Navegando por Autor "Silva, Brenda Lorraine Grillo"

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Evidence of semantic association in technology-related vocabulary : a corpus study of collocations.
(2020) Silva, Jesiel Soares; Brandão, Luiz Henrique Mendes; Silva, Brenda Lorraine Grillo
This paper presents a semantic study of corpora-based words which meanings are related to technology, exploring how such words have been semantically coined over time regarding their most frequent collocations. In this study, we counted on three corpora (DAVIES, 2010): The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) were used as source of data about the English language. The Portuguese language data was assessed through the corpus do português NOW (News on the Web). The screening procedures were respectively: a) Selection (words that probably have changed semantically over the years); b) Comparison (check the collocates and their frequency); collection: a file was created with all the comparisons regarding frequency and strength of attachment). In order to verify the existence of statistically different groups, we applied T-test and considered the percentage of appearance for the target-collocations as well as the MI score. Results indicated meaningful changes to words related to internet milieu when time is considered and regarding collocation. Similar results have been found for both Portuguese and English. Moreover, data revealed that the three most frequent collocates for the target-words when present time was considered not only demonstrated a clear change towards internet-related meaning, but also showed a higher strength of attachment.
A proposal for recalibration of a vocabulary levels test as diagnosis of late bilinguals’ L2 proficiency.
(2021) Silva, Jesiel Soares; Brandão, Luiz Henrique Mendes; Góes, Lara do Nascimento; Silva, Brenda Lorraine Grillo; Barbosa, Geovanne; Ferreira, Jáliton Luiz Souza; Benevides, Lays Albuquerque
This study explores the recalibration and adequacy of a measure of vocabulary size – the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) – as a predictor of Brazilian Portuguese-English speakers’ ability to access grammatical representations through their non-dominant language. Such endeavor concerns a specific part of the test (composed majorly by cognates) which has been blurring the results when participants are natives in Latin-derived languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese. A new test (nVLT) was designed, with a novel version of this problematic part (level 4) present in the older test that, now, avoids the proliferation of cognates. Both versions were applied to a number of Brazilian participants and the results were correlated with another proficiency measure, taken from an acceptability judgment task designed according to the model reported in Souza et al (2015). When the low-proficiency participants took the VLT, there were a decreasing pattern in their scores from the first level of the exam all the way to level 3 (because each level is harder than the preceding). But, when they got to level 4, which is “harder” than level 3, their scores increased surprisingly, and then decreased again in level 5. When they performed the nVLT, which has a level 4 recalibrated (without latin cognates), the decreasing pattern was maintained evenly through the whole test. These results from nVLT show an internal coherence of the test due to the recalibration.