Indefinite phrases with focus informational function in Brazilian Portuguese:

a theoretical investigation of the semantic and pragmatic particularities

Abstract

This work claims to investigate the semantic and pragmatic phenomena in dialogs of Brazilian Portuguese (BP). More specifically, the research claims to analyze dialogs that are composed of yes/no questions and answers in which there is an indefinite nominal phrase with informational focus function. This phrase can be to occur in canonical position, or it can be dislocated. The research was motivated by XXXX (2017) who affirm that quantification indefinite phrases with a focus function can trigger distinct inferences, depending on several factors such as: syntactic structure (canonical, dislocation), semantic questions, context of use. From creating dialogues, the work seeks to present a formal logic proposal for to explain the acceptability of answers with focus indefinite. From the investigated data, we conclude that the question kind and the set inserted by the question influence the acceptability of the answer. Furthermore, the semantics criteria such as congruence between the question and the answer are necessary, for the acceptability of sentences with indefinite focus, but not sufficient. In addition to congruence, the pragmatic strategies are needed so that responses with focus indefinite phrases, both in their canonical and dislocation position, are suitable for a given question given in the context.