Modern European Portuguese Research Articles

A Diachronic Overview of the Prepositional Accusative in Portuguese

One of the several differences between Modern European Portuguese (EP) and Modern Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is the prepositional expression of complements licensed by the preposition a. While in EP the preposition a occurs in several contexts, this element has been substituted by other strategies in BP, as is extensively discussed in the literature. The aim of this paper is to investigate the historical behavior of a-marked prepositional accusatives (PP-ACC) in Portuguese. In order to do so, a search was conducted for PP-ACCs in the Historical Portuguese Corpus Tycho Brahe. The results showed an increase of PP-ACCs in the 17th century, followed by a decrease in the 18th century. Thereafter, unmarked accusatives (NP-ACC) were analyzed in the corpus, which resulted in 7756 sentences, contrasting with 624 PP-ACCs in the same contexts. This result shows that the a-marked accusative is far less common than bare accusatives in Historical Portuguese. Psych verbs, however, behaved differently, showing a constant increase in PP-ACCs. In EP, the preposition a still introduces Experiencer arguments in structures with some psych verbs (O vinho agradou ao João—lit. ‘The wine pleased ‘to’ John’). In BP, the preposition a has disappeared in psych predicates (O vinho agradou Ø o João—‘The wine pleased John’). In both Modern EP and BP, most PP-ACCs have become typical unmarked direct objects. In the context of psych verbs, however, structural accusative assignment has shifted to structural dative Case in Modern EP, so as to ascertain the interpretation of the Experiencer in the internal argument via the preposition a. While in Modern BP, the argument is not overtly marked since it receives inherent accusative case in the derivation.

Evidencialidade/mediatividade, modalidade epistémica e (inter)subjetividade

Evidentiality or, following the French linguistic tradition, “mediativity” is a complex and controversial category, with an already extensive body of literature devoted to other languages and a few studies focusing on Portuguese. As a conceptual category, abstracting away from its linguistic means of expression, which is to some extent present in languages such as Portuguese that lack a specific grammatical system for its codification, evidentiality/mediativity raises two main issues which are yet to be addressed: the first question concerns the definition of its status as a grammatical, semantic or discursive category and of its conceptual basis, traditionally characterized as referring to the source of information for the propositional content of the utterance, while the second touches upon its demarcation with respect to the conceptual category of epistemic modality. The aim of this study is to provide an answer to both questions from a cognitive-functional, usage-based perspective, on the basis of two grammaticalized evidential/mediative markers of Portuguese, namely the compound form of the future and the verb parecer ‘seem’ followed by a non-finite verb or a finite clause. We sustain the view that evidentiality provides an indication about the source and reliability of the information, and that reliability does not necessarily involve degrees of epistemic speaker commitment or degrees of (un)certainty. While the reportative evidential uses of the compound form of the future in Modern European Portuguese, typical of news reports, and of parecer provide evidence for the relative independence of evidentiality in relation to epistemic modality, the inferential evidential uses of the compound future and of parecer reveal a close link, and even a partial overlap, between evidentiality and epistemic modality. Both reportative and inferential uses of these evidential markers contribute to the speaker’s epistemic control in the discourse and speaker’s intersubjective alignment. While the inferential uses of the compound future and of parecer stemmed from diachronic cognitive and pragmatic-discursive processes of subjectification, the reportative uses of these evidential markers resulted from diachronic cognitive and pragmatic-discursive processes of intersubjectification.

Thenãointerpolation in Classical and early Modern European Portuguese and the mapping between syntactic and phonological structures: An empirical study

