Towards a linguistic-discursive approach for clause juxtaposition in brazilian portuguese: orality and writing in literacy practices

ABSTRACT

RAIBLE, 2001 CORRÊA, 2004 KABATEK, 2006

Discursive tradition; Juxtaposition; Writing acquisition; Orality; Literacy

RESUMO

Para refletir sobre a relação entre os componentes de construções paratáticas justapostas, a partir da hipótese de que esses componentes devam ser analisados em seu contexto discursivo, em associação com suas propriedades prosódicas, morfossintáticas e semânticas, assumo um modelo funcionalista de junção (RAIBLE, 2001); um entendimento da escrita como constitutivamente heterogênea e como modo de enunciação (CORRÊA, 2004); e uma concepção de aquisição de escrita que considera as tradições discursivas (KABATEK, 2006), com o intuito de lançar um olhar linguístico-discursivo para essas construções, em dados de aquisição de escrita. A partir de análises qualitativa e quantitativa, o trabalho confirmou a hipótese acima e mostrou que: (i) na composição sintagmática de uma dada tradição, atuam outras tradições, de forma dinâmica; (ii) são os propósitos discursivos do sujeito, segundo suas representações de um momento, do espaço de interlocução e do(s) outro(s)/destinatário(s), que determinam quais tradições atuam como matéria para a produção de uma tradição; (iii) nos dados investigados, a mescla de TDs e as junções que ocorrem numa mesma tradição são recorrentemente empreendidas por justaposição, enquanto gesto que aponta, no espaço gráfico, para a situação concreta de enunciação.

Tradição discursiva; Justaposição; Aquisição de escrita; Oralidade; Letramento

Introduction

In this paper, I study juxtaposed paratactic constructions in a sample of texts written by children in the first and second grades of primary school. Therefore, I shall use a functionalist model of junction, based on discretionary processes and a two-dimensional arrangement (RAIBLE, 2001), in which the tactic and logical-semantic and cognitive axis are intersected (KORTMANN, 1997); a theoretical foundation which defines writing as inherently heterogeneous and as a mode of enunciation (CORRÊA, 2004); as well as a concept of acquisition of this mode of enunciation which accounts for writing/speaking traditions (KABATEK, 2006).¹

The perspective of parataxis by juxtaposition is guided by a proper view of the way these constructions are contextualized, as complexes placed in discursive environments, related to discursive traditions (DTs). In order to create utterances, a child deals with idiomatic rules (system and norm) and discursive rules, which belong to the domain of DTs – covering acts of speech, genres and textual types, styles, literary forms etc. – and refer to traditional ways of speaking/writing, which rule discourse production and reception.

As in previous work (LOPES-DAMASIO, 2014; TUÃO-BRITO, 2014; LONGHIN-THOMAZI, 2011a, 2011b), the approach of tradition compositionality relating to junction, here specifically juxtaposition, presumes that DT acquisition is always a process (OESTERREICHER, 1997). The child progressively assimilates fixed and variable properties of DTs, i.e., what these traditions evoke as already-said and as a project of saying.

Thus, this paper centers around the following question: On what is the relationship between the components of a paratactic juxtaposed construction based? The hypothesis is that the components of this construction should be analyzed in their discursive context, in association with their prosodic, morphosyntactic and semantic properties. The analysis of this context, in turn, should consider the DT in which the utterance is made.

This text is organized into four parts. In the first, one I shall present the theoretical assumptions and the expectations based on them; in the second, I shall introduce the view (on) and the way of viewing writing acquisition data. In the third and fourth parts, which feature the data analysis, I shall present (i) a proposal of contextualized analysis, providing an interpretation of the juxtaposed paratactic constructions in the light of discursive aspects related to the morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of the described schemes and (ii) a combination of this analysis with the DT approach, in order to relate the results of (i) with the predictions for the modes of saying/speaking in discussion, along with the conditions of text production. I finish with final remarks.

The assumed and the expected

From a Halliday functionalist view (1985), the term parataxis includes structures called asyndetic juxtaposition in traditional grammar, i.e. constructions whose clauses have the same status, without any linking word, and which can codify any meaning relations, from the most concrete, such as symmetric addition, to the most abstract, such as concession. In this sense, the identification as parataxis points towards an aspect of the tactic way of functioning, as opposed, for instance, to hypotaxis, while the identification as juxtaposed shows an aspect of the mechanism by which this taxis occurs, as opposed to equivalent constructions articulated by other mechanisms than “zero” (Ø), such as e, ou, mas, por exemplo, isto é etc.²

Current research focusing on this type of construction considers prosodic, semantic and syntactic properties of parataxis and concentrates on the description of the semantic relationship created between the elements of the construction (PEKAREK-DOEHLER et al., 2010, THUMM, 2000). According to Thumm (2000), the precise nature of the relation established between these clauses is defined through discursive inferences, based on the (co-)context where they occur. This suggests that the subjects³ project their text/utterance towards the other/recipient⁴ through many contextualization hints and that the other/recipient is guided by these signs. Under these conditions, if juxtaposed paratactic constructions are recognized and interpreted by these others/recipients, how should they be identified by the analysts? This issue has not yet been sufficiently covered in literature (see for instance THUMM, 2000, p.7), mainly when it comes to considering the context in real situations of interlocution, i.e. according to the concept of an alive and concrete language (COSERIU, 1979). The analysis of juxtaposed paratactic constructions, often considered primitive or syntactically simple, should focus on how a subject signals to the other/recipient that two states of things p and q make a meaning relationship x, not y, emerge in a given (co-)context and that they are not simply placed in the discourse as two completely independent propositions.

In the analyzed texts, the lack of junctives to show the existing relation between the clauses is supplied by other forms of contextualization, whether they be lexical, prosodic, syntactic, kinetic or of any other nature. From this perspective, contextualization, according to Auer (1992, p.5 apud THUMM, 2000, p.8), tries to answer questions such as, “by which means is an activity orchestrated to be heard as such?” The search for answers to this question should start with the assumption that the interpretation of an utterance, as well as its production, is based on its locus of occurrence, which in turn is related to the DTs. In this locus, contexts are not given, they are not simply there as a complete, preset, ready-made, unchangeable set which the subjects simply evoke. Instead, they are dialogically established and re-adjusted during the verbal interaction. Therefore, the dynamic notion of (con)text, not as a product, but as a process, should be acknowledged. Under this perspective, I understand the incomplete face of DTs to be projects of saying which, through a dialogue with the “already-said”, evoke other new sayings which are intrinsically linked to the locus of production.

Thumm (2000, p. 8), quoting Auer (1986, p.24), stresses that these contextualization procedures can create a kind of connection between two essential parts. The junction mechanisms, in this sense, are empirically observable data or clues given by contextualization. However, when the phenomenon does not display these mechanisms, the clues should be found in the linguistic-discursive environment of the construction. Still, they are empirical and observable, as long as a component of world knowledge, organized in schemas, frames or scripts, is taken into account.

One criterion to define contextualization hints is their non-referential nature (THUMM, 2000, p.9), i.e. they do not have any meaning out of context and, although they are lexical elements, they can allow specific readings in particular contexts. This means that they indicate frames/schemas/scripts in an unstable way.⁵ In these terms, contextualization clues are flexible, their signaling value is relational, meaning that the same clue might have different signalling values according to the context.

