Porco polastrel, l’è cossì, lora: multifuncionalidade de marcadores discursivos em Talian

Abstract

Talian is a Brazilian language that emerged from contact among Northern Italian linguistic varieties especially those of Venetian origin and Southern Brazilian Portuguese, and is spoken by Italian-descendant communities in southern Brazil. Although its development has not been based exclusively on orality, but also on written practices, radio constitutes an important domain for its circulation, where spontaneous and highly interactive linguistic practices are manifested. This study aims to describe and analyze the multifunctional behavior of the discourse markers adesso, anca, cossì, giusto, lora, nò, and si, originally adverbial and adjectival forms in radio-broadcast Talian, from the perspective of the North American Functionalist approach, with particular attention to processes of contact-induced grammaticalization resulting from language contact between Talian and Brazilian Portuguese. The study is based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of a corpus consisting of radio programs broadcast in Talian. The results indicate that the recurrence of certain discourse markers is associated with the expansion of their pragmatic-discursive functions, revealing patterns of multifunctionality. Of the 209 tokens identified, lora/alora is the most frequent marker, followed by si and nò, whereas giusto and cossì display significant productivity in the textual and interactional organization of discourse. The findings reveal a predominance of the interpersonal domain, with nò, si, and cossì functioning mainly in interpersonal negotiation, followed by the textual domain, in which discourse markers such as lora/alora and giusto contribute to discourse organization. The ideational domain, represented by anca and adesso/desso, exhibits lower productivity. These patterns point to processes that may be described as contact-induced grammaticalization resulting from the influence of Brazilian Portuguese, the majority language, whose increasing presence in the repertoires of Italian- descendant communities exerts continuous and progressive pressure on Talian. Such processes are fostered by the public, mediated, and partially monitored nature of radio orality, which combines planned or semi-scripted segments with moments of greater interactional openness, where the effects of language contact on the functional behavior of the analyzed items become more apparent. The data suggest that Talian constitutes a dynamic and emerging linguistic system, shaped by language use and contact, with radio serving as a potentially central space for the circulation, diffusion, and stabilization of innovative linguistic practices