The contexts of change in attributive SNLoc: a study of lexical constructionalization in Portuguese

Abstract

Based on Usage-Based Functional Linguistics, we aim to study the SNLoc attributive construction in use in contemporary Portuguese, resulting from the strong integration of its subparts - SN and locative adverbial pronoun. In a panchronic perspective, it is taken as basis the Corpus of Portuguese, for analyzing past sync, and the Corpus Discurso & Gramática, to investigate the uses of the twentieth century. Through these corpora, we carried out a primarily qualitative study and proved the hypothesis that SNLoc attributive is a marginal member of the class of Portuguese names, resulting from lexical constructionalization. The linguistic change that results such scheme starts in untypical contexts, in deictic uses more references, such as physical deictic (“when I was three years old ... I fell ... so there is even the scar here...”) and cataphoric deictic (“I plan to do another course there at the university”). Through anaphoric deictic uses (“there is a nice passageway from the kitchen to the living room ... with a small balcony ... that we will make a bar there”) and virtual deictic (“put the oil ... so on ... put the chicken ... then let the chicken there...”), which constitute critical contexts, with ambiguities of meaning and form, it reaches to the SNLoc attributive construction, in an isolating context. There are cases like: “then started running ... running ... running and the man behind him ... then ... then he took a girl there totally crazy ... " A new constructional scheme of language is formed, in the lexical level, assuming a meaning of vagueness and uncertainty, distinct from its original meaning.