Frames can be operated and analyzed on a more local (micro) and more global (macro) level. In this work, I will locally analyze predicative constructions paratactically connected by juxtaposition, in order to investigate the factors which contribute to this link, as well as to the emergence of meaning in the complex. Thus, in line with Pekarek-Doehler et al. (2010) and Thumm (2000), I intend to show that the link is created based on morphosyntactic, semantic/lexical and prosodic properties, but also closely related to the context on the discourse level, in a more global sense. The analysis is meant to show the high sensitivity of the paratactic concatenation to its discursive environment, here considered to be part of DTs.

This perspective is therefore guided by the notion of paratactic constructions as local implementations which fit into a discourse, reflecting and projecting aspects of their production context on it. The analysis of paratactic juxtaposed constructions not as isolated elements, but constitutive parts of this context, considers them not simply a juxtaposition of two or more predicative sequences, but a construction integrated in and by its discursive environment in a complex and dynamic manner.

Writing acquisition data: material and method

Writing acquisition data provides a thought-provoking material to study the process by which the complex relationship between the subject and language is created and changed, based on a discussion about the dynamic nature of this relationship within a language theory marked by DTs. The idea is not to observe the process of writing acquisition/learning only as a language system and norm, but rather to observe the relationship between the system, the norm and speaking/writing traditions, which act as a filter for making utterances. The purpose is to see what has been called writing acquisition as a process which involves the children’s⁶ imaginary movement through representations of linguistic forms as well as representations related to traditional ways of speaking/writing, as relatively stable types of utterances made in different spheres of human activity (BAKHTIN, 2000).

The process of text production, in the perspective of Corrêa (2004), would be mediated by images which the writers create about (their) writing, referring both to the product of their images about social representations of writing and to the construction process in various social practices. As such, DTs are considered here to be a substance and product of language.

The utterances chosen for this research are made on a semiotic basis – the graphic mark (writing) – and taken as a mode of enunciation (CORRÊA, 2004). In this sense, according to Abaurre, Fiad and Mayrink-Sabinson (2002, p.22), “[…] writing acquisition is a particular moment in a more general process of language acquisition. At this stage, once in contact with the written representation of the language he speaks, the subject rebuilds the story of his relationship with language.”⁷ Thus, writing is a space where characteristics appear which reflect an image of writing created at school, but strongly marked by orality, since it is developed inside an oral thinking system (ABAURRE, 1990; STREET, 2006).

These characteristics point towards the heterogeneity of writing and are based on the theoretical status of speaking/writing (CORRÊA, 2008), which contrasts with the idea of writing as a representation of language in which spoken and written language are opposed in an imprecise and dichotomic way. Furthermore, it contrasts with the view of speech and writing as modalities, since the oral and written modalities are defined by references to their semiotic basis: the sound (speech) and the graphic mark (writing), creating a difference which has served as an inappropriate basis to validate the strong opposition between spoken and written practices, as if the semiotic aspect were the only relevant one to them.

Koch and Oesterreicher (2007), followed in Brazil by Marcuschi (1997, 2007), propose the so-called methodological dichotomization of the speech/writing relationship by creating a typological continuum of text genres, which includes the intermediate points between one extreme assumed to be typically oral and the other extreme assumed to be typically written. On this perspective, the semiotic bases, which are relevant to the constitution of the text continuum, are combined with other factors, such as communicative proximity/distance. The authors consider these to be related notions which should be evaluated through realization (phonic or graphic) and text concept (oral or written), which can occur on a continuum of endless intermediate forms.

Although this is the approach of many researchers who use the concept of DT, the dichotomization between both modalities remains, despite in fact being methodological and considering the variety of texts in the intermediate points of the continuum. Therefore, as already mentioned, I tend to adopt a proposal which defines speech and writing as modes of enunciation in which writing, though it is a solitary enunciation, never takes place without a representation of an other/reader/recipient, which creates a link with the mode of enunciation of speech, given that, more than the physical presence of interlocutor, what counts is the representation (CORRÊA, 2008, 2004).

As a result, in this work, the written mode of enunciation is considered a space where demonstrations of the subjects’ singularity are valued, being understood as hypotheses and operations of these subjects, not as failures/mistakes. This option leads to an analytical treatment which is not bound by adequacy of the children’s enunciation to the researcher’s proposal or the correction models as provided by grammar for adults (CORRÊA, 2007).

The subject’s hypotheses and operations, in the process of writing acquisition, concern not only the level of education, as traditionally understood, but the acquisition of different DTs, covering linguistic rules, DT rules and the way the subject relates to them, i.e. covering a concept of literacy which underlies an extensive socio-historical process related to reading and writing practices (STREET, 2006). Including the subject who is learning to write in formal literacy practices involves not only the process of codification and decodification, assumed in the elimination of illiteracy, but also a dialogical relationship between these practices and those typical for orality, since this movement does not start only with the process of formal writing acquisition. At the start of formal schooling, the children have already moved through several oral and written social practices. From this contact, they obtain great knowledge, here understood as images, of what is traditional or recurrent in the ways of speaking and writing.⁸

Thus, I am not suggesting a natural and direct path from orality to writing, but rather highlighting the role of orality traditions, which the child knows, in their acquisition process of the written mode of enunciation. In addition to the role of orality come the traditions related to the image of writing conveyed by school and the heterogeneous nature of writing. The oral and formal traditions and this image of writing are connected to the presence of the other, a physically present or represented interlocutor and the point of reference needed for the subject and his writing process (CAPRISTANO; OLIVEIRA, 2014).

Following this perspective, the research universe comprises 100 texts extracted from the database about children’s writing acquisition, formed to support the work of the Research Group Estudos sobre a Linguagem (CNPq/UNESP, Brazil).⁹ The selected material includes writings of students from the first and second grade of a public school (Romano Calil) located in the outskirts of the city of São José do Rio Preto, Brazil.

As to the method, a quantitative and a qualitative approach have been combined in two main stages: (i) analysis of juxtaposed paratactic constructions considering contextual-discursive aspects which define the characteristics of the constructions; (ii) combination of this analysis with aspects of the DTs where the texts are inserted.

Morphosyntactic and semantic aspects in discursive traditions

Previous research (LOPES-DAMASIO, 2014; TUÃO-BRITO, 2014; LONGHIN-THOMAZI, 2011a, 2011b) has suggested that, in writing acquisition data, the subjects prefer junction schemas with e (and) and juxtaposition to codify the various meaning relations, as shown in Chart 1:

Chart 1
– Token frequency of junction mechanisms

Table 1 shows the frequency of juxtaposition in the analyzed texts, along with the meaning relations listed in a scale with increasing cognitive complexity:

Table 1
– Frequency of juxtaposition in writing acquisition data

Ø	ADDITION	MODE	SIMUL TIME	POST TIME	CAUSE	CON TRAST	Tt
CALIL01	81 26.21%	0 0%	0 0%	45 14.56%	17 5.5%	1 0.32%	144 46.6%
CALIL02	81 26.21%	1 0.32%	1 0.32%	53 17.15%	25 8.09%	4 1.29%	165 53.39%
Tt	162 52.42%	1 0.32%	1 0.32%	98 31.71%	42 13.59%	5 1.61%	309 100%

• Source: Author’s elaboration.

