A expressão da evidencialidade no português escrito do século XX no contexto dos gêneros textuais

Abstract

The present study investigates, under the functionalist perspective, the manifestation of evidentiality in 20th century written Portuguese in the context of textual genres. Given the Functional Discourse Grammar theoretical-methodological support (FDG - HENGEVELD; MACKENZIE, 2008), we analyzed the correlation between the expression of evidentiality and discursive and cognitive conditioning originated from the Narrative genres (NGs), Report genres (RGs), Argumentative genres (AGs), Expository genres (EGs) and Prescription Genres (PGs). For this, we used the Minimum Corpus of Written Texts in Portuguese (2006), in which we selected 400 pages written in the twentieth century in Portugal and Brazil. With the aid of SPSS computer program, we observed that the Report evidentiality is more used in the RGs, in the EGs and in the AGs, assuming different report effects, depending on the capacity of language involved in the group. The Inferred evidentiality occurs more frequently in the AGs, suggesting that this evidential strategy is conditioned by the communicative need to reach conclusions from premises (data). The Genericity evidentiality is recurrent in the AGs and in the EGs, demonstrating that its use is motivated by the actions of expository and argumentative language. The Event Perception evidentiality is related to narration, in the real world (RGs) or the fictional world (NGs), from the facts obtained directly. The PGs are the least favor the expression of evidentiality, presented almost always in the Report form. At a Rhetorical-textual level, we found that the textual sequence determines the choices made in the evidential plan. The Report evidentiality predominates in the explanatory and in the narrative sequences. The Inferred evidentiality and genericity are more frequent argumentative sequences. Perception Event occurs more often in narrative sequence. The Report evidentiality predominates in dialogical and descriptive sequences. At an Interpersonal level, the evidential units perform functions related to pragmatic motivations inherent to groupings of genres. The textual-rhetorical function, related to the organizational construction of the text, is more common in NGs, manifesting itself in the Report and Event Perception form. The pragmatic function, linked to argumentative needs of the speaker, predominates in the AGs and the RGs, expressing itself by Inferred and Report marks. The informational function, which relates to the knowledge of the speaker’s world, is more recurrent in the EGs and the PGs, externalizing as a Report or genericity unit. At a Representational Level, the data show that, in most cases, the speaker, while presenting the information source, means also for obtaining this information. At a Morphosyntactic Level, the Linguistic Expression (composed of two clauses) and the prepositional phrase are the most frequent manifestation of evidentiality. Finally, the data suggest that there is an alignment between the cognitive-pragmatic categories and evidentiality codification, reflected in the preference for direct order from the evidential statement, represented at the occurrences through a constructed Linguistic Expression by an explicit source of information (lexical or pronominal), by an unmarked axiological value verb (Report mark) and the content asserted in the form of indirect speech.