Prosody as a formal parameter in a constructional analysis of insubordinate adversative conditional constructions in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Recently, there are many studies that deal with a linguistic phenomenon related to the non-prototypical use of complex sentences which is not considered by normative grammar. It is the case of constructions that although presenting some subordination mark, are used independently without being related to a matrix clause, a phenomenon characterized as "insubordination" (EVANS, 2007 2009).This project aims to describe the uses of insubordinate conditional constructions with an adversative value in Brazilian Portuguese, which are not yet fully described in this language (ALVES, 2019). For this purpose, prosody is considered as one of the formal aspects of this type of construction. In studies on insubordination in Spanish (Schwenter, 2016, Garcia, 2017), prosody proved to be fundamental to delineate the syntactic independence of these constructions, because intonation seems to be the only distinguishing element between elliptical and insubordinate constructions when there is segmental stimuli for each of the structures. Even though Brazilian Portuguese is an intonational language and some of its meanings are determined prosodically, the relations between syntax and prosody are little explored and there are few studies that analyze insubordinate constructions in Portuguese through the interrelation between these two linguistic levels (SILVESTRE, 2017).In this project, we consider this phenomenon as a result of the correlation between formal and functional aspects in a constructional perspective of language, following Goldberg (2006). Thus, we intend to analyze insubordinate adversative conditional constructions as a pair of form and meaning that configures a type of construction. In this sense, prosodic aspects will be treated as essential to a better understanding concerning the formal codification of these constructions, which has not yet been addressed within the Construction Grammar theoretical.