The following Charts complete the information provided by Table 1. It is remarkable how the frequency of juxtaposition usage increases in second grade writings (CALIL 02), see Chart 2. This increase is explained by the use of this junction strategy to codify a wider range of meaning relations, see Chart 3:

Chart 2
– Juxtaposition in data from the 1st and 2nd grade of primary /2school

Chart 3
– Meaning relations of juxtaposition in data from the 1st and 2nd grade of primary school

The increased frequency of juxtaposed constructions in data from the 2^nd year of primary school contrasts with theses which relate parataxis, especially juxtaposition, to simplicity and to the syntax of spoken language (in a dichotomic view) and language in its most primitive stages. Instead, analysis shows that, in less advanced texts, in the 1^st grade, and more advanced ones, in the 2^nd grade, different semantic relations are codified through the dialogic context mobilization, strongly associated to DTs and the relation between the traditions of orality, known by children, and those of formal literacy, in stage of acquisition.

In order to illustrate these statements, the following subsections show some texts written according to the proposals (P) presented in the List 1, according to the semantic patterns in Chart 3 – addition, time, cause and contrast – which will help explain the discursive basis which supports the relation between the components of the construction.

List 1
– Proposals for the analyzed text production

Proposals	Proposal Description	Texts
P(1) Dengue	The researcher handed out a leaflet about dengue and told all children not to comment with the others what they had received. Then, he asked them to read and see the leaflet attentively by themselves. Afterwards, he collected the leaflet and requested that they write about the read topic.	(01)
P(2) Experience description	Together with the children, the researcher made an experiments which imitated a water purification process. While they did the procedures, he asked them to pay great attention, since they should describe that experiment afterwards, so a third person could read and repeat all stages.	(05)
P(3) Sad story	The researcher asked the children if they remembered any sad story which had happened to them or loved ones and requested that they tell the chosen story in writing.	(02)
P(4) Candida tes to presidency	The researcher asked the children if they knew who would be the candidates to presidency. After receiving affirmative answers, he listed five candidates on the board together with the children and asked them to write a letter to one of them, explaining what they thought he should do to improve the situation in Brazil.	(10)
P(5) Story of Little Red Riding Hood	The researcher asked the children if they remembered the story of Little Red Riding Hood and asked them to help him tell it. After this oral activity, he asked the children to tell their own story (version) of Little Red Riding Hood. During this activity, the researcher told some parts of the story Little Red Riding Hood by Chico Buarque de Holanda, trying to give examples of how they could change their stories.	(06)
P(6) Shopping list	The researcher asked the children to write a text in which they instructed a third person to go shopping. In this text, they should (a) choose a supermarket and indicate its location; (b) explain which products and how many the chosen person should buy; (c) define the amount this person could spend and, finally, (d) indicate the place where the person should deliver the purchases.	(03)
P(7) Cake recipe	The researcher brought a cake and asked which ingredients were needed to bake it. The children gave a few suggestions. Then, he read the recipe of a chocolate cake and asked them to write a recipe of something which they liked.	(04)
P(8) Lecture report	The children attended a lecture about the functioning of the hearing system and afterwards the researcher asked them to write to a third person (father, mother, aunt, uncle, brother, grandparents etc.) telling what they had understood about the lecture.	(08)
P(9) Need glasses?	The researcher asked if the children liked animals and possessed any. Then, he told them that he had found a magazine with a story describing an animal which they certainly did not have at home: the tapir. The text was read aloud twice by the researcher, who asked them to write what they had understood.	(07)
P(10) About the painting	The researcher presented a few copies of the work of Lasar Segall – the pictures: Retrato de Lucy, Paisagem brasileira, Floresta crepuscular, Interior de pobres II, O encontro – and a picture of the author at the age of about 29. Afterwards he asked the children to pretend that they were artists (painters) and draft a painting, describing it (name, kind of material and the reason why they had done or intended to do the painting).	(09)
P(11) Invitation to Érica	The researcher told the children that they were going to write an invitation to the journalist Érica who would come to visit them and talk about her work in the newspaper and how newspaper articles could be written. He arranged with the children that only the two best invitations would be delivered to the journalist in the name of the class – one representing the girls, the other one, the boys.	(11)

• Source: Author’s elaboration.

As can be seen in List 1, the proposed text productions do not indicate one single DT requested by the researcher, i.e. they do not require a single type of relatively stable enunciation:¹⁰

P(1) Dengue – in order to do the activity according to the requirements of the proposal, the child could at once develop the injunctive and list DTs, focusing the text on a list of what should and/or should not be done to avoid Dengue;

P(2) Experience description – the writer could realize the descriptive, narrative and injunctive DTs, focusing the text on a description of the experience and/or injunctions for proper execution of the experience and/or a narration which would tell someone else about it (see CAPRISTANO; OLIVEIRA, 2014);

P(3) Sad story – although the proposal focuses on narration, the writer might also infer the need to explain the choice of a given story, which would represent an argumentative DT, besides including, at several points of the text, descriptive DT, to present the elements of the narrative.

P(4) Candidates to presidency – the need to work with the letter DT leads to other DTs which appear especially in the main body of the letter. Since this proposal requires the writer to speak about what he thinks that the candidates should do, the argumentative DT also occurs, given that this thought must also be explained, as well as the injunctive DT, considering the possible insertion of instructions/orders/advice to these candidates.

P(5) Story of Little Red Riding Hood – in this proposal, the narrative DT is clear for the writers, who can also develop descriptive DTs, to present the elements of the narrative. The request to change the end of the story creates the need to argue pointing out the reason for the change, even if it be just to fulfill a request of the proposal itself;

P(6) Shopping list – the child would have to develop a shopping list, but also injunctions and descriptions which would guide the recipient in his task;

P(7) Cake recipe – the recipe DT leads the writer to develop list and injunctive DTs, since the ingredients must be listed and the actions must be organized;

P(8) Experience report – the report, description and narration DTs can be developed based on this proposal, given that, while focusing on reporting a lecture, the writer could also describe what had been presented and/or tell everything to someone else;

P(9) Need glasses – as they talk about the tapir, besides the description, they need the argumentative DT in order to explain/justify given characteristics, behaviors of this animal and of those related to it;

P(10) About the painting – the writer could realize the description and argumentation DTs in a text focusing on the description of his painting, but also on the explanation of the reason for choosing a given painting; and

P(11) Invitation to Érica – creating an invitation DT could also mean that the writer needs to argue so that the invitation will be accepted.

The mixture of DTs¹¹ shown in this list can be related (i) to the content of the proposal or (ii) to the complex nature of the requested DT. For instance: as to (i), in the case of P(6) Shopping list, the content of the proposal requires writing a text in which other relatively stable enunciations, beyond the shopping list itself, are necessary. The same occurs in P(11) Invitation to Érica, where the child, being inserted in a competitive environment, relates writing an invitation – supposed to be the best of the class – to the need of acceptance by the invited recipient, which leads to argumentation. On the other hand, as to (ii), complex DTs, such as those requested in (P4) Candidates to presidency and (P7) Cake recipe, a letter and a recipe, respectively, are inherently heterogeneous, in the sense that they are syntagmatically formed of other DTs.

