Mapeamento de microconstruções com “então”: uma proposta de rede construcional

Abstract

According to the theoretical assumptions of Usage-based Functional Linguistics, more specifically with regard to the constructional approach to change proposed by Traugott and Trousdale (2013), this thesis aims at proposing an analysis of constructions with the word “então” (“so”) empirically attested in the current synchrony. Following this approach, language is a network of hierarchically organized constructs (TRAUGOTT e TROUSDALE, 2013), whose basic unit is the construction, identified by form-function pairing (GOLDBERG, 2016). Based on this principle and aiming at fulfilling the general objective, we present specific objectives: i) to map the microconstructions with "então” (“so”), from the form-function pairing of the tokens found in the corpus constituted for this research; ii) distribute them in a network hierarchically organized in levels of schematicity. This data analysis is based on the qualitative and quantitative methodology taking as a basis a synchronous corpus composed by two modalities: the written and the oral ones. The written modality contains texts available on the Internet, taken from blogs, from informal magazines like "Ana Maria" and "Marie Claire", and formal magazines such as "Exam" and "Veja". The oral modality consists of five hours of recording interview programs also found on the internet. Thus, we assume the following hypotheses: i) the constructions with "então" are instantiated in the language from more abstract hierarchical levels. ii) there is a semantic-pragmatic expansion of its uses, and it is related to an increase of intersubjectivity; iii) it is possible to draw its constructional network from an empirical and synchronic analysis. The results demonstrate that it is possible to identify microconstructions with "então” (“so") and, consequently, their involvement in a process of constructionalisation based on the instantiation of increasingly intersubjective constructions, from a more general scheme, which has the phoricity as its basic function and the relational character of “então” ("so"), which instantiates three less hierarchical subschemes. In the first subscheme, it is possible to find the anaphoric microconstructions which indicate a temporal circumstance; in the second subscheme, the microconstructors that not only retake an antecedent in an anaphorical way, but also point, cataphorically, to the subsequent portion, functioning as a connector; and in the third subscheme, subdivided into two intermediate subschemes in which the microconstructions with discursive markers appear - the first intermediate subscheme consists of constructs involved in textual processing and in the level of the interactional relations, and the second intermediate subscheme consists of constructs involved in the textual articulation and at the level of conclusive and interactional discursive relations.