Constructional variation and stabilization in [sei] and [aham sei] as disbelief answers in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper aims to analyze how constructional variation and constructional stabilization occurwith [sei] and [aham sei] as disbelief answers in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) instead of theircommon use linked to cognitive sense (the act of knowing something/knowing about somethingor knowing how to do something), perceived primarily by differences in intonation andconversational context. For this, we’ll see the results found by Souza (2024) who, based oncorpora data and tests made with native speakers, seek to understand a little further howconstructional variation happens in this case and what are the preponderant factors for thesespeakers to choose those constructions instead of others or vice-versa in some specificdialogical scenarios. His work, elaborated under a socioconstructionist profile (MachadoVieira, 2016; Machado Vieira and Wiedemer, 2018; 2019a; 2019b) studied how ConstructionGrammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006; Traugott and Trousdale, 2013) and VariationistSociolinguistic (Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968; Eckert, 2012) can contribute to explainempirically the results found, which led us to follow the same theoretical path in order to expandthe examples and expose interesting data shown at his work, specially how schematicity andproductivity (Traugott and Trousdale, 2013) happen within these constructions. In sum, wepresent the most prominent results of a work that studies how prosodic features interfere in theform-meaning paring in the analyzed data, an interface still underexplored at the constructionalstudies field.