In addition to (i) and (ii), one should consider that: (iii) the children oscillate between what they should write, according to the model set by school, and what they wish to write (SOARES, 2003); and (iv) the children oscillate in regard to the other/recipient which they perceive and represent for themselves, alternately writing to the other/recipient represented by the school institution and to the other/recipient represented by the direct participant/interlocutor of everyday conversations, among other possible directions (CAPRISTANO; OLIVEIRA, 2014).

However, in line with Capristano e Oliveira (2014), we should consider that children’s enunciations which emerge from these requests are school genres, equivalent to complex DTs written at school and marked by: (1) the locus of text proposal and production – the classroom in the school environment; and (2) by the didactic nature of the activity – with follow-up from the teachers responsible for the classes and, very important in this context, their intervention in the text production, through suggestions, answers to questions about how to write etc. It is a writing tradition which, as such, requires a more detailed approach, so that, through its complexity, other DTs can surface.

Mode of enunciation and meaning relations in juxtaposed constructions

The relation of Addition

Pezatti and Longhin-Thomazi (2008) distinguish two kinds of addition among sentences: symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric addition allows the order of its members to change without any significant change in meaning, since the members of the addition are independent, i.e. one member does not add meaning to the other. In asymmetric additions, reversibility is not allowed, since one member leads to the other and the state of truth of the following members depends on the preceding ones. Additionally, the chronological order with an iconic value also plays a role related to the asymmetry of the portions which form the complex.

Under these circumstances, I consider paratactic juxtaposed constructions expressing addition to be those defined as symmetric. On the present approach, the members of the addition are independent, according to the quoted authors, but highly dependent on the discursive context, since the development of the analyzed texts depends, to a great extent, on the addition of paratactic members. By these means, the subjects add new information or reintroduce discursively relevant given information and, through this movement, they make the text flow without establishing semantic relationships between its parts. However, it is essential to recognize the importance of pragmatic-discursive factors, such as relevance (GRICE, 1975) and argumentative scales (DUCROT, 1983), for instance, in determining precisely that order recognized in the text and no other.

The following utterance, developed from P(1), the proposal which offered the child a preventive leaflet for Dengue, shows the relation of symmetric addition:

(Text 01)

Não deixe as boca das garrafas proalto Ø as

tanpas no lixo Ø põe nos cacos de vidro no

lixo si joga caco de vrid no chanão as

criança bote cortar e machucar intão

lixo si joga caco de vrid no chanão as

chão tem muito crinaça que já machuco [CALIL01-P(1)]

The subject starts the texts giving a few recommendations to his reader/recipient, in a DT which mixes a list and injunction, making use of juxtaposed paratactic clauses: (1) do not leave the mouth of the bottle turned upward; (2) leave bottle caps in the waste (3) discard glass fragments. These recommendations, which receive injunctive traces in the texts, due to the verbs used in imperative, are added to each other symmetrically. Therefore, by presenting a list of recommendations, the writer starts to develop his text by inserting new information, through juxtaposition, in each member of the paratactic construction. Although some changes may occur in the presented sequence of recommendations – which makes the construction symmetric – pragmatically, they show an increasing relevance which can only be established and inferred from the text itself. This means that the insertion of the third juxtaposed clause, discard glass fragments, plays a central role in the further text development based on this topic: the children could cut themselves, if the glass fragments are thrown on the floor [...]. This development, as should be noted, shows a context where the child oscillates between what they should write, observing the request of the proposal, and what they wish to write, meaning a warning to those who could harm the children by throwing glass fragments on the floor. This is a case where the child leaves the initial proposal and focuses on what seems most relevant to them.

The relation of addition, highlighted in (02), occurs in a text developed from P(3), a proposal which asked children to tell a sad story.

(Text 02)

Eu só sei que ese dia foi

muito muito triste, eu avia ganhado uma mari-

taca. E femia ela gostava muito de

brincar muito Ø viver livre voando pelo

ar e depois de quatro dias, fui até

lá dar comida a ela a cesi e...

ela tinha sido roubada e eu achei

a porta da gaiola aberta e pegada.

No barro foran dias e dias de triste-

za. [CALIL02-P(3)]

In (02), the subject starts the text describing the time of the utterance as a very, very sad day, thereby stressing his responsive attitude towards the content of the proposal. The narrative tradition developed by him focuses on the fact that his parrot was stolen and, of course, includes an excerpt describing the animal: she really liked to play Ø live freely. This description is inserted through paratactic clauses juxtaposed by symmetric addition, given that, in the context, it is important to present these characteristics, while the order is not necessarily fixed. Again, however, we see an increasing relevance of the characteristics presented by the writer in the complex in discussion. The characteristic presented afterwards, live freely, in the sequence completed by the juxtaposed clause flying, which specifies how this free life happened, is key to support the argumentation of the writer against stealing the parrot, which, if it lived freely, had no reason to fly away. As a result, the sequence of juxtaposed paratactic clauses describing the animal is presented in such a way that the sum of the characteristics is consistent with the fact presented by the writer, in the sense of adding arguments to support his perspective about his stolen animal.

As the occurrences of paratactic juxtaposition with an additive value show, in the texts (01) and (02), although it is not possible to establish a time sequence for these clauses, they display a discursive relationship which defines their arrangement in the text. Therefore, in the paratactic complex, these clauses have not only a function of inserting new information, making the text progress, but also, in an intrinsic association with this function, presenting the pragmatic-discursive relevance of these pieces of information.

The relation of Time

In cases where the paratactic juxtaposed sequence is asymmetric, circumstantial information can be added (see Table 1). In a temporal interpretation, one member of the complex is related to another through a chronological sequence with an iconic value, as illustrated in the excerpts (03) to (05):

(Text 03)

Maria você vaiter que ila

no tridico fazer augumas

compras Ø você pega a venida

e vai reto para cima Ø eu quero

que você traga 4 cebolas 5 peixe

2 quilo de açúca 12 duzia de ovos

6 bananas 9 ameixas 2 detergente

3 batatas eu tenho so 3 reais [CALIL01-P(6)]

To fulfill the request of the proposal (6), the writer of the text (03) mixes injunctive and list DTs, based on a juxtaposed paratactic setting: (i) an order – Maria, you will have to go to Tridico do some shopping, (ii) an explanation about the way the other/recipient should follow to reach the destination – follow the avenue and go straight up and, finally, (iii) what should be purchased – I want you to bring [...]. These juxtaposed clauses display an order related to the iconic sequence of actions in the real world and their presentation in the text. In other words, since the subject is not expected to tell what should be bought before asking someone to go shopping, the relationship of precedency and posteriority between the components of the paratactic construction is crucial for the discursive development of the text.

Note that the other/recipient is represented as Maria, the person chosen to do what the writer is requesting as the direct interlocutor in this dialog, but, additionally, the teacher/researcher other/recipient is also represented, as can be noticed in the methodic form by which the writer fulfills what has been proposed, according to the instructions given by the teacher/researcher in the proposal 6.

