"Cortei o cabelo ou tive o cabelo cortado?": análise baseada em corpus para a construção de ação causada em Português Brasileiro

Abstract

The pattern instantiated by [I cut the hair] is the most conventional form in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) for when someone says they went to the salon and had their hair cut with a hairdresser. This pattern can be understood as an argument structure construction, called here as caused-action, in which the transitive form [NP V NP] is associated with the meaning of an indirectly caused activity (CIRÍACO, 2014a; SANTOS, CIRÍACO & SOUZA, 2019). Based on Usage-Based Linguistics (BARLOW, KEMMER, 2000), Corpus Linguistics (SARDINHA, 2004), Goldberg’s Construction Grammar (1995, 2006, 2019), and on the hypothesis of Ciríaco (2014a), this study aimed at verifying whether the caused-action construction is restricted to the functional context of provision of services through a search in corpus (Corpus Brasileiro – Sketch Engine) and in social network (Twitter). Another goal is to describe the semantic and pragmatic aspects associated with the construction. As a result, it is possible to confirm the construction’s functional restrictions and its most frequently used verbs. The analysis also allows us to observe that the meaning of the construction can be associated with both the transitive form [NP V NP] and the competing form [NP V NP [com/em NP]], with the former being preferred, given the context of provision of services. Finally, this study also shows how the construction can have its meaning changed to meet the different communicative needs of the speakers, depending on the sociohistorical context, such as the pandemic one.