Transitividade na esquizofrenia: comparação dos relatos orais de eventos psicóticos entre grupos clínico e não clínico

Abstract

This work presents the results of a statistical usage-based analysis of thecorrelation between the transitivity formal structure and different semantic values in thediscourse of a clinical and a non-clinical population. Based on the theoreticalframework of Cognitive Linguistics, transitivity forms used by patients withschizophrenia were compared with those used by participants without psychiatricdisorders. This investigation had the objective of establishing a relation between theprevalence of certain linguistic patterns and a schematic cognitive structure (aconceptual core) associated to delusional and hallucinatory events. The study shows asignificant correlation between 1) the transitive syntax and a specific set of semanticvalues and 2) the transitivity construction and schizophrenia discourse. The first resultwas used for a reanalysis of the transitivity construction concept in terms of semanticparameters statistically specific to the transitivity syntax, which leads us to a narrowdefinition of the argument structure construction. The second result was interpreted asevidence of a schematic conceptual core, i.e. a prototypical schematic cognitivestructure associated to the speech of patients with schizophrenia, which supportsLepesqueurs (2015, in press) hypothesis of a certain semiotic scheme in theconstruction of meaning in schizophrenia. For this author, part of the delusion can beunderstood as a conceptual blending process organized by an iconic interaction scheme.In other words, the iconic nature of the delusion constrains the linguistic grid availabletowards a greater number of transitive constructions. These findings suggest, albeit in apreliminary way, the possibility of describing schizophrenia also on a linguistic basis.