Intensifying construction with color lexemes in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This paper exposes the results of the research on the formal-functional configuration of the Xcolor of NS subschema of the Xcolor of Y intensifier construction (as in purple/green of anger or red of shame) in Brazilian Portuguese. We believe that this construction is caused by the fact that our body, more specifically, our face undergoes color changes due to some emotion or sensation, such as when we become pale (from fright), red (from shame, passion) etc. This change in facial coloring is something so recurrent that, by association to the intensity attribute of color, it can motivate not only constructions such as the one studied in this research, but many others, leading us to defend that the emotion revealed through colors (usually on the face) is a factor that contributes to the symbolic elaboration present in the relation of color lexemes to the (sub)schemes exposed here. Thus, from the perspective of Functional-Cognitive Linguistics, which seeks to analyze the language based on sociocultural and pragmatic aspects, communicative situations, internalized knowledge and cognitive operations, and the Grammar of Constructions, for which the language is a network of nodes/form-function/meaning pairings, we analyze how these constructions were triggered and how they are systematically and variably configured, based on Traugott and Trousdale (2013), Machado Vieira (2016) and Wiedemer and Machado Vieira (2018). The data analyzed are from the Corpus do Português, and our method is frequency analysis. Our initial results show that this construction intensifies, above all, negative aspects; the alternation of colors allows their classification as allostructions; and this construction is part of the construction network of Brazilian Portuguese intensifiers.