Subspecification and inferentiation in spontaneous speech

Abstract

In this article, referentiation is considered a discursive process of referent construction (discourse objects). In such a view, the referent, once introduced in the text, can be reviewed, reactivated with new properties/attributes, thus occurring a referential progression. This progression is also seen as a process involving several referents, which make a semantic-referential imbrication. Indeed, the referents and their properties are not always activated in the text explicitly i.e. their activation usually occurs in a subspecified, implicit way. To supply such subspecification here come the inferences, which are information settled down by the cotext and/or context. The aim of this study is try to understand how subspecification and inferentiation occur in the referential process, especially in no planed speech. As a corpus are adopted excerpts of the Varsul (Urban Linguistic Variation of Brazils South Region) database.