Empirical Approaches to Portuguese Linguistics - New insights from studies in various areas of grammar

Abstract

Over the last two decades, empirical methods have become increasingly prominent in linguistics. Even traditionally more introspective theoretical frameworks have begun to embrace empirical methods to test their hypotheses. This special collection unites works applying state of the art empirical methods to the study of Portuguese and its varieties, to highlight the applicability of these methods to Portuguese linguistics. In doing so, this collection aims to show the potential and the possible limitations of these methods. This special collection brings together contributions on different varieties of Portuguese from the subfields of phonology, morpho-syntax, syntax and semantics, using a variety of empirical methods: The methods range from classic corpus linguistics and sociolinguistic field methods to psycholinguistic experiments. The aim of this collection is to illustrate how these methods can be applied to the study of Portuguese in all linguistic subfields. By explicitly addressing how empirical methods contribute to furthering our understanding of Portuguese linguistics, we want to increase awareness for empirical methods and their applicability to the study of Portuguese, and ultimately encourage researchers to make greater use of them.