Uma investigação funcionalista da estrutura argumental preferida e da acessibilidade de referentes em narrativas escritas destinadas ao público infantil

• Autor(a) principal: Melo, Elise Nakladal de Mascarenhas
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações do Mackenzie
• Texto Completo: http://dspace.mackenzie.br/handle/10899/25500
• topic: gramática funcional; estrutura argumental preferida; transitividade; fluxo de informação; acessibilidade; CNPQ::LINGUISTICA, LETRAS E ARTES::LINGUISTICA

This work investigates the argument structure of transitive clauses in English written narratives for children. The relation between the information flow in discourse and the way in which the subject of a transitive verb (A) and the direct object (O) are filled is examined in order to test the Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) hypothesis proposed by Du Bois (1987). PAS refers to an use pattern of the core arguments of the verb, with grammatical constraints (avoid more than 1 lexical argument per clause and avoid lexical A) and pragmatic constraints(avoid more than 1 new argument per clause and avoid new A). The intervening factors in referents accessibility (ARIEL, [1990] 2016) are also examined, as a subsidy to the interpretation of the results obtained in testing the PAS hypothesis. The set of the corpus consists of two illustrated books published in the Penguin Young Readers series: Frances Hodgson Burnett´s The Secret Garden, intended for the transitional reader (children from 6 to 8 years old); and Lewis Carroll´s Alice in Wonderland, intended for the fluent reader (children from 8 to 9 years old). Additionally, the obtained results are compared with the exam of the original text Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland (CARROLL, [1865] 2009), generally intended for the children of the 19th century. In testing the PAS hypothesis, it was verified that the 1 lexical argument per clause constraint was not confirmed in the written narrative intended for the children from 6 to 8 years old, in which the clauses with both arguments (A and O) in lexical form are more frequent. In the set of the corpus, it was also verified the high incidence of lexical noun phrases in the A position. The results obtained in verifying the intervening factors in referents accessibility, in turn, revealed, for the A position, the preference for the proper noun in cases of negative intervention of the “distance”, “competition”, “saliency” and “unity” factors in the referential accessibility, since this accessibility marker, operating together with the illustration, in which the referent´s descriptive features are evidenced, configures an immediate access of the reader to the referred entity. For the O position, it was observed the preference for the common noun in the noun phrase´s nucleus in the cases of negative intervention of the four factors in referential accessibility, inasmuch the direct object, in principle, does not constitute itself as Topic, thus requiring, for the satisfactory interpretation of the reader, an informative referential expression. And finally, for both syntactic positions (A and O), it was observed the use of the referent expressed by pronoun preponderantly in cases of positive intervention of the four factors in referential accessibility, since this accessibility marker retrieves an antecedent by textual remission, making it difficult for the child to access the referred entity.