PREFIXOS, RECURSIVIDADE, FASES E ESTRUTURA DO VP
Alessandro Boechat de Medeiros/UFRJ
O presente trabalho tratará de tópicos ligados aos prefixos re- e des- (no ambiente verbal). Concentrar-me-ei em
dois pontos: sua relação com a estrutura argumental/de eventos do sintagma verbal e sua relação com a
definição de limites para interpretação especial de raízes. Defenderei que o prefixo des- se anexa a uma camada
mais interna de uma estrutura de eventos sintaticamente representada associada ao sintagma verbal, enquanto o
prefixo re- se anexa a uma sua camada mais alta. Além de explicar inúmeras propriedades semânticas desses
prefixos, incluindo sua relação com a quantificação do complemento do verbo e sua leitura em passivas
adjetivas, a proposta explica a ordenação relativa permitida entre eles: redes- é aceitável (por exemplo,
“redesmilitarizar”), mas desre- não o é ou o é em muito menor grau (*desremilitarizou). Claro está que,
explicando tais fatos, apresentamos argumentos para uma decomposição sintática das estruturas de evento
associadas aos sintagmas verbais. Entre as propriedades interessantes desses prefixos está também o fato de que
são recursivos: é possível anexar mais de uma vez o mesmo prefixo a uma determinada palavra, a princípio sem
limitação superior, disparando regras de interpretação que podem aplicar-se sobre saídas de aplicações
anteriores das mesmas regras. Por exemplo, em “o João desmarcou seu encontro com Maria”, o prefixo desdispara a seguinte regra de interpretação: o estado “marcado” do encontro entre João e Maria deve ser invertido
ou negado quando o verbo é prefixado. Em “o João desdesmarcou seu encontro com Maria”, a mesma regra de
interpretação é disparada: a sentença é verdadeira se e só se o estado “desmarcado” do encontro entre João e
Maria for invertido ou negado quando o verbo for prefixado. Note-se que somente com as interpretações de
negação ou inversão para des- e repetição para re- a recursividade é permitida: em “o artista realçou os detalhes
da obra”, a prefixação não indica repetição; mas uma segunda ocorrência do prefixo não permite outra leitura
que não a de repetição: “o artista rerrealçou os detalhes da obra”. Essa propriedade está relacionada a uma
questão importante sobre a definição de significados idiossincráticos: uma ocorrência do prefixo pode estar
envolvida em definição de significado especial de uma raiz, mas não uma segunda. Por exemplo, “nortear” não
necessariamente tem interpretação psicológica; “desnortear”, sim; mas uma segunda anexação de des- não
idiomatiza o verbo “desnortear” como o fez a primeira. Estabeleceriam os prefixos fronteiras de fase mesmo
não sendo morfemas categorizadores, conforme propostas de trabalhos como Marantz (2001) e (2013)? Por
outro lado, como lidariam teorias como a de Borer (2009) (em que qualquer camada nova pode gerar um
significado especial para a raiz) com a restrição de interpretação, descrita acima, imposta pelos prefixos
recursivos? Este trabalho também pretende apresentar algumas idéias para tratar a questão.
REFERÊNCIAS:
BORER, H. “Roots and categories”. In Talk given at the 19th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, University
of Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz. 2009. Disponível em: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~borer/rootscategories.pdf
MARANTZ, A. “Words”. WCCFL XX handout, USC, February, 2001.
_____________. “Locality Domains for Contextual Allomorphy across the Interfaces”. In: MATUSHANSKY,
O.; MARANTZ, A. (Orgs.) Distributed Morphology Today: Morphemes for Morris Halle. Cambridge Mass:
MIT Press, 2013. p. 95-116.
THE CARTOGRAPHY OF FOCUSING ADVERBS: THEIR POSITION AND THEIR SYNTACTIC PROPERTIES
Aquiles Tescari Neto (UFRJ)
The behavior of the exclusive AdvP só 'only' in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is better explained on structural
grounds, i.e. in terms of its position in the hierarchy of AdvPs in the Middlefield (Cinque 1999). The clue to
arrive at this conclusion comes from the distribution of exclusivamente 'exclusively' which is also an exclusive
AdvP but behaves differently from só with respect to some properties which discriminate between low and high
AdvPs.
