The second issue of volume 60 fully expresses Alfa’s quality of broadly representing the current trends in linguistics research. This coverage is manifested by the diversity of study objects, levels of linguistic analysis, and theoretical models, as discussed below. Another aspect deserves to be highlighted as a mark of the set of works presented here: their theoretically dialogical character. Nothing more up-to-date than dialogue, nothing more current than interfacing, or interdisciplinarity.
Such dialogue is the basis of Rosário and Oliveira’s paper, the one opening this issue. The authors draw up a critical assessment of the development of functionalist studies until they reach a point of dialogue with cognitive studies, and the subsequent construction of a holistic approach to grammatical phenomena based on the interrelationship between Functionalism and Cognitivism. Taking the conjunction of the two theoretical perspectives, they discuss the concepts of construction, constructionalization and linguistic change, demarcating their relationship and their differences with classical concepts as grammaticalization and lexicalization. Their analysis, however, is not limited to an assessment of what has been done; it also brings the application of the theory in a case study - the analysis of Locative Verb constructions in Portuguese according to the constructional approach. With this, the authors provide a presentation and a defense of the theoretical model called ‘Centered-in-use’ Functional Linguistics or Cognitive-Functional Linguistics.
The following two papers also share the functionalist approach, but associate this perspective with different theoretical counterparts. Zunino, Abusamra and Raiter’s paper focuses on the issue of causality, investigating the construction of this meaning in two-clause sequences in Spanish. The study articulates functionalist and psycholinguistic perspectives, experimentally evaluating the role of two types of knowledge - prior knowledge about the world and linguistic knowledge (semantic) - for understanding causal relationships. “Everyday” linguistic stimuli – associated with world knowledge – and “technical” linguistic stimuli – unlinked to this kind of knowledge are interpreted by native speakers of the variety under study. The results allowed reconsidering the role of principles such as iconicity in processing the causal meaning of two-clause sequences.
Lopes-Damasio study also starts from a functionalist approach and also focuses on a phenomenon at the level of clause junction - juxtaposed paratactic constructions. This study, however, departs from the previous one in its issues and strategies of analysis and in the theoretical approaches with which it establishes dialogue. The author analyzes data from a text corpus produced by trainees of initial series. In order to characterize adequately the relationship between the construction components, she proposes a necessary association between, on one hand, prosodic, morphosyntactic and semantic aspects of the constructions and, on the other hand, the discursive context in which they are located. The results of this analysis are interpreted both from the perspective of Discursive Traditions model and as depending on the specific conditions of the writing acquisition process.
From the analysis at the level of clause junction and from the construction of meaning in association with the discursive context, we move to the level of the noun phrase. Foltran and Nóbrega look into the behavior of intensifier adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese, to provide them a morphosyntactic, syntactic and semantic characterization. Condensing the vast existing literature on the subject of intensification, the authors arrive at a typology of intensifier elements, from which they pick out, as an object of study, the innovative intensifier adjectives (as tremendo), denominal (as senhor) and those acquired as loanwords (such as mega and big). In addition to offering a detailed description of the structural properties of the intensifiers, their study brought elements to propose a revision of the morphological status of intensifiers acquired through loan, traditionally treated as prefixes: in the light of new data, the authors defend their adjectival nature.
The fifth article explores a topic still poorly investigated, which mobilizes the morphology and phonology interface: the status of theme vowels in Portuguese noun class. Matzenauer and Bisol propose to define and characterize these elements, taking into account their possible role in the derivational process in Brazilian Portuguese; accordingly, their analysis argues and demonstrates that theme vowels are part of the language lexical entries and that the suffixes combine with such forms, in a process called “stem-based derivation”. As part of the undertaken characterization, the authors distinguish between legitimate theme vowels (a and o) and the vowel e that, in most cases, takes up the theme vowel position but has, in fact, the epenthetic vowel status .
Under the perspective of discursive semiotics, Barros analyzes an extensive corpus of different autobiographical genres (literary autobiography prose, autobiographical poems, academic memorials). The author looks into the way two discursive organizations of memory - the past-event memory and the event memory - manifest and articulate in these texts. This analysis highlights the relationship that is established between enunciator and enunciatee, the contract signed in this interlocution through the ‘truth’ built in the text and proposed to the reader that it designs.
This issue ends with two papers that address language topics as a starting point for the investigation of issues in other areas. Nóbrega, Souza and Azevedo’s paper is located in the field of Applied Linguistics, in its contemporary perspective, focused more on social aspects linked to the educational process than in structural aspects of the teaching-learning situation. Based on this intrinsically interdisciplinary approach, the authors propose to investigate the social construction of knowledge through the analysis of students’ personal experience reports in the context of English language classroom. One of the main questions of the study is the language role in the learning and knowledge construction processes. In this scenario, language is understood from the conjunction of two theoretical models perspectives - the sociocultural theory and the Systemic-Functional Linguistics.
Finally, closing this issue, the reader will find Bailer and Tomitch’s paper. The authors bring a comprehensive review of the literature on behavioral and neuroimaging studies on multitasking involving language. The theme is very contemporary and, as shown by the authors, involves the articulation of knowledge of several areas related to cognition: from experimental psychology or neuropsychology, which seek to measure the effect of multitasking situations on the functioning of the brain and perception skills, to education, to the extent that such studies allow us to understand the relationship of multitasking practices with learning processes.
As I sought to reveal, this issue is comprehensive in thematic scope and analysis approaches: word, sentence and text grammar; formalist and functionalist approaches; semantics and discourse from different perspectives; the enunciation as a space of signification and of the social construction of knowledge; language and cognition, all these aspects are covered in these pages. “Tailoring” the differences is, as I said at the beginning, the work on the interface, be it constitutive of the adopted theoretical model, be it something sought out of it, in the articulation with different perspectives.
As in any situation of dialogue, in theoretical and methodological dialogues, a (pre) dominance of one or another ‘participant’ might occur. What is undeniable is that the result is transformative for all; the articulation of concepts and the negotiation of assumptions lead to a new proposal. The balance is a greater and better understanding of the functioning of the faculty of language and of individual languages, our main goal. As the new editor of Alfa from this issue on, I hope that is the balance resulting from the reading of the studies presented here. And that these studies motivate future new dialogues.
Rosane de Andrade Berlinck
Editor
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
May-Aug 2016
