Grammaticalization of complex concessive junctive words: the case of the scalar source bem

• Grant number: 20/02285-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): May 01, 2020
• Effective date (End): December 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Historical Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Sanderléia Roberta Longhin
• Grantee: Gabriel Benedetti
• 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

The main goal of this project is to analyze aspects of the historical constitution of concessive constructions articulated by the periphrastic junctive words: bem que e se bem que. We are interested in carrying out a comparative study on the semantic and distributive characteristics of complex constructions, regarding one key issue: considering that periphrases experiment grammaticalization in different moments, and that they have persisted for centuries, until the decline of bem que in the modern Brazilian Portuguese, what could justify the prevalence of se bem que and the lesser use of bem que on the Portuguese history? We acknowledge the hypothesis that junctive words which are more versatile, and not restricted to a single modal realization or concessive relation, tend to prevail on languages. The research has been carried out from a diachronic perspective, based on data extracted from texts in different genres which have been written over a time frame of five centuries. (AU)