The system of identification in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Abstract: We follow systemic principles for language description – axial reasoning, text-based
evidence and trinocular perspective – to describe IDENTIFICATION in Brazilian Portuguese (BP).
Through agnation we detail the criteria that classify the available choices and the identification
structure they can generate. A central methodological argument is that this structure will be
modelled synoptically. Three systems are proposed for BP: MENTION TYPE, CO-REFERENCE, and
ADJACENCY. The function structures realising features of these systems are modelled as identity
graphs – mentions (nodes), identities (an edge meeting co-referential mentions) and adjacency
edges. The description is demonstrated against a fully annotated BP corpus tested across genre
families. Because co-reference is an equivalence relation, each co-referential mention has one
identity, independently of any particular text. Several inherited categories, including retrieval
relations defined by serial or temporal order, are shown to require no mechanism beyond this
description.