'Ver' como marcador pragmático em português brasileiro

Abstract

This paper discusses constructions IN Brazilian Portuguese in which the verb ver ‘to see’ can be a full verb with the meaning ‘to verify’ or can be a pragmatic marker. The hypothesis defended here is that these readings are related to two different structures. Constructions with the meaning of ‘to verify’ are treated as biclausal structures, whereas constructions with ver functioning as a pragmatic marker are analyzed as monoclausal structures. Based Speas and Tenny (2003) and Hill (2007, 2014), who assume the existence of a Speech Act Phrase (SAP), a projection associated with the speech act and visible for the syntactic computation, we propose that, when acts as a pragmatic marker, ver is an expression that underwent a process of linguistic change called pragmaticalization (Erman and Kotsinas 1993; Dostie 2004; Dievald 2011) and, as a consequence, is externally merged into the head of SAP, a projection at the interface of syntax with conversational pragmatics. ---DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2017.v13n2a13509