Portuguese Spoken Research Articles

Brazilian version of the Pediatric Functional Status Scale: translation and cross-cultural adaptation.

ObjectiveTo translate and cross-culturally adapt the Functional Status Scale for hospitalized children into Brazilian Portuguese.MethodsA methodological study of the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Functional Status Scale was conducted, according to the stages of translation, synthesis of translations, back-translation, synthesis of back-translations, expert committee analysis and pre-test with a sample of the target population. During the evaluation by the committee of experts, semantic, content and item analyses were performed.ResultsThe semantic, idiomatic, cultural and conceptual equivalences between the translated version and the original version were obtained, resulting in the Brazilian version of the Functional Status Scale. After the analysis by the expert committee, there were no problems regarding the cultural or conceptual equivalences because the items were pertinent to the Brazilian culture and few terms were modified. In the pre-test stage, the scale was applied by two evaluators to a sample of 25 children. Clarity and ease in answering the scale items were observed. Good inter-observer reliability was obtained, with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.85 (0.59 - 0.95).ConclusionsThe Functional Status Scale for pediatric use was translated and culturally adapted into Portuguese spoken in Brazil. The translated items were pertinent to the Brazilian culture and evaluated the dimensions proposed by the original instrument. Validation studies of this instrument are suggested to make it feasible for use in different regions of Brazil.

Os verbos ter e haver existenciais no português falado em Luanda-Angola

Com o arcabouço teórico-metodológico da Sociolinguística Variacionista, pesquisa-se a variação no uso dos verbos ter e haver em construções existenciais, com dados orais do português de Luanda (PL). Objetiva-se contribuir para o entendimento acerca da natureza do português de variedades africanas. Os resultados mostram que há uma variação estruturada no PL, sendo que o ter existencial é amplamente utilizado, com uma frequência de 42% e é favorecido, principalmente, pelo fator baixa ou nenhuma escolarização; embora, no cômputo geral dos dados, o verbo haver predomine em construções existenciais, com uma frequência de 58%. Os resultados são analisados qualitativa e quantitativamente em tempo aparente. Os dados foram levantados na fala de 23 informantes, em entrevistas sociolinguísticas pertencentes ao acervo dos projetos “Em busca das raízes do português brasileiro” e “A concordância verbal em Luanda-Angola: elementos para a discussão sobre a formação do português brasileiro”, sediados na Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana. Nesse sentido, buscando contribuir para os estudos sobre a ormação da realidade sociolinguística brasileira, acredita-se que é importante a realização de estudos que se centrem em dados coletados em outros continentes que não apenas o europeu – como propôs Petter (2007) –, pois, assim, torna-se possível a comparação entre a variedade brasileira e as variedades africanas do português, ampliando-se o debate sobre a influência do contato linguístico na formação dessas variedades e a discussão sobre a atuação de fatores linguísticos e socioculturais em fenômenos linguísticos variáveis.

The Psychometrics of the European Portuguese Version of the Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised.

Cloninger's psychobiological model of personality integrates contributions from behavioral genetics, neurobiology, and psychology in the description of the human personality. The temperament and character inventory (TCI) is its assessment instrument. The Brazilian Portuguese version of the TCI has shown good psychometric properties. However, Portuguese spoken in Brazil presents marked and substantial differences to that spoken in Portugal, and no study has yet described the psychometrics of the European Portuguese version. The objective of this study was thus to describe the psychometric properties of the European Portuguese adult version of the TCI (the temperament and character inventory-revised (TCI-R)). This study involved 1400 Portuguese adult participants. The factorial structure of the European Portuguese version was tested using four methods: exploratory factor analysis, orthogonal procrustes rotation analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and exploratory structural equation modeling. The integration of data coming from these methods suggested that the Portuguese version of the TCI-R presented good structural validity (as revealed by the emergence of the temperament and character structures predicted by theory) and high levels of congruence between the American and the Portuguese versions. An improvement in the goodness of fit of the models for the Portuguese population was achieved by using exploratory structural equation modeling over confirmatory factor analysis. Although some facets registered questionable consistency, all dimensions had acceptable to good consistency (all ≥ .79). These results confirm the validity of the Portuguese TCI-R and its adequacy for use in European Portuguese samples.

