As orações pseudo-relativas modalizadoras: aspectos formais e funcionais

Abstract

This work intends to reflect about the syntactic, semantic and discursive aspects associated to the use of pseudo relative sentences with modal remarks. To begin with, we tried to verify if, in traditional grammars, former and latter ones to NGB, and in descriptive grammars of the Portuguese language, as well as in the linguistic research about the relative sentences, there is a reference to the kind of construction we labeled as pseudo relative modal sentences. From this initial bibliographical overview, we saw that this construction seems to have been neglected by grammarians and linguists, because there is almost no allusion to it. With functionalist theorical guiding, we sought, then, to proceed a qualitative analysis about the properties of the pseudo relative modal construction. The analysis of the observed facts, mainly in blogs available on Internet, revealed us that the pseudo relative modal construction a) shows an embedding relation; b) is formed with Action, Process or State verbs; c) it shows verbs that, in general, are cognition and elocution ones, working as matrix predicates carrying propositions with epistemic modality and evidentiality values; d) it hás associated, frequently, to the Argument 1 of these verbs the trace [+ Exp]; e) apparently tends to occur in background excerpts; f) it has, usually, in the former SN, a referred data or at least, identifiable by the interlocutor. From this qualitative analysis of the phenomenon, we intend to provide contributions to possible research about the phenomenon we name here pseudo relative modal.