Kind demonstratives: about some uses of “aquele/aquela” in Brazilian Portuguese

Lovania Roehrig Teixeira,
Renato Miguel Basso
XML PDF

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss uses of demonstratives of Brazilian Portuguese that have not yet been analysed in the literature, the kind demonstratives (DK), in the form “aquele(a) N”. These items differ from the anaphoric and deictic uses of demonstratives, and also from NDNS demonstratives, (WOLTER, 2006; KING, 2001), and from its indefinite (WOLTER, 2006; ABBOTT, 2010; PRINCE, 1981;), emotive (WOLTER, 2006; LAKOFF, 1974) and deictic-discursive (ROBERTS, 2002) uses. DKs refer to kinds, that is, they refer to species or types indicated by the nominal. In this way, what is shared by both interlocutors is a species or a kind expressed by the nominal and not a single determined individual. This results from the fact that DKs do not preserve familiarity at the level of individuals, but rather at the level of kinds, and so we can consider DKs as defined expressions. In addition, DKs refer to kinds in the top of a scale, that is, exemplary examples of kinds. Thus, DKs refer to types that (i) do not have uniqueness and familiarity at the level of the ordinary individuals, and (ii) do not refer to any instantiation of the referred type, but rather to instantiations that, for a given interlocutor, are exemplary and, therefore, they are ranked high on the scale of good examples of the relevant kind.

Full-text of the article is available for this locale: Português (Brasil).

References

LEVINSON, S. C. Deixis In.: The Handbook of Pragmatics. Horn, Laurence R. and Gregory Ward (eds). Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

LEVINSON, S. C. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 [1983].

ABBOTT, Barbara. Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010.

BASSO, R. M. A Semântica das Relações Anafóricas entre Eventos. Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2009. Tese de Doutorado.

BASSO, R. M.; VOGT, D. R. Weak demonstratives: are there any? Revista da Abralin, 2013.

CÂMARA JR., J. M. Estrutura da Língua Portuguesa. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1970.

DIESSEL, H. Demonstratives: Form, Function and Grammaticalization. Amsterdam: Benjamins.1999.

ELBOURNE, P. D. Situations and Individuals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 248pp.

ELBOURNE, P. D. Demonstratives as individual concepts. Linguistics and Philosophy., n. 31, p. 409 -466, 2008.

GRICE, H.P. Meaning. Philosophical Review, v. 66, p. 377-388, 1957.

GRICE, H.P. Logic and Conversation. In.: COLE, P.; MORGAN, J. (ed.). Pragmatics (Syntax and Semantics). Nova York: Academic Press, 1975.

HEIM, I. The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1982. Doctoral dissertation.

HEIM, I. E-type pronouns and donkey anaphora. Linguistics and Philosophy, v. 13, p. 137-177, 1990.

HEIM, I.; KRATZER, A. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.

HORN, L.R.: Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature. In.: SCHIFFRIN, D. (ed.). Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications. Washington: Georgetown University Press, p. 11–42, 1984.

HORN, L.R.: A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

HORN, L.R.: Presupposition and implicature. In.: LAPPIN, S. (ed.). The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, p. 299–319, 1996.

KING, J. C. Complex Demonstratives: a quantificational account. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

KRATZER, A. An investigation of the lumps of thought. Linguistics and Philosophy, v. 12, p. 607-653, 1989.

LAKOFF, R. Remarks on this and that. CLS 10, p.345–356, 1974.

LEVINSON, S. C. Presumptive Meanings: the Theory of Generalized Conversational

Implicature. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.

LEVINSON, S. Dêixis. In.: HORN, L. R.; WARD, G.(ed.) The Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. p.97-121, 2004.

NUNBERG, G. Indexicality and deixis. Linguistics and Philosophy., n. 16, p. 01-43, 1993.

NUNBERG, G. Descriptive indexicals and indexical descriptions. In: REIMER, M.; BEZUIDENHOUT, A. (Ed.). Descriptions and beyond. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. p. 261-279.

PAVANI, S. Os demonstrativos este, esse e aquele no português culto de São Paulo. Dissertação (Mestrado em Linguística) – Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem, Universidade de Campinas, Campinas, 1987.

PRINCE, E. F. On the inferencing of indefinite-this NPs. In.: JOSHI, A. K.; WEBBER, B. L.; SAG, I. A. (ed.) Elements of discourse understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge, p. 231–250, 1981.

ROBERTS, C. Demonstratives as definites. In: DEEMTER, K. van; KIBBLE, R. (Ed.). Information Sharing. Stanford, CA: CSLI Press, 2002.

ROBERTS, C. Uniqueness in definite noun phrases. Linguistics and Philosophy, v. 26, p. 287-350, 2003.

RONCARATI, C. Os mostrativos na variedade carioca falada. In: PAIVA, M. da C.; DUARTE, M. E. L. (orgs.). Mudança linguística em tempo real. Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa Liv., 2003.

TEIXEIRA, L. R. Os demonstrativos: uma análise semântico-pragmática baseada em situações. 2017.153f. Tese (doutorado)- UFRGS, Instituto de Letras, Porto Alegre. 2017.

VOGT, D. R. Por um tratamento semântico das descrições demonstrativas. Dissertação (Mestrado): Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis. 2013.

WOLTER, L. K. That’s That: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Demonstrative Noun Phrases. Santa Cruz: University of California, 2006. Doctoral dissertation.