FROM 'MIDDLE' FOR 'KIND OF': USES AND GRAMMATICALIZATION TRAJECTORY OF LINGUISTIC ITEM 'MIDDLE' IN VITÓRIA DA CONQUISTA’S

Abstract

ABSTRACT
This work results from a survey in the light of sociolinguistics and American functionalism, which investigated the uses and Grammaticalization trajectory of linguistic item 'middle' in Vitória da Conquista’s. We, as contribution to literature review, dictionaries of different synchronicities, normative grammar, language studies and textbooks. As Corpora of analysis,
the data from Vitória da Conquista's popular portuguese and Vitória da Conquista's Refined Portuguese speech. In our study, we found that among the prototypical “expedient, reason, artifices, invention to achieve something,”“middle' passes through intermediaries meanings “place, or part between the extremes”, “half of something,” and adverbialize, forming more abstract constructs such as “kind of”. This structure distances itself from the prototypical sense of this element and, in particular, expresses textual values. In the study of dictionaries, we identified a large capacity for “middle” to provide the basis for innovative constructions. Despite the uses and shifts in the normative grammars and textbooks, the discussion remains around the variability / invariance that item. From the point of view of linguistic factors, we found data that lead us to conclude that, combined with “what”, “middle' works as a voiceover discourse value, a textual organizer who works in the context of modality, responsible for establishing a speaker's relationship with the statement content. The extralinguistic point of view, also according to this data, older respondents show a more historicist linguistic behavior, more conservative and frequently place the speech in space and time.
Speakers with fewer years of education are more conservative. The more educated young categorically use the innovative way, which shows a change in progress. Informants with more years of schooling tend to use more abstract cognitive categories as and demonstrate ability to organize more complex constructions. These information suggest that the level of education, according to the survey, has direct relevance on the linguistic performance of informants.