The role of inferencing in the diachronic development of new contrast markers

• Grant number: 20/03328-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: July 05, 2022
• End date: July 04, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Sanderléia Roberta Longhin
• Grantee: Luísa Ferrari
• Supervisor: Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
• 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
• Institution abroad: University of Manchester, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 19/01411-0 - Contrastive clausal coordination: processes of constitution and regularities in change, BP.DR

Abstract

This overseas research project, falling within a pragmatically oriented approach to semantic change (TRAUGOTT; DASHER, 2002; HANSEN; WALTEREIT, 2006; HANSEN; VISCONTI, 2009), aims to investigate the role of pragmatic inferencing particularly in the development of new contrast markers. For this purpose, we focus on the evolution of four new Brazilian Portuguese contrast markers, namely agora, enquanto (que), só que and ao passo que, which, yet mainly unrecognized as such, result from two main strategies of creation of connectives attested in Romance languages. The analysis will be undertaken diachronically, on the basis of strongly argumentative texts from the 18th to the 21st century, and it will focus on polysemic contexts, in which contrastive meanings are added, via pragmatic enrichments, to the original meanings of the new markers. (AU)