicited or corpus data, while adopting different theoretical frameworks. Thus, some chapters rely on large diachronic corp...

The main objective of this paper is to study the semantics of verbs of inherently directed motion (Levin, 1993) ir (‘go’) and vir (‘come’) combined with prepositional phrases with the thematic role of Goal, headed by the prepositions para (‘to) and até (‘to’) in European Portuguese. The data from our news-based-corpus reveals that both prepositions...

The main objective of this work is to describe the semantic values of sentences with clauses of participle with a NP as an internal argument of the verb, using the framework of rhetorical relations. To achieve this goal, we analyse two relevant sources of information: the participle and the connectors. Insofar as the first source, we assess the fre...

The main goal of this paper is to discuss the temporal behaviour of European Portuguese factive purpose clauses introduced by para (‘to’) + non-inflected Infinitives. We will argue that a posteriority temporal relation, resulting from the interaction between the lexical properties of the connective and the Result Rhetorical Relation, is crucial to...

The main goal of this paper is to discuss the temporal behaviour of European Portuguese factive purpose clauses introduced by para (‘to’) + non-inflected Infinitives. We will argue that a posteriority temporal relation, resulting from the interaction between the lexical properties of the connective and the Result Rhetorical Relation, is crucial to...

The main objective of this paper is to assess students’ textual and discursive awareness in the production of argumentative texts. The corpus, with texts of students from the 12th grade, was analysed according to the following phases: segmentation of the texts into smaller units, identification of rhetorical relations (Asher and Lascarides, 2003, a...

The objective of this work is to highlight, in polemic texts, the features that reveal its reporting nature, analysing some temporal properties of sequences that report the speech of the other. In this analysis, we study a corpus that includes texts of a polemic of Camilo Castelo Branco from the ending of the XIX century.

The main goal of this paper is to discuss temporal and aspectual features of sentences with clauses introduced by the connectives antes de + Infinitivo ('before' + Infinitive) and depois de + Infinitivo ('after' + Infinitive) combined with situations in the Pretérito Perfeito in European Portuguese. Our discussion is based on the widespread view th...

This paper focuses on the temporal and rhetorical relations in complex sentences with adverbial subordinate clauses. We put forward a proposal for the semantic treatment within a theoretical framework which is grounded on Segmented Discourse Representation Theory, from Asher and Lascarides (2003), with some stipulations to deal with specificities o...

In this paper we investigate the temporal and rhetorical relations in complex sentences with clauses introduced by quando ‘when’ in European Portuguese. We put forward a proposal for a semantic treatment within a theoretical framework which is grounded in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT; Asher and Lascarides 2003), with some extra s...

This paper aims at investigating how the rhetorical relations are inferred in a literary text and what is the role of aspect in the process of inference. With respect to the first point, it will be argued that the analysis of the text requires the consideration of two levels of representation as far as rhetorical relations are concerned: the rhetor...

The sentences with consecutive clauses have been a controversial topic because not only their syntactic status but also their semantic interpretation are confronted with many problems which give rise to different analysis. Our aim in this paper is to propose a semantic analysis of finite subordinate consecutive sentences in European Portuguese grou...

This paper presents an action research study on Portuguese teaching that confirms the relation of a positive implication between the grammatical and writing competences of students in the secondary level. Furthermore, this study also validates an integrated method of development of linguistic competence that relates different skills. All in all, it...

O professor de Português depara-se, actualmente, com um conjunto de estratégias no domínio do funcionamento da língua que, apesar de partirem de um ponto comum identificado com a necessidade de desenvolver o conhecimento explícito da língua, divergem relativamente à concepção do trabalho em sala de aula, no Ensino Básico e Secundário. Dessas estrat...

Fenómenos linguísticos e géneros discursivos O estudo linguístico do texto jornalístico em Português Europeu evidencia a existência de características muito próprias no que diz respeito à selecção de tempos verbais e de processos de combinação temporal de orações. A observação do corpus constituído revela que a existência de subordinação sintáctica...

O objectivo central deste artigo é o de analisar algumas interacções que se estabelecem entre as relações retóricas ou discursivas e a organização temporal das situações em construções gerundivas adverbiais, no enquadramento teórico da Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT), de Asher e Lascarides (2003).

The sentences with consecutive clauses have been a controversial topic because not only their syntactic status but also their semantic interpretation are confronted with many problems which give rise to different analysis. The scrutiny of several grammar books and studies concerning this matter in different Romance languages such as European Portug...

We present a study of constructions of the type <light verb + noun> in European Portuguese. We analyse these constructions as complex predicates where both the light verb and the noun share an important role in the predication and we focus on the aspectual combina-tory properties of the two elements of the complex predicate. We propose that light v...

This paper aims at describing the predicative features of light verbs dar, fazer and ter followed by deverbal nominalizations, showing that they are not mere functional elements, nor auxiliary verbs, but they share some properties with full verbs. In this sense, those constructions constitute complex predicates, generated in syntax. We also argue f...