Quão fundo é o fundo? Perspectivação no caso das expressões com "ao fundo" em Português Europeu e Português do Brasil

In the present paper we shall discuss different locations of perspective point (viewpointing) as discussed in underlying events of motion in Portuguese, both in European and Brazilian Portuguese, in the case of the expression ‘ao fundo’ (at/to the bottom; at/to the end). We start with physical motion, and its metaphorical extention(s), and then focus on fictive motion and its conceptual and contextual specificities when used in EP (but not BP) space directions. In EP the prototypical vertical reference to depth gives place to (i) horizontal or non-directioned, (ii) frequently deictic, and (iii) viewpointed semantic extentions, indicating the end of the horizontal path getting as far as the speaker’s “mental eye” can reach (Batoréo, 2014 a, b; Batoréo & Ferrari, 2013). We defend that human cognition is not only rooted in the human body, but also inherently viewpointed in language (Dancygier & Sweetser, 2012), and we postulate that in the case of some EP uses of ‘ao fundo’ we are dealing with a special sort of location of perspective point underlying events of fictive motion, placing one’s “mental eye” to look out over the rest of the scene, as initially formalized by Talmy (2000).