A conceptualização da posse e da existência em português: subsídios para a conceptualização dos desenvolvimentos diacrónicos das construções com haver e ter

This paper develops an analysis of the historical development of the possessive and existential constructions in Portuguese from a Cognitive Grammar perspective, as the outcome of a metonymical mapping which has taken place in the conceptual space shared by possessive, locative and existential constructions. Moreover, we demonstrate that the shift from possession to existence can be ascribed to two different types of construals: 1) reification in the possessive domain and 2) active-zone activation in the existential domain. Thus we claim that possessive constructions with haver correspond to a relationship profiled by a verb that takes an internal perspective and propose that the existential construction arises from a change in the primary focal prominence of the elements in such relationship, i.e., through zone-activation or metonymic shift of the already reified verbal basis.