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The current global threat brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic has led to widespread social isolation, posing new challenges in dealing with metal suffering related to social distancing, and in quickly learning new social habits intended to prevent contagion. Neuroscience and psychology agree that dreaming helps people to cope with negative emotions and to learn from experience, but can dreaming effectively reveal mental suffering and changes in social behavior? To address this question, we applied natural language processing tools to study 239 dream reports by 67 individuals, made either before the Covid-19 outbreak or during the months of March and April, 2020, when lockdown was imposed in Brazil following the WHO’s declaration of the pandemic. Pandemic dreams showed a higher proportion of anger and sadness words, and higher average semantic similarities to the terms “contamination” and “cleanness”. These features seem to be associated with mental suffering linked to social isolation, as they explained 40% of the variance in the PANSS negative subscale related to socialization (p = 0.0088). These results corroborate the hypothesis that pandemic dreams reflect mental suffering, fear of contagion, and important changes in daily habits that directly impact socialization.

This paper challenges the hypothesis that ideophonic sequences are syntactic structures built from lexical roots by the recursive operation Merge through the mediation of a functional head, taken to be either a coordinate (Corver 2015) or a determiner (Corver 2023). Drawing on Generative Grammar theory and new data from Brazilian Portuguese, we argue that the evidence for this hypothesis is weak at best. We first show that these sequences do not behave consistently as constituents. While they can stand alone, be coordinated, and resist intrusion, they fail to undergo movement and ellipsis. Taken together, this suggests that they are most likely linear sequences. They lack the formal features responsible for mediating grammatical interactions with the surrounding syntactic context and on which asymmetric structures are built. Moreover, the evidence on which Corver relies is mostly phonological and as such does not provide strong support for the conclusion that ideophonic sequences are asymmetric structures. Following the general tenets of Minimalism, we conclude that, in the absence of strong and uncontroversial evidence, it is best to assume that sequences formed by canonical ideophones are linear strings or symmetric structures distinct from ordinary syntactic phrases.

This study reports a successful selective waste collection initiative led by UFSC’s Araranguá campus in a municipality without a recycling system. The initiative, named “Recicla UFSC Ara”, was structured around three main components: (i) the installation of color-coded bins for recyclable waste (including paper, plastic, metals, and polystyrene) and non-recyclable waste in indoor and common areas; (ii) the establishment of a Voluntary Delivery Point (PEV) to gather specific recyclable materials, such as glass, electronics waste, plastic bottles, writing instruments, and bottle caps; and (iii) the execution of periodic educational community-focused campaigns aimed at encouraging participation from both the university and the broader local community. Recyclables were manually sorted and weighed during regular collection rounds, and contamination rates were calculated. Quantitative data collected from 2022 to 2025 were analyzed using descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA to assess waste generation and contamination trends. Gathered recyclables were directed to appropriate partner institutions, including local “Ecoponto”, non-profit organizations, and corporate recycling programs. The study also conducted a literature review of similar university-led waste management programs to identify standard practices and regional specificities, providing a comparative analysis that highlights both shared elements and distinctive contributions of the UFSC model. Results demonstrate a significant volume of waste diverted from landfills and a gradual improvement in waste disposal practices among the university community. Targeted communication and operational changes mitigated key challenges, improper disposal, and logistical issues. This case underscores the role of universities as agents of environmental education and local sustainable development.

Everett (2005) has claimed that the grammar of Pirana is exceptional in displaying 'inexplicable gaps', that these gaps follow from a cultural principle restricting communication to 'immediate experience', and that this principle has 'severe' consequences for work on universal grammar. We argue against each of these claims. Relying on the available documentation and descriptions of the language, especially the rich material in Everett 1986, 1987b, we argue that many of the exceptional grammatical 'gaps' supposedly characteristic of Pirana are misanalyzed by Everett (2005) and are neither gaps nor exceptional among the world's languages. We find no evidence, for example, that Pirahã lacks embedded clauses, and in fact find strong syntactic and semantic evidence in favor of their existence in Pirahã. Likewise, we find no evidence that Pirahã lacks quantifiers, as claimed by Everett (2005). Furthermore, most of the actual properties of the Pirahã constructions discussed by Everett (for example, the ban on prenominai possessor recursion and the behavior of wh-constructions) are familiar from languages whose speakers lack the cultural restrictions attributed to the Pirahã. Finally, following mostly Gonçalves (1993, 2000, 2001), we also question some of the empirical claims about Pirahã culture advanced by Everett in primary support of the ' immediate experience' restriction. We conclude that there is no evidence from Pirahã for the particular causal relation between culture and grammatical structure suggested by Everett.

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a severe mental disorder associated with a variety of linguistic deficits, and recently it has been suggested that these deficits are caused by an underlying impairment in the ability to build complex syntactic structures and complex semantic relations. Aiming at contributing to determining the specific linguistic profile of SZ, we investigated the usage of pronominal subjects and sentence types in two corpora of oral dream and waking reports produced by speakers with SZ and participants without SZ (NSZ), both native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Narratives of 40 adult participants (20 SZ, and 20 NSZ–sample 1), and narratives of 31 teenage participants (11 SZ undergoing first psychotic episode, and 20 NSZ–sample 2) were annotated and statistically analyzed. Overall, narratives of speakers with SZ presented significantly higher rates of matrix sentences, null pronouns—particularly null 3Person referential pronouns—and lower rates of non-anomalous truncated sentences. The high rate of matrix sentences correlated significantly with the total PANSS scores, suggesting an association between the overuse of simple sentences and SZ symptoms in general. In contrast, the high rate of null pronouns correlated significantly with positive PANSS scores, suggesting an association between the overuse of null pronominal forms and the positive symptoms of SZ. Finally, a cross-group analysis between samples 1 and 2 indicated a higher degree of grammatical impairment in speakers with multiple psychotic episodes. Altogether, the results strengthen the notion that deficits at the pronominal and sentential levels constitute a cross-cultural linguistic marker of SZ.

The present paper is a reassessment of the empirical and theoretical arguments presented by some of main minimalist accounts for binding. Some if these accounts assume that the binding principles are conditions on LF representations, others argue that they are derived by narrow syntax computations. Despite that, I present some observations indicating that there is not yet a satisfactory minimalist account for binding. The amounted evidence indicates that binding is derivational. However, pragmatics seems also engaged in building coreferentiality.  

In this paper, we analyze external possessors in Brazilian Portuguese, showing that those realizing Nominative-Case (Nominative-possessors) are not syntactically uniform, varying derivationally. These variations are related to the vP internal structure. In agentive argument structures, Nominative-possessors are licensed in obligatory control configurations. Non-agentive argument structures give rise to raising configurations. In turn, raising configurations are not syntactically uniform either. Unaccusative vPs, differently from inchoative ones, contain a dative position at the vP edge. This position is used as an intermediate landing site for the raised Nominative-possessor. Importantly, a copy of a possessor in this intermediate position alters information structure at LF, having three interpretative effects: (a) affectedness: the possessor is interpreted as being affected by the denoted event, (b) presupposition of existence: the possessor must be an existent entity, and (b) contextual confinement: the possessor-possessum is interpreted as an integral part-whole at the event time.

The present paper is a reassessment of the empirical and theoretical arguments presented by some minimalist accounts for binding. Some of them assume that the binding principles are conditions on LF representations, while others argue that they are derived by narrow syntax computations. I present some observations indicating that there is not yet a satisfactory account for binding. Despite that, the amounted evidence indicates that binding is derivational. Nevertheless, pragmatics seems also engaged in building coreferentiality.