O gerúndio na expressão de tempo futuro: um estudo sociofuncionalista

Abstract

This research deals with the variation of future tense with gerund forms in the Portuguese spoken in Fortaleza, from data of speakers of three different professions, collected by means of sociolinguistic interviews: salesmen, teachers and telemarketing workers. This phenomenon presents six variants: a) the imminent periphrastic simple future, b) the imminent periphrastic extended future - that compose the imminent future variable; c) the medium periphrastic simple future, d) the medium periphrastic extended future - that compose the medium future variable; e) the resultative periphrastic simple future, and f) the resultative periphrastic extended future - that compose the resultative future variable. We also consider a definition of gerundismo based on form, aspect, modality and temporal criteria. The theoretical referential is composed by the association of postulates of the Sociolinguistics Analysis and the Linguistic Functionalism, resulting in the theoretical configuration of the Sociofuncionalismo, considered by Tavares (2003). The analysis is performed in four stages: in the first one, we analyze the variants of imminent future; after that, the variants of medium future; later, the variants of resultative future and, finally, a section is dedicated for analysis of the variant called gerundismo. Results confirm that the phenomenon under study is influenced by factors of distinct nature: social factors, such as sex and profession of speakers and linguistic factors as type of the verb (auxiliary or modal verbs) and presence of one mark of future tense.