As construções com o verbo botar: aspectos relativos à gramatização

Abstract

The present dissertation describes the behave of the botar verb considering, in a grammaticalization continuum, two extremes for the categorization of its usage extensions: full verb predicator and support verb. The research focuses the use of botar constructions + NP/PP in Portuguese and it also defines the morphosyntatic and semantic properties that “botar” takes on when it is linked to the support verb category. The thorough investigation about the selection properties of botar and its syntatic-semantic behavior in botar constructions + NP counted with data that belong to the oral and written corpora from brazilian portuguese. The investigation provided subsidies to describe different usages of botar in the mentioned structure and, thus, delineate a grammaticalization chain of botar (from predicator verb to support verb). The results show that the productivity of botar for each one of the two regional varieties (Rio de Janeiro e Ceará) is more productive in the popular oral norm of Ceará. In the oral cultured Portuguese of Fortaleza, we noticed a smaller frequency of the botar verb, confirming our hyposthesis of that the grammaticalization process is slower in the cultured modality, though, even in smaller amount, there are already grammaticalization evidences. After a general analysis in the XIX and XX centuries, we noticed that there is a frequency increase of the botar verb during the centuries. This fact confirms that the verb is in a continuous process of grammaticalization. The results also demonstrate that the complex structures with botar gather constructions whose components (support verb + non-verbal element) present six integration levels. The description of each one of these levels (with the parameters defined in the analysis and the examples extracted from the corpora) showed that the botar verb, in the support verb category, can take part in more integrated structures as well as in less integrated ones, depending on whether these constructions get closer or move away of the prototype of a construction with a support verb.