A produção de Hedges por falantes brasileiros de português e aprendizes chineses de PLA

Abstract

This work aims at contrasting the use of hedges by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese and Chinese learners of Portuguese as an additional language. After a theoretical study of the historical evolution of linguistic vagueness and hedges, the thesis proposes a list of possible hedges in the Brazilian Portuguese linguistic system and tries to give a new definition on hedges. We also made a new classification of hedges for the analysis of data from this study, based on the discussions about the limitations of the former studies and the pragmatic theories. In the second part of the study, a brief introduction on corpus linguistics is given, which helped to build two small corpora CTOB and CTOC. This separately stands for Portuguese native speaker from Brazil and Chinese learners of PLA, through a nine-month longitudinal research. The data analysis is based on the new classification of hedges. First of all, we did a general comparison on the use of hedges in two corpora. Next, we analyzed the main distinctions in the application of hedges, revealed in the collected data. Finally, after a comparison of the Chinese who had learned Portuguese for two years in China, we tried to find the acquisition process of hedges in PLA. Thus, the data showed that there is no regularity during the nine-month study in Brazil. The research demonstrates that the study of theories is considered as a new way to analyze Portuguese hedges, with the help of the construction of corpora, which indirectly contributes to language teaching.