Ilha do Desterro (Oct 2008)
I think in portuguese I think in portuguese
Abstract
This paper takes Aijmer (1997, 1998) and Simon-Vandenbergen’s (1998) contrastive work on I think as its starting point. In their studies, both Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen show that English think is a fuzzy verb and that this becomes particularly evident in a cross-linguistic perspective. Neither Swedish, Dutch or French seems to have one verb corresponding to the whole semantic range of think. In this article, the polysemous nature of think will be further explored in an English-Portuguese contrastive perspective. The data for the study will be taken from the English- Portuguese parallel corpus COMPARA. Portuguese equivalents of (I) think will be analysed and the results compared to the findings of Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen. This paper takes Aijmer (1997, 1998) and Simon-Vandenbergen’s (1998) contrastive work on I think as its starting point. In their studies, both Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen show that English think is a fuzzy verb and that this becomes particularly evident in a cross-linguistic perspective. Neither Swedish, Dutch or French seems to have one verb corresponding to the whole semantic range of think. In this article, the polysemous nature of think will be further explored in an English-Portuguese contrastive perspective. The data for the study will be taken from the English- Portuguese parallel corpus COMPARA. Portuguese equivalents of (I) think will be analysed and the results compared to the findings of Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen.
