The interface syntax, semantics and pragmatics in functionalism

Abstract

In this paper, I write from my experience as a researcher on linguistics, grammar and history of grammar, but especially from my role as author of grammar books and dictionaries, each of them based on real language usage. From the start, I declare my theoretical ground on Functionalism, circumscribed here to its most general tenets and presented in a practical exercise of analysis. My intention here is to highlight the pragmatic component for two reasons: fi rstly, because only recently this component has entered the concern of scholars of language and the authors of grammar textbooks, (ii) secondly, because its theoretical apprehensibility is more complex, since such component offers a higher level of diffi culty to reach an explanation that would give it legitimacy beyond a folkloric interest or fad. More than that, I propose, as the background for the following considerations about linguistic usage, the existence of a coupled compositionality of the components that produce language: syntax, semantics and pragmatics.