Relativized temporal phrases: Language variation and change in contemporary Portuguese

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of relativized temporal phrases as a domain of particularly intense variation and change in contemporary Portuguese. Various phenomena indicative of competition among linguistic forms (with a special focus on the standard variety of European Portuguese, as documented in newspaper texts) are highlighted and examined. Two main sets of constructions take centre stage in the paper. In one, the much-discussed tendency to omit the preposition em (‘in’) in relativized constituents expressing simple temporal location is assessed, using large corpora. In the other, the relativization of duration phrases (or comparable locating phrases, containing predicates of amounts of time) is scrutinized. These latter structures – very poorly studied in the literature – reveal intriguing restrictions, and associate with various types of anomalies, viz., non-standard suppression, addition or change of prepositions. Furthermore, one remarkable innovation is documented in Portuguese newspaper texts: the relativization of time-anchored duration adjuncts with the (preposition-like) connective há (a verb form equivalent to ‘there is’, currently undergoing a grammaticalization process, and shifting into a preposition) – 31: são os anos há que não ganhamos uma medalha (‘31: this is the number of years {we haven’t won a medal/since we last won a medal}’).