The role of contexts in the changes of grammaticalization and subjetification: a diachronic study of the constructions with agora and now

Abstract

This research project has the major purpose of investigating the performance of human cognition in two specific types of linguistic change, that tend to take place together: the grammaticalization and the subjectification. Believing, in the basis of Traugott (1988), in a close relation between cognition and contextual changes which constitute the intermediate stages of the processes of change focused, since, according to the author, an essential cognitive mechanism - the strengthening of informativeness - is in the basis of these contextual changes -, we intend, in a more specific scope, to investigate the role of contexts in the processes of grammaticalization and subjectification. For this purpose, we propose a diachronic study of two instances of change undergone by two different languages. The instances refer to the changes observed in the constructions with agora, in Portuguese, and in the constructions with now, in English. These constructions have, in present-day Portuguese and English, both the meaning of time (their original meaning) and the meaning of contrast, that, in relation to the first, can be considered more grammatical, since it establishes internal relations to language and, therefore, is more abstract. In addition to more grammatical, it is also more subjective: it is highly based on the speaker/writer's beliefs and subjective attitudes. The fact that different languages undergo similar paths of change indicates the existence of universal tendencies of change, resulted from cognitive operations, that go beyond the specificities of languages. In this way, in order to confirm such tendencies, this project intends to find possible generalizations concerning the role of contexts in the change and, therefore, of the performance of human cognition in language. (AU)