Preliminary stages of a cross-cultural Brazilian Portuguese adaptation of a measurement tool for assessing public understanding of human papillomavirus.

The objective of this study was to conduct the initial stages of the cross-cultural adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese of a scale to measure the level of knowledge about HPV. The stages included: translation from English into the Portuguese spoken in Brazil; synthesis of the translated version; back-translation; analysis by an expert committee; and reliability analysis based on internal consistency and reproducibility. Cronbach's α coefficient for the instrument was 0.985. Subset analysis produced only minor variations. The correlation coefficients between the individual items and the overall result showed strong positive correlations, except for three items. Reproducibility analysis showed kappa values with substantial or moderate agreement for the majority of the items. A preliminary Brazilian version was obtained with satisfactory results, but other stages are necessary in the process of validation of the Brazilian version.

Nasalização em português brasileiro: uma (re)visão autossegmental

We propose to make a brief review on nasalization phenomena studies in Portuguese, aiming the phonological process of nasal harmonization that occurs in the variety of Brazilian Portuguese spoken in Vitoria da Conquista-BA and region, a phenomenon hitherto not described for any Portuguese dialect. To do so, we consider as fundamental, D’Angelis (2002) analysis, which incorporates relevant concepts presented by Trubetzkoy, from the Prague School, and some points of Camara Jr. propose. We also propose to update the discussion with the approaches along the lines of auto segmental phonology, incorporating some insights of Piggott (1992), discussing with other analyzes for nasalization phenomena in other languages, especially Guarani (language of Tupi-Guarani Linguistic Family), as proposed by Costa (2010), which deals with the phonological processes involving nasality and nasal harmony in Brazilian indigenous languages , in order to verify if the researches on nasality phenomena in other languages can shed some light on the processes that occur in Portuguese.

Construções [Foc+Que] no português do Município do Libolo, Angola

Based on the typology of cleft sentences in Portuguese, this study presents the strategies applied in the [Foc+Que] constructions in Portuguese spoken in Libolo (LBP), Angola. The canonical form of a cleft construction consists of a bi-clausal structure in which there is a copula followed by a focused phrase which is, by turn, followed by a sentence headed by a 'que'. However, it is observed that in LBP there are “clefts without copula”, constructions that have been identified in the literature as “innovation of Brazilian Portuguese”. In our analysis, we not only consider that these LBP structures are mono-clausal – not belonging to the scope of cleft sentences – but we also intend to corroborate the phenomenon of linguistic contact and evidence of formal grammar features attested in the substrate and reinforced in the LBP as the non-occurrence of clefting.

Brazil’s Immigrant Song

Brazil’s Immigrant Song

Caraterísticas fonéticas do Português da Ilha Terceira

PHONETIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PORTUGUESE ISLAND OF TERCEIRA
 A historical and geographical context of a natural expansion of a language leads to a formation of dialects. The aim of this article is to present some examples of phonetic, distinctive characteristics of Portuguese spoken in Terceira Island (the Azores). The dialect reveals such phonetic properties as anti‑hiatic vowel release and diphthongization, of which the first is almost totally limited to Terceira Island. Whereas, other phonetic characteristics such as labialization of the vowel [u], commonly occurring in the western and eastern groups of the islands, does not apply to the dialect of Terceira. Therefore, it is anticipated that the features of the northern dialects of Portugal had more influence on the Portuguese of Terceira Island than the southern ones.

A mirative construction description: observations about an occurrence in Brazilian Portuguese spoken in Belém

Notions of evidentiality and mirativity are related; however there are aspects of each of them which indicate that mirativity is a distinct conceptual category. One issue is how languages encode these categories. The semantic domain of evidentiality refers to the source of knowledge behind assertions. In Brazilian Portuguese, for example, there is no specific category for evidentiality or mirativity, but there is a syntactic construction in one dialect of Brazilian Portuguese that exhibits mirative overtones. The main goal of this paper is to describe that construction, based on a functional semantic approach.

