Construções avaliativas com “super”, “mega”, “hiper” e “ultra” na língua portuguesa – uma proposta de rede construcional a partir da Linguística Funcional Centrada no Uso

Abstract

In this thesis, we dedicated ouselves to understanding how evaluative constructions with “super”, “mega”, “hiper” and “ultra” are instantiated and conventionalized in the Portuguese language. In this way, we take on the theoretical contribution of Usage-based Functional Linguistics (BYBEE, 2010; MARTELOTTA, 2011; FURTADO DA CUNHA et al., 2013; TRAUGOTT & TROUSDALE, 2013; ROSÁRIO & OLIVEIRA, 2016; BISPO & SILVA, 2016), starting from the assumption that such evaluative constructions would have been shaped in and by the context of use, and so being integrated in the grammar structure of the language. Our research hypothesis are the following: (a) “super”, “mega”, “hiper” and “ultra” fulfill new communicative purposes constructions that differ from their uses as prefixes; (b) the uses of evaluative constructions with “super”, “mega”, “hiper” and “ultra” constitute a form-function pairing which is recent within the Portuguese language though. In view of such a hypothesis, our most specific aims, in this sense, are (i) to describe the constructional patterns, or form-function pairings, of evaluative constructions with “super”, “mega”, “hiper” and “ultra” to identify the three schematic levels proposed by Traugott and Trousdale (2013) – scheme, subscheme and microconstruction – and (ii) propose a constructional network that would be able to relate the analysed constructions in a hierarchical way around a common abstract scheme. In order to fulfill the objectives proposed in this paper, we have constituted a corpus for the analysis of data, with the distribution of texts, taken from blogs and magazines available on the Internet, in three levels of formality – established within a continuum – and in three different synchronies. Our analysis is based on the equation between the qualitative analysis and on the frequency calculation of use, since we aim at identifying and describing the form-function pairings linked to each level of schematicity, which are conventionalized in the language through the increasement of their frequency in the use of the language.The obtained results point out that “super”, “mega”, “hiper” and “ultra”, through an analogical process with the scheme {[adverb of intensity] + [adjective/adverb]} – which has as its main representative the adverb of canonical intensity “muito” before an adjective or an adverb – and from their original meanings and their uses as prefixes, they instantiate in the language a more abstract and more general scheme for the indexation of the evaluative speaker’s positioning within the discourse by means of intensification and focus. In addition, we identified thirteen microconstructions which are distributed, by similarities and specificities regarding their formal and functional properties, in three subschemes that differ semantically because of the scope intensification and the focusing and as a consequence the morphosyntactic role played by “super”, “mega”, “hiper” and “ultra” in the constructions they appear. In this context, we demonstrate how the scheme, subschemes and microconstructions are responsible for the emergence of new evaluative constructions with “super”, “mega”, “hiper” and “ultra” in the language as well as the establishment of a constructional network available to the speaker access in the production of a coherent discourse.