1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. Pragmatics & Cognition
  4. Volume 29, Issue 2
  5. Article
Volume 29, Issue 2
  • ISSN 0929-0907
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9943
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Like in English, in Brazilian Portuguese can function as a discourse marker (DM) with more than one meaning, and these meanings are curiously diametrically opposed. Certainty, doubt or uncertainty is inferred by hearers in an interactional context. In a sample of audio-video recorded interviews, the occurrences of this DM were classified by meaning, and association tests between meanings and linguistic factors (pronoun realization, polarity, position in utterance), real-world features (type of evidence from which the speaker says something, and discursive topic), prosody (F, intensity and duration), and facial expressions were carried out. Differences that distinguish these factors were identified among certainty, doubt and uncertainty uses. The certainty meaning of was associated with pronoun presence, more formality and topics in which the speaker had direct evidence. Uncertainty and doubt were associated with pronoun absence, less formality and topics in which the speaker did not have direct evidence. Patterns of intensity and duration acted to distinguish the certainty, doubt and uncertainty meanings of . In a conditional decision tree, the position in utterance, presence of a pronoun, type of speaker’s evidence, discursive topic, and duration helped to disambiguate the meanings of . These results suggest the relevance of a multilevel approach to describe DM, in different languages, at least with respect to mental state verbs.

© 2022 John Benjamins Publishing Company
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/pc.21024.fre
2023-04-11
2024-12-06

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/pc.21024.fre
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Aijmer, Karin
    2011 I think – An English modal particle. InToril Swan & Olaf Jansen Westvik (eds.), Modality in Germanic languages, 1–48. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110889932.1
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110889932.1 [Google Scholar]
  2. Antunes, Leandra Batista & Véronique Aubergé
    2015 Análise prosódica da certeza e da incerteza em fala espontânea e atuada [Prosodic analysis of certainty and uncertainty in spontaneous and acted speech]. Revista Diadorim17(2). 212–237. 10.35520/diadorim.2015.v17n2a4077
     https://doi.org/10.35520/diadorim.2015.v17n2a4077 [Google Scholar]
  3. Antunes, Leandra Batista, Véronique Aubergé & Yuko Sasa
    2014 Certainty and uncertainty in Brazilian Portuguese: Methodology of spontaneous corpus collection and data analysis. InProceedings of the 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody, 110–114. 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2014‑10
     https://doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2014-10 [Google Scholar]
  4. Babel, Anna M.
    2009 Dizque, evidentiality, and stance in Valley Spanish. Language in Society38(4). 487–511. 10.1017/S0047404509990236
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404509990236 [Google Scholar]
  5. Baltrusaitis, Tadas, Amir Zadeh, Yao Chong Lim & Louis-Philippe Morency
    2018 Openface 2.0: Facial behaviour analysis toolkit. InProceedings of the 13th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face & Gesture Recognition, 59–66. 10.1109/FG.2018.00019
     https://doi.org/10.1109/FG.2018.00019 [Google Scholar]
  6. Boersma, Paul & David Weenink
    2018 Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 6.0.37. www.praat.org/
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Casseb-Galvão, Vânia Cristina
    1999 O achar no português no Brasil: Um caso de gramaticalização [The achar in Brazilian Portuguese: A grammaticalization case]. Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinas MA dissertation.
  8. 2001 Evidencialidade e gramaticalização no português do Brasil: Os usos da expressão diz que [Evidentiality and grammaticalization in Brazilian Portuguese: The uses of the expression diz que]. Araraquara: Universidade Estadual Paulista PhD dissertation.
  9. Castellano, Ginevra, Loic Kessous & George Caridakis
    2008 Emotion recognition through multiple modalities: Face, body gesture, speech. InChristian Peter & Russell Beale (eds.), Affect and emotion in human-computer interaction, 92–103. Berlin: Springer. 10.1007/978‑3‑540‑85099‑1_8
     https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85099-1_8 [Google Scholar]
  10. Cornillie, Bert
    2009 Evidentiality and epistemic modality: On the close relationship between two different categories. Functions of Language16(1). 44–62. 10.1075/fol.16.1.04cor
     https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.16.1.04cor [Google Scholar]
  11. Cruz, Marisa, Marc Swerts & Sónia Frota
    2017 The role of intonation and visual cues in the perception of sentence types: Evidence from European Portuguese varieties. Laboratory Phonology81. 1–24. 10.5334/labphon.110
     https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.110 [Google Scholar]
  12. Dehé, Nicole & Anne Wichmann
    2010 The multifunctionality of epistemic parentheticals in discourse: Prosodic cues to the semantic-pragmatic boundary. Functions of Language17(1). 1–28. 10.1075/fol.17.1.01deh
     https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.17.1.01deh [Google Scholar]
  13. Duarte, Maria Eugênia Lamoglia
    2000 The loss of the ‘avoid pronoun’ principle in Brazilian Portuguese. InMary Aizawa Kato & Esmeralda Vailati Negrão (eds.), Brazilian Portuguese and the null subject parameter, 17–36. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 10.31819/9783964561497‑002
     https://doi.org/10.31819/9783964561497-002 [Google Scholar]
  14. Ekman, Paul
    2000 Basic emotions. InTim Dalgleish & Mick Power (eds.), Handbook of cognition and emotion, 45–60. New York: John Wiley.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Ekman, Paul & Wallace V. Friesen
    1975 Unmasking the face: A guide to recognizing emotions from facial clues. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. 1978 Facial Action Coding System: A technique for the measurement of facial movement. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Fraser, Bruce
    1999 What are discourse markers?Journal of Pragmatics31(7). 931–952. 10.1016/S0378‑2166(98)00101‑5
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(98)00101-5 [Google Scholar]
  18. Freitag, Raquel Meister Ko
    2003 Gramaticalização e variação de acho (que) e parece (que) na fala de Florianópolis [Grammaticalization and variation of acho (que) and parece (que) in Florianópolis’ speech]. Florianópolis: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina PhD dissertation.
