The metaphor in Portuguese grammar: The case of Superlative Construction of Body Expression

Abstract

This paper investigates the metaphorical nature of the Superlative Construction of Body Expression, [Xv de YN/V] (“[ele] quase morreu de vergonha numa tarde de conversas”; “Padre Dito quase estourou de rir”; “O Lúcio rolou de rir com a explicação”), from a cognitive and constructionist perspective. Given the centrality of “language in use” within the theoretical and analytical model adopted, a corpus-based approach was chosen. The corpus used was the Corpus do Português, composed of forty-five million words, allocated in texts of the XIV-XX centuries. The analysis, in general, points to the articulation of different cognitive categories in the institution of the construction pattern being investigated; the semantic reanalysis of the element allocated in X – a full meaning verb – as a scalar operator, in the context of the construction; and the centrality of metaphor in the institution of grammatical patterns.Key words: Portuguese grammar, metaphor, degree-modifier constructions.