Portuguese Sentences Research Articles

Incoordinate <em>mas</em> sentences in European Portuguese

In this paper, we explore incoordinate sentences with mas (‘but’, in English) in European Portuguese (EP). These sentences are characterized by the presence of a conjunction attached to a single sentence, occurring in the position of a second conjunct. We take up on the work of Giorgi (2016, 2018), Kuteva et al (2017) and Niclot (2018), and propose a syntactic analysis for incoordinate sentences. Our data shows that, in EP, there are two types of incoordinate sentences, depending on their independence, i.e., incoordination stage. In both cases, mas is a conjunction and not a discourse marker, which heads a ConjP. But, to capture its correlation with discourse, it should be connected with a discourse configuration as the one suggested by Cinque (2008) and Giorgi (2016, 2018). Thus, with this investigation we aim at providing a more adequate description of paratactic constructions, the levels of integration that can be associated to coordinate/incoordinate sentences in European Portuguese, and the status of conjunctions that occur in them.

Mining Comparative Opinions in Portuguese: A Lexicon-based Approach

The constant expansion of e-commerce, recently boosted due to the coronavirus pandemic, has led to a massive increase in online shopping, made by increasingly demanding customers, who seek comments and reviews on the Web to assist in decision-making regarding the purchase of products. In these reviews, part of the opinions found are comparisons, which contrast aspects expressing a preference for an object over others. However, this information is neglected by traditional sentiment analysis techniques and it is not applicable for comparisons, since they do not directly express positive or negative sentiment. In this context, despite efforts in the English language, almost no studies have been done to develop appropriate solutions that allow the analysis of comparisons in the Portuguese language. This work presented one of the first studies on comparative opinion in Portuguese. Four main contributions are (1) A hierarchical approach for detecting comparative opinions, which consists of an initial binary step, which subdivides the regular opinions from the comparatives, to further categorize the comparatives into the five opinion groups: (1) Non-Comparative; (2) Non-Equal Gradable; (3) Equative, (4) Superlative; and (5) Non-Gradable. The results are promising, reaching 87% of Macro-F1 and 0.94 of AUC (Compute Area Under the Curve) for the binary step, and 61% of Macro-F1 in multiple classes; (2) An lexicon algorithm to detect the entity expressed as preferred in comparative sentences, reaching 94% of Macro-F1 for Superlative; (3) Two new datasets with approximately 5,000 comparative and non-comparative sentences in Portuguese; and (4) a lexicon with words and expressions frequently used to make comparisons in the Portuguese language.

Online Sentence Processing During Reading of Temporally Ambiguous Gapping Sentences in Brazilian Portuguese

This article aims to explore whether the online sentence processing of gapping sentences, with a temporary ambiguous DP at the second conjunct, such as “Beatriz baked a pizza and Carla a lemon cake for snack”, is more costing in terms of time course in comparison to other two coordinated sentences, coordinate with conjoined object such as “Beatriz baked a pizza and a lemon cake for snack in the afternoon”, and coordinate with conjoined clauses without ellipsis, such as “Beatriz baked a pizza and Carla made a lemon juice”. A Self-Paced Reading task in moving-window fashion was carried out with native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The results seem to indicate that temporary ambiguous DP and the resolution of the ellipsis site were more costly to process int comparison to the other two coordinated sentences.

Syntactic Priming Effects During the Comprehension of Passive Voice in Portuguese

Syntactic priming refers to the facilitation that occurs in the processing of a given complex syntactic structure when the speaker has been previously exposed to the same structure or to a similar one. Using a self-paced reading task, we investigate the effects of syntactic priming during the comprehension of passive sentences in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Adult native speakers of BP read target passive sentences in primed and unprimed conditions, with verb repetition between prime and target in both conditions. Our results show that participants read target sentences faster in the primed than in the unprimed condition, that is, after having been exposed to the same syntactic structure in a previous sentence. These findings indicate that, at least in part, the processing of passive voice was facilitated by repeated exposure to the syntactic structure. We interpret these results as evidence of syntatic persistence and residual activation.

Study of Speech Recognition in Noise and Working Memory in Adults and Elderly with Normal Hearing.

