A distinção massivo-contável em Suruí

Abstract

This dissertation investigated the mass-count distinction in Suruí, a language of the Tupi stock and of the Mondé linguistic family, or Tupi - Mondé Tupi Mondé, spoken by the Paiter/Suruí people. Our investigation is centered on the Formal Semantics of the nominal phrase, by controlled elicitation (data collection with the native speaker of the language, designed especially to verify hypotheses of semantic theory), with translations of sentences from Brazilian Portuguese (BP) into the Suruí language, judgments of grammaticality, acceptability, veridicality and quantity. (a) OBJECTIVE: “The first objective of the study is the semantic analysis of how the grammar of the Surui language operates the mass-containable distinction. The second is to compare the behavior of this language with that of other languages, including Brazilian Portuguese. ”, (b) THEORETICAL-METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK: “Our investigation is centered on the Formal Semantics of the nominal syntagma, using controlled elicitation (data collection with native speakers, specially designed to verify the hypotheses of semantic theory), with sentence translations from BP to Surui, followed by judgments of grammaticality, acceptability, truth value and quantity”, (c) RELEVANCE OF THE WORK: “It is perhaps the first work to distinguish between mass and countable in the Suruí language, and also the first to deal with this language from the point of view of formal semantics. Once assumed as a semantic universal that all natural language show some grammatical effect of the distinction between mass and count nouns, a study of the Suruí language may contribute to compare the grammatical marking of such a semantic distinction with other indigenous languages and with languages in general. Based on questionnaires applied in the consultant's native language, the following steps were followed: (i) it was observed whether the language has determiners, articles, plurals, verbs, personal pronouns, alienable and inalienable names, and how the system of numerals and (ii) how the nominals are interpreted in terms of quantity. The questionnaires surveyed cardinal numerals in sentences with nominals, comparative sentences and quantity judgments, contextualized according to the consultant's reality, so that we could investigate what is countable and what is massive in the Suruí language. Our findings include the fact that in Surui mass nouns are interpreted in terms of volume and do not combined with cardinals.