Emergence of contrastive junctions in the history of Portuguese: contexts, polysemy and subjectivization

This paper discusses meaning change in the domain of junctions. According to a theoretical frame which grants pragmatics a status of driving force of change, I focus on the importance of context for the emergence of polysemy and seek criteria to analyze the tendency for meaning subjectivization. Therefore, I perform an empiric analysis, from a longitudinal perspective, of the semantic reanalysis process which has led enquanto, originally a temporal conjunction, to express contrast