Abstract
The aim of this study is to provide an integrated description of consequential constructions in European contemporary Portuguese, relating their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic behavior. It will be argued that the discourse segment introduced by the connectives consequentemente, de forma que, dai (que), de modo que, por isso, assim can be analyzed in terms of a supplement (Huddleston & Pullum 2002), not syntactically integrated with its anchor, but semantically related to it. Semantically, consequential constructions may be paraphrased by causal ones involving an adverbial subordinate clause. But, unlike causal constructions, consequential ones connect two distinct speech acts. The suppression of the consequential connective may trigger two different readings, but it will be argued that, for pragmatic reasons (Levinson 2000), the preferential reading is still the consequential one.
Highlights
To the author’s knowledge, there is no thorough investigation focused exclusively on the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of consequential constructions in contemporary European Portuguese
In Lopes (2004), a contrastive approach to consequential and conclusive constructions in European Portuguese is sketched, within Sweetser’s (1990) theoretical framework, which advocates a tripartite analysis of meaning, unfolding over the content, the epistemic and the speech act domains
Lopes argues that consequential constructions operate at the content domain, whereas conclusive constructions involve both the epistemic and the speech act domains1
Summary
To the author’s knowledge, there is no thorough investigation focused exclusively on the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of consequential constructions in contemporary European Portuguese. (3) Tinham baixo nível económico e más condições habitacionais, de modo que recorriam à mendicidade como meio de sobrevivência.( ext13178-‐soc-‐97a-‐2) [They were poor and had bad housing conditions. (3b) *Não tinham baixo nível económico e más condições habitacionais de modo que recorriam à mendicidade como meio de sobrevivência.
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