Functional motivations for syntagmatic discontinuity

Author(s)

Nathalia Pereira de Souza Martins

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São José do Rio Preto. 2020-02-28.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Instituto de Biociências Letras e Ciências Exatas. São José do Rio Preto
• Defense date: 2020-02-17
• Advisor: Roberto Gomes Camacho

Abstract

The phenomenon this paper focuses on is the noun phrase (Np) that presents noncanonical order of its constituent parts, called “discontinuous” by Keizer (2007), as well as the Np itself displaced from its most canonical position in a clause. The analysis and description of discontinuity, in both cases, aims to examine, based on the theoretical framework of Functional Discourse Grammar (HENGEVELD; MACKENZIE, 2008), which pragmatic, semantic and formal factors motivate the speaker’s choice to select specific morphosyntactic encodings to these Nps in spoken and written Portuguese. According to the theoretical perspective adopted, the most appropriate method for explaining the complexity of these variations is to assume that principles in interaction and possibly in competition determine the order of constituents in the Np and the order of Np in the clause. The sample examined was extracted from the Iboruna Corpus, which was conceived by the Functional Grammar Research Group (Grupo de Pesquisa em Gramática Funcional), of São Paulo State University (UNESP) at São José do Rio Preto, and also from texts of the online magazine CartaCapital. As methodological procedures, the following analysis parameters were listed: (i) interpersonal: pragmatic and rhetorical functions of the elements; (ii) representational: type of semantic entity and the semantic relation between the elements; (iii) and morphosyntactic: morphosyntactic constitution of the elements and structural weight. The analysis shows that the end-focus principle has greater relevance in spoken language, while the principle of structural complexity plays a more significant role in written language. Furthermore, it is found that the prototypical discontinuous Np is characterized by interference of elements between the head noun and its post-nuclear modifiers. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/26963-0 - Functional motivations for noun phrase discontinuity
• Grantee: Nathalia Pereira de Souza Martins
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master