ABSTRACT
This paper develops a cognitive linguistics approach to non-canonical VS order in spoken Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Based on recent developments of Mental Spaces Theory (Sanders, Sanders and Sweetser 2009SANDERS, Ted; José Sanders &Eve Sweetser. 2009. Causality, cognition and communication: a mental space analysis of subjectivity in causal connectives. In: Ted Sanders & Eve Sweetser (eds.). Causal categories in discourse and cognition. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter., 2012_____. 2012. Responsible subjects and discourse causality: how mental spaces and perspective help identifying subjectivity in Dutch backwards causal connectives. Journal of pragmatics. 44/2: 191-213.; Ferrari and Sweetser 2012_____ & Eve Sweetser. 2012. Subjectivity and upwards projection in mental space structure. In: Barbara Dancygier & Eve Sweetser (orgs.). Viewpoint in language: a multimodal perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ), and drawing on attested linguistic data from oral interviews and spontaneous conversation, the research provides evidence that BP subject inversion is a viewpoint shift phenomenon. It is argued that SV and VS structures evoke different mental space networks: the former instructs the hearer to set Viewpoint in the Deictic Centre of Communication, whereas the latter signals Viewpoint shift to the Content Domain.
Key-words:
VS order; Mental Spaces Theory; Viewpoint; Deictic dislocation