In the texts in (04), below, the writer develops two recipes, one for chocolate cake and the other for rice, presenting typical action sequences with a non-prototypical mixture of list and injunctive (mode of preparation) DTs, typical for recipes. Regarding these texts, I would stress: (i) the representation of the other/recipient as the person receiving instructions to prepare the recipe, step by step and on-line, illustrated by the use of the pronoun you¹², which indicates that this utterance is addressed to an anonymous other/recipient; (ii) the use of verbs in imperative related to the purpose of ensuring a proper reading and interpretation of the utterances in the written mode of enunciation;¹³ (iii) the simultaneity between these utterances and the time/moment of enunciation, in the same iconic action sequence expressed by the semantics of the juxtapositions highlighted in bold:

(Text 04)

Bolo de chocolate

Uma colher de sopa de mantega

uma chicara de açucar

depois coloque duas chicaras de farinha de trigo Ø

uma ou duas chicaras de leite

modo de fazer

mecher todos os ingredientes que você colocou

em uma hora e coloque em uma açadeira

untada Ø espere assar e bom apetite

arroz

coloque uma cebola picada em uma

panela com óleo em seguida coloque o

alho e deixe fritar depois coloque o

arroz escolhido Ø poe sal Ø mecer um

pouco e poe a agua Ø tire os grãos

de arroz do canto da panela

e pegue a tampa e tampe mais

não pode fechar tudo tem que deixar

um boraco depois do ponto tampe

isso é só. [CALIL01-P(7)]

The asymmetry of the markedly time-related paratactic juxtaposed constructions is directly associated to the non-reversibility of their order. Something similar happens in the following example:

(Text 05)

Purificador de água

Vamos precisar de:

. uma garrafa descartavel de uma tesoura

pedra, areia fina e areia grossa .

depois ah pegar a tesoura Ø corte a garrafa e

vamos usar a parte de cima e a debaixo

a de cima e como um funil e bota primeiro

a areia fina e de pois areia grossa e pedras

pegue agua suja e bote dentro do funil e o

algodão depois usar a parte debaixo e vai co-

meçar purificar a água. [CALIL02-P(2)]

In the utterance in (05), the writer provides a report which dialogues with the recipe in terms of: (i) its formal aspects, though presented unconventionally, namely: a list of items needed to perform the experiment – we will need a one-way bottle, a scissor, fine sand and coarse sand – and the mode of preparation; and (ii) the instruction purpose, also found in other DTs.

The writer begins his utterance in the first person plural, thereby joining the I, who makes the utterance, and the other/recipient, who the I addresses, indicating proximity/engagement between the writer and the other/recipient represented by him. The nature of tradition, however, leads the writer, in this project of saying, to alternate between this more participative interlocution and a more injunctive one, codifying the strongly instructional content of the utterance through different forms of imperative (pegar a tesoura, corte a garrafa, bota primeiro a areia fina). The variation in the form of marking the imperative, as shown in this text, reinforces what I have indicated in regard to the previous text: interpreting this aspect as a sign of dialogical and typically less formal utterances, which, therefore, signal the writer’s movement across various ways of conceiving his relationship with writing considering the objectives of the utterance he makes. Additionally, the heterogeneity of writing is indicated by the interjection ah, which can be related to the writers concern about remembering the steps of the experience and thereby ensure that the purpose of the tradition in which his utterance is developed is fulfilled, as proposed.

The simultaneity of these utterances with the moment of enunciation, a key factor in the semantic constitution of the highlighted juxtaposed complexes, also reveals in this utterance the iconic relation between the text and the world, which is equally expressed by and it will start to purify the water, at the end of the text.

Paratactic constructions of the types illustrated in the texts (03) to (05) can be connected to the iconic order of their members as well as to the semantics of the verbs which express sequence in time, along with other aspects, such as the interference of twin verb tenses and verbal modes directly related to the objectives of the text writer. Analysing the parameters of explicitation, identity and animacy of the syntactic subject in these constructions can indicate its level of syntactic integration.¹⁴ In the investigated data, the subjects are always animate – which stands in direct association with the narrative tradition,¹⁵ recurrently found in the texts –, in most occurrences they are also identical, appear explicitly and, when elliptic, they can be clearly retrieved from the context. Therefore, the semantic-discursive interweaving of temporal juxtaposed paratactics does not equal a high integration level of the clauses forming the complex, which is thus at a less advanced stage of grammaticalization.

Although the syntactic integration between the clauses should be defined at a low level, the discursive integration should be defined as essential for the kind of identified temporal relations. The discursive purposes of the texts are the determining factor for the sequence of the facts presented in iconic order. The relation between “before” and “afterwards” provides the text with the trace of practice which aims to fulfill a purpose.

To finish this section follows the text (06), where the relation of simultaneous time can be observed:

(Text 06)

a capelzinha vernelha

. Era uma vez una mulher chanado

Maria. Ela tin una filha chamada Ro-

berta nas chanavam ela de Chapel-

sinho vernelho porque ela tinha uma

linda capa vemelha. Um belo dia

dona Maria mandou Chapelsinha

levár algus doses para vovó e a

dona Maria falou ˗ filha va para

o caninho mais longo para o lobo

não te pegar e não conversar con

estranho viu.

. E lá foi apelsinho vernelho,

mas no meio do caninho “rac!” ai

falo a chapelsinho ˗ quem me arran-

hou descupe minha menina, era o

lobo desfarsado de lenhador.

“uuuuu”! vejo que você está indo pa-

ra a casa da vovó e pelo canin-

ho mais longo va por ali esta

ben . E ela foi mas o lobo chego

prineiro e prendeu a vovó e lá

está a capensinho. que boca grande

é para comer vosê socorro,

socorro, socorro Ø um guarda.

. Que estava pasando escutou

e lá foi apelsinho vernelho, Alén de ter salvado

[verso da folha]

a vovó matou o lobo. [CALIL 02-P(5)]

The writer begins the text with a DT Once upon a time, recurrent in the introduction of narrative traditions identified as tales/children stories and/or folk tales, whose role is to undefine the time setting of what is being told. This text is a narration, with the typical insertion of descriptive parts and direct speech, including the character’s cry for help after the threat of the wolf. At the same time as this sentence is spoken by the character Little Red Riding Hood, it is heard by the guard, iconically representing what would happen in the real world. However, the text dramatically expresses the cry for help and then, in a juxtaposed manner, the fact that the guard, who was passing by, went there because he heard it. Still, in the clause juxtaposition the idea of simultaneity in time is not lost, because the paratactic members are inserted in a given discursive context.

The relation of Cause

In the absence of explicit junctives, the sense of cause is expressed discursively, as I have shown regarding the notions of addition and time. Thus, the concept of causality adopted in this paper surpasses the logic-semantic domain and is expressed in the light of discursive relations, which are inherent to the world knowledge of the participants in the interaction (ZIV, 1993, 1997).¹⁶

Following this perspective, juxtaposed paratactic constructions, even without explicit linguistic marks, allow for a causal interpretation, thereby distancing the conceptual and linguistic representation from causality, but at the same time relating the conceptual representations to pragmatic-discursive aspects assimilated from the context.¹⁷ Under these conditions, the juxtaposed paratactic constructions in the analysed texts contextually allow causal readings, within the semantic polysemy of this domain, in most causes leading to causal readings with socio-physical content (SWEETSER, 1991), of cause-effect or assertion-explanation, as shown in the examples (07) and (08), respectively.