Bever & Clark (2008) argue that Semantics would be responsible for the asymmetries between quantificational
AdvPs and only in English. This is not true of their corresponding adverbs in BP. While só 'only' behaves like
English only w.r.t. some syntactic properties shown in (1), (3) and (5) which also define high adverbs, there is
another class of exclusive adverbs in BP, represented by exclusivamente 'exclusively', which shows the
opposite pattern. Exclusivamente behaves like low quantificational adverbs (e.g. sempre 'always') (see (2), (4)
and (6)).
(i) high adverbs (and só) cannot appear in the sentence-final position unless de-accented:
(1)
João mente *(,) provavelmente/só
'João tells lies, probably/só'
(i') low quantificational adverbs (and exclusivamente) can:
(2)
João mente sempre/exclusivamente
'John always/exclusively tells lies'
(ii) high adverbs (and só) cannot be recovered by the elliptical VP in BP (see (3a), below)):
(3)
João comprou provavelmente/só um carro e a Maria também comprou [-]
João bought probably/only a car and Mary did too [-]
a.
*[-]: provavelmente/only um carro ('probably/only a car')
OK
[-]: um carro ('a car')
a'.
(ii') low quantificational adverbs (and exclusivamente) can (see (4a), below)):
(4)
João compra sempre/exclusivamente na FNAC e a Maria também compra [-]
João always buys at FNAC and Mary does too [-]
OK
[-]: sempre/exclusivamente na FNAC ('always/exclusively buys at FNAC')
a.
OK
a'.
[-]: na FNAC ('at FNAC')
(iii) high AdvPs (and só) do not allow the extraction of the constituent under their scope:
(5)
*O quei o João comeu provavelmente/só ti?
'Whati did João probably/only eat ti?'
(iii') low AdvPs (and exclusivamente) do:
(6)
Ondei o João sempre/exclusivamente compra ti?
Wherei does John always/exclusively buy ti?
According to Bever & Clark (2008), the different behavior of quantificational adverbs with respect to only can
be explained on semantic grounds. Were Semantics responsible for that, one should expect the corresponding
AdvPs in BP to have the same behavior. This is only partially true. As seen in (2), (4) and (6), exclusivamente
and só behave differently. Exclusivamente surprisingly behaves like the quantificational AdvP sempre
'always'.
What actually counts is the position the AdvP occupies in the hierarchy (Cinque 1999). Thus, só behaves like
high adverbs because it is placed among them. In spite of its semantics, exclusivamente behaves like
quantificational adverbs due to their location among low AdvPs.
References:
Bever, D; Clark, B.Z. 2008. Sense and Sensitivity: How Focus Determines Meaning. Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
Cinque, G. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-linguistic Perspective. New York: Oxford
University Press.
ON APPLICATIVES AND THEIR PROPERTIES
Bárbara Guimarães Rocha/Poslin/UFMG
Mônica Costa Marçal de Moraes/UFMG
The present work aims to show the evolution of the studies about applicatives in generative literature.
Besides, it intends to define the category applicative and its properties. The evolution of the studies begins with
Larson's (1988) analysis of the Double Object Construction, go through Baker's (1988) analysis of Preposition
Incorporation, Anagnostopoulou's (2001) account of double object constructions, Pylkkänen's (2002, 2008)
typology, Cuervo (2003a,b), Torres Morais (2006), McGinnis (2001, 2004), ending with Jeong's (2006)
proposal. Starting from the literature review and based on the analysis of data from the bantu language
Nyandja, the category applicative is defined as a transitivizer, hybrid category, which assigns inherent Case and
θ-roles relating applied arguments with the event or the basic object of the verb. Typologically, the category can
be divided into three distinct heads, in Pylkkänen's terminology: High APPL, Low Goal APPL and Low Source
APPL.
