Transitivity: from verb to construction

Abstract

In this paper we discuss verbal transitivity. More specifically, we confront the approach to this grammatical phenomenon according to grammatical tradition, the proposal of North-American Functionalism in its classic version and the usage based functional perspective articulated to Construction Grammar. Thus, we attempt to focus, mainly, on the shift from the view centered on the clause, which considers the gradience of the relation between a verb and its argument(s), to the one that postulates transitivity as a property of the construction. Thus, based on the effective uses of language in oral and written texts, we examine the transitive construction, trying to identify discoursepragmatic pressures on the perspectivation of transitive events and how these pressures reflect on the expression of the constructs that encode these events

Keywords

• Transitividade. Construção. Linguística Funcional Centrada no Uso.