O quê? Trabalhar? Ele? O sentido de incongruência na construção de reação de incredulidade

Abstract

This study focuses on the Incredulity Response Construction (IRC), a closed-class form with a fairly extraordinary meaning for a schematic grammatical construction. I will attempt to demonstrate that although the IRC does have semantic content, it is much more general and inclusive than is assumed in the cognitive literature. Furthermore, the meaning of the IRC can be derived from the construction’s form. These two characteristics—general meaning and an iconic relation between form and meaning—suggest that the IRC does not represent a problem for the traditional lexicon-syntax division.