(Text 07)

Usando oculos

Anta.

A femia é maior doque o macho o filhotes e quinem a mãe a

anta não enxerga direito Ø ela fica trombando nas

arvores Ø ela gostadecoisa salgada Ø os cassadores

pôm sacolas de sal e quando chóve molhaosal

e as coisas que ela come ficão salgadas e também

ela é muito grande ela é grande do tamanho de

um elefante éla é mamifera. [CALIL01-P(9)]

(Text 08)

Mai hoje eu apredi como

cuida do ovido itudo mais

é muintacoisa Ø não daprais

prica porque é coisa dimais ite

uma cordinha que sobe ate

u selepru e tanbei que tetrês

ossino [CALIL01-P(8)]

In the text (07), written based on P(9) Need glasses, the writer addresses the researcher/professor other/recipient through the title, Wearing glasses, which relates his utterance to what has been told in the proposal. However, he feels the need to further define the topic of his speech, therefore indicating, through the title Tapir, another representation of the recipient, as a direct interlocutor who does not know the animal about which he will speak, thus explaining the description to be made. In this scene, the child represents itself as someone who holds the required knowledge to introduce a given animal to the other/recipient, represented as someone who does not know this animal, while in fact, the child has also only just been introduced to it, as the last comparison shows, it is as large as an elephant.

Thus, the utterances are filtered basically into descriptive traditions, in combination with argumentative ones, since some traces of the introduced animal and those who interact with it (for instance, the hunters) need to be explained. In the first highlighted binary sequence, the tapir can’t see very well Ø it keeps bumping into trees, the fact that it can’t see well is considered to be the reason why tapirs bump into trees. In the second, it likes salty things Ø the hunters leave salt bags, the fact that they like salty things is considered to be the reason for the hunters’ behavior. In these sequences, the iconic temporal order and the verbal semantics typical for an action or event open the possibility of a causal interpretation for the utterances. At the informational level, each pair of the causal complex is responsible for presenting one piece of new information which, at the prosodic level, is codified in different intonational units. The cause-effect relationship between these pieces of new information, in intonationally independent clauses, however, is codified in the context, according to the (newly obtained) world knowledge of the speaker/writer.

In the text (08), written according to P(8) Experience report, as proposed, the writer addresses the other/recipient Mother, represented as a direct participant-interlocutor of the dialog, in addition to an other/recipient represented by the researcher/teacher, who is the reason for the writer to argue that he does not feel able to report/explain the experience. The dialog with this other/recipient apparently is also reflected in the excerpt and it has a little string that goes up to the brain and also three little bones, information which might have been remembered by the teacher/professor during the student’s text production.

More particularly, in the binary sequence – it’s so much Ø I can’t explain –, the assertion it’s so much, which appears at the beginning of the text, when the writer tells the interlocutor how he learned to take care of his ears and everything else, is the basis for the additional explanation I can’t explain, in other words, I can’t explain everything I’ve learned because it’s so much/it’s too much. In this context, at the discursive level, we find an addendum which is the result of the writer’s judgment about his own discourse and thus supports his initial statement, his position. As in the previous example, at the informational level, each pair of the causal complex is responsible for presenting one piece of new information which is codified prosodically in a different intonational unit. Again, it is the writer’s world knowledge that sustains the causality relation inferred from the context. In other words, based on a personal evaluation about the conditions of his discourse, the writer makes a statement and an addendum, establishing a cause relation of the type assertion-explanation.

Hence, according to Ziv (1993), the causal sense in paratactic juxtaposed constructions is legitimated in context by discursive principles. The idea of time, in certain instances, favors the causal reading, since the temporal order of events in the world is linguistically translated into the order of asymmetric clauses, linked by an iconic order, which makes the world and language converge. In this iconic order, interpreting what comes before as a cause, as in the occurrences highlighted in the text (08), and assertion, as in text (09), and what comes afterwards as effect/explanation, respectively, is natural: it is reasonable for the tapir to bump into trees because it can’t see; for the hunters to leave salt bags because the tapirs like them and they want to attract them; for someone to be unable to explain something because it seems too complex (too much).

However, beyond the temporal relation, which is basic to the constructions in discussion, the cause relation depends on the context, which can legitimate or not the implied cause-effect, based on the speaker’s/writer’s knowledge and their beliefs about the world. The idea of cause in paratactic juxtaposed constructions is therefore strongly discursive, relying not only on traces of the linguistic context, such as the iconic order of clauses and the verb meaning, but also, and above all, on enunciative-discursive schemes of models and world expectations. These schemes are particularly relevant and therefore recurrent in contexts marked by the tradition of presenting a given point of view, the writer’s one, conventionally called argumentative.

The relation of Contrast

In this paper, I understand the configuration of contrast along the lines of Pekarek-Doehler et al. (2010), not as a logical operation or merely a semantic relation between two predicative constructions joined paratactically, but as an activity performed by the subject, in which the structures, despite not being marked morphosyntactically, have the function of acting as resources for an intended purpose. This relationship can be supported by several other syntactic, lexical-semantic and prosodic means, which help create parallels to define differences, refutations which add argumentative functions to the utterances based on world knowledge and the speaker’s/writer’s expectations.

Some of these functions are driven, more specifically, by linguistic correlatives, such as those highlighted in (09) and (10), whereas others have a more global composition, discursive-contextually dependent, as I show in (11).

(Text 09)

Eu fiz no meu quadro o sitio do

pica-pau amarelo, Ø eu só deze-

nhei a quilo porque eu não

tinha nada para fazer.

Meu dezenho tem: a emilia,

a narinho e o Pedrinho,

arvores e o sol e as nu-

vem.[CALIL02-P(10)]

In (09) the binary sequence in a rigid order – I painted the yellow woodpecker farm on my canvas Ø I only painted it because I had nothing to do – shows an argumentative strategy to mark the contrast by using only associated to had nothing to do, as part of the causal relation which, in turn, forms the second paratactic member. Considering the suggestion of P(10), painting a canvas and afterwards describing it, the writer, despite some lack of inspiration, does the activity, but allows us to retrieve the contrast when he discusses his choice. In this utterance, the writer simulates a dialog between two characters, the child, which represents himself, and another character representing the other/recipient who, at the same time, corresponds to a direct participant/interlocutor of the dialog and the teacher/researcher. In face of this representation and the assignment, in a formal school context, the child fulfills their task, highlighting the contrast.

The explicit negative along with syntactic parallelism to mark a contrast can also be noticed in the utterance in (10), based on P(4) Letter to the president, in which the writer, using injunctive and argumentative traditions, has a direct conversation with his other/recipient, José Serra.