Keywords: Formal Syntax; Applicative; Applicative Structures; Argument Structure, Verbal Valence; Double
Object Construction; Derivation by Phase; Dative Shift.
A AMBIGUIDADE DOS PREDICADOS PSICOLÓGICOS DA CLASSE DE ASSUSTAR: O CASO DAS PASSIVAS VERBAIS E
ADJETIVAIS
Bruno Pilastre de Souza Silva Dias/PG-UNB
Neste trabalho discutimos a ambiguidade dos predicados psicológicos da classe de assustar quanto à
interpretação estativa/eventiva. Tal ambiguidade torna essa classe especial em contexto de construção passiva
verbal e adjetival. Ao se analisar os predicados do tipo assustar, verifica-se que há a possibilidade de se
construir tanto a passiva verbal quanto a passiva adjetival (1a-b). No entanto, não obstante serem também
predicados Experienciador-Objeto (ExpObj), predicados do tipo preocupar rejeitam a passiva verbal e aceitam
a passiva adjetival (2a-b) e predicados do tipo acalmar aceitam apenas a passiva verbal (3a-b). O
comportamento de verbos como assustar apresenta-se como um problema teórico, principalmente em relação às
razões que levam esses verbos a apresentarem a dupla leitura, estativa ou eventiva.
Defendemos que a ambiguidade de predicados do tipo assustar (e.g., animar, atemorizar e amedrontar)
pode ser explicada pela relação entre raiz e morfologia causativa. Para esses predicados, a interpretação estativa
adviria da raiz nominal (susto, ânimo, temor, medo) e a interpretação eventiva, da morfologia causativa (aevraizest-arev). Os predicados da classe de acalmar (e.g., alegrar, amansar) também são formados por raízes
estativas e morfologia causativa – esses predicados se distinguem dos predicados da classe de assustar por
formarem construções com a forma do adjetivo (João ficou calmo com os cuidados da enfermeira), em que não
se observa a morfologia causativa (nem a morfologia participial). Os predicados do tipo preocupar (e.g. retrair,
saturar, inibir), por fim, não são ambíguos em relação à interpretação estativa/eventiva – são estativos. Esses
verbos estão relacionados a nomes estativos (preocupação), inexistindo morfologia eventiva relevante em sua
estrutura.
(1)
João foi assustado por Maria.
João ficou assustado com Maria.
(2)
*João foi preocupado por Maria.
João ficou preocupado com Maria.
(3)
João foi acalmado pela enfermeira.
*João ficou acalmado pela enfermeira.
2ND PERSON POSSESSIVES IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE: PARAMETERS OF AGREEMENT
Bruna Karla Pereira/UFVJM
Based upon generative syntax and concerned about agreement (MIYAGAWA, 2010) as a cross-linguistic
operation which manifests under different conditions among languages, this paper analyzes possessives (1-5) in
dialectal Brazilian Portuguese (BP).
In the type of structures given in (1-5), the post-nominal possessive: i) refers to 2nd-person PL; ii) may
occur in predicative position (5); iii) may be replaced by a genitive form (“um procedimento de vocês” – a
procedure of you-PL); iv) can not be preceded by preposition (“*um procedimento de seus” – a procedure of
your-PL); and v) can not occur in pre-nominal position (“*um seus procedimento” – an your-PL procedureSG).
The productivity of these structures in Mineiro dialect (henceforth MD) is verified, because the noun may
be left out (4) and preceded by: definite article (1), indefinite article (2), no article (3) and demonstratives (5).
