Evidencialidade e gramaticalização: uma análise discursivo-funcional de verbos de percepção em espanhol

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the grammaticalization process of perception verbs (VdP) with evidential use in Spanish (LE). The grammaticalization in Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is a functional expansion process of linguistic items between layers and levels of the grammatical hierarchy (HENGEVELD ET AL., 2017). To achieve the established aim, we adopted the functionalist approach of FDG to analyze and describe the pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic behaviors of VdP, considering the categories of the Interpersonal, Representational, and Morphosyntactic Levels. With this functionalist approach, we investigate the most prototypical VdP of the Spanish language, according to Jansegers (2017), namely: ‘ver’, ‘mirar’, ‘oír’, ‘escuchar’, ‘oler’, ‘olfatear’, ‘tocar’, ‘sentir’, ‘probar’ and ‘notar’. For this, we used Corpus de Referência del Español (CREA), available online, to identify the occurrence of VdP in LE. To build our sample and collect the occurrences, we established the criteria Medium (written), Geographic (Spain), and Theme (Various testimonies). After data collection, we made a quali-quantitative analysis of the six VdP with evidential use, based on the established analysis categories. After the analysis, we find that 'ver' presents a process of grammaticalization more advanced than the other verbs, for showing a greater widening of its scope, acting in the Communicative Content layer, at the Interpersonal Level, and in the Propositional Content, Episode, and State of Affairs layers, at the Representational Level. Next, we found that 'notar' also presents a greater widening scope, acting in the Propositional Content, Episode, and State of Affairs layers, at the Representational Level. The 'oír' acts in the Communicated Content, Episode and State of Affairs layers, at the Representational Level. The 'sentir' also goes through a grammaticalization process, but in smaller expansion, compared to 'ver', 'notar' and 'oír'. However, the 'oler' and 'escuchar' verbs did not present enough data for us to be able to generalize or point out possible paths of grammaticalization.