Introduction In clinical practice, patients with the same degree and configuration of hearing loss, or even with normal audiometric thresholds, present substantially different performances in terms of speech perception. This probably happens because other factors, in addition to auditory sensitivity, interfere with speech perception. Thus, studies are needed to investigate the performance of listeners in unfavorable listening conditions to identify the processes that interfere in the speech perception of these subjects. Objective To verify the influence of age, temporal processing, and working memory on speech recognition in noise. Methods Thirty-eight adult and elderly individuals with normal hearing thresholds participated in the study. Participants were divided into two groups: The adult group (G1), composed of 10 individuals aged 21 to 33 years, and the elderly group (G2), with 28 participants aged 60 to 81 years. They underwent audiological assessment with the Portuguese Sentence List Test, Gaps-in-Noise test, Digit Span Memory test, Running Span Task, Corsi Block-Tapping test, and Visual Pattern test. Results The Running Span Task score proved to be a statistically significant predictor of the listening-in-noise variable. This result showed that the difference in performance between groups G1 and G2 in relation to listening in noise is due not only to aging, but also to changes in working memory. Conclusion The study showed that working memory is a predictor of listening performance in noise in individuals with normal hearing, and that this task can provide important information for investigation in individuals who have difficulty hearing in unfavorable environments.

The role of gender stereotypes in reading and processing sentences in brazilian portuguese

The role of gender stereotypes in reading and processing sentences in brazilian portuguese

Speech Outcomes Audit for Unilateral Cleft lip and Palate After 2-Stage Palate Repair: Preliminary Results.

Primary cleft lip and palate surgeries can interfere with speech status, facial appearance, maxillary growth, and psychosocial and academic development. Therefore, different surgical protocols and techniques have been proposed, and adequate velopharyngeal function and speech is the main goal for the treatment success. The present study aimed to report preliminary speech results of the 2-stage palate repair of children with unilateral cleft lip and palate. One hundred seventy nonsyndromic patients with unilateral cleft lip and palate were included in this report, 35% males and 65% females, submitted to the 2-stage palatoplasty protocol, composed by lip, nasal ala, and hard palate repair at 3 to 6 m (stage 1) and soft palate repair at 12 to 18 m (stage 2). The target age range for speech recording was 5 to 10 years, and the speech material included repetition of Brazilian Portuguese sentences. These samples were obtained over 5 years and assessed by 3 of 14 experienced speech pathologists. When discordant, the majority rate was adopted. Average velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD) rates were 19,5%, varying according to the soft palate technique, with better results when the Sommerlad technique was performed (VPD=11%), followed by Braithwaite (VPD=15%) and then Von Langenbeck (VPD=25%). Passive errors were observed in 32% and active errors in 25%. Speech results reflect the outcomes of an interdisciplinary team's work, where facial growth and nasolabial appearance must also be considered. Further analysis and a wider casuistic are recommended. Hence outcomes audit needs to be a permanent process, providing solid and updated evidence for optimal cleft care.

Filling the gap: Cloze probability and sentence constraint norms for 807 European Portuguese sentences

Sentence processing is affected by the sentence context and word expectancy. To investigate sentence comprehension experimentally, it is useful to have sentence completion norms with both context constraint and word expectancy measures. In this study, two experiments were conducted to collect norms for completion of 807 European Portuguese sentences. Context constraint was measured through type-token ratio and proportion idiosyncratic responses, while word expectancy was assessed by cloze probability. Besides establishing norms for a large sample of sentences, the study investigated the impact of the production procedure and method of analysis. In Experiment 1, a single-production procedure was used, i.e., participants completed each sentence fragment with only a single response, whereas in Experiment 2, a multiple-production procedure was used, i.e., participants have to provide up to three completion words for each sentence fragment. In Experiment 2, the analyses were obtained using two distinct methods: first-response analysis and combined-response analysis. The results showed that cloze and context measures are comparable between production paradigms and that the results from both analysis methods were correlated. The advantages of each production procedure and analysis method are discussed.

Automatic Generation of Literary Sentences in French

In this paper, we describe a model for the automatic generation of literary sentences in French. Although there has been much recent effort directed towards automatic text generation in general, the generation of creative, literary sentences that is not restricted to a specific genre, which we approached in this work, is a difficult task that is not commonly treated in the scientific literature. In particular, our present model has not been previously applied to the generation of sentences in the French language. Our model was based on algorithms that we previously used to generate sentences in Spanish and Portuguese and on a new corpus, which we constructed and present here, consisting of literary texts in French, called MegaLitefr. Our automatic text generation algorithm combines language models, shallow parsing, the canned text method, and deep learning artificial neural networks. We also present a manual evaluation protocol that we propose and implemented to assess the quality of the artificial sentences generated by our algorithm, by testing if they fulfil four simple criteria. We obtained encouraging results from the evaluators for most of the desired features of our artificially generated sentences.

