Negação verbal no português brasileiro: aspectos teórico-metodológicos em estudo baseado em corpus

Abstract

Brazilian Portuguese (BP) verbal negation system has three forms, namely, pre-verbal, double and post-verbal, as can be seen, respectively, in the following examples: (i) *MIC: [91] mas / Michael / eu não falo nesse sentido // (ii) *DOM: [101] cês n lêem isso mais não // (iii) *RUT: [220] participa não / minha filha //.This dissertation has two main objectives: (i) present a critical review of the literature on verbal negation and (ii) thereafter, analyzing the verbal negation data of the corpus C-ORAL-BRASIL (RASO & MELLO, 2012). The C-ORAL-BRASIL is a reference corpus of informal spoken PB. This corpus consists of 208,130 words divided into 139 texts, divided between family/private and public interactions. The recordings cover a range of speech situations, since the main purpose of the corpus is to capture the largest possible number of speech acts, making this a representative diaphasic variation. The C-ORAL-BRASIL corpus is architected according to Language Theory in Act [TLA] (Cresti 2000). By analyzing the data, it was found that there are many counterexamples to previous research, concerning the pragmatic and syntax of negative sentences. The main counterexamples show that the post-verbal negation can negate new information, information not directly activated in the speech and can not negate the assertability from a previous proposition, the double negative can negate new information in the speech, post-verbal negation can occur with subject expressed in embedded clauses, the double negative can occur in infinitive and coordinated clauses. Data analysis also allowed characterize the negation in prosodic-informational terms, i.e. propose restrictions on the realization of three forms. The pre-verbal negation showed a free distribution relative to the textual informational units: it can occur in all textual informational units, such as COM, COB, CMM, TOP, APT, APC, INT and PAR, while post-verbal negation can only occur in illocutionary units, such as COM, COB and CMM. The double negation occurs mainly in illocutionary units: COM, COB and CMM, however there have been three cases in which it took place in the textual unit PAR. This shows that double negation can inherit functional features of both preverbal negation, as the post-verbal, opposing so the assumptions that characterize the three forms containing distinct features.