Lexical expansion in Brazilian Portuguese: a psycholinguistic approach

• Grant number: 18/15718-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2018
• End date: August 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Psycholinguistics
• Principal Investigator: Thiago Oliveira da Motta Sampaio
• Grantee: Fernando Luis Antunes Sabatini
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Psycholinguistics has plenty of evidences on how we understand words. For instance, there are studies on how do we read compound words, on word processing in bilinguals, on frequency effects on isolated or contextualized words, among others. However, as far as we know, there is no psycholinguistic study about Lexical Expansion. According to Kriauiknien & Sangailait (2016), a new word can be formed by three ways: (I) new morphological composition with existent parts, such as the addition of affixes, (II) semantic change of a current word and (III) loan words. After a pilot study about loaned words from English that accept Portuguese morphemes, we are intended, besides enhancing this study to improve control factors such as frequency of use and spelling, to study the Lexical Expansion process itself. We propose an experimental protocol in which lexical decision and pseudowords priming tests will be applied on three groups: (I) subjects that have not been exposed to the pseudowords, (II) subjects that have been exposed to a text that induce a meaning for each pseudoword so then subjects have an implicit knowledge about the lexical content, and (III) subjects that have been exposed to text and a glossary which suggests meanings for each pseudowords so then subjects have a explicit knowledge about the lexical content. With this project, we aim to enlighten and initiate/expand the experimental studies about lexical expansion in Brazilian Portuguese.