A transitividade na Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional: o papel das circunstâncias em notícias jornalísticas do século XIX

Abstract

The Systemic-Functional Linguistic accept, in general, three essential functions to languages, also called language mentafunctions. They are: ideational, interpersonal and textual, which in the field of linguistic system, relate the clause as representation, interaction and message, respectively. In this theory, transitivity is perceived as a system and its structures. Commonly they express a representational result: a clause is normally about a process with participants and circumstances related to it (HALLIDAY; MATTHIESSEN, 2004). In this way, the system of transitivity is part of ideational metafunction, because reveals the way how elements are related in the clause to accomplish a certain communicative purpose. Subsidised by the Systemic- Functional Linguistic (HALLIDAY, 1994; HALLIDAY; MATHIESSEN, 2004), this research has as main objective relate the usage of the circumstantial elements in Material Process, that express process of doing-&-happening in the journalistic’s communicative aim, considering that Circumstances is the third component of the transitivity system. The corpus is composed by 30 news from the 19th century published between 1941 and 1970 and collected from the VARPORT’s database (PPFLE/UFRJ). In the analysis, were identified 586 (100%) Process, being 574 (100%) Material Process (of doing-&-happening). From the total of Material Process 270 (65,85%) were process of doing and 140 (34,15%) were happening. About 83% of the Circumstances found in the corpus are related to Material Process, but despite the Process of doing were more recurrent, more than 60% of these elements are in Process of happening, once is necessary that the portrayed events in the news be detailed. This result indicates the relation between the usage of Circumstances and the intransitive performs in the journalistic news.