Delimitation of idioms to an online dictionary of Portuguese from Brazil and from Portugal - French from France and from Quebec

• Grant number: 10/19008-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Effective date (Start): April 24, 2011
• Effective date (End): July 08, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Claudia Maria Xatara
• Grantee: Claudia Maria Xatara
• Host Investigator: Gerard Petit
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São José do Rio Preto. São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France

Abstract

Considering an idiom as a complex figurative lexical unit which is acknowledged by the cultural tradition of a language community, we have already researched this type of phraseological units with examples that contextualize their contemporary use in Brazilian Portuguese/Portuguese from Brazil. We also proposed equivalents and contexts of use in French (from France and from Quebec) and in European Portuguese for each of these idioms. All expressions in both languages and their variants have been reviewed by experts (native speakers) and meet a minimum threshold of frequency, measured by the number of pages found on the web, which is recognized as one of the vectors of Corpus Linguistics. Therefore, after having built a model of dictionary to be available online, we would like to address the issue of delimitation of the entries/entry delimitation. The problem is to determine the core for each one of them: the beginning (left boundary) and end (right boundary) of each expression to be confirmed as an entry. Supervision for this part of the research in a laboratory whose problem of delimitation and electronic lexicography are two specialties seems quite relevant. (AU)