Demonstrativos no português brasileiro e no romeno: um estudo comparado em narrativas históricas e em peças teatrais de comédia

Abstract

This study presents a comparative analysis concerning the demonstratives of two Romance languages – Brazilian Portuguese and Romanian – according to the functionalist point of view of Linguistics. It is intended here to demonstrate in more details the functioning of the demonstratives’ system of both languages, establishing relations between them by collecting empirical data through the analysis of corpora. According to researches already conducted by Câmara Jr. (1971), Pavani (1987), Roncarati (2003), Cambraia (2008, 2010, 2015), Marine (2005, 2009) and Ramalho (2016), the theory dedicated to the category of demonstratives in traditional grammars does not seem to account for their actual performed functions, since phenomena such as the simplification of the use of the forms este/esse/aquele to only two forms (binarism) and the use of adverbial adjunction have been verified over time. These facts suggest the necessity to seek for theoretical models that take into account the internal and external factors which would help to elucidate these processes based on this study and, consequently, the collected data, which is the reason the typological-functional model of Givón (2001) was chosen. As corpora, the textual genres of theatrical comedy and historical narrative are analyzed, considering the stylistic aspects of each genre. In order to establish a diachronic panorama of the linguistic processes involved, the twelve texts comprised in the corpora (six of which in Brazilian Portuguese and six in Romanian) are separated by three distinct periods: the first period of analysis is situated in the second half of the 19th century; the following, in the first half of the 20th century; the last, in the second half of the 20th century. The first 150 occurrences of demonstratives from each text were categorized and analyzed under morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic criteria, in order to test the research hypotheses: Brazilian Portuguese would be moving towards a binary system of demonstratives, as already verified in Romanian; the F2 form (esse and its inflexions) of the BP would be more common in the theatrical textual genre (more innovative standard) than the F1 form (este and its inflexions), in the same way that, in the same genre, the use of simple forms of the RO (ăsta/ăla and their inflexions) would be more frequent than the reinforced ones (acest/acel and their inflexions); the behavior of the neutral grammatical gender in the demonstratives’ system would be different in BP and RO, since, in the earlier, the neutral is restricted to three forms (isto/isso/aquilo) and, in the latter, it constitutes a full grammatical genre. After analysis and discussions, the raised hypotheses were evaluated and confirmed, concluding that, in fact, there is a change in the BP demonstratives in relation to the simplification from a ternary system to a binary one, and this change is more evident and efficient in the theatrical textual genre, which is closer to orality. In RO, the same happens with the frequency of simple forms, generally used in oral contexts. As for the neutral in BP and RO, the frequency of demonstratives with such grammatical gender is different in each language, both in relation to the functions performed by it and in frequency of use.