  19. Freitag, Raquel Meister Ko., Regina Célia Fernandes Cruz & Thiago da Cunha Nascimento
    2021 The grammar in the body: On embodied resources in meaning construction and negotiation. Cadernos de Linguística2(2). 1–28. 10.25189/2675‑4916.2021.v2.n1.id354
     https://doi.org/10.25189/2675-4916.2021.v2.n1.id354 [Google Scholar]
  20. Freitag, Raquel Meister Ko. & Bruno Pinheiro
    2020 Modelo de árvore de inferência condicional para explicar usos linguísticos variáveis [Conditional inference tree model for explaining variable language usages]. InCristina dos Santos Carvalho, Norma da Silva Lopes & Angélica Rodrigues. Sociolinguística e funcionalismo: Vertentes e interfaces [Sociolinguistics and functionalism: Τrends and interfaces], 317–342. Salvador: Editora Uneb. 10.7476/9786588211328.0012
     https://doi.org/10.7476/9786588211328.0012 [Google Scholar]
  21. Freitag, Raquel Meister Ko., Julian Tejada, Bruno Pinheiro & Paloma Cardoso
    2021 Função na língua, generalização e reprodutibilidade [Function in language, generalization and reproducibility]. Revista da Abralin20(1). 1–27. 10.25189/rabralin.v20i1.1827
     https://doi.org/10.25189/rabralin.v20i1.1827 [Google Scholar]
  22. Gonçalves, Sebastião Carlos Leite
    2003 Gramaticalização, modalidade epistêmica e evidencialidade: Um estudo de caso no português do Brasil [Grammaticalization, epistemic modality and evidentiality: A case study in Brazilian Portuguese]. Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinas PhD dissertation.
  23. Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard
    1998 The semantic status of discourse markers. Lingua104(3–4). 235–260. 10.1016/S0024‑3841(98)00003‑5
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S0024-3841(98)00003-5 [Google Scholar]
  24. Hirst, Daniel
    2012 Analyse tier Praat script.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Holmes, Janet
    1990 Hedges and boosters in women’s and men’s speech. Language & Communication10(3). 185–205. 10.1016/0271‑5309(90)90002‑S
     https://doi.org/10.1016/0271-5309(90)90002-S [Google Scholar]
  26. Hothorn, Torsten, Kurt Hornik & Achim Zeileis
    2006 Unbiased recursive partitioning: Α conditional inference framework. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics15(3). 651–674. 10.1198/106186006X133933
     https://doi.org/10.1198/106186006X133933 [Google Scholar]
  27. Hoye, Leo Francis
    2005 “You may think that; I couldn’t possibly comment!” Modality studies: Contemporary research and future directions. Part I. Journal of Pragmatics37(8). 1295–1321. 10.1016/j.pragma.2005.01.004
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.01.004 [Google Scholar]
  28. Kärkkäinen, Elise
    2003 Epistemic stance in English conversation: A description of its interactional functions, with a focus on I think. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/pbns.115
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.115 [Google Scholar]
  29. Levshina, Natalia
    2020 Conditional inference trees and random forests. InMadali Paquot & Stefan Gries (eds.), A practical handbook of corpus linguistics, 611–643. Bern: Springer. 10.1007/978‑3‑030‑46216‑1_25
     https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46216-1_25 [Google Scholar]
  30. Liu, Binmei
    2009 Chinese discourse markers in oral speech of mainland Mandarin speakers. InProceedings of the 21st North American conference on Chinese linguistics, 358–374.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Macedo, Alzira Tavares de
    1998 Iniciadores de turno em função da polidez [Shift starters in politeness functions]. Revista de Estudos da linguagem7(2). 9–28. 10.17851/2237‑2083.7.2.9‑28
     https://doi.org/10.17851/2237-2083.7.2.9-28 [Google Scholar]
  32. Ningelgen, Jana & Peter Auer
    2017 Is there a multimodal construction based on non-deictic so in German?Linguistics Vanguard3(1). 15. 10.1515/lingvan‑2016‑0051
     https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0051 [Google Scholar]
  33. Oliveira e Silva, Gisele Machline de & Alzira Tavares de Macedo
    1996 Análise sociolinguística de alguns marcadores conversacionais [Sociolinguistic analysis of some conversational markers]. InAlzira Tavares de Macedo, Claudia Roncarati & Maria Cecília Mollica (eds.), Variação e discurso, 11–49. Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Oliveira, Bruna Ferreira Valenzuela de
    2011 A prosódia na expressão das atitudes de dúvida, incerteza e incredulidade no português brasileiro [Prosody in the expression of attitudes of doubt, uncertainty and disbelief in Brazilian Portuguese]. Belo Horizonte: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais PhD dissertation.
