Quem cala consente: functional-construcionist approach to headless relative clauses introduced by ‘quem’

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the use of the headless relative clauses introduced by “who” in formulaic expressions, such as “Quem casa quer casa”, considering its morphosyntactic organizing forms, argument structure patterns, semantic, cognitive and socio-interactional aspects related to it. The study is qualitative and quantitative and it is supported theoretically by Usage-based Functional Linguistics (FURTADO DA CUNHA; BISPO, 2013) and Construction Grammar (GOLDBERG, 2006; TRAUGOTT; TROUSDALE, 2013). The database are 100 formulaic expressions taken from Google. The results show that the morphosyntactic configuration of the clauses that constitute the formulaic expressions is related to semantic aspects (counterpoint / language game, cause-effect relations), interactional factors (pragmatic inference, inter/subjectivity) and cognitive aspects (metaphorical and metonymic projections).

Keywords

• linguística funcional centrada no uso. gramática de construções. adágios populares. relativa sem antecedente.