The NP+V+NPBARE construction and the cognitive process of chunking

Abstract

This paper is part of the dissertation being developed by Aline dos Santos Silva, which focuses on the NP+V+NP_BARE construction in Brazilian Portuguese. The aim is to look into the constructs of this construction that form chunks in digital texts. To achieve this goal, we characterize the subschemas of this construction in terms of both the verbs that constitute them and the properties of schematicity, productivity and compositionality. We seek to demonstrate how the constructional patterns are distributed on a continuum according to the degree of weakening of the verb lexical meaning. We analyze the morphosyntax and the semantics of these chunks, as well as some of the discursive-pragmatic functions that they can perform. These functions, and the lexical gap that some of these chunks fill in, show the motivation for the existence and the use of these syntactic-semantic unities. The analysis follows the theoretical and methodological framework of Usage-based Functional Linguistics (FURTADO DA CUNHA; BISPO; SILVA, 2013) combined with Construction Grammar (TRAUGOTT; TROUSDALE, 2013; BYBEE, 2016 [2010]).