The relation between type of predicate and type of clause in portuguese oral and written narratives - DOI: 10.4025/actascihumansoc.v26i1.1562

Abstract

According to the theory of functional grammar, the predicate is the most fundamental layer of the underlying structure of the clause. Applied to a given number of terms, the predicate builds the second layer of the underlying structure of the clause, the predication, which designates a set of states of affairs, i.e., the conception of something that may exist or occur in a world. States of affairs can be divided, according to six types of semantic patterns, into action predicates, situation predicates and process predicates. The aim of this article is to verify the relation between type of state of affairs of the predicate and type of clause in a corpus of 10 oral narratives and 10 written narratives in Portuguese. The analysis presented a higher frequency of independent clauses to code situation predicates, of paratactic clauses to code action predicates and of adverbial hypotactic clauses to code process predicates