Quantifying binominal constructions in Portuguese and Russian: the case of "um monte de NP" and Kucha NPgen

Abstract

This paper reports on a contrastive study of Brazilian Portuguese um monte de NP and Moscow Standard Russian kucha NPgen quantifying binominal constructions, under a usage-based constructionist approach. To identify semantic specificities in both constructions, an empirical investigation based on collostructional analysis was conducted. The results indicate that despite some similarities between Portuguese and Russian in terms of cognitive operations involved in the conceptualization of the binominal quantifying constructions um monte de NP and kucha NPgen, there are specificities concerning each construction in each language in terms of semantic compatibility of lexemes co-occurring in them.

Keywords

• quantifying binominal constructions
• usage-based construction grammar
• monte
• kucha
• collostructional analysis