A logoforicidade em português brasileiro: um estudo experimental.

Abstract

This study aims to investigate whether logophoric structures are acceptable or not for the speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Much of the issue literature on the subject (Reinhart and Reuland (1993), Menuzzi (1997)) points out that logophoric anaphora exists separately from syntactic anaphora in Universal Grammar. The syntactic anaphoras are guided by syntactic factors such as location and c-command. But logophor may or may not notice these syntactic conditions. These studies also demonstrate that where there is logophoricity, the pronoun and anaphora are interchangeable, so, either one or the other can be used in the same position in the sentence. The conclusion we reached after the literature review is that anaphora resolution in logophorics contexts seems to involve not only the influence of structural information but also and above all, the influence of pragmatic and discursive information, as seen in pronouns. Based on these theoretical assumptions, we examine the acceptability of logophorics sentences in PB in order to know if they are present in the grammar of the speakers of that language. Two acceptability judgment experiments were conducted in order to know if the structures with the logophoric anaphor “ele mesmo” and the logophoric pronoun “ele” are acceptable in BP, based on the English structures presented by Reinhart e Reulnad (1993). Our hypothesis was that both structures are acceptable to speakers of BP and that in contexts where there is a logophoric anaphor, there can also be a logophoric pronoun, as shown by Reinhart e Reuland (1993). The results showed an acceptance of both structures in BP, supporting the formulated hypothesis. With these results, we obtained evidence that the structures with the logophoric anaphora “ele mesmo” and the logophoric pronoun “ele” observed in this study are acceptable in Brazilian Portuguese, as in English.