Minidictionaries of the Portuguese Language: a comparative lexicon-statistic of the macro and microstructures and model suggestion

Author(s)

Jose Luiz de Lucca

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2001-11-07

Examining board members

Maria Vicentina de Paula do Amaral Dick; Erasmo D Almeida Magalhaes; Marieta Lucia Machado Nicolau; Maria Aparecida Barbosa Pais; Claudio Possani

• Advisor: Maria Vicentina de Paula do Amaral Dick

Abstract

This doctorate thesis contains the results of two lexicographical piece of research. The first is based on the studied corpus of eight minidictionaries, six published in Brazil and two in Portugal, through the collection, tabulation and contrastive analysis of the level of resolution of the lexical items in the introduction and appendixes, in relation to their macro- and microstructures. The second is a piece of sampling field research carried out in the city of São Paulo. It involved students and teachers of fundamental and medium teaching at two schools in the private sector and three in the public sector. A lexical-statistical analysis of the level of resolution of the minidictionaries in the introduction and appendixes was carried out in that the introduction and appendixes were analysed. We looked at the macrostructure, in that we prioritized the loans, gaps, locutions, neologisms, proper names, prefixes against, prefixes and suffixes and acronyms. In addition, we looked at the microstructure, through considering the antonyms and synonyms, defined articles, irregular augmentatives, lexical field, contexts, definitions, circular definitions, irregular diminutives, syllabic divisions, domains, feminine gender, syncretic forms, homophones, homographs, explanatory language, paronyms, plurals of the composed words, instances of polysemy, predicative verbs, cross-references, labelling, synthetic absolute superlatives, tautologies, explanatory vocabulary and open/closed vowels. The sampling field research was conducted through giving out almost 900 questionnaires, out of the which we selected 311 for our final analysis, as these were representative of the enrolled students\' as a whole in the medium teaching in Brazil in 1999. These analyses are intended to be representative of the total corpus. So many of the minidictionaries are now published in Brazil, as of enrolled students in high education in Brazil. We further expose the historical panorama of the lexicographical production in minidictionaries, the theoretical foundation, the establishment of the corpus and methodology, an analysis of two lexical fields (fish and fruits) and the typology of the monolingual dictionaries and the bibliography. From the research above, we present, as a conclusion to the work, a suggestion for a model of a super-minidictionary of the Portuguese language for higher education. My thesis advisor was Professor Maria Vicentina. (AU)