A flood of senses: a collostructional study on the quantifying binominal construction in Brazilian Portuguese.

Resumo

We study the uses of the quantifying binominal construction uma enxurrada de NP (a flood of NP) from a usage-based perspective. Our main goal is to identify the nouns with which the construction preferably combines to understand the potential semantic interplay between the construction`s meaning and the noun enxurrada (flood). Our general hypothesis is that NPs recruited by the construction must be semantically coherent with it (GOLDBERG, 1995). Thus, the semantics of enxurrada interplays with the constructions meaning. After the analysis, we realized the construction uma enxurrada de SN (a flood of SN) brings with the idea of movement, cause and consequence.