Usos de pronto e (em)b0ra em conversas informais: um estudo descritivo de gramaticalização.

Abstract

The speakers of each and every language, use many strategies to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in its communication process. Among these strategies, there is the use of certain words in linguistic contexts which are not in accordance to their origin, it favors the language change. These changes are the so called phenomena of lexicalization and grammaticalization. The latter, the focus of our research, transforms the lexical items into grammatical instruments. In this direction, this work aims at studying the process of grammaticalization of the Brazilian linguistic items pronto and (em)bora, very recurring in the speech of the Paraíba‟s – a Brazilian state – people. For that, audio recordings were made from some informal conversations among 25 (twenty-five) people of different gender, education levels and ages. The transcriptions of the data followed conventions proposed by the Conversation Analysis and Phonetics. This study is grounded on the studies of Functionalist Linguistics, and based on the theoretical contributions of Givón (1979, 2012), Martelotta (2011) and Castilho (2010), among other researchers on the topic. Current outcomes suggest us that the linguistic items analyzed are being used with different meanings, causing change of the grammatical class, and that the intonation in which they are pronounced contributes to identify each meaning. In addition, we found that the people in this research are using the items pronto and bora independently of any concerning factors, such as education level, age and gender.