Causal and concessive connectives in Brazilian Portuguese - a cognitive-functional perspective: an analysis of the conceptual connection of grammatical elements in usage in this adverbial zone

• Grant number: 12/23239-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): March 01, 2013
• Effective date (End): June 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Maria Helena de Moura Neves
• Grantee: André Vinícius Lopes Coneglian
• Host Institution: Centro de Comunicação e Letras (CCL). Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie (UPM). Instituto Presbiteriano Mackenzie. São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 14/03509-4 - The nature of a concessive category and its linguistic realization, BE.EP.MS

Abstract

This project, linked to CNPq Research Group "Portuguese Usage Grammar", coordinated by the advisor, aims at analyzing and discussing, from a cognitive-functional viewpoint, the connectives that explicitly establish causal and concessive relations in Brazilian Portuguese. From a functional perspective combined to a cognitive approach from Mental Spaces Theory, this proposal focuses on language usage as a guide to the structure of human conceptual system. The specific goals of this project are verifying and analyzing: a) the conceptual connection between the categories of cause and concession; b) the linguistic elements in the construal of the connective and its mental spaces configuration; c) the usage of connectives relative to conceptual domains (content, epistemic, speech act and metalinguistic); d) the usage of tense and mood related to specific connectives and how these categories configure mental spaces; e) viewpoint structures evoked by the usage of the connectives analyzed; f) the degree of subjectivity attached to the connectives. The procedures include: a) the establishment of pertinent factors that allow mental spaces configuration through linguistic structure; b) the interpretation of the cognitive and functional parameters that reveal the structure of human conceptual system.