A prototypical analysis of the direct object

Abstract

This work aims to describe the morphological, syntactic and semantic traits that define the prototype of the direct object in written texts of Brazilian Portuguese, through the analysis of 100 essays by the Vestibular Competition UFRGS (2007). This approach is based on the descriptive model of Perini (1989), which proposes the representation of classes, functions and grammatical processes through matrices of distinctive traits. The fundamental hypotheses of this work are expressed in a matrix that includes morphological, syntactic and semantic traits. As for the morphological traits, we consider name, pronoun, sentence and null object. As regards the syntactic traits, apassivation, position filling between the verb and the object and standard V (verb) + O (object). In relation to semantic traits, we consider the thematic roles of theme, agent, causer of experience, product and time. We proceeded to the collection and classification of 1,309 data in the texts under analysis, taking as a target sentence declarative, principal and subordinate sentences. In this way, we raise the percentages of employment of each trait. The results of the trait frequencies point to the following characteristics of the direct object prototype in Brazilian Portuguese: morphologically, [+ name]; Syntactically [+ standard VO, - position filling V_O]; And semantically, [+ theme].