To see as a marker of contextual salience in romance languages

evidence from Acadian French and Brazilian Portuguese

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-5794-e13711

Keywords:

pragmatic marker, perception verbs, romance languages, grammaticalization, semantic bleaching

Abstract

This paper discusses constructions found in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and Acadian French (AF), in which the equivalents of to see accompanies a second verb in imperative utterances. In these constructions in BP and AF to see emphasizes the command expressed by the other verb. The BP construction can also have an additional interpretation, in which vê ‘seeimperative,2,singular’ has the meaning ‘to verify’. It is proposed that BP constructions can be associated to two different structures. The constructions with the ‘to verify’ meaning are treated as biclausal structures in which the verb ver ‘to see’ selects for a CP headed by the complementizer se ‘if’. As for the analysis of the emphatic order meaning associated to the BP and AF constructions, we adopt the proposals put forth in Speas & Tenny (2003) and Hill (2007, 2014) according to which conversational pragmatics is encoded in syntax as a predicative structure (Speech Act Projection - SAP) above CP. Following these ideas, we analyze BP and AF emphatic order constructions as monoclausal structures, where vê in BP and voir in AF are injunctive pragmatic markers that are externally merged into the SA head in order to encode a pragmatic relation.

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Author Biographies

Catherine Léger, University of Victoria (UVIC). Faculty of Humanities. Victoria - BC - Canadá

Catherine Léger joined the Department of French at the University of Victoria in 2010, where she teaches French language and linguistics courses. Her research focuses mainly in two areas: the pragmatic/syntax/semantic interface and different aspects of Acadian French, especially Chiac a long-stigmatized variety of Acadian French spoken in southeastern New Brunswick that emerged from intense contact with English. She has worked on clausal complementation in French (including on issues related to factive complements and aspectual verbs) and discursive markers and borrowings from English in Acadian French.

Marcus Lunguinho, Universidade de Brasília (UnB). Instituto de Letras. Brasília - DF - Brasil

Marcus Lunguinho holds a Master's in Linguistics from the University of Brasília (2005) and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of São Paulo (2011). During his PhD he was a visiting student at the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is currently a full professor in the Department of Linguistics, Portuguese and Classical Languages at the University of Brasília. His research is part of the theoretical framework of Generative Theory in its Minimalist version and focuses on the description and analysis of morphosyntactic phenomena of the verbal and nominal domains. In the verbal domain, his interests are: 1) auxiliary verbs and their morphosyntactic properties (synchronic and diachronic perspective), 2) grammaticalization of verbs, 3) selection of auxiliaries, 4) morphosyntactic dependencies, 5) non-finite domain syntax, 6 ) typology of participles (adjectives, perfectives, passives and innovators), 7) passive sentence properties, 8) modal verbs, 9) aspectual verbs and 10) syntactic alternations. In the nominal domain, his interests are: 1) vocative and syntax-pragmatic articulation, 2) syntactic organization of possession relationships (possessive, internal possessors and possessors external to the DP), 3) quantification and modification phenomena and 4) mechanisms of internal agreement with the DP.

Patrícia de Araujo Rodrigues, Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR). Setor de Ciências Humanas. Curitiba - PR - Brasil

Patricia Rodrigues has an M.A and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She is a full professor at the Federal University of Parana (Curitiba, Brazil), at the Department of Literature and Linguistics where she teaches and supervises students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her research interests focus on syntax and its interfaces with semantics and pragmatics. In 2017-18, she conducted a postdoctoral research under the supervision of Prof. Sergio Menuzzi at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) on causal clauses. From 2013 to 2019 she worked as editor-in-chief and as associated editor of Revista Letras.

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Published

08/11/2021

How to Cite

LÉGER, C.; LUNGUINHO, M.; RODRIGUES, P. de A. To see as a marker of contextual salience in romance languages : evidence from Acadian French and Brazilian Portuguese. ALFA: Revista de Linguística, São Paulo, v. 65, 2021. DOI: 10.1590/1981-5794-e13711. Disponível em: https://periodicos.fclar.unesp.br/alfa/article/view/13711. Acesso em: 17 jul. 2024.

Issue

Vol. 65 (2021)

Section

Papers

License

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