(Text 10)

José serra

. Ce você ganhar terá de mostrar agi-

lidade você terá que fazer para tirar

as pessoas da rua dar comida para que

eles não passe fome Ø você não fas isso

seu fosse você ia fazer isso Ø você não

mostra vergonha ajude nos pense naqueles

que estão sofrendo agora você não pensa

sua bola de futebol ajuden eles fazer isso

você estará colaborando.[CALIL02-P(4)]

This strongly dialogic utterance¹⁸ includes two paratactic juxtaposed sequences in the pairs, as follows: (i) dar comida para que eles não passem fome Ø você não faz isso [give food so they won’t starve Ø you don’t do that]e (ii) se eu fosse você ia fazer isso Ø você não mostra vergonha [If I were you I would do that Ø you don’t care]. In (i), the writer creates the contrast between what the writer should do, but fails to do, in his opinion, being represented as the I who addresses the identified other. In (ii), immediately afterwards, the first pair, composed of a conditional clause, recursively contrasts this I which imagines itself in the position of the other with the other (you) featured in the second clause of the complex. Two different attitudes underlie this pair in a discursive integration: you don’t do that because you don’t care and that makes you different than me, who would do so [meaning that I care]. The negatives (to do vs not to do), in addition to personal points of view judged and qualified distinctively by the writer (I vs you) mark different perspectives, from the perspective of the writer, which, legitimated by real-world principles – in this case, related to several attitudes expected from politicians – allow a contrastive interpretation.

In the following text, the contrast is also marked by an opposition between me and you. However, the discursive direction in (11) is different than in (10):

(Text 11)

Para Érica

Como você vai, mesmo não

conhecendo você já poso saber

como você é jornalista e

eu conheço jorna lista como

a palma da minha mão.

. Você gosta de dezenhar

porque eu adoro dezenhar, Ø você

deve gostar de escrever olhe um

dos meus dezenhos

[desenho]

. Queria convidar você para

vim aqui na chase abraços de

João [CALIL02-P(11)]

The utterance in (11), based on P(11) Invitation to Érica, shows typical features of written invitations, such as the addressing To Érica and the explicit purpose of the act I would like to invite you to come to my class. However, some aspects of this utterance are related to the tradition of inviting people orally, resembling a dialog which often is informal and starts with an attempt to approach the interlocutor, as observed in Como você vai? [How are you?] and throughout the development of the text, in which the writer makes of point of following this approach, even in an unfavorable context.

Thus, the contrastive relation is marked throughout the development of (11), being codified by different means. At the beginning, the writer states that although I don’t know you, I can already know what you are like: a journalist. Specifically, by representing his other/recipient participant/interlocutor, based on his world knowledge about what and how a journalist is – claiming to know them like the back of his hand – the writer, despite not knowing the journalist “person”, can create expectations about her and shape his discursive purpose of trying to approach this other/recipient, as opposed to the previous text.

Another evidence of this attempt to approach her appears in the question Você gosta de desenhar? [Do you like to draw?]. The insertion of this question is supported by the causal paratactic construction porque eu adoro desenhar [because I like to draw] (which, in turn, is shown by a drawing in the text). However, recursively, this clause functions in the juxtaposed pair because I like to draw Ø you must like to draw, which, through its binary order, again creates a contrast, marked lexically (draw x write), but primarily marked in the discourse. If the writer knows the journalists like the back of his hand, he is supposed to know that journalists like to write. In any case, this contrast does not overshadow the wish to approach the other, as marked and reinforced by this subject. The whole discursive strategy expressing the attempt of the I to approach the other/recipient, even in a context marked by contrasts, is justified by the intention to utter an invitation to this other/recipient and make it be accepted. For the writer, the best invitation of the class would be the one with the greatest chance of being accepted.

Final remarks

In this paper, the view on predicative constructions paratactically connected by juxtaposition, using data from acquisition of the written enunciation mode, has allowed us to confirm the hypothesis that the connection between the members of this kind of construction, as well as the meaning relation emerging from it, result from their discursive context. In this respect, in order to properly understand this kind of construction, considering inherent aspects of DTs is just as important as considering their morphosyntactic, lexical-semantic and prosodic properties.

In the discursive environment of a given speaking/writing tradition, frames/schemas/scripts are evidenced and in order to fulfill the expectations arising from them, some meaning relations, though not explicitly marked, are more expected than others. The texts resulting from the proposals Cake recipe and Experience description, for instance, predominantly express temporal relations in the recipe and description DTs, since the order of facts in time is priority, in an iconic relationship between the text and the world. In texts written based on proposals where the list DT was evident – such as Shopping list, Dengue –, the idea of symmetric addition could also be observed. In these texts, even though the order of the paratactic members with an additive value could be changed, displaying them as codified has an argumentative relevance. The cause and contrast relations also surpass the logic-semantic domain and are expressed in the light of discursive relations, which are inherent to the world knowledge and the set of beliefs of the participants in the interaction, in particular the writer’s, in some relatively stable utterances. These relations could be observed in several texts, whenever the recurrent trace was argumentation, whether to establish the cause-effect or assertion-explanation relation through socio-physical content or to mark incompatibility between two entities.

This work has also suggested that directing the text production proposal towards a given DT, as in the proposal Sad story, for instance, which calls for a narrative DT, does not prevent the occurrence of a mixture of DTs. As such, this study can show various examples of a DT composed of other DTs, according to its criterion of syntagmatic compositionality, and show how this mixture is related to different factors, such as the kind of DT, the kind of proposal guiding the text production and the kind of relation between the subject and the tradition and/or the way he enunciates this tradition.

In this sense, even though some meaning relations are more recurrent in certain traditions, as shown by the examples – such as the proposal Candidates to presidency, focusing on the production of essentially argumentative enunciations, in which cause and contrast relations are expected – these relations are also constitutive of other traditions, such as predominantly narrative, Sad story, descriptive, Need glasses, Experience description, Cake recipe, injunctive ones, as Candidates to presidency etc.

One discursive issue which is relevant for this work and aligns with the results presented by Capristano and Oliveira (2014) is the representation made by the writer of the other/recipient of the utterance, which emerges in the texts simultaneously referring to: (i) the school institution other who must be acknowledged, since all texts belong to an educational macro DT, as a writing tradition set exclusively in the formal school context;¹⁹ (ii) the professor/researcher other; and (iii) the direct participant/interlocutor other in the dialog.

Regarding (ii) and (iii), I relate the dependency of utterances to the enunciation context, in which the writer and the reader share the same enunciation situation, which allows the writer to point towards it in the configuration of text meanings. In this setting, the use of juxtapositions is a gesture of the child/writer indicating the fact that they rely on this knowledge shared with their other/recipient/reader at the moment of enunciation. In line with Capristano and Oliveira (2014) and Corrêa (2004), I propose that, based on the belief that the context in which the utterance has been made is moulded in their writing, children join clauses by juxtaposition without using tactic junction mechanisms to express the codification of the various meaning relations, just as they follow other strategies, e.g. using definite nominal expressions and pronouns without referents (CAPRISTANO; OLIVEIRA, 2014).

However, this gesture of the writer in acquisition stage of a new (written) mode of enunciation has a specific trace, as a gesture made in relatively stable enunciations: at the same time as it points towards the context, it also provides evidence in the co-text, i.e. linguistic marks which guide the other/recipient to the meaning relation which can only be truly understood in the discursive environment. This indicates that the subject is inserted in writing by moving across the fixed, but also the incomplete aspects of traditions, and therefore chooses parataxis by juxtaposition, since it is a strong indicator for traditions already known by the subject; traditions found in orality.

The gesture represented by the tactic mechanism of clause juxtaposition cannot be completely defined as a fissure, meaning gaps which can only be filled by the other/recipient present at the moment of enunciation, but could be considered a fissure as long as it is understood as a gap which can be filled by the other/recipient who considers a sum of linguistic – in the sense of what is traditional and thus fixed in texts – and discursive cues.