Post-nominal possessive in a definite DP (1) is not expected under the following assumption: if possessives
“occur prenominally, the DP is definite, if they occur postnominally, the DP is indefinite” (COSTA;
FIGUEIREDO SILVA, 2003, p. 25). Post-nominal possessive showing number agreement is not expected
either under the following assumption: while “prenominal possessives show number agreement in BP1,
postnominal ones do not” (6) (COSTA; FIGUEIREDO SILVA, 2003, p. 27). It happens, because the addressed
data (1-5) do not work in the way as (6) works. In (6), even though the noun ‘book’ does not show
morphological plural mark, it is plural (it refers to books). In contrast, the data in (1-5) have a singular noun
that refers to a singular object (a badge, a note, etc.) while possessive is plural. This seems to reveal another
pattern of possessive agreement that is made with the possessor rather than with the noun.
A possible reason for the emergence of these structures is related to ongoing parametric changes
(ROBERTS; KATO, 1993) in BP inflectional system. Analyzing (7), seu (7a) does not make clear the reference
to a plural possessor, as vosso (‘your’) does in European Portuguese (7b). Therefore, in the lack of a possessive
pronoun which makes clear the reference to 2nd-personPL, sua/seu has been used with a plural morpheme ‘-s’
even with singular nouns (7c). Similarly, in some dialects, English 2nd-personPL may be addressed with plural
forms, other than ‘you’ (PL or SG): ‘yous’, ‘you-uns’, ‘you-all’, ‘you-guys’, ‘y’all’ (MAYNOR, 2000).
Considering this, it is important to mention that, when noun and possessive are plural (8), it is not
possible to tell if the reference to the possessor (2nd-person) is singular or plural, resulting in ambiguity (8). The
two possible readings allowed in (8) may be seen in (9). The reanalysis of number agreement with the possessor
is identified only when the noun is singular and the possessive is plural (10). As such, one may understand that
two grammars coexist in (8): one in which the possessive agrees in number with the noun and another one in
which the possessive agrees in number with the possessor.
According to Bernstein (2005), Spanish post-nominal possessives (11a) are more complex
morphologically than pre-nominal ones (11b). Besides, while English allows possessives followed by
preposition (12b), Spanish does not (12a). Bernstein (2005) explains that, instead of a preposition de (‘of’),
Spanish has a null complementizer. In this hypothesis, D takes CP as a complement [D[CP]] (KAYNE, 1993
apud BERNSTEIN, 2005). As a result, Spanish post-nominal possessives agreement takes place in a predicative
position.
Applied to the data presented above, as in (2), this hypothesis results in (13) where the possessive is
merged in Spec,AgrP while the NP moves up to Spec,CP, deriving possessive post-nominal position, inside a
relative reduced clause. This derivation is more advantageous than Cinque’s (2005) analysis, because, in
relatives, the noun must raise “a dutyi [that ti is yours]”. As such, it prevents the NP to remain in situ ruling out
structures like “*um seus procedimento” ( an your-PL procedure).
(1)
“A caixa de e-mail suas enche rápido?” (Belo Horizonte: November 12th, 2014)
The mailbox-FEM-SG your-FEM-PL fills fast?
Does your mailbox fill up fast?
(2)
“Isto tem que ser um procedimento seus” (Belo Horizonte: December 4th, 2014).
This has that to-be a procedure-MASC-SG your-MASC-PL
This has to be your task.
(3)
“Isso é estratégia suas para vender mais” (Belo Horizonte: March 2014).
This is strategy-FEM-SG your-FEM-PL to sell more
This is your strategy to sell more products.
(4) “O nosso crachá é verde e o seus é azul” (Belo Horizonte: December 11th, 2014).
The our badge-MASC-SG is green and the (ø) your-MASC-PL is blue
Our badge is green and yours is blue.
(5)
“Se não me engano, essa anotação é até suas” (Belo Horizonte: August 19th, 2014).
If not me mistake, this note-FEM-SG is even your-FEM-PL
If I am not wrong, this note is even yours.