AbstractThe central topic of the paper is clitic-verb non-adjacency (interpolation) in Classical and early Modern European Portuguese (EP). Throughout that period, the negative markernãowas the only expression likely to disrupt the continuity of clitic-verb sequences. The aims of the study are twofold. First, previous assumptions on the syntax of this pattern are matched against data retrieved from the texts stored in theBiblioteca Nacional Digital. The present analysis demonstrates, first, that clitic-verb adjacency and non-adjacency had divergent distributions depending on whether they occurred in obligatory proclisis contexts or in X-V-cl/X-cl-V variation ones. Whereas interpolation was the default choice in the former, clitic-verb adjacency was prevailing in the latter in the period under discussion. The second aim is to account for the overrepresentation, underpinned by corpus data, of 3rd person accusative pronouns in clauses with interpolation. In previous works, the origin of clitic-verb non-adjacency was couched either in semantic terms (the contribution ofnãoto the meaning of the VP) or in terms of clitic movement and increasing constraints on the status of Neg (Neg and clitic are both assumed to be affixes). In the present paper, interpolation is shown to have had an interface nature, with phonological factors playing a central role. The discontinuity of clitic-Verb sequences is thought to have helped speakers to get rid of the affixal attachment of theo,a,os,asseries to the preceding non-verbal sound material (nasal diphthongs innão,quem,ninguém, etc, coercing preverbal pronouns into taking a nasal onsetquem no,não no, etc.). As a consequence, in present day standard EP, clitic-specific allomorphy has become earmarked for enclisis.

The change in the position of the verb in the history of Portuguese: Subject realization, clitic placement, and prosody

This article analyzes the changes in subject position in Portuguese between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries in terms of the loss of verb-second grammar properties and the rise of an SVO grammar. Our analysis is based on the survey of an unprecedented amount of data for sixteenth-to nineteenth-century Portuguese in a syntactically annotated corpus. We argue that in Classical Portuguese (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries) the verb moves to C(omp), there is no preverbal position reserved for subjects, and all of the preverbal phrases are discourse-prominent constituents—which characterizes Classical Portuguese as a V2-type grammar. In Modern European Portuguese (from the eighteenth century on), in contrast, the verb does not move as high as C(omp), and there is a preverbal position reserved for subjects—in other words, this is an SVO grammar. We suggest that this change from a verb-movement, V2-type grammar to an SVO grammar derived from a prosodic change that happened in the seventeenth century, which also affected clitic placement.

Gone without the verb: clitic interpolation and clitic climbing in the history of European Portuguese

Previous studies have reported that clitic interpolation and clitic climbing change according to three stages in the history of European Portuguese. In this paper we develop the idea that these phenomena are deeply intertwined in the diachrony of Portuguese once they are related through the notion “clitic position” and reflect a general strategy for clitics to stay outside the focus domain of the clause. In order to provide a unified explanation for interpolation and climbing, we follow a quantitative methodology using the Tycho Brahe Corpus of Historical Portuguese. Moreover, developing some ideas about the Force-Fin system, in the Generative Grammar framework, we put forward a formal approach to the diachronic change having taken place between Old Portuguese and Classical Portuguese. Considering that clitic position reflects the category hosting the clitic, we argue that the availability of XP interpolation and of obligatory clitic climbing in Old Portuguese are different consequences of more basic structural principles, such as the V-to-Fin movement, which is dependent on the role of left-peripheral elements in the Old Portuguese grammar. Therefore the clitic could occur either in Force or in Fin, in order to mark the relative presuppositional nature of clitics with respect to different left-peripheral elements. In Classical Portuguese, we defend that XP interpolation paved the way for Neg interpolation because of the loss of V-to-Fin movement in embedded contexts; by then clitic climbing started to reflect a number of criteria related to topicality. Finally, in Modern European Portuguese, the gradual loss of Neg interpolation and the marked status of clitic climbing can be seen as further consequences of the loss of V-to-Fin movement.

Topics, Subjects and Grammatical Change: from Classical to Modern European Portuguese

Topics, Subjects and Grammatical Change: from Classical to Modern European Portuguese

Topics, Subjects and Grammatical Change: from Classical to Modern European Portuguese

This paper presents a diachronic account of the syntax of subjects in Portuguese by comparing three different constructions -- active, canonical passives and SE-constructions -- relating the change in the position of subjects to the loss of V2. In the V2 grammar, in which the pre-verbal position is associated with fronted elements, and non-fronted subjects remain in post-verbal position, we see the same patterns of word order in SE-constructions as in active and canonical passive sentences; in the (X)SVO grammar, in which the subject is associated with the preverbal position and the fronted elements occupy the left periphery of the clause, active and canonical passives show a significant increase of pre-verbal subjects, whereas SE-constructions remain alike with respect to word order. We interpret this result as evidence for analyzing the internal argument of SE-constructions as a complement rather than a subject.