Effects of Conventional and Musician-Specific Hearing Protection Devices on Speech Intelligibility

(1) Background: To assess and compare speech intelligibility with conventional and universal musician-specific hearing protection devices (HPD); (2) Methods: The sample comprised 15 normal-hearing musicians of both sexes who had been professionals for more than 5 years. They underwent thorough audiological assessment and free-field audiometry to measure the attenuation levels of three HPD models (musician-specific, silicone, and foam devices). The sentence recognition thresholds in quiet (SRTQ) and noise (SRTN) were assessed with the Lists of Sentences in Portuguese. User satisfaction with musician HPD was assessed after 2 months; (3) Results: Conventional HPD had higher pure-tone mean attenuation levels than musician HPD. No statistically significant differences were found in SRTQ and SRTN between the three HPD types. However, the musician HPD had higher mean signal-to-noise ratios and percentages of correct words from sentences presented in noise than the other HPD. The answers also indicated a positive trend toward satisfaction with the musician-specific HPD; (4) Conclusions: Despite the lack of significant differences in speech intelligibility while wearing the three HPD models in either quiet or noise, the musician-specific HPD provided greater musical sound quality. This reinforces the possibility of an effective and adequate use of protection to preserve musicians’ hearing.

Some Particularities of the Use of Definite Articles in Proper Nouns (Antroponyms and Toponyms): A Semantic Approach in a Comparative Perspective Between Mozambican Portuguese and European Portuguese

The present work, entitled Some peculiarities of the use of definite articles in proper nouns (anthroponyms and toponyms): a semantic approach in a comparative perspective between Mozambican Portuguese and European Portuguese, has as main objective to analyze the use of definite articles in proper nouns ( anthroponyms and toponyms) in Mozambican Portuguese. In this sense, we try to describe the different contexts in which the presence/absence of definite articles in proper names (anthroponyms and toponyms) occurs in European Portuguese (EP), we also try to compare the use of definite articles in proper names (anthroponyms and toponyms) in Mozambican Portuguese (PM) with European Portuguese (PE). The study is of a descriptive nature and to carry out the data analysis, a written corpus was built that resulted from the application of two linguistic tests, namely a provoked production test (filling in empty spaces in Portuguese sentences), composed of thirteen ( 13) sentences and a test of grammaticality and/or acceptability judgments, consisting of twenty-six (26) sentences. The inquiry was directed to eighty (80) students of the 10th Grade of the Secondary School of Tete. The analyzed data allowed us to verify that in the variety of Mozambican Portuguese, speakers constantly omit the definite articles in sentences with simple anthroponyms in different positions and contexts, thus creating a difference with European Portuguese; they omit definite articles in contexts where simple toponyms occur (referring to place names that designate landforms), in a predicative syntactic position of the subject; in short, the study allowed us to verify several differences in the two varieties of Portuguese, with regard to the use and/or omission of definite articles in different contexts.

Fundamental frequency related parameters in Brazilians with COVID-19.

This study compares fundamental frequency (fo) and fundamental frequency standard deviation (foSD) of COVID-19 patients with the same parameters in the speech of subjects without COVID-19, and verifies whether there is an effect of age and sex in the patient group. Both groups, subjects with and without COVID-19, are formed by Brazilian Portuguese speakers. Speech samples were obtained from 100 patients with mild to severe symptoms of COVID-19, and 100 healthy subjects. A single 31-syllable Portuguese sentence was used as the elicitation material for all subjects. The recordings were divided into four age groups. The acoustic measures were semi-automatically extracted and analyzed by a series of analyses of variance. Patients with COVID-19 present vocal differences in fo-related parameters when compared to healthy subjects, that is, patient voices presented higher fo and foSD with respect to control voices. In addition, for patient voices, there was an age and sex effect on fo SD values. Vocal parameters of women and elderly subjects showed more marked differences in fo-related parameters, indicating that patient voices are higher-pitched and have a higher variation of fo SD. Consequently, fo-related parameters may be tested as vocal biomarkers in the screening of respiratory insufficiency by voice analysis, in patients with severe symptoms of COVID-19.

Child Sexual Abuse: How Is the Victim Represented in Portuguese Sentences

ABSTRACT Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a global problem with severe consequences for victims and their development, with various resulting consequences. Sentences regarding CSA crimes can be unconsciously influenced by extralegal factors. This study aimed to understand how Portuguese CSA victims are represented in judges’ sentencing of offenders. Twenty-seven sentences of CSA, from a Portuguese database, were thoroughly analyzed through thematic analysis. Six main themes pertaining to the victim, emerged from the sentences’ analysis: (i) emotional response during statements; (ii) reported details and reactions; (iii) credibility and reliability of statements; (iv) revelation and secret-keeping; (v) victim’s trajectory; and (vi) impact on the victim. The assessment of the credibility of the victim’s statements proved to be central across all sentences. Data related to external sources, namely judges’ personal beliefs, physical evidence, and witnesses, emerged. Legal and psychosocial factors were identified, with the latter consisting of victim-blaming and legitimization of sexual violence. As for the practical implications of these findings, we argue that a fair exercise of justice, and improvement of the efficacy of prosecution of CSA is only possible through identification of these sensitive issues and adequate addressal of them during magistrates’ training.