(6)
a. “o meus livro” – “the-SG my-PL book-SG” (COSTA; SILVA, 2003, p. 27)
b. “uns livro meu” – “some-PL book-SG my-SG” (COSTA; SILVA, 2003, p. 27)
(7)
a. “um procedimento seu” (BP) a procedure-MASC-SG your-MASC-SG (your task)
b. “um procedimento vosso” (EP) a procedure-MASC-SG your-MASC-SG (your task)
c. “um procedimento seus” (MD) a procedure-MASC-SG your-MASC-PL (your task)
(8)
Preciso de dois favores seus! (‘seus’ = ‘de você’ or ‘de vocês’)
Need-I of two favor-MASC-PL your-MASC-PL (your = SG or PL)
I need two favors of yours.
(9)
a. Amigo, preciso de dois favores seus! (‘seus’ = ‘de você’)
Friend, need-I of two favor-MASC-PL your-MASC-PL (your = SG)
My friend, I need two favors of yours.
b. Amigos, preciso de dois favores seus! (‘seus’ = ‘de vocês’)
Friends, need-I of two favor-MASC-PL your-MASC-PL (your = PL)
My friends, I need two favors of yours.
(10)
Amigos, preciso de um favor seus!
Friends, need-I of a favor-MASC-SG your-MASC-PL (your = PL)
My friends, I need a favor of yours.
(11)
a. casas suyas - house-FEM-PL your-FEM-PL – your houses
b. sus casas- your-PL house-FEM- PL– your houses
(12)
a. un amigo de *suyo
(13)
[DPum[CP procedimentoi [AgrP/IP seus[NPti]]]].
b. a friend of mine/yours
REFERENCES
BERNSTEIN, Judy. On the morpho-syntax of possessive constructions. Recherches linguistiques de Vincennes,
v. 34, p. 55 - 76, 2005.
CINQUE, Guglielmo. Deriving Greenberg’s Universal 20 and its exceptions. Linguistic Inquiry, Massachusetts,
v. 6, n.3, p.315 - 332, 2005.
COSTA, João; FIGUEIREDO SILVA, Maria Cristina. Notes on nominal and verbal agreement in Portuguese.
Revista di Grammatica Generativa, v. 27, p. 17 – 29, 2002.
MAYNOR, N. Battle of the Pronouns: Y'all versus you-guys. American Speech, 75 (4), p. 416 - 418, 2000.
MIYAGAWA, Shigeru. Why agree? Why move? Unifying Agreement-Based and Discourse-Configurational
Languages. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2010.
ROBERTS, Ian; KATO, Mary (Org.) Português brasileiro: uma viagem diacrônica. Campinas: UNICAMP,
1993.
MEASUREMENT SCALES IN EXPERIMENTAL SYNTAX
Cândido Samuel Fonseca de Oliveira/Poslin-UFMG
Ricardo Augusto de Souza/Poslin-UFMG
The emergence of generative linguistics during the cognitive revolution of the second half of the
twentieth century increased the attention paid to the cognitive processes that are related to the faculty of
language. In order to shed light on these processes, one of the major sources of evidence in some linguistic
fields is the acceptability of certain constructions. For many years, in fields such as syntax, a considerable
amount of data was gathered through informal procedures. However, since the advent of experimental syntax,
formal methods have been more utilized and, consequently, studied. The scale used in the elicitation of
judgments is of paramount importance since it determines the type of data that will be obtained and what
mathematical operations will best suit the ensuing statistical inference procedure. The scales used can be
nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio. These two last have been long been considered the most appropriate ones for
acceptability judgment tasks because they allow the use of several analytical tools in data treatment. Interval
scales are usually seen in the format of likert scales, whereas ratio scales are usually seen in the format of
magnitude estimation. In recent years, it has been debated which of these two paradigms is superior for
acceptability judgment tasks and the few evidences available are still inconclusive. Thus, this study aims at
contributing to this discussion by comparing the results provided by each of these paradigms in relation to the
same linguistic phenomena: the acquisition of argument strucuture in L2 by high proficient Portuguese-English
bilinguals. Basically, the experiments aimed at comparing the acceptability of licensed and unlicensed instances
of the same construction. Experiment 1, with the Likert scale paradigm, yielded a significant difference in the
judgments of the licensed and the unlicensed sentences by subjects and marginally significant difference by
items. Experiment 2, with the magnitude estimation paradigm, yielded a similarly significant difference in the
judgments of the licensed and the unlicensed sentences by subjects, but no significant difference by items. Also,
participants of Experiment 1 showed a more clear distinction between the licensed and the unlicensed sentences
than the participants in Experiment 2. Thus, the results suggest that both techniques have psychometric
potential in the context of bilingualism studies, since both of them have showed the distinction under scrutiny.
