Análise diacrônica dos verbos "ser" e "estar" com sentido existencial no português em cartas de leitor do século XIX da cidade do Recife

Abstract

The present work seeks to undertake a diachronic analysis regarding the use of copular verbs with existential meaning, since they represent one of the greatest challenges for researchers who are interested in the subject. In order to carry out this research, we used historical data from nineteenth century reader's letters to newspapers in the city of Recife, as well as data from a survey with contemporary Portuguese speakers about this phenomenon. This research is based on the assumptions of the generative theory, and as main references, we have the studies of Chomsky (1981, 1986), Avellar (2004, 2007), Sibaldo (2009, 2016) and Tarallo (2009). This work endeavors to contribute to the growth of the literature on copulatives with an existential meaning, and also offers some analysis from the findings in the corpus, bringing some syntactic-semantic analysis about the diachronic variation that can be found in the use of the Brazilian Portuguese verb "to be" with an existential sense.