Transitividade : no princípio era o verbo, mas agora o foco é toda a sentença...

Abstract

Traditionally the transitivity is considered a property of some names and verbs. In general, the lexemes that require the presence of an complement for integrate the sense of them, are considered transitive. However, the transitivity is a more complex phenomenon than the grammarians suggest. It is therefore necessary to analyze this phenomenon from other perspectives, which are probably more appropriate. In this research, we defend the relevance of analyzing the transitivity from a functionalist approach, more specifically from the postulates of Hopper and Thompson (1980). These researchers believe that transitivity is gradient and it involves the whole clause. Based on the analysis of a narrative text that was produced during an interview by an informant to 7 years old, we confirm the hypothesis that the speakers handle the transitivity system in order to reach their communicative intentions, because the portions with high degree of transitivity are associated with the foreground, and the portions that have low degree of transitivity are associated with the background. In addition, based the study of 280 sentences produced by informants between 4 and 7 years old, we show that the sentences with median transitivity are the most common in our corpus (41%); in turn, the sentences with high transitivity and the sentences with low transitivity are less recurrent (36 and 23%, respectively). These data, when compared with findings from Hopper and Thompson (2001), suggest that the transitivity manifests itself in different ways because of the particularities of the gender of discourse in question.