Gradiência de composicionalidade da construção X-NTE em dados do século XX

Abstract

This article studies the compositionality of the X-NTE construction, which licenses nouns and adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese formed by adding the suffix –nte to a verbal base. The aim of this work is to analyze the compositionality of the construction, observing which formal and functional properties contribute to the greater/lesser compositionality of deverbal nouns in –nte. More specifically, it intends to: i) point out formal and functional properties that can serve as parameters of the construction's compositionality; ii) analyze how and how often these parameters favor (or not) the compositionality of deverbals in –nte; iii) evaluate to what extent nouns in –nte can be considered more or less compositional. The theoretical foundation consists of assumptions from Usage-Based Functional Linguistics (UBFL) and Construction Grammar. This qualitative research, supported by quantitative data and employing a descriptive-explanatory approach, analyzed 367 occurrences extracted from the Corpus for the History of Brazilian Portuguese (CPHPB). Four parameters of compositionality were identified: analyzability, inheritance of the argument structure of the base verb, correspondence of meaning between the base and the deverbal noun, and semantic specialization. The interrelation between these four parameters revealed a continuum of compositionality. Most nouns ending in -nte proved to be more compositional. This predominance is mainly attributed to the parameters of analyzability, correspondence of meaning between the verbal base and the deverbal noun, and semantic specialization of certain items in specific contexts. Only the parameter related to the inheritance (or lack thereof) of the syntactic-semantic structure of the verbal base indicated a greater tendency towards non-compositionality.