UMA ANÁLISE DE PODE CRER À LUZ DOS MODELOS BASEADOS NO USO

Abstract

This master's thesis focuses on the analysis of the expression pode crer (you may know) as a discursive marker (hereinafter, DM) in the Portuguese language. DMs are expressions with a strong pragmatic value, which indicate, among other aspects, how the speaker wants the utterance to be understood by the hearer (BYBEE, 2020[2015]). Composed of the auxiliary modal verb poder (to may) and the cognitive verb crer (to believe), pode crer can be seen as DM in this occurrence, from speakers A and B: A – Aconteceu (atraso) comigo no começo da pandemia, mas uma hora chegou. Eles tão sobrecarregados e com funcionários a menos. (It happened (delay) with me at the beginning of the pandemic, but a time came it. They are so overworked and understaffed). B – pode crer (you may know) (Twitter.com). The general objective of this research was to observe changes in pode crer throughout the history of the Portuguese language, demarcating formal and functional aspects that triggered its most recent role, that of DM. It is estimated that the type of change that has occurred can be explained by usage-based models (CROFT; CRUSE, 2004; BYBEE, 2010; TRAUGOTT; TROUSDALE, 2013), which defend language as a network of constructions, formed by a relationship symbolic in a form with meaning. Thus, the study had as specific objectives to define, on the one hand, the traits that currently allocate expression in the DM group and, on the other hand, to explore issues of constructional change, as pode crer not always present characteristics in line with such a grouping. In this way, pode crer proved to be a genuine pairing of form and meaning, since, over the centuries covered (XVI to XXI), it was affected by the restructuring of form and establishment of a new meaning, that of assent, as in occurrence above. The corpus was built through the Corpus do Português site, one diachronic (DAVIES; FERREIRA, 2006), corresponding to the 16th to 20th centuries, and another synchronic (DAVIES, 2016), representing the 20th century. In addition to the most recent uses of the aforementioned database, data from the year 2020 were collected from the social network Twitter. The results suggest that pode crer was born from a set of diverse uses in the initial centuries until its conventionalization as a DM, gradually becoming less compositional and more schematic, integrating the network [pode + V]DM within the Portuguese language, specializing as denoting assent.