Collocational deviations in Portuguese as a foreign language

• Autor(a) principal: Silva Netto, José William da
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Entretextos
• Texto Completo: https://ojs.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/entretextos/article/view/44107
• topic: Collocations; Interlanguage; Portuguese as a Foreign Language; Colocaciones; Interlengua; Portugués como Lengua Extranjera; Colocações; Interlíngua; Português Língua Estrangeira

This paper’s purpose is to discuss the collocational deviations evidenced in Portuguese as a Foreign Language (hereinafter PFL) written texts as a means to reveal the learners’ hypotheses on how the Portuguese language functions. Our theoretical background highlights the studies on collocations, from a phraseological perspective, by Sinclair (1991), Lewis (2000, 2012), Bahns (1993) and Tagnin (2013), the concept of collocational competence by Lewis (2000), Wu (2003) and O’Dell and McCarthy (2008), and the five interlanguage processes by Selinker (1974), Henderson (1985) and Tarone (2006). Our methodology includes five written assignments, in an e-mail genre, whose context addresses the participants’ perspectives on Brazilian cultural aspects, such as cuisine and tourist attractions. The participants, in turn, are eight North Americans who promoted the English language in Brazil for nine months in 2015. The text productions were analyzed, the collocational deviation occurrences were identified and classified according to the participants’ proficiency levels, namely B1/B2 and C1/C2. The data revealed that the deviations are mostly motivated by two interlanguage processes, language transfer and misuse of verbal and nominal elements, and are recurrent in the more advanced levels of proficiency in PFL.