In sum, I point out at least three important considerations arising from this work: (i) in the syntagmatic composition of a given tradition, other traditions are dynamically involved – what I call mixture of DTs; (ii) the factor which rules this compositionality principle of DTs is strongly discursive, in the sense that the discursive purposes of the subject, according to his representations of a given moment, space of interlocution and other/recipient of his utterance define which traditions serve as material for producing a tradition; and, finally (iii) in data from acquisition of the written mode of enunciation, the mixture of DTs, as well as the junctions which occur in a tradition, are recurrently made through juxtaposition, as a gesture which graphically points to the actual situation of enunciation, since the subject imprints his experiences with the traditions of orality, especially dialog, in the construction of writing traditions.

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• 1
  Kabatek (2005, p.159) defines them as “[...] la repetición de un texto o de una forma textual o de una manera particular de escribir o de hablar que adquiere valor de signo propio (por lo tanto es significable). Se puede formar en relación con cualquier finalidad de expresión o con cualquier elemento de contenido cuya repetición establece un lazo entre actualización y tradición [...]”([...] the repetition of a text or a textual form or a particular way of writing/speaking which gains the status of individual sign [thus able to convey meaning]. It can originate in relation to any purpose of expression or any content element whose repetition creates a link between actualization and tradition [...]).
• 2
  Paratactic juxtaposed constructions may differ from their lexically marked counterparts regarding, for instance, their discursive-pragmatic functions.
• 3
  The subject is understood as individuation, referring to the dialogic movement of the writer who, as a result, only has an individuality within the concept of dialogism.
• 4
  Following the concept of Authier-Revuz (1990, p.26) that words are always “someone else’s [...] no word is neutral, but instead is inevitably carried, occupied, inhabited, crossed by discourses in which it has led its socially sustained existence”, the subject always negotiates with the other what is constitutive to him and therefore defines how his utterances emerge.
• 5
  The idea of frame considered here is culturally determined, as a known activity which allows the production, interpretation and/or comprehension of utterances in the form of different DTs. Thus, we consider the concept of expectation structures: “A frame refers to an expectation about the world, based on previous experience, against which new experiences will be measured and interpreted” (TANNEN, 1993, p.16 apud THUMM, 2000, p.11).
• 6
  The idea of imaginary as a representation, according to Corrêa (2004 p.XIX), relates very well to its etymology, in the sense that it refers both to finished images and to their (re)construction. “The term ‘imaginary’, which, in its archaic usage, is also the name of the trade responsible for this kind of craft [...] would at once correspond to the set of images and to the – always unfinished – work of the craftsman when leaving his mark on the images he made.”
• 7
  Original text: “[...] a aquisição da escrita é um momento particular de um processo mais geral de aquisição da linguagem. Nesse momento, em contato com a representação escrita da língua que fala, o sujeito reconstrói a história de sua relação com a linguagem.” (ABAURRE; FIAD; MAYRINK-SABINSON, 2002, p.22).
• 8
  The same approach is followed by Capristano and Oliveira (2014) based on discursive genres from a Bakhtinian perspective. What I call traditional here corresponds to discursive genres, but might also correspond to other instances not related to them, such as linguistic constructions, forms of treatment etc. The main link between these notions, however, is that both are socially prefigured and expanded once the child enters the school environment.
• 9
  The proposals have been created and assigned by Capristano and have been collected every two weeks. The students have been tracked from 2001 to 2004, during the four years of primary school, always in the context of school.
• 10
  The DT indicated in association with each proposal have been found as realizations in the texts which compose the corpus of this study.
• 11
  What I call mixture of DTs broadly corresponds to the concept of ruins of discursive genres, in the terms of Corrêa (2004), and can be understood as memories of generic enunciations found in writing (children’s writing, in this work, but also others) which indicate representations made by children of those relatively stable modes by which they(we) enunciate in their(our) lives, in various social practices. The ruins show the intergenericity, far from any negative connotation and approaching their constructive sense, as “[...] more or less formless parts of discursive genres, which, when featured in a different genre, receive the status of historical sources – retrospective or prospective – in the constitution of a spoken or written expression” (CORRÊA, 2006, p.209, emphasis ours). The choice of mixture of DTs necessarily is related to the understanding of DT as speech/writing traditions which match discursive genres, but also to textual types, acts of speech, linguistic constructions, forms, styles etc. The acquisition of a DT requires at once a retrospective and a prospective dialog with repetitions of the “already-said” and a project of saying having the status of historical and discursive source (in what is new to each discursive event). Thus, the composition of a DT supposes the writer’s movement through other DTs, since that shows the underlying (syntagmatic and paradigmatic) compositionality principle. Regarding the acquisition of the written mode of enunciation, this movement is closely related to traditions which the child already knows, evidently marked by orality, such as everyday conversations.
• 12
  The use of you in children’s utterances found in recipes, reports, among others, apparently is related to television shows where several activities, including recipes, are taught to an anonymous audience (CAPRISTANO; OLIVEIRA, 2014; KOMESU, 2003), as well as the contact to relatives – mothers, grandmothers – who make similar utterances when doing certain tasks.
• 13
  In BP, less formal (more dialogical) speech events favor the use of imperative in association with indicative, whereas more formal (less dialogical) events favor the use of imperative in association with subjunctive (SCHERRE, 2007). Nevertheless, the dialogical nature of the children’s enunciations, marked in the syntax and in constructions such as and enjoy, that’s all, seems to indicate that the use of verbs related to subjunctive, in utterances such as (04), might be due to an attempt to ensure its most proper interpretation, as well as to the representation of the school institution other/recipient, which reinforces other forms in the child’s linguistic universe.
• 14
  Studies suggest that, the greater the semantic integration (which means an advanced stage of grammaticalization, according to Heine, Claudi e Hünnemeyer (1991)), the greater will be the use of zero anaphora to mark identical subjects and more recurrent will be the trace [-animate] (LIMA-HERNANDES, 2008, p. 6).
• 15
  The narration, as a speech/writing tradition, recurrently occurs in this data as a way of acting in the compositionality of other traditions (LONGHIN-THOMAZI, 2011a, 2011b).
• 16
  This understanding aligns with a basic category for representing human knowledge which covers a semantic polysemy – cause, consequence, reason, explanation and justification.
• 17
  This phenomenon has also been studied by Ziv (1997) for constructions in English. The author suggests that causal interpretations can derive from principles related to relevance (GRICE, 1975) and to world knowledge, by studying juxtaposed paratactics, paratactics with and as well as non-finite gerund and participle constructions and relative constructions. About relative constructions with circunstantial values, see also Longhin and Lopes-Damasio (2014).
• 18
  As opposed to relatively stable utterances, such as recipes, according to previous remarks in this paper, the representation of the other addressed by the utterance is no longer anonymous. In this sense, it shows a direct participant/interlocutor, identified in the utterance and, therefore, acting as reference for the pronoun you.
• 19
  Capristano and Oliveira (2014), in the analysis of text from the same corpus as researched here, provide evidence which also supports this position, such as the existence of school headers.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  May-Aug 2016

History

• Received
  July 2013
• Accepted
  Oct 2014