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| Author(s): |
Luísa Ferrari
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São José do Rio Preto. 2018-09-24. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Instituto de Biociências Letras e Ciências Exatas. São José do Rio Preto |
| Defense date: | 2018-08-22 |
| Advisor: | Sanderleia Roberta Longhin |
| Abstract | |
In this paper, we investigate, in a longitudinal perspective, similar paths of change in Portuguese and English. Originally, ‘agora’ and ‘now’ work as temporal adverbs that establish a relationship between the time of events in the world and the speaking time (SCHIFFRIN, 1987; ILARI, 2002). Through the history of Portuguese and English, both ‘agora’ and ‘now’ acquire non temporal meanings, that are distributed in two types. In one of them, the itens express contrastive meanings and work as conjunctions; in the other one, they indicate a change to new discourse (sub)topics, playing the role of discourse markers (TRAUGOTT; DASHER, 2004). Assuming that linguistic change occurs in specific contexts, that evoke inferences of new meanings (TRAUGOTT; DASHER, 2004), our main purpose is to elucidate the paths of change of ‘agora’ and ‘now’ in the light of the contextual clusters that favour the emergence of the new usage patterns. For this purpose, the research is developed in a diachronic perspective, by means of different types of texts produced over different periods of Portuguese and English. Conceiving contexts as the main via to change, we affiliate to the Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (TRAUGOTT; DASHER, 2004), that conceives pragmatics as the chief driving force in semantic change and attempts to explain the tendency of subjectification of meanings. We combine that model with the theoretical assumptions of Grammaticalization (HOPPER; TRAUGOTT, 2003), that are relevant to this research since the changes investigated by us affect both meaning and morphosyntax. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 15/21358-6 - The role of contexts in the changes of grammaticalization and subjetification: a diachronic study of the constructions with agora and now |
| Grantee: | Luísa Ferrari |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Master |