Os tipos de achar e parecer na fala mineira

Abstract

This paper had as its aims at verify the grammaticalization process which the verbs achar (to think) and parecer (to seem) go through in spoken Brazilian Portuguese in Conceição do Ibitipoca in the state of Minas Gerais. The proposals by Galvão (1999) and Gonçalves (2003) applied to the samples of spoken discourse of Rio de Janeiro city were used. Galvão (1999) investigated the path of the verb achar, which functions as a full-verb class (achar1), as a performative-modal verb, appreciation marker (achar2), and as an epistemic modal verb that marks a hunch (achar3), finally functioning similarly to an adverb, appearing outside the sentence structure (achar4). Gonçalves (2003) analyzed the verb parecer and proved that this verb, identified as a full-verb class (parecer1), becomes a support verb (parecer2), comes to belong to propositional attitude verbs class (parecer3), and claims the functions of attitudinal satellites, with adverbial characteristics (parecer 4,5). All this process of change occurs gradually. An investigation showed that data from the Minas Gerais spoken discourse do not present all the steps found in the Rio de Janeiro discourse. In order to show the grammaticalization of the verbs, we submitted the samples to qualitative and quantitative analyses (part of the GoldVarb program) to make sure that the occurrences were analyzed coherently and systematically. The data in Conceição do Ibitipoca, Minas Gerais, are part of Resende’s database (2006).