Uma descrição funcional das orações de finalidade

Abstract

This study entitled "A functional description of the purpose statements” has as its object the purpose statements introduced by the conjunctive phrases in order to and so that, the prepositional phrase in order to and by the preposition to in data of spoken and written Portuguese language in Brazil, in a functional-descriptive perspective. The final adverbial sentence expresses the intent, the aim and purpose of the statement expressed in the main clause or nuclear sentence. Descriptive analysis focuses on functionalist theory of several authors as Dik (1989), Hengeveld (1998), Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2008), Sweetser (1990), among others. The occurrences of spoken and written language data found in the Corpus of Portuguese, available at: <http://www.corpusdoportugues.org>, analyze the following parameters: (a) formal device used in construction: preposition or conjunction; (b) meaning indicated by the connector (for, in order that, so that); (c) semantic dominances and suggested and studied by Sweetser (1990): content dominance or predictive dominance; epistemic dominance and act of speech or pragmatic dominance; (d) pragmatic function of topic or focus; (e) position that the purpose sentence occupy in relation to the main clause: prepended, postponed or interspersed and (f) verb forms which occur in matrix sentence and verb forms that occur in purpose statements ; such analysis are done within the formal, semantic and discourse-pragmatic structures. This paper intends to see how the speakers of a language in common use verbal interaction in order to be successful as their communicative intentions. It can be concluded that the conjunctive phrases "in order to " and " so that" are set as conjunction , working as a function and the prepositional phrase and preposition " in order to" and "to" are set as a preposition ,working as the purpose .The conjunctive phrases approach the function of purpose , establishing ,indeed, an end, while the other connectors just establish the connection between the compound periods of purpose.