<Principiar a + infinitivo> no Português Europeu: significado, definição estrutural, descrição sintático-semântica

Abstract

<Principiar a + infinitivo> é uma construção que focaliza o ‘começo’ da situação denotada pelo predicado cujo núcleo é a forma verbal de infinitivo. O “inceptivo”, o valor em questão, não lhe é, contudo, exclusivo. Com efeito, <começar a + infinitivo>, <desatar a + infinitivo>, <meter-se a + infinitivo>, <pôr-se a + infinitivo>, por exemplo, são construções que também o partilham. Por conseguinte, constitui objetivo deste estudo descrever a construção indagando das suas especificidades, para o que – com base num corpus constituído por material linguístico autêntico, recolhido na imprensa escrita e em textos literários (finais do séc. xx e inícios do séc. xxi) – convoco argumentos vários, tanto de natureza estrutural quanto sintático-semântica.

The aim of this study is to identify and characterize the structure <principiar a + infinitive>. In order to do this, we firstly have to identify its meaning, that is, it will be understood that <principiar a + infinitive> is equivalent to <começar a + infinitive>, the general, unmarked construction of the Inceptive (there are a number of other constructions with the same meaning, but possessing idiosyncratic properties, which distinguish them, such as – just to mention a few examples – desatar a, meter-se a, pôr-se a), but of predominantly literary occurrence (the main difference between both constructions – and this, of course, considering only the present corpus), because it focuses on the ‘initial limit’ of an event (aspectual value); secondly, we proceed to its structural delimitation, that is to say, by means of tests of almost exclusively syntactic nature, it will be seen that principiar a can be considered a semi-auxiliary verb and the sequence “principiar a + infinitive”, a verbal periphrasis; and, thirdly, we proceed to the syntactic-semantic description of the structure, in order to ascertain the compatibility and selection restrictions. We will discuss in particular their status as an aspect operator, that is, their ability to modify the basic aspects of predicates. It will be known, for example, that principiar a combines preferably with events (processes and culminated processes) and phase states, transforming them, when acting as an operator, in punctual events. The corpus, for this analysis, is made up of authentic linguistic material, collected predominantly from the written press (1990s of the 20th and first decade of the 21st century) and from literary texts (20th and 21st century).