List of sentences in Portuguese: speech perception evaluation in children

RESUMO Objetivo: elaborar listas de sentenças no Português Brasileiro, com vocabulário baseado em situações de comunicação do dia a dia, para a avaliação da percepção auditiva dos sons da fala em crianças. Métodos: o material utilizado para a obtenção das sentenças foi um corpus do Português Brasileiro, com adequações aos critérios estabelecidos nesta pesquisa e analisado por juízes. Foram elaboradas 37 listas, compostas por 13 sentenças e 50 vocábulos fonológicos, que foram denominados palavras-chave. O material foi aplicado em 10 crianças sem queixas auditivas ou de comunicação, na faixa etária entre seis e 10 anos. Foi aplicado o teste de Friedman para verificar possíveis diferenças entre as listas. O nível de significância adotado foi de 5% (0,05). Resultados: a média do índice de reconhecimento de fala apresentada pelos participantes nas 37 listas de sentenças foi de 96,8%. As 37 listas foram estatisticamente semelhantes (p= 0,140). Conclusão: o material elaborado possui sentenças que representam situações de comunicação do dia a dia de crianças, é de fácil e rápida aplicação.

Listas de sentenças em português: avaliação da percepção da fala em crianças

ABSTRACT Purpose: to develop lists of sentences in Brazilian Portuguese based on daily vocabulary to evaluate auditory speech perception in children. Methods: a Brazilian Portuguese corpus with adaptations to attend the criteria established for this study and analyzed by judges was used to obtain the sentences. Thirty-seven lists, each composed of thirteen sentences with fifty phonological keywords, were constructed. The material was presented to ten children, aged between 6 and 10 years, with no hearing or communication complaints. The Friedman test was applied to verify possible differences among the lists. The level of significance adopted was 5% (0.05). Results: the mean speech recognition index presented by the participants was 96.8% for all lists. The thirty-seven lists were considered statistically similar (p=0.140). Conclusion: the developed material proved to contain sentences that represent situations of children’s day-to-day communication and its application is easy and quick.

Behavior as a stereotype cue: An European Portuguese pretest on age and gender stereotypes

When it comes to the study of stereotypes, plenty of material can be of use. While personality traits tend to be the most commonly adopted, behavioral information can also be relevant, both in the study of stereotypes, as well as in other research fields (e.g., illusory correlations, memory and judgement and decision making). The purpose of this paper was to create a readily available list of behavioral sentences with stereotypicality ratings for both age (young to old) and gender (woman to man) categories, to be used in future studies. In two studies, participants judged age and gender stereotypicality of more than two hundred sentences in European Portuguese. Results were stable across both studies, using different methodologies (three alternative forced-choice task, in Study 1; bipolar rating scale, in Study 2). Relative frequencies for each choice, as well as average ratings, per behavior, are provided at the end.

Analysis of the production of total interrogative sentences in Brazilian learners of Spanish as a foreign language

