The phoric predicate construction in contemporary Brazilian Portuguese

• Main Author: Vinícius Maciel de Oliveira
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro 2020-10-01
• Series: Revista Linguística
• Subjects: proforma verbal, gramática das construções, mudança construcional.
• Online Access: https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/rl/article/view/33910

This article analyzes the phoric predicate construction with the verb do (fazer), in data from contemporary Brazilian Portuguese, based on theoretical and methodological foundations of Usage-Based Functional Linguistics, oriented to explain the processes of constructionalization and constructional change. The analyzes demonstrate that such construction establishes a phoric relation (anaphor or cataphor) with some referent predicate already mentioned, for being mentioned or from the situational context. The research also reveals that the process of reference to a predicate can occur through the repetition of the referent, which allows us to treat the phenomenon, also, from a variation perspective.