doctoralThesis
Nomes em -nte sob o viés diacrônico: uma abordagem funcional centrada no uso
Fecha
2021-11-04Registro en:
CORDEIRO, Fernando da Silva. Nomes em -nte sob o viés diacrônico: uma abordagem funcional centrada no uso. 2021. 219f. Tese (Doutorado em Estudos da Linguagem) - Centro de Ciências Humanas, Letras e Artes, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, 2021.
Autor
Cordeiro, Fernando da Silva
Resumen
In this thesis, we analyze the nominalizing construction represented by the scheme [[X]V –
nte]N, which allows the formation of deverbal nouns and adjectives in Portuguese, like
governante, seguinte e representante, and finds roots in the Latin present participle. We aim
to describe the formal and functional characteristcs of this construction, as well as to seek the
semantic-cognitive and discursive-pragmatic motivations involved in its use, especially in
relation to the recategorization of the participle form into nouns and adjectives. We defend
that the nouns in –nte instantiate a form-meaning pairing. The participle-name trajectory is
multidirectional, and the categorical fluctuation between adjective and noun is motivated,
above all, by metonymic projections. Our theoretical support is the Usage Based Functional
Linguistics, in the terms of Furtado da Cunha, Bispo e Silva (2013) and Oliveira and Rosário
(2016), which incorporates the theoretical model of Grammar of Constructions, as proposed
by Goldberg (1995, 2006), Croft (2001), Traugott and Trousdale (2013), Hilpert (2014). It is
diachronic research, whose data consist of different textual configurations in Portuguese,
written between the 13th and 20th centuries. Methodologically, we characterize this research
as basic in nature, whose approach is eminently qualitative, with quantitative support; as for
the objectives, it is descriptive-explanatory research. The results reveal an increase in the
frequency of use of the construction over time, both in terms of token and in terms of type.
Among the most relevant formal properties, we can cite the absence of significant changes in
the morphosyntactic structure of the formal pattern; the presence of Latin verb lexemes in the
construction verb slot; and the partial inheritance of the verb-base argument structure, which
is, in some contexts, conditioned by semantic-cognitive and discursive-pragmatic motivations.
Among the functional properties, we identified that less agentive bases are more frequent in
adjective formations, while more agentive bases are more common with nouns. We found at
least four meanings of construction: circumstantial, aspectual, evaluative and agentive, which
are established through the interaction of morphosyntactic, semantic-cognitive and pragmatic
factors. The processes of (inter)subjectivity and pragmatic inference are crucial for the
expansion of the meaning of the instantiations of the construction in the contexts which they
occur, as evidenced by the positive and negative evaluations carried out in the use of some
constructs. Metaphorical and metonymic projections are also important mechanisms for the
semantic extension of the constructs. We characterize the construction as partially schematic,
with relatively high productivity and intermediate compositionality. Formal and functional
evidences that points to the recategorization of the participle present in nouns, in a process of
multidirectional change. We attribute the categorical fluctuation between the lexical
categories of adjective and noun to metonymic mappings. Both in the recategorization of the
present participle and in the categorical fluctuation, the underlying mechanism of change is
that of neoanalysis.