Arqueologia da inferência

Abstract

The research here presented had focused on reflections and analysis involving the inferences theme. Based on studies and our empirical knowledge on the subject, some question arose that stood out as the guiding principles of our investigation: what are inferences? How was the concept of inference used throughout the history of linguistic studies? How can one classify the types of inferences? With the purpose of finding answers to this problematisation, we outline, as a general objective, to delineate the history of the term in the history of linguistic studies with brief analyzes based on Philosophy. In the perspective of reaching the proposed objective, we support the research in the theoretical assumptions of Copi (1978), Hegenberg (1974), Benoit Hardy-Vallée (2013) for the discussions about the nature of a concept; as well as in the works of Grice (1975), Levinson (2007), Sperber & Wilson (2005), Charaudeau (2004), Clark (1992), Koch (1998), Coscarelli (2002), Dell'Isola (2001) and Marcuschi (2008) for discussions on the history of inferences. It is, therefore, a research based on Textual Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and Pragmatics, of the hermeneutical type, which proposed to analyze the inferences under some points of theoretical intersection between the researches related to the subject. The data collection was possible through a review of the specific bibliography regarding the inferences. As a result of this research process, we understand that inference is the result of a cognitive operation, based on information processing of an input, with the purpose of contributing to the resolution of an interpretative problem by generating new information, of the relationship between the decoding of the original information and the comparison of it with the data contained in the individual's mnemonic-experiential repository.