Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 304
Part of Session 163: Variation and change in the city of Rio de Janeiro (Other abstracts in this session)
The variable use of ‘opinion’ verbs in Rio de Janeiro dialect: morphosyntactic and prosodic analysis
Authors: Paixão, Vivian Borges (1); Almeida, Erica Sousa de (2); Callou, Dinah Maria Isensee (3)
Submitted by: Paixão, Vivian Borges (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
This paper discusses variable use of the subjunctive versus the indicative mood in Brazilian Portuguese and focuses on embedded clauses with verbs which denote ‘opinion’ (pensar ‘to think’ and crer∕acreditar ‘to believe’), based on oral samples of standard and non-standard Rio de Janeiro dialect, recorded in two different periods of time.
We analyze two sets of data, consisting of informal interviews, stratified for level of education: 1046 embedded clauses with the verb achar, 16, with the verb pensar, 50, with the verb acreditar/crer, in standard dialect; 492 of achar, 25 of pensar and 21 of acreditar, in non-standard dialect.
Recent papers (Almeida & Callou, 2009; Almeida, 2010) confirm that the use of subjunctive in embedded clauses is related to the semantic/lexical component of the main clause (the matrix verb) and that verbs which denote ‘opinion’ (believe, suppose, think, seem) and convey the same referential meaning may behave differently with respect to mood choice. Another conclusion is related to the fact that the most frequent verb of ‘opinion’, achar ‘to find’∕‘to think’, has a multifunctional use: originally a verb of perception (meaning I – ‘to find’), acquires an opinion value (meaning II – ‘to believe’) and it may occur, in some contexts, a semantic bleaching, with loss of the morphological feature itself (meaning III – ‘maybe’). With meaning I and II, achar still has a verbal value (e.g. 1), and with meaning III it corresponds to an epistemic modalizer (e.g. 2).
(1) eu não acho que casar e ter filhos seja uma coisa natural, da vida...
I don’t think that to marry and to have children is something natural in one’s life…
(2) Acho que... talvez no estágio atual fosse mais interessante.
[ I ] think that... maybe in the current stage it would be more interesting.
The prosodic analysis, using the software Praat (version 5.1.43), based on intensity and fundamental frequency (F0) parameters, showed that the difference between them relies on the fact that, with meaning II, achar has a prosodic contour similar to other verbs of opinion, such as pensar ‘to think’, with emphasis at the verbal item. When achar is just an epistemic modalizer, the emphasis relies on other elements, such as the verb of the embedded clause or the negative particle.
Our hypothesis is (i) that other ‘opinion’ verbs – crer∕acreditar ‘to believe’ and pensar ‘to think’ – presents similar behavior to the verb achar ‘to think’∕’to suppose’ and might correspond to as epistemic modalizer and (ii) the prosodic contours of indicative mood embedded constructions are similar to the subjunctive mood constructions, regarding the three verbs.
BOERSMA, P. & WEENINK, D. 2010. Praat: doing phonetics by computer (version 5.1.43). http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/.
ALMEIDA, E. & CALLOU, D. 2009. Sobre o uso variável do subjuntivo em português: um estudo de tendência. In: Textos selecionados. XXV Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Lingüística (Lisboa 2009). Porto, APL: 143-152.
CALLOU, D.; ALMEIDA, E. & PAIXÃO, V. 2011. A multifuncionalidade do verbo achar. In: Línguas Pluricêntricas: Variação Linguística e Dimensões Sociocognitivas. Braga: ALETHEIA.