As construções condicionais em cartas pessoais do português brasileiro: uma análise baseada no uso

Abstract

The present dissertation investigated, through a constructional approach, conditional constructions in a synchronic sample of written Brazilian Portuguese. Conditional constructs are formed by two propositions (protasis and apodosis) that maintain an interdependence and an unfit relationship between them. In this relation, formal and functional factors act for conditional meaning to be established. Thus, we verify the linguistic (formal-functional) and contextual motivations that act in the use of the conditional microconstructions of the sample. In addition, we sought to identify and schematize the patterns of recurrent conditional uses in the sample, as well as to correlate the constructions' modality with the propositions' temporal expression. At the discursive level, we propose to understand the correspondence between the syntactic form and usage context - the communicative situation to which the conditional construction belongs. The research followed the theoretical-methodological assumptions of Usage-Based Linguistics supported by the Construction Grammar model (CG). The UsageBased Linguistics expands the scope of analysis since it covers the contextual dimension in the phenomenon description. Furthermore, it characterizes the construction as a symbolic pairing between form and meaning, dependent on the linguistic and discursive context. Concerning the methodology, the present research is of qualitative natures, as it describes the data according to the motivations implied in the use of conditional constructions, but does not rule out, however, the measurement of the propositions' usage frequency. The drawn sample consisted of 24 (twenty-four) personal letters written in a specific context, referred to as “goodbye letters”. The letters belong to the project “Variação e Mudança do Português no Oeste de Santa Catarina" (VMPOSC), and were obtained from the CEOM. As a result, we found a continuum between form and meaning, the components of conditional constructions in the sample. In this sense, the motivation for using conditional constructions is not only syntactic but also semanticpragmatic. The evaluated constructions lie in the process of constructional change of language, once the found differences match the form, as their meaning (semantic-pragmatic function) is preserved - that is, the proposal of a condition, be a reinforcement of the interlocutor's point of view, a speaker's prediction, or to express the attitudes of i.e. probability, uncertainty or desire. Thus, the conditional constructions of the sample are linked by already existing relationships in the constructional network, and therefore do not entail new linguistic nodes.