Um estudo da mudança de classe gramatical em unidades lexicais neológicas / A study of word class change in neological lexical units.

AUTOR(ES)
FONTE

IBICT - Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia

DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

22/03/2011

RESUMO

Word class change consists on the creation of a lexical unit in a word class different from the bases class. In order to do this, speakers have at their disposal many mechanisms, like suffixal derivation (with many different suffixes), parasynthetic derivation, regressive derivation and conversion. Our goal, in this study, is to describe such mechanisms, trying to figure out why speakers create new lexical units in different word classes. With the theoretical foundations of Cognitive Linguistics, we divide our analysis in two perspectives: the onomasiological perspective, in which we analyse the mechanisms of lexical creation, and the semasiological perspective, in which we analyse the mechanisms of interpretation of a new lexical unit. According to Cognitive Linguistics, we understand that word classes must be considered semantic categories, and word class change, a basically semantic process. Considering only the lexical word classes, the six possible types of word class change in Portuguese are: adjective to noun, verb to noun, noun to adjective, verb to adjective, noun to verb and adjective to verb. Therefore, we collected 1,209 neologisms resulting from a word class change process from the Base de neologismos do português brasileiro contemporâneo (Contemporary Brazilian Portuguese neologism database - part of Project TermNeo Contemporary Brazilian Portuguese Neologism Observer) and classified them into the six types of word class change. For each one of these types, we analysed onomasiologically the creation mechanisms and, semasiologically, the interpretation mechanisms of these neologisms. Suffixal derivation is the most employed mechanism, with many suffixes which are productive in contemporary Portuguese, many of them polysemic; however, parasynthetic derivation in verb creation and regressive derivation in the formation of abstract nouns are also productive mechanisms. There are some important cases of suffix competition, like -ice and -(i)dade in the change from adjective to noun and -ção and -mento in the change from verb to noun. In analyzing neologism interpretation, metonymy revealed itself an important process in almost all types of word class change. Finally, the analyses seem to show that speakers change word class in order to express new concepts, and not only for merely morphosyntactic reasons.

ASSUNTO(S)

classe gramatical criação lexical morfologia morphology neologia neologism neologismo neology word class word formation

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