Is the Brazilian Portuguese phrase estar indo, i.e. be going [to], being grammaticalized into an auxiliary, and if that is the case, is it a borrowin…

2018

Master's thesis English EN501 - University of Agder 2018 The aim of this thesis is to compare the grammaticalization of English be going to and Brazilian Portuguese estar indo (i.e. the equivalent to English be going to) in order to investigate whether the phrase is grammaticalizing in Brazilian Portuguese, and furthermore, to discuss whether the grammaticalization is influenced by English. To discuss these issues, the thesis consults research and corpora that illustrate the use and grammaticalization of the phrase in the two languages. Data from the BYU corpora and Twitter1 show that Brazilian Portuguese estar indo is used in situations where it appears to be a (purposive) future auxiliary…