A ABSTRATIZAÇÃO DE EVIDENCIAIS NO PORTUGUÊS BRASILEIRO, NO ESPANHOL DOMINICANO E NO ITALIANO

This article presents the result of an investigation on the development of more abstracted microconstructions based on predicative lexical evidential structured with the prototypical dicendi verb. Three Romance languages were contrasted: Brazilian Portuguese (BP) (dizer), Spanish (ESP) (decir) and Italian (IT) (dire). The evidential semantic domain concerns the source of the enunciated knowledge (Aikhenvald 2004; Casseb-Galvão 2001) and its coding can occur by lexical and/or procedural elements. The main hypothesis involves the recognition that across languages more prototypical lexical uses originate processes of constructional changes of abstract evidentials, with grammatical or discursive meanings, as [diski], in PB, (decir), in ESP and si dice che, in IT.