Quantifying binominal constructions in Portuguese and Russian: the case of "um monte de NP" and Kucha NPgen

• Main Authors: Karen Sampaio Braga Alonso, Diego Leite de Oliveira, Nuciene Caroline Amphilóphio Fumaux, Gabrielle de Figueira do Nascimento, Thiago Moreira da Silva
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística 2020-07-01
• Series: Working Papers em Linguística
• Subjects: quantifying binominal constructions; usage-based construction grammar; monte; kucha; collostructional analysis
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/workingpapers/article/view/70666
• ISSN: 1984-8420

This paper reports on a contrastive study of Brazilian Portuguese um monte de NP and Moscow Standard Russian kucha NPgen quantifying binominal constructions, under a usage-based constructionist approach. To identify semantic specificities in both constructions, an empirical investigation based on collostructional analysis was conducted. The results indicate that despite some similarities between Portuguese and Russian in terms of cognitive operations involved in the conceptualization of the binominal quantifying constructions um monte de NP and kucha NPgen, there are specificities concerning each construction in each language in terms of semantic compatibility of lexemes co-occurring in them.