Grammar of disease names

• Grant number: 13/20753-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2013
• End date: November 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Gladis Maria de Barcellos Almeida
• Grantee: Maria Beatriz Escanhuela Sajovic
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims at proposing a description of constructions composed by support verbs and predicative nouns of a specific semantic category, the diseases names. The analysis is based on the Lexicon-Grammar methodological model, as proposed by Gross (1975, 1981). We intend to develop an intensive research on sites related to health and medicine in order to list the names of human diseases used in Brazilian Portuguese. We also intend to establish a set of properties of nominal constructions with the support verbs "ter", "estar com", "pegar" and "sarar" followed by the diseases names, and to classify these nouns according to their structure in the Lexicon-Grammar tables. This sort of description may be useful to set up linguistic resources for Natural Language Processing Systems due to the fact that the data is presented in a formal and structured way.