  35. Redeker, Gisela
    2006 Discourse markers as attentional cues at discourse transitions. InKerstin Fischer (ed.), Approaches to discourse particles, 339–358. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Rilliard, Albert & Moraes, João Antônio
    2017 Social affective variations in Brazilian Portuguese: A perceptual and acoustic analysis. Revista de Estudos da Linguagem25(3). 1043–1074. 10.17851/2237‑2083.25.3.1043‑1074
     https://doi.org/10.17851/2237-2083.25.3.1043-1074 [Google Scholar]
  37. Romano, Manuela & Maria José Cuenca
    2013 Discourse markers, structure and emotionality in oral narratives. Narrative Inquiry23(2). 344–370. 10.1075/ni.23.2.07rom
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.23.2.07rom [Google Scholar]
  38. Sato, Shie
    2017 On establishing I think as a final particle in interactions: Some comparisons with sentence-final particles in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics1101. 83–98. 10.1016/j.pragma.2016.11.013
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.11.013 [Google Scholar]
  39. Schoonjans, Steven
    2013 Is gesture subject to grammaticalization?Linguistic Society of Belgium81. 1–14.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Silva, Juliana Preisser de Godoy
    2008 Análise dos aspectos prosódicos na expressão da certeza e da dúvida no português brasileiro [Analysis of prosodic aspects in the expression of certainty and doubt in Brazilian Portuguese]. Belo Horizonte: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais PhD dissertation.
  41. Swerts, Marc, Emiel Krahmer, Pashiera Barkhuysen & Lennard van de Laar
    2003 Audiovisual cues to uncertainty. InISCA Archives – Tutorial and Research Workshop on Error Handling in Spoken Dialogue Systems, 25–30.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Tagliamonte, Sali A. R. & Harald Baayen
    2012 Models, forests, and trees of York English: Was/Were variation as a case study for statistical practice. Language variation and change24.21. 135–178. 10.1017/S0954394512000129
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394512000129 [Google Scholar]
  43. Tejada, Julian, Raquel Meister Ko. Freitag, Bruno Pinheiro, Paloma Batista Cardoso, Victor Renê Andrade Souza & Lucas Santos Silva
    2021 Building and validation of a set of facial expression images to detect emotions: A transcultural study. Psychological Research. 1–11. 10.1007/s00426‑021‑01605‑3
     https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01605-3 [Google Scholar]
  44. Thompson, Sandra A. & Anthony Mulac
    1991 A quantitative perspective on the grammaticalization of epistemic parentheticals in English. InElizabeth Closs Traugott & Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization, 313–329. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/tsl.19.2.16tho
     https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.19.2.16tho [Google Scholar]
  45. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
    1995 Subjectification in grammaticalization. InDieter Stein & Susan Wright (eds.), Subjectivity and subjectivisation: Linguistic perspectives, 31–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511554469.003
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511554469.003 [Google Scholar]
  46. Vandelanotte, Lieven
    2006 Speech or thought representation and subjectification, or on the need to think twice. Belgian Journal of Linguistics20(1). 137–168. 10.1075/bjl.20.10van
     https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.20.10van [Google Scholar]
  47. Wittenburg, Peter, Hennie Brugman, Albert Russel, Alex Klassmann & Han Sloetjes
    2006 ELAN: A professional framework for multimodality research. InProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, 1556–1559.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/pc.21024.fre
Loading
Linguistic and paralinguistic constraints on the function of (eu) acho que as DM in Brazilian Portuguese
Pragmatics & Cognition 29, 324 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.21024.fre
/content/journals/10.1075/pc.21024.fre
/content/journals/10.1075/pc.21024.fre
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Brazilian Portuguese; emotional features; evidentiality; mental state verbs; prosody

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error