When speaking becomes demanding: the construction FALAR PARA V. infinitive in Portuguese, a cognitive explanation

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on the construction FALAR PARA V.infinitive in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), in oral and written modalities, in contexts in which a manipulative sense emerges. The sharing of semantic-grammatical domains between the verbs pedir (to ask) and falar (to speak), such as the conceptualization of communicative activity through the use of the word and the possibility of finite and nonfinite complements, directed us to an investigation on the similarities and differences the constructions with these verbs exhibit. Based on this, we contrasted with European Portuguese (EP), in the same synchrony, taking into account the cognitive belief that semantic diversities are the result of different conceptualizations. Therefore, we try to identify the cognitive operations involved in the conceptualization processes profiled by the speaker´s choice, considering both conventionality and semantic change. The concepts of perspectivization and subjetification, taken from Traugott´s (1989), Traugott and Dasher´s (2002) and Langacker´s (2008) studies, oriented our data analysis, which highlights the construction FALAR PARA V.infinitive as an instance of the process of semantic change in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), in both oral and written modalities.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2018n46a1146