Projeção figurativa e expansão categorial no PB: o caso de um frame ‘animal’

Abstract

This study is a subproject which makes part of the macroproject Superlative Constructions of the Brazilian Portuguese – A Sociocognitive Approach (MIRANDA, 2007) – and has as a research object the semantic and categoric change which, having as source domain the frame of animal (lexical items ‘animal’, ‘bicho’, ‘fera’, ‘monstro’ and ‘gigante’), results from a scale frame, as illustrated by the following examples: Irritado, Animal acaba com treino do Verdão; Skol gelada é o bicho!; Você, fera na cama!; Festival reúne feras do jazz; TV 'monstra' chega ao mercado brasileiro por R$ 299 mil; Zoomp compra quatro grifes e vira gigante da moda. This work, of sociocognitivism base, has as a central thoretical scope the preconceptual bases (Basic level categories and image schemas) and conceptual bases (Conceptual Domains or Frames, Metaphor and Metonym) of our categorizing process, anchored on the studies by Lakoff & Johnson (1980,1987, 1999), Fauconnier & Turner (2002), Tomasello (2003), Croft (2004) and Fillmore (2007), Talmy (2000); Geeraerts (2007). Because of the linguistic usage in our investigative purpose, the Corpus Linguistics (Sardinha 2004; Aluísio and Almeida 2006) motivated our methodological choice. Attempting to actually unveil the usage behavior of the lexical items, our empiric base consists of a specific corpus collected through internet researches on: Editora Abril magazine site (ABRIL.COM), CETENFolha/Folha de São Paulo, G1 – Globo.com News website, blogs and on Orkut relationship communities. The main purpose of our analysis is: (i) to describe the semantic-pragmatic and formal dimension of the focused lexical net; (ii) to unveil the conceptual motivation – image schemas and metaphoric / metonymic processes – of this net in order to understand the possible cognitive links which compose it. This way, our research presents the following results: the confirmation in our corpus 8 of our first hypothesis, that is, that there has been a process of lexical expansion in course in which lexical items (‘animal’, ‘fera’, ‘bicho’, ‘monstro’, ‘gigante’) that integrate the nodes of metaphoric net of the frame ‘animal’ turn out to be SEMANTIC OPERATORS OF SCALE, forming a polysemic net. In terms of the morphosyntactic expansion, we tend to have a double standard: (1) the NP2 (with metaphoric meaning) keeps its noun function: present in 68.7% of the analysed occurrences and (2) is syntatically re-evaluated as an adjective, with adnominal or predicative function, as perceived in 31,3% of the occurrences. The results show, in short, that the change processes on the lexical rede happen more ostensively and robusty than the morphosyntactic ones. In terms of the conceptual motivation, we could present the relevance of the image schema of force (force dynamic Model) in the configuration of an agonistic scene, perspectivized by the focused lexical constructions. Moreover, we presented the THE GREAT CHAIN METAPHOR which leads us to figure out how the lexical items of the conceptual frame of ‘animal’ tend to refer to beings of another order, like ‘humanos’ (PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS) and ‘entidades’ (COMPLEX OBJECTS ARE ANIMALS).