Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: ANA FLÁVIA MATOS FREIRE

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : ANA FLÁVIA MATOS FREIRE
DATE: 13/11/2024
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: Plataforma Google Meet
TITLE:

Functional-constructionist approach to shoulda, coulda and woulda: TAM in present-day American English

KEY WORDS:

Auxiliariness; tense, aspect and modality; shoulda, coulda e woulda; Usage-Based Functional Linguistics; present-day American English.

PAGES: 148
BIG AREA: Lingüística, Letras e Artes
AREA: Lingüística
SUBÁREA: Teoria e Análise Lingüística
SUMMARY:

In this dissertation, we focus on the uses of shoulda, coulda and woulda, which we understand as coming from the forms should have, could have and would have, respectively, in present-day American English. We aim to analyze such uses in terms of their functional and formal properties and to characterize the constructional network of which they are part of. The orientation of this work is functional-constructionist, which means that we rely on Usage-Based Functional Linguistics, LFCU, based on the works of Furtado da Cunha, Bispo and Silva (2013) and Furtado da Cunha and Bispo (2013) among others. Thus, we have a usage-based grammar perspective (Bybee, 2010) and contributions from Construction Grammar in accordance with Goldberg (1995), Croft (2001) and Traugott and Trousdale (2013). For the foundation regarding auxiliariness, we are mainly based on Heine (1993), Bybee (1995), Hopper and Traugott (2003), Bybee (2010), and Brinton and Brinton (2010); regarding the category of aspect, we rely on Croft (2012), and concerning modality, we are based on Lyons (1977). Our research database is the Corpus of Contemporary American English, COCA, which is composed of eight text groups (oral, fiction, magazine, newspaper, academic, webpages, blogs and TV/movies) written and transcribed between 1990 and 2019. We used WordSmith Tools 7.0 Program for processing the corpus, identification of the occurrences of shoulda, coulda and woulda, and measurement of token and type frequencies and verification of contexts of occurrences.Then, we analyzed their semantic-cognitive, interactional, phonological and morphosyntactic aspects, their compositional, schematic and productive properties and the constructional network of which the forms in question are part of. The preliminary results show that shoulda, coulda and woulda are used for the expression of the categories of tense, aspect and modality, which approximate them to prototypical auxiliaries. We also found that their uses are linked firstly to informality and, subsequently, to the oral modality, which is why we argue that informal spoken contexts are conducive to their uses. Regarding their formal properties, particularly phonological, shoulda, coulda and woulda have two syllables, a Germanic accent pattern and four phonemes with the CVCƏ structure. Concerning their morphosyntactic aspects, we find that these auxiliaries can occur followed by a VP formally expressed or not, occur without an explicit subject and allow the use of adverbs between them and the VPs. Their uses instantiate the schematic pattern that can be represented by [VAUX VP]TAM, which we characterize as partially compositional, relatively schematic and relatively productive. Consequently, this schema licenses three subschemas, [shoulda VP]TAM, [coulda VP]TAM and [woulda VP]TAM, which capture functional particularities regarding deontic, epistemic and volitive values within TAM marking, and can be considered partly compositional, partly schematic and partly productive. Finally, these three subschemas sanction nine microconstructional types, which are defined according to the codification of the VP: participle, past and infinitive. Therefore, the findings of our analysis point to the rise of shoulda, coulda and woulda as TAM auxiliary verbs in English to express hypothetical situations in the past.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Presidente - 1551756 - EDVALDO BALDUINO BISPO
Externa à Instituição - MARIA MAURA DA CONCEIÇÃO CEZARIO - UFRJ
Externo à Instituição - MONCLAR GUIMARÃES LOPES - UFF