However, as opposed to what had been proposed, the magnitude estimation paradigm was not qualitatively
superior to the Likert Scale paradigm. In reality, in accordance to other studies (WESKOTT & FANSELOW,
2011; FUKUDA et al., 2012) our results suggest that the Likert scale provided a finer distinction of the
acceptability difference in question.
“- TEM PÃO? - PROLOC TEM (BP)/ - PRO TENHO (EP)”
ADVERBIAL (LOCATIVE) PRONOUNS AS SUBSTITUTES OF IMPERSONAL ‘SE’ IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
Eloisa PILATI (UnB)
Rozana NAVES (UnB)
Heloisa SALLES (UnB)
The goal of this study is to discuss the syntactic properties of (transitive) constructions as in (1) and (2) - data in
the table below -, as well as unaccusative constructions with verbs of movement as in (3), which display a
generic interpretation on the subject in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), as opposed to European Portuguese (cf.
Costa 2010). We will argue that their occurrence is determined by the syntax of the (subject) pronominal
system in BP, which includes a (null/ overt) locative adverbial pronoun, which is in complementary distribution
with (3rd) impersonal clitic pronoun ‘se’. As for the grammaticalization of locative adverbs (whether overt or
null) as subject pronouns, we follow Pilati & Naves (2013); and Naves, Pilati & Salles (2013), which in turn
assume Rabelo’s (2010) hypothesis that BP displays a split in verbal inflection preventing 3rd person from
licensing referential null subjects, as opposed to 1st and 2nd person (cf. (2d)), as well as Bhat’s (2004)
crosslinguistic work on pronouns, in which it is shown that the grammatical split on the pronominal paradigm is
commonly expressed through locative formatives (for 3rd person). A well-known fact about BP is that ‘se’
ceases to be a marker of subject indetermination (Galves 2001; Kato & Duarte 2008). However, in the absence
of the clitic impersonal pronoun ‘se’, a locative pronoun is obligatory, as illustrated in (2a), as opposed to (2d).
Given this, we argue that the novel (grammaticalized) pronoun being endowed with a locative feature, as well
as a 3rd person feature, and being deprived of gender and number features, fulfills the conditions on the
grammatical/ formal licensing of the subject position, as a substitute of the impersonal clitic pronoun ‘se’,
which is a 3rd person pronoun, being also deprived of number and gender features, accounting for the
complementary distribution between these formatives. The requirement on a locative feature in the licensing of
these constructions further allows for a unified analysis with the conditions determining the occurrence of the
so-called topic-subject constructions, in which a locative DP is found in subject position of unaccusatives verbs
(cf. (4)), as originally discussed in Pontes (1986), and after in Galves (2001), and many others, as well as the
(restricted) occurrence of VS word order in BP, which is taken to be an instance of locative inversion, as
proposed in Pilati (2006), as in (5), in which a temporal locative feature on the predicate is postulated, denoting
a recent fact. The analysis of BP facts in terms of a locative adverbial pronoun finds a correlate in Holmberg’s
(2010) work on Finnish, in which an overt locative pronoun in subject position gives rise to arbitrary
interpretation on the subject, as shown in (6a), which correlates with a construction with an expletive, as
illustrated in (6b). An additional piece of evidence for the role of the locative pronoun in the formal licensing of
the T head is that it is not possible in the presence of a thematic subject, a locative DP in pre-verbal position
being unable to trigger subject agreement, as in (7).
1.
2a.
2b.
2c.
2d.
3
4
Matou um cara no show.
Killed.3s a man at the show
‘One killed a man at the show.’
