Impersonal expressions in Brazilian academic speech
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2017.1.25061Keywords:
Sociofunctionalism, Impersonalisation, Verbal microconstructions.Abstract
This paper deals with the comparability of microconstructions with ter-se and haver (in english, there to be) related to the functional area of discursive and pragmatic impersonality, to impersonality grammatical construction. This study describes, according to Sociofunctionalism, the increase of frequency of the recurrence to instances of the microconstruction with ter-se in an interval of time and the restrictions of the (stable) variation of uses of such grammatical form with the ones of the microconstruction with verb haver: the academic area and the semantic of the SN, for example. The change which is observed at the microconstruction which contains ter-se is explained by its sytactic fixation and the association of its indefinite meaning use with an impersonal (existential or presentational) meaning, phenomenon which gives rise to its functionalequivalence with haver and its use as a discursive strategy to dim the speaker presence. The results are based on the statistical and qualitative analysis of the uses detected in the academic texts from different areas of knowledge. We also aim, as far as possible, to contribute to debates about the locus of variation at studies developed according to Construction Grammar, which has been dedicated to linguistic change phenomenon.
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