O esquema morfológico X-ōsus na língua latina e o desenvolvimento X-oso no português: uma abordagem construcional

Abstract

This research analyzes the trajectory of the X-oso construction, from its origin in Latin as X-osus to its development in twenty-first-century Portuguese, focusing on issues of dating, etymology, formal and semantic patterns, and, above all, processes of schematization. The study is grounded in the theoretical contributions of Cognitive Linguistics (Lakoff and Johnson 2002 [1980]; Fillmore 2009 [1982]; Lenz 2013; Simões Neto 2016; Ferrari 2022), Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 2008; Soares da Silva and Batoréo 2010), Construction Grammar (Goldberg 2012 [2003]; Pinheiro 2016, 2022, 2025; Pinheiro, Soares da Silva, and Freitas Júnior 2023), Cognitive Morphology (Hamawand 2011; Oliveira 2023; Simões Neto 2024; Aguiar and Mota 2025), and Constructional Morphology (Booij 2005, 2007, 2010, 2018; Soledade 2013; Gonçalves and Almeida 2014; Simões Neto 2016, 2017; Soledade, Gonçalves, and Simões Neto 2022; Tavares da Silva 2023). The corpora were compiled using Moniz (2001) and Gaffiot (2016) for the Latin data and Houaiss (2009) for the Portuguese data, totaling 540 and 1036 occurrences, respectively. The analysis indicates that the X-osus pattern emerged in Latin in the sixth century BCE and reached peak productivity in the first century BCE. Furthermore, its base is generally nominal and its prototypical meaning is “full of.” With regard to schematization, the analysis revealed that, although the formative is polysemous, its differet meanings largely derive from metaphorical and analogical extensions. In simplified terms, the X-osus pattern may be represented by a dominant relational schema and three subschema (provision, similarity, and action), the first being the most productive. In Portuguese, the X-oso pattern derives from Latin -osus, inheriting both lexical items and the formal and semantic pattern; it is first attested in the tenth century and reaches greater productivity in the nineteenth century. Despite a present-day reduction in productivity, it cannot be considered unproductive in contemporary Portuguese. Although many occurrences are inherited from Latin, endogenous formations prevail, and, since no relevant formal or semantic changes are observed, the Latin schemas and subschemas account for the Portuguese constructions, requiring only reformulation in light of the phonological changes reflected in the spelling shift from osus to oso in the transition from Latin to Portuguese.