FALSE DIMINUTIVES OF BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE AND THEIR RECOGNITION IN A FREELY AVAILABLE COMPUTATIONAL DICTIONARY

Abstract

In this paper we propose the creation of a list of false diminutives in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and the analysis and description of their coverage by a computational dictionary (DELAF-BR), which, like other computational dictionaries (lexicons), is a basic resource for language processing and depends on the meticulous and systematic description of the language. To this end, we analized 953 lexemes ending in -inho/-inha and we classified them into: (i) real diminutives (Dim), which can designate degree of size (botinha), intensity (cedinho), youth (homenzinho) and value judgment (povinho); and (ii) false diminutives (FDim), in which the meaning of the lexeme distances itself from the word from which it derives (almofadinha, camisinha, carrinho). With the list of 468 FDim built, we analized its processing by DELAF-BR and we verified that only 31 described lexemes (6.6%) were included in this electronic dictionary. Considering the 37 most frequent FDim in general language corpora, the result was similar: only 10.8% of the cases (4 lexemes) were contemplated in the dictionary. Therefore, this research presents contributions to descriptive studies of language and to the area of ​​Natural Language Processing with the construction of a lexical resource of the false diminutives in Brazilian Portuguese.