Análise funcionalista das estratégias de negação do português oral culto de Fortaleza: um estudo de caso

Abstract

This present paper aims at analyzing the three strategies of negation which occur in the oral Portuguese from Fortaleza city: canonical pre-verbal, double and post-verbal negatives, respectively, trough two documented records in PORCUFORT (Formal Oral Portuguese of Fortaleza). To this end, we will reflect about principles of iconicity, as were postulated by functionalist Givón, and reflect about economy, as Zipf, in view of the existence of some conflicts between these two postulates. In support of research, we used primarily the comments made by Maria Angelica Furtado da Cunha, in her work entitled O modelo das motivações competidoras no domínio funcional da negação. Our hypothesis consists that the youngest speaker, who makes more use of the informal modality, would use more often the new strategies of denial The results achieved with this present research were extremely important and signalizing their validity for further studies, because they show that grammar is in a continuous process of transformation due to the linguistical choices that speakers do constantly.