Tem/Vende fruta
have/sell.3s fruit
‘They sell fruits.’
Joãoi disse que aqui vende*i/arb fruta
John said that here sell.3s
fruit
‘John said that he sells fruits.’
Joãoi disse que elei tem/vende frutas
John said that he has/sells fruit
‘John said that he sells fruits.’
*Vende frutas.
Sell.3s fruits
‘They sell fruits.’
Aqui vai/ sai
fácil.
Here go.3s/ leaves.3s easily
‘One goes/ leaves easily here.’
Essas casas batem sol.
These houses hit.3pl sun
(with subject arbitrary reading;
ok PB; *PE – cited in Lunguinho & Medeiros
2010)
(in a sign, with subject arbitrary reading: ok PB;
*PE)
(with arbitrary reading on the embedded subject:
ok BP;*EP – adapted from Modesto 2007)
(correferential subjects: ok BP; *EP):
[out of the blue] (definite reading on 3s: *PB; ok
PE)
[in the sense of passing through] (okPB; *PE –
cited in Souto 2004)
(okPB; *PE)
5a
5b
6a
6b
7a
7b
‘These houses are reached by the sun’/ ‘The
sun reaches the houses’
Morreu Fellini.
Died.3s Fellini
‘Fellini has (just) died’
Fellini morreu.
Fellini died.3s
‘Fellini has died’
Tässa istuu mukavasti.
Here sits comfortably
Sitä istuu mukavasti tässä.
EXP sits comfortably here
Aqui nada F. Scherer
Here swim.3s F. Scherer
*Essas piscinas nadam F. Scherer
These pools swim.3pl F. Scherer
(ok BP, only as a recent fact; ok PE, under narrow
focus)
(ok BP, unmarked reading; ok PE)
[Holmberg 2010; Finnish]
[Holmberg 2010; Finnish]
[CP [AdvP/Topic Aquij [TP Øi [T’ nadai [vP Locj [vP F.
Scherer ti ]]]]]]
*[CP [TP Essas piscinasj [T’ nadamj [vP Locj [vP F.
Schereri]]]]]]]
REFERENCES
BHAT, D. Pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
COSTA, J. PB e PE: orientação para o discurso importa?. Estudos da Língua(gem), v. 8, n. 1. 2010.
GALVES,C. Ensaios sobre as Gramáticas do Português.Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2001.
HOLMBERG, A. The null generic subject pronoun in Finnish. In: Biberauer, T. et al. Parametric Variation: null subjects
in Minimalist Theory. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
KATO, M.; DUARTE, M. E. Indefinite subjects in Brazilian Portuguese, a Topic and Subject-prominent language. VII
Workshop on Formal Linguistics, Curitiba-PR, 2008.
LUNGUINHO, M. V. S.; P. MEDEIROS Jr. Inventou um tipo novo de sujeito: características sintáticas e semânticas de
uma estratégia de indeterminação do sujeito no português brasileiro. Interdisciplinar, ano IV, vol. 9, 2010, p. 7-21.
MODESTO, M. Null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese and Finnish: they are not derived by movement. In: Davies, W. &
Dubisnsky, S. (org.). New horizons in the analysis of Control and Raising. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007.
NAVES, R.; PILATI, E. & SALLES, H. As cidades da Amazônia chovem muito: non-thematic subjects and the properties
of Infl in Brazilian Portuguese. Portuguese Linguistics in United States. Georgia: UGA, 2013.
PILATI, E. Aspectos sintáticos e semânticos da ordem verbo-sujeito no português. Doctoral Thesis. Brasília: UnB, 2006.
PILATI, E. S., NAVES, R. R. Desenvolvendo a hipótese da cisão da categoria pronominal no português brasileiro. In:
Denilda Moura; Marcelo A. Sibaldo. Estudos e Pesquisas em Teoria da Gramática.1 ed. Maceió: EDUFAL, 2013, p.
233-253.
