Os domínios funcionais do gerúndio em Língua Portuguesa

Abstract

This thesis deals with the study of constructions with gerund in Portuguese, researched from data from XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX and XX centuries, by the theoretical perspective of North American Functionalism, to get three main purposes: a) to compose a diachronic corpus of similar nature and characteristic, determined by regular parameters in order to analyze the functioning of the constructions with gerund in Brazilian and European Portuguese, in synchronic and diachronic perspective, establishing an equal sample of the material analyzed; b) to describe the tense-aspect functional domain of gerund, in which the functions of tense, aspect and modality are codified; c) to describe the aspect-circumstantial functional domain of the gerund in which the circumstances are associated with the aspect. It was found 3,910 ocurrences of gerund, 1,671 from them are distributed in tense-aspect domain and 2,239 are distributed in circumstantial-aspect domain. The gerund constructions were submitted to statistical analysis in Goldvarx program, whose frequency of use was verified from the following categories: syntactic-semantic values, circumstantial values, tense notions, aspect notions, modality, grounding, century and variety of Portuguese. The results were analyzed by Markedness Principle, proposed by Givón (1990, 1991), and they have revealed that: in the tense-aspect functional domain, the adjective gerund and coordinated gerund appear as marked categories; independent gerund, imperative gerund and connective gerund as intermediate categories; and the narrative and descriptive gerund as marked categories. In the circumstantial-aspect functional domain, the circumstances of mood, tense, cause are non- marked categories; the circumstances of consequence, condition and finality are intermediate categories; and the circumstances of concession, proportion, comparison and conformity are marked circumstances.