Coordination as a locus of inference

grammatical economy and pragmatic implicature in A última crônica by Fernando Sabino

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between linguistic coordination, grammatical economy, and inference in A última crônica, by Fernando Sabino, from a functionalist-pragmatic perspective. The study is based on the assumption that coordination is not limited to the syntactic linking of units, but also functions as a discursive resource that organizes textual progression and guides the reader’s interpretation, according to Functional Discourse Grammar (Pezzatti; Loghin, 2021; Pezzatti; Mackenzie, 2022). Grounded in the notion of grammar in use, the analysis considers that structural choices reflect communicative pressures related to economy and information management (Abreu, 1997). From a pragmatic perspective, the study draws on the theory of conversational implicatures (Grice, 1982) and Relevance Theory (Sperber; Wilson, 1995), focusing on the emergence of implicit meanings when relations between segments are not fully made explicit. The corpus consists of occurrences of coordination between phrases, clauses, and utterances, observing connectors, structural parallelism, and argument omission. The results indicate that the alternation between syndetic and asyndetic coordination promotes formal economy and intensifies pragmatic inferences in narrative construction.