Processamento da co-referência pronominal: informação sintáctica e semântica

Tese de mestrado, Linguística, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2012Este trabalho tem como objectivo analisar o processamento da co-referência de pronomes nulos e realizados em interacção com o papel temático do antecedente. Duas experiências foram realizadas: a primeira, relativa à retoma anafórica interfrásica, envolveu 24 estudantes universitários, nativos de Português Europeu, os quais leram pares de frases justapostas com um nexo temporal. A segunda frase tinha um sujeito pronominal e, através de uma tarefa de controlo da interpretação da cadeia referencial, os informantes eram forçados a escolher um antecedente para o sujeito pronominal da segunda frase. Usou-se o programa PsyScope para apresentação dos itens experimentais em tempo controlado. As variáveis dependentes foram a percentagem de escolha do antecedente para o pronome (sujeito ou objecto da primeira frase) e o tempo de resposta em milissegundos. Os resultados indicam uma clara preferência por retoma de sujeito independentemente do papel temático deste, assim como uma utilização semelhante do pronome nulo e do pronome realizado na retoma de sujeito. A segunda experiência, relativa à retoma anafórica intrafrásica em frases concessivas, com a ordem subordinante subordinada, envolveu 20 estudantes universitários e consistiu num questionário em suporte papel cuja metodologia era semelhante à experiência anterior. Os resultados são bastante diferentes dos da primeira experiência e confirmam dados já existentes relativamente a estruturas coordenadas: o pronome nulo retoma preferencialmente um antecedente em posição de sujeito, enquanto o pronome lexical retoma um antecedente em posição de objecto. Nesta experiência, o papel temático do antecedente obteve resultados estatisticamente significativos, tendo em conta o tipo de pronome: o pronome lexical prefere retomar um antecedente que não esteja semanticamente proeminente, como é o caso do objecto directo Tema em frases activas e do sujeito Tema em frases passivas. Conclui-se, à semelhança de outros estudos (Costa, 2003/ 2005; Mayol, 2010), que, na co-referência intrafrásica, os dois pronomes não são sensíveis aos mesmos factores: o pronome nulo recupera sempre o antecedente sintacticamente proeminente, sendo, portanto, sensível a factores exclusivamente sintácticos. O pronome lexical, pelo contrário, é sensível a factores semânticos, recuperando o antecedente semanticamente menos proeminente.Abstract: The aim of this work is to analyse the processing of co-reference with null and lexicalised pronouns along with the thematic role of the antecedent. Two experiments have been made: in the first one, regarding inter-sentential co-reference, participated 24 university students, all Portuguese native speakers, who read pairs of independent sentences that were temporally connected. The second sentence had a pronominal subject and, by a task that controlled the interpretation of the referential chain, the informants had to choose an antecedent for that pronominal subject. PsyScope programme was used for the presentation of the experimental items with controlled time. The dependent variables were the percentage of choice of the antecedent for the pronoun (subject or object of the first sentence) and answering time in milliseconds. The results show a clear preference for retrieving the subject regardless of its thematic role, as well as a similar use of the null and the lexicalised pronoun for retrieving the subject. The second experiment regarding intra-sentential co-reference in concessive sentences, with the order matrix - subordinate, involved 20 university students and consisted of a questionnaire in paper with a methodology similar to that of the previous experiment. The results are quite different from the previous experiment and confirm data for coordinate sentences: the null retrieves a subject antecedent, while the lexicalised pronoun retrieves an object antecedent. In this experiment, the thematic role of the antecedent had statistically significant results, regarding the type of pronoun: the lexicalised pronoun prefers to retrieve an antecedent that is not semantically prominent, as is the case with the direct object Theme in active sentences, and the subject Theme in passive sentences. We conclude, following other studies (Costa, 2003/2005; Mayol, 2010) that in intra-sentential co-reference, the two pronouns are not sensitive to the same factors. The null always retrieves the syntactically prominent antecedent and is therefore sensitive to exclusively syntactic factors. The lexicalised pronoun, on the other hand, is sensitive to semantic factors, retrieving the least semantically prominent antecedent

Circulating tumor extracellular vesicles to monitor metastatic prostate cancer genomics and transcriptomic evolution

Extracellular vesicles; Prostate cancer; TranscriptomicsVesículas extracelulares; Cáncer de próstata; TranscriptómicaVesícules extracel·lulars; Càncer de pròstata; TranscriptòmicaExtracellular vesicles (EVs) secreted by tumors are abundant in plasma, but their potential for interrogating the molecular features of tumors through multi-omic profiling remains widely unexplored. Genomic and transcriptomic profiling of circulating EV-DNA and EV-RNA isolated from in vitro and in vivo models of metastatic prostate cancer (mPC) reveal a high contribution of tumor material to EV-loaded DNA/RNA, validating the findings in two cohorts of longitudinal plasma samples collected from patients during androgen receptor signaling inhibitor (ARSI) or taxane-based therapy. EV-DNA genomic features recapitulate matched-patient biopsies and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and associate with clinical progression. We develop a novel approach to enable transcriptomic profiling of EV-RNA (RExCuE). We report how the transcriptome of circulating EVs is enriched for tumor-associated transcripts, captures certain patient and tumor features, and reflects on-therapy tumor adaptation changes. Altogether, we show that EV profiling enables longitudinal transcriptomic and genomic profiling of mPC in liquid biopsy.This work was funded by “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434, La Caixa Junior Leader Fellowship to I.C.-S., LCF/BQ/PI20/11760033, EU H2020 Research and Innovation programme MSCA grant agreement 847648), and grants from FERO (funded by FERO and Fundacion Ramon Areces) and Fundación AECC (LABAE20019MATE) to J.M., who also acknowledges support from CRIS Cancer Foundation (grant TCL-2020-10) and a DoD CDMRP Physician Science Award (PC220307); J.M. is also a past recipient of a PCF YIA. A grant from the AstraZeneca Partners of Choice Program to VHIO contributed to this study (NCR-19-20035). S.A.-G. and N.H. were supported by Instituto de Salud Carlos III through fellowships FI19/00280 and CP19/00170, respectively. P.C. was supported by an ESMO Translational Research Fellowship. VHIO authors would like to acknowledge the Spanish State Agency for Research (Agencia Estatal de Investigación) for the financial support as a Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa (CEX2020-001024-S/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the Cellex Foundation for providing research facilities and equipment and the CERCA Program from the Generalitat de Catalunya for their support on this research