A representação do movimento no português paulista

The aim of this article is to analyze how motion can be organized and represented in Paulista Portuguese (Portuguese spoken in São Paulo), in data taken from several genres of text from the 18th to the 20th centuries. I take into account the patterns proposed by Talmy (2000b), and the representation of path points in motion events. The analysis is qualitative and quantitative, taking into account the discursive properties of the texts in the corpora, based on the Discourse Traditions model.

Alternância Vocálica das Formas Verbals e Nominais do Português Brasileiro para Aplicação em Conversão Texto-Fala

This paper investigates new strategies to deal with the alternation in vowel quality of the Portuguese spoken in Brazil for application in text-to-speech systems. Based on an adequate identification of the grammatical classes, such as verbs and nouns, we have sought to solve such a problem. A general insight of the different phases needed to conceive a morphosyntactic parser as well as the main techniques for generating vowel alternation, in both general and restricted cases, are discussed. Test results showed that the vowel sound alternation rules proposed in this paper solve most problems concerning the differences between verbs and nouns.

A monotongação do ditongo decrescente [eI] no português caxiense

This study approaches the monophthongization of [eI9] fallingdiphthong in the Portuguese spoken in Caxias (Maranhão), in thelight of two recent proposals of phonological interpretation of thephenomenon: Bisol (1989, 1994)’s proposal, based on The Geometryof Phonological Feature (cf. Clements, 1985), and Schane (1995)’sproposal, based on Particle Phonology. The results show that thesubject is controversial; The proposals here treated present someproblems, but they also contribute to its solution. We noticed thatBisol’s interpretation accounts for the reduction of the diphthongin focus before palatals, but the explanation given for the phenomenonbefore tap or simple vibrant is questionable. Regarding themonophthongization of [eI9] falling diphthong before the vowel [a](e.g., [:meI9a] > [:mea] ‘sock’), nothing is mentioned in the proposal.Particle Phonology, according to Schane, doesn’t make clear if thephenomenon is “per se” determined by the syllabic duration or bythe following segment.

Directionality in linguistic change and acquisition

This article focuses on the directionality observed in the processes of change and acquisition of the prepositions that replaced Latin cases in the speech of Rio de Janeiro and in the Contact Portuguese spoken by Brazilian Indians in the region of Xingu. In Brazilian Portuguese, it is possible to delete the indirect case preposition of some verbs. The system loses and maintains prepositional nexus in a cyclic process motivated by the semantic transparency and the iconicity of the preposition, the adjacency between verb and complement, and the degree of transitivity of the verb. The variable use in Contact Portuguese shows the same effects observed in the Rio de Janeiro variety, in a process that includes a gradual filling up of categorical and variable contexts. We argue that the forces that guide acquisition of the Portuguese prepositional subsystem in the Xingu variety act in the same way as those that constrain variation in urban language.

The Development of Metropolitan Languages in Post-Colonial Contexts: Language Contact and Language Change and the Case of Portuguese in Maputo

This article explores briefly some phenomena of potential indigenization of the Portuguese spoken in Mozambique. Data for the study has been taken from work that is currently underway in Maputo, Mozambique, that was originally initiated to investigate contact varieties of Portuguese and to probe their educational implications. Speech samples comprise formal interviews and non-formal encounters from a socio-demographically representative sample of informants. The article first provides an inventory of some non-standard European Portuguese variants that are found in this data, and subsequently focusses upon a discussion of what contribution different linguistic processes make to indigenization, specifically the role played by processes of second language acquisition in a context of massive and diffuse language contact and change. Special attention is also paid to the social contexts in which different manifestations of language contact are found, and the importance of linguistic ideology for the form that language contact takes in particular cases is explored. The article concludes with the suggestion that the salient characteristics of types of non-native speech community such as Maputo require a reconceptualization of models and methods of contact linguistics and second language acquisition, and that this in turn carries implications for the terms of reference and analysis to which indigenization need be related.