Vitor Augusto Nobrega.

The primary research foci of our group are of both a conceptual and empirical nature: Conceptually, we seek to better understand non-concatenate morphological processes, both from theoretical and theoretically-informed experimental research. Second, using these theoretical assumptions as a guide, we explore the diachronic development, synchronic variation, and development (including acquisition, attrition, and change) of umlaut in Germanic (including Scandinavian) languages and beyond. Umlaut in Germanic languages has traditionally been regarded as a phenomenon that began as a phonological alternation the evolved over the course of several centuries into a 'morphological' one

The project Innovations in human and non-human animal communities aims to reconstruct the evolutionary history of three allegedly human-specific cognitive abilities, namely: linguistic competence, symbolic activities, and sophisticated tools. More specifically, it seeks to understand the evolution of the cognitive underpinnings underlying each of these innovations, by looking for antecedents in nature that could account for their development in a relatively short evolutionary time. The core question we pose is: are there evolutionary precursors that, functioning together in some fashion, could have led to the development of cognitive capacities that gave rise to the emergence of an intricate language faculty, symbolic reasoning, and elaborate tool manufacturing? By addressing this question, we investigate whether the evolution of such cognitive proclivities and the differences they had put between man and the higher animals are in fact one of degree and not of kind, as Charles Darwin initially suggested

Human language constitutes an extremely complex cognitive ability. Although several non-human animal species are endowed with some form of communication, none possess the attributes especially the combinatorial capability which allow modern humans to convey meaning in such an intricate manner. As such, the uniqueness of human language raises significant questions about when and how it may have emerged in evolution. It is impossible for us, however, to directly observe language as it was at any given point in the evolutionary history of our species, since language does not fossilize and does not leave direct marks in the fossil record. This project involves investigating and analyzing images of prehistoric artifacts (e.g. ochre pieces, bones, eggshell fragments, mollusk shells, stones, and bedrocks) containing abstract geometric engravings produced by Homo erectus, Homo denisova, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens, with the aim of elucidating the availability of a formal grammar parallel to that observed in present-day language and the emergence of human language. A variety of cross-disciplinary computational methods will be utilized including microstructural image analysis from materials science and engineering, topological methods from mechanical engineering, morphometrics approaches from evolutionary biology, data visualization, analytics, image and pattern recognition from computer science

CompoNet is a large database of compounds developed at the Department of Foreign Languages of the University of Bologna. The aim of the project is to study compounding of a given language, of a given family (e.g. Romance, Slavic, etc.) and compounding in general from a typological perspective

Este projeto tem o objetivo de ampliar o escopo dos estudos em Morfologia Distribuída na pesquisa em Linguística no Brasil. Faremos isso por meio de discussões sobre processos de formação de palavras, concatenativos ou não, nas línguas naturais, bem como sobre questões relacionadas à noção de estrutura argumental, e à ideia de geometria de traços para os sistemas pronominais e flexionais das línguas naturais, sempre fundamentadas pelo modelo da Morfologia Distribuída. Os estudos focam línguas como o português brasileiro (PB), o espanhol peninsular (EP), o inglês, o japonês e o hebraico, investigando, em particular, questões tais como prefixação de negação e de repetição no PB, prefixação de formalidade no japonês, sufixação para a formação de verbos denominais, também em PB, formação de nominalizações em PB e em hebraico, de termos aumentativos e diminutivos no PB e em outras línguas românicas, formações do tipo de mesclagem e truncamento em PB e EP, questões relacionadas à estrutura argumental de predicados verbais, nominais e adjetivais, além de questões voltadas para o detalhamento do conjunto de traços do sistema flexional do PB. Com esse trabalhos, pretendemos identificar, nas línguas em foco, propriedades mais gerais das línguas naturais

Este projeto insere-se no Projeto Observatório de Neologismos do Português Brasileiro Contemporâneo (Projeto Termneo), criado em 1988, com apoio do CNPq, em função de uma dupla finalidade: catalogar e difundir novos termos das áreas de especialidade, que abrangem as áreas das ciências e das técnicas; elaborar trabalhos terminológicos que respondam às necessidades do desenvolvimento tecnológico e científico. Assim, os pesquisadores estão procedendo à elaboração de um Dicionário Terminológico da Economia, que terá cerca de 2500 (dois mil e quinhentos) termos com base em um corpus constituído por manuais da Economia vinculados às diversas subáreas dessa área: Macroeconomia, Microeconomia, Finanças Públicas, Econometria, Economia Internacional e Desenvolvimento Econômico