Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

220each group of verbs separately, because we considered that the verbs in the firstgroup were opposites of the verbs in the second group and, as a result, theycould not be full equivalents.2. The actantial structures of the verbs. After selecting the relevant candidateequivalents, we proceeded to examine their actantial structures, namely thenumber and nature of the actants. Consider, for instance, the first group of verbsthat refer to the action of complying with the law (comply 1 and cumprir 1 ). Theseverbs do not have identical actantial structures because the English verb admitsthe PROTAGONIST/ACT alternation whereas the Portuguese verb only occurs withterms denoting a PROTAGONIST. This is an indication that the verbs are not fullequivalents because whenever comply 1 occurs with terms denoting an ACT, itmay not be easily translated into Portuguese by means of cumprir 1 . As for theverbs that express the idea of not complying with the law (exceed 1 , infringe 2 ,violar 2 and violate 2 ), it can be observed from Table 21 that the four verbs haveexactly the same number of actants which correspond to the admissible FEs:PROTAGONIST or ACT and LAW. In addition, they all admit that the first actant ofthe verbs, the one that typically functions as the syntactic subject of the verbs,refers to either a PROTAGONIST (the person who does not comply with the law)or to an ACT (the behaviour or action necessarily carried out by somebody andthat does not comply the law). Even if the application of this criterion did notreveal any difference between the four verbs, we continued to examine them inmore detail by means of criteria 3 and 4.3. The linguistic realizations of the FEs. The linguistic realizations of the actantsthat correspond, by implication, to the core FEs were analyzed so as to confirmor refute whether the nature of the verbs‘ actants is entirely identical. Forinstance, we can observe from Table 21 that there is no difference concerning