Tomei a liberdade de fazer este estudo: a multifuncionalidade do verbo “tomar” em uma amostra de fala da Cidade de Goiás-GO

Abstract

This work describes the use of tomar in Goiás City, in order to ascertain possible cognitive and functional factors that may motivate the multifunctionality of this verb. The theories that support this study assume that language is at the service of communication and that the linguistic structure emerges from the use. The Usage-Based Linguistics with the assumptions of Bybee (2007; 2010; 2015), Furtado da Cunha et. al. (2013), Givón (2011), Neves (2002; 2011) and Tomasello (2008; 2009) enabled us to analyze the cognitive aspects that motivate the different uses of the verb analyzed; the Construction Grammar by Goldberg (1995; 2006), and the conceptual and hierarchical network elaboration by Traugott and Trousdale (2013) and Traugott (2015) allowed us to analyze the language as an interconnected cognitive scheme, organized through networks; Sociolinguistics, with the contributions of Bortoni-Ricardo (1985) and Labov (1972; 1994), has given us the methodological rigor for the data collection of this study. From the instances analyzed, we found out that, among four categories: full verb, verb extended, verb support and crystallized expression, the citizens of Goiás, in spoken language (data obtained from Fala Goiana Project), have privileged the uses of the support and extended categories. One possible explanation lies in the fact that the full and crystallized expression categories are used in a context of more restricted use: the full verb is highly lexical and always encodes the same meaning. The crystallized expression has highly entrenched components and also always encodes the same meaning. On the other hand, the support and extended categories can be used in different contexts and, depending on the noun phrase that accompanies the verb, can assume different meanings. The analysis of the data allowed us to realize that the multifunctionality of the verb tomar is associated with the fact that the verb has a common semantic trace associated to all four categories, body proximation, and it also has links with other linguistic change phenomena, such as the disuse of the reflexive pronoun and the tendency to use periphrasis to reduce inflectional forms (linguistic economy), these strengthens the assumption that the language is formed by networks.