Functional motivations for noun phrase discontinuity

• Grant number: 17/26963-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: May 01, 2018
• End date: February 29, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Roberto Gomes Camacho
• Grantee: Nathalia Pereira de Souza Martins
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São José do Rio Preto. São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims at examining the noun phrases with non-canonical order of constituents, called "discontinuous NP" by Keizer (2007), as well as the NP itself displaced from its more canonical position in a clause a whole, based on the theoretical framework of the Discursive-Functional Grammar (HENGEVELD; MACKENZIE, 2008). The analysis and description of these two interrelated phenomena aims to search for pragmatic, semantic and formal factors which motivate the speaker's choice of specific morphosyntactic encodings to represent the discontinuity in NPs and clauses. According to the theoretical perspective adopted, the most appropriate method of explaining the complexity of these order variations is to assume that principles in interaction and possibly in competition determine the order of constituents in the NP and also the order of the sentence. Thus the hypothesis to be confirmed or rejected is whether the speaker's decision to put out of the NP (or out of the clause) material that structurally belongs to it is determined by independent principles and whether it is possible that, when two or more principles define conflicting orders, the speaker performs a kind of compensatory balancing act based on the pragmatic status and the formal complexity of the constituents. The database for analysis is constituted by speech recordings extracted from the Iboruna Corpus, which represents the variety spoken in São José do Rio Preto City and adjacente towns. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

MARTINS, Nathalia Pereira de Souza. Functional motivations for syntagmatic discontinuity. 2020. Master's Dissertation - Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Instituto de Biociências Letras e Ciências Exatas. São José do Rio Preto São José do Rio Preto.