Os prefixos na historia do portugués: unha aproximación semántica e cognitiva

A partir dun corpus medieval, o artigo analiza a evolución e o comportamento histórico dos prefixos a(d)-, re-, en-, des- e es- en determinadas unidades léxicas, co obxectivo de avaliar a importancia das motivacións semánticas e cognitivas no cambio derivativo, así como de determinar a dirección deste. Establécese unha comparación entre a variación morfosemántica deses prefixos no portugués medieval e no portugués europeo (incluíndo variedades dialectais), incidindo en cuestións de produtividade, redundancia, recategorización, polisemia e especialización semántica. Conclúese que as motivacións para os cambios derivativos, xeralmente semánticas e cognitivas, son extremadamente importantes e requiren a inclusión tanto dunha perspectiva diacrónica como da variación diatópica en calquera estudo sistemático da morfoloxía derivativa do portugués.

On the position of sempre in Medieval Portuguese and in Modern European Portuguese

In Modern European Portuguese the adverb sempre can have two different interpretations: a confirmative, non-temporal, and a temporal/aspectual interpretation. In the confirmative interpretation sempre means ‘after all’, and in the temporal/aspectual interpretation it means ‘always’. Each interpretation correlates with the position sempre occupies in the sentence. In this article we compare the behavior of sempre in modern varieties of Portuguese and in Medieval Portuguese (MP). Modern European Portuguese (MEP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) behave differently as to the placement and interpretation of sempre . This situation is assumed in the literature as deriving from aspects of clause structure, such as verb movement and licensing of null subjects (Brito, Clause structure, subject positions and verb movement: About the position of sempre in European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, John Benjamins, 2001; Ambar, Gonzaga and Negrão, Tense, quantification and clause structure in EP and BP, John Benjamins, 2004, among others). In MP, however, sempre is always temporal/aspectual and can be placed before or after the verb. Therefore, we argue that the variation found in MP does not relate to structural differences of the kind that exist between MEP and BP, but rather to the inherent semantics of sempre . We propose that somewhere during the history of Portuguese there was a specialization of the adverb sempre , that resulted in the fact that its syntactic placement derives its meaning. In fact, we show that the first occurrences of non-temporal sempre appeared during the Classical Portuguese period.

The Change in Clitic Placement from Classical to Modern European Portuguese: Results from the Tycho Brahe Corpus

In this paper we study the syntax of clitic-placement in Portuguese authors born from 1542 to 1836, as regards their patterns of clitic pronouns placement. The motivation for the research was to enquire: what is the pattern of enclisis (V-cl) and proclisis (cl-V) variation in those texts; is it indicative of linguistic change; if so, when in the timeline can the change be located?Drawing from the emprical results, we analyse the syntax of clitic placement in those texts as representative of a grammatical change which should be located in the first half of the 18th century. Our empirical arguments and structural analysis sustain that in texts up to the 18th century, enclisis is strictly a Verb-First phenomenon (even so, we will argue, in constructions that are supperficially non-verb initial). We sustain that the effects of this syntax in clitic placement ceases to be noticed for texts written by authors born after 1700.

Differences and similarities between European and Brazilian Portuguese in the use of the «gerúndio»

This paper provides a partial description of the main differences between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) concerning the use of the «gerundio». Two rather distinct syntactic and semantic uses of this verb form are focussed: the periphrastic «gerundio» and the adverbial «gerundio». The periphrastic «gerundio» occurs in combination with auxiliary verbs, forming complex sequences of two verbal elements. In modern EP, it tends to fall into disuse after some auxiliary verbs, the uninflected infinitive (preceded by a preposition) emerging instead. This paper identifies and briefly characterises the contexts where this competition «gerundio»-infinitive takes place. The second kind of «gerundio» occurs in adverbial clauses, where it may be associated with a wide spectrum of interpropositional semantic values, like cause, result or mood, just to name a few. After a brief semantic characterisation of the adverbial «gerundio», the main differences between EP and BP involving its use will be described. Among them, those concerning the use of gerundive clauses preceded by the preposition em and, once again, those involving the competition «gerundio»-infinitive, stand out.