towards an analysis of errors made by university students ... - DSpace

17
be submodified by adverbs or sub-classified by nouns; the
examples from Sinclair's are:
i) a wel1 - fed calf (-en word sub-modified by an
- adverb)
ii) a mi 1k-fed calf
(-en word sub-class ified by a
noun)
iii) an i 11-fi tti ng grey suit i n g word sub-modified
by an
adverb)
iv) a magnificent
record- breaki ng jump (-ing word subclassified
by
a noun)..
The modifiers cari thus present a delicacy scale whose structura-1
elements are d, o, e and n; at d we have the general and specific
deictics; at o the numerals, at e the qualitative adjectives, the
7 O
classifying adjectives and the 'colour' adjectives. Submodi.fiers
can operate at d, as in 'every single book 1
; at e, as in 'a very
beautiful view', 'very blue, interesting eyes'; 53 and at n, as,
in ' i ns truc ti on- manual holder' and at h in 'textiles pri ce-control ' .
The latter examples a re probably the most difficult ones
since
there is not a consistent way to mark the relationship between
one noun and the other, or others, in a nominal
group in the
written
medium.
* The errors which interest us most in this work are
the ones which have maintained the same sequence as the
English
structural elements in their equivalents in Portuguese. Thus,
basically, we have been interested in the errors whose main
characteristic was to order the exponents in Portuguese
according to the sequence of the structural elements in English
nominal groups. Moreover, we have restricted our work to two