Deixis na Romania Nova: o lugar dos demonstrativos no portugues de Belo Horizonte e no espanhol da Cidade do Mexico

Abstract

The relationship between human language and the outside world has been on the focus of several different fields of research under a number of perspectives. As far as deixis is concerned, it is argued that cultures divide, analyze, and classify space in different ways (ULLMANN, 1966, p. 68). The aim of this paper is to understand how deictic reference functions in two varieties of Romania Nova, namely, Portuguese spoken in Belo Horizonte and Spanish spoken in Mexico City, with special focus on the productivity of the demonstrative + locative construction. It is known that there are two main trends in romance languages: the dropping of one of the demonstratives, thus rendering an initially three-element structure simpler, with only two elements; and the eventual joining of a locative to these elements (CAMBRAIA & BIANCHET, 2008, p. 29). The aforementioned trends seem to bear some sort of relation since the loss of semantic information brought forward by the rearranging of the demonstrative elements appears to be balanced by the spatial meaning provided by the locative particle. This study is based on a functionalist approach that relies on postulates by Givón (1979), Hopper & Traugott (1993), and Traugott (2008) in addressing the combination of demonstrative and locative elements in romance languages as a probable grammatical construction. The methods for data collection were the conduction of survey questionnaires, based on Milano (2007), and the carrying out of an experiment performed by subjects from both cities. It was noted that the demonstrative form este (and its inflections) has been dropped by Portuguese speakers from Belo Horizonte whereas the demonstrative form aquel (and its inflections) has been dropped by Spanish speakers from Mexico City. It was also possible to realize that not only there is the trend of dropping one demonstrative form but also that the semantic value that they express are changing: the trend of dropping of one demonstrative form has led to different trends across languages: the deictic center of Portuguese spoken in Belo Horizonte is now considered to be the space where both the speaker and the hearer are (indistinctively represented by esse and its inflections); in Spanish spoken in Mexico City the deictic center is the space where the speaker is (indistinctively represented by ese and its inflections). Nevertheless, the joining of locatives is not equally productive across both aforementioned languages. While Belo Horizonte Portuguese data displayed a high number of demonstrative pronouns joined by a locative adverb within the same noun phrase (which characterizes the construction), Mexico City Spanish data have not shown the same pattern. Finally, it is argued that pointing gestures an intrinsically deictic strategy does not function as a compensatory mecanism for the dropping of demonstrative form, as has been suggested by Pereira (2005, p. 100-101). On the contrary: this strategy is closely connected with the linguistic production in a much broader sense.