The pitch curves in a language may represent not only distinct intonational patterns but also serve to differentiate one type of sentence from another (e.g., interrogative x affirmative). Different melodic curves may also contain linguistic information which can affect comprehension. One comparison between Spanish and Portuguese can exemplify how differences in the melodic curves of interrogative sentences might cause miscomprehension. According to Sosa (1999) melodic curves of yes/no questions in Spanish tend to end with a high melodic pattern (H) or with a high and low movement, depending on the dialect. On the other hand, Brazilian Portuguese yes/no questions are said to end with a circumflex pattern, generally represented by a (HL) tone, especially when the last word of the sentence presents the stress in the penultimate syllable (Moraes and Collamarco, 2007). Taking these facts into consideration, this work aims at analyzing the pitch curves of interrogative sentences (yes/no questions) of Colombian Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, which were ended by words with stress relying on the last, the penultimate or the antepenultimate syllables. In order to conduct the research, data was collected with two Brazilian learners of Spanish, one native speaker of Colombian Spanish and one native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese. The native speakers served as control group. The learners of Spanish were asked to read 15 sentences in Spanish, and the control group was asked to read the same set of questions in their respective native language. These questions were contextualized as to be inserted in a situational context of a job interview (role play). All sentences were presented to the participants in a computer screen, in a randomized order. In total, the database was composed by 35 sentences in Spanish and 14 sentences in Brazilian Portuguese. The collected data was then analyzed in the software Praat through the algorithm Momel. This algorithm is able to draw the melodic contours of each sentence at a time. The algorithm Intsint was also used through Praat in order to extract the melodic tones corresponding to each curve. The intonational patterns (in nuclear and prenuclear regions) and the highest point of F0 in each sentence were analyzed. Results related to the sentences ended in words with stress in the last syllable showed that all subjects produced, predominantly, high ending patterns (H) in this type of sentences. Differences among subjects rely on the highest F0 point, which appeared with higher frequency in the nuclear region for the native speaker of Colombian Spanish and for the learners. For the prenuclear region, the results showed that the high and low movements were more prominent in the sentences produced by the learners than in the sentences produced by native speaker of Colombian Spanish. Regarding the sentences ended by words with stress in the penultimate and the antepenultimate syllables, results presented differences between the intonational patterns of Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish. The native speaker of Colombian Spanish presented a high ending tone (H) for all the sentences. The native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese and the Brazilian learners of Spanish varied their production either using a high tone (H) or a circumflex tone (HL). The highest point of F0 appeared with higher frequency in the nuclear region for the productions of the native speaker of Colombian Spanish when compared to production of the Brazilian learners of Spanish and the native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese. These results may be due either to the influence of the intonational pattern of the learner’s L1 or to the influence of other varieties of Spanish which the learners have had contact with.

Experimental approach of the prosodic component in the linguistic input of gardenpath sentences in Brazilian Portuguese

This study investigates what part the prosodic component plays in linguistic processing. Can prosodic cues be computed early in the linguistic process and influence the syntactic processing? Some studies in American English (Kjelgaard&Speer, 1999; DeDe 2010) and German (Steinhaueret al 1999) have shown that yes, furthermore, prosodic elements like intonational phrases can modify the syntactic chain during processing. Our work is based on the premises that, during the perceptive processing, an early activation of the prosodic component in the linguistic input can lead the sentence’s syntactic structure.There have been studies in Brazilian Portuguese that show how prosody influences parsing (Lourenço-Gomes 2008; Magalhães& Maia 2006), however, none that tested the effects of prosodic constituents’ organization in online tasks.

Syntactic and semantic overlay in processing disfluent sentences in Brazilian Portuguese

We evaluate, through an online self-paced listening experiment, the processing of disfluent sentences in Brazilian Portuguese such as I want you to put uhh drop the ball. Ferreira et al. (2004) presents a model for such sentences, by which the verbs before and after the disfluency are structurally overlaid, which results in a complex mental structure with properties inherited from both verbs, which, in that case, differ in number of arguments. Based on this model, we extended the experiment for verbs that differ in categorial selection, such as to love (o) /to sympathize (with), and prepositional lexical selection, such as to trust (in)/to sympathize (with). Also, for each of these two syntactic conditions, we evaluated two semantic conditions: consonant and dissonant meanings. By that, we meant to analyze the processing of the disfluency when the two overlaid verbs had the same meaning (that is, when the speaker wants to change the form of the sentence but not its content) and when the disfluency implies a complete change of meaning, which, as shown by our results, do not admit the same type of Overlay as it occurs with sentences with semantically consonant verbs. Additionally, both categorial selection and lexical prepositional selection conditions, with semantically consonant verbs, showed the same type of effect as in Ferreira et al (2004). The basic assumption behind the experiment is that if two mental structures are overlaid during the processing of disfluencies, it is possible to ask what exactly is being overlaid, i.e. what is the form of a verbal mental structure.

Anomalias de forma e de conteúdo em português brasileiro: um estudo preliminar de rastreamento ocular da leitura e de avaliação de aceitabilidade

O presente estudo usou a metodologia de rastreamento ocular para investigar em que medida a leitura de frases em português brasileiro pode diferir em relação a anomalias gramaticais e semânticas e como essas frases são avaliadas quanto à sua boa formação, tomando-se como controle frases bem formadas gramatical e semanticamente. A partir da análise dos dados on-line, foi possível identificar que as sentenças que apresentam anomalias de traço de concordância de número no sintagma nominal, ainda que melhor aceitas na medida off-line do que as frases com anomalias semânticas pelos falantes escolarizados da língua, são processadas de forma inicialmente mais custosa em termos dos padrões de fixação e de refixação. Avalia-se que os resultados obtidos aduzem evidências em favor dos modelos estruturais de processamento de frases.