TRANSITIVE EVENT OF MOTION: USE, COGNITION, AND CONSTRUCTIONAL NETWORK
KEY WORDS: Transitive Event of Motion. Constructional Network. Usage-based Functional Linguistics. Construction Grammar.
In this thesis, I examine the syntactic and semantic coding of the transitive event of motion in order to analyze the cognitive and discursive-pragmatic motivations for this coding. I conceive the transitive verb of movement (TVM) as one followed by two or three arguments that implies the total movement of at least one entity from one place to another. From the observation of the contexts of the use of the constructs with this verb, I propose a hierarchical network of the construction with verbs of movement followed by a direct object, based on the patterns the construction licenses. These patterns are differentiated by the set of semantic, cognitive and discursive-pragmatic properties they exhibit. The theoretical framework of this thesis combines assumptions from Linguística Funcional Centrada no Uso (LFCU), Cognitive Linguistics (LC) and Construction Grammar (CG). The analytical categories adopted refer to transitivity, prototypicity, semantic roles, frame semantics, and metaphor. The methodological procedures serve a predominantly qualitative approach with quantitative support. The data supporting the analysis were collected from various sources: the Corpus Discurso & Gramática (FURTADO DA CUNHA, 1998); the Federal Judgment Bank of Rio Grande do Norte; the database of the Programa de Estudos Sobre o Uso da Língua da UFRJ, PEUL Project; and texts available online at major magazine websites. The results indicate the existence of a constructional scheme organized syntactically as NPSUBJECT + VERBMOTION + NPDIRECT OBJECT + (Prepositional Phrase), which sanctions five subschemas and two micro-constructions, which in turn reveal notions of caused movement, trajectory, associated motion, approximation and departure.