A construção [X-vel]Adjetivo: uma abordagem funcional centrada no uso

Abstract

Adjectives formed by suffix -vel in Brazilian Portuguese are the focus of this study, considering as a construction, such as form-meaning pairing. The main objective is to describe both formally and functionally the [X-vel]Adjective Construction. LinguísticaFuncionalCentrada no Uso is being used as theoretical support, as shown by Cezario and Furtado da Cunha (2013), Oliveira and Rosário (2015). This research stream is the combination of US Functionalism (Talmy Givón, Paul Hopper, Joan Bybee, Sandra Thompson) with Construction Grammar (Adele Goldberg, William Croft, Elizabeth Traugott and Graeme Trousdale). That investigation is based on the notion that languages consists of a hierarchal and interrelated construction network. For this, it is based on the methodological assumptions of qualitative research backed by quantitative research. The data collection is carried out mainly from Corpus Discurso e Gramática (Corpus D&G), that are composed of both oral and written texts, and subdivided into five text types, which were generated by informants from five Brazilian cities and with different levels of education. In addition, texts of different typologies in virtual environments, which were obtained from Google server, have also been used. The research results confirm the importance of studies about adjectives formed by suffix -vel from its formal and functional aspects, bringing up several motivations pertinent to its usage. Moreover, part of occurrences confirms the existence of semantic extension process associated to both transitive scenes and argumentative structure underlying to derivational basis in the formation of these adjectives. Thereby, it validates the previous idea that some of them preserve both passivity and possibility meanings, since they are related to passive/non-agentive referents.