Argument structure and valency: the grammatical relation direct object

Abstract

This paper addresses the grammatical relation direct object, with the aim of analyzing the varying discourse manifestations of this element. As a result of this analysis, it is proposed a gradient treatment of objecthood, by means of a scale which ranks the direct object according to its degree of prototipicality. The research follows a functional perspective on language study, discussing syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects of the direct object, and considering the syntactic properties as derived from semantic and pragmatic properties of the verb the direct object is related to. The data for this study come from eight conversational narratives, collected from Corpus Discurso & Gramática: a língua falada e escrita na cidade do Natal.