PONTES, E. Sujeito: da Sintaxe ao Discurso. São Paulo: Ática; Brasília: Instituto Nacional do Livro, Fundação Nacional
Pró-Memória, 1986.
RABELO, P. Argumentos (EPP) Nulos no Português do Brasil em Contextos Oracionais Finitos e Infinitivos. Doctoral
Thesis, Brasília: UnB, 2010.
SOUTO, K.C.E. Aspectos sintáticos e semânticos do verbo ir de movimento no Português do Brasil. Dissertação de
Mestrado. Brasília: UnB, 2004.
BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE: A NULL-SUBJECT LANGUAGE OR A OBLIGATORY SUBJECT
LANGUAGE?
Fabio Duarte Bonfim/UFMG
Christiane Miranda Buthers/UFMG-POSLIN
The current Brazilian Portuguese, unlike the Portuguese European and PB non-contemporary, has shown a
gradual increase of filling the left position of the verb in finite sentences, as can be seen from the data presented
on 1 and 2:
(1) Porque você vê todo mundo desempregado. (SPONTANEOUS SPEECH)
(2) Se constrói um país. (SPONTANEOUS SPEECH)
In contexts such as those presented in 1 and 2, if there is deletion of the words XP appearing in the starting
position, the result is a little acceptable sentence, as they suggest the following examples:
(3) ?? Porque ___ vê todo mundo desempregado. (SPONTANEOUS SPEECH)
(4) ?? __ constrói um país. (SPONTANEOUS SPEECH)
Based on examples like these, the hypothesis tested in the course of the analysis was that the little acceptable
data 3-4 is directly connected with the fact that the contemporary PB present a significant increase in the
percentage of occurrence of word order [XP V DP]. One of the goals of the work was to investigate the
grammatical status of XPs phrases that appear in the first position of these syntactic constructs. The study
demonstrates that some of these XPS have functioned as pure expletives, having only a requirement of strict
syntax, for example, the evaluation of EPP, in accordance with Chomsky (1995). For such verification, we use
as a theoretical assumption Holmberg (2000), which analyzes the stylistic fronting (Stylistic Fronting) present
in Scandinavian languages. Another objective was to investigate the emergence of this order would be
correlated or not with the weakening of the concordance system and the way the PB satisfies the EPP feature in
finite sentences.
To explain this phenomenon, the proposal outlined in the paper was the factorization of EPP in two distinct
features: [uD] and [uP], as follows:
Through this formulation, it is possible to account for the universality of the EPP. More precisely, this proposal
introduces the idea that EPP is a syntactic property that it present in all languages. What is new in this proposal
is that the features above, which constitute the EPP, are speaking configurable for language, so that they can
enter the derivation as weak or strong. This analysis allows us to analyze the phenomenon of null subject more
consistently, as it realizes explain interlinguistic variations concerning your actuation. According to this
proposal, AGR has only a secondary role in the null subject licensing, since not always their presence in the
system leads obligatory occurrence of the null subject. In short, this analysis argues that the current PB is a
partial null-subject language. It is this property that grammar allows the subject position null optionally proves
in certain contexts and in other always filled. Thus, the emergence of order [XP V (DP)] can be described as a
side effect of the way the EPP feature is valued in contemporary PB.
REFERENCES:
CHOMSKY, N.(1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
_____. Derivation by phase.(1999). MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18, Cambridge (MA): MIT.
_____; LOBATO, L. (1988). Linguagem e mente: pensamentos atuais sobre antigos problemas. Brasília: Ed.
UnB.
CYRINO, S.M.L.; LAMOGLIA DUARTE, M.E.; KATO, M.A.(2000). “Visible subjects and invisible clitics in
Brazilian Portuguese.”, in: KATO, M.A.; NEGRÃO, E.V.. (eds.). Brazilian Portuguese and the null subject
parameter. Frankfurt am main: Vervuert.
DUARTE, F.B. (2008). Distribuição de pronomes fortes, fracos e afixos de línguas de sujeito nulo. Revista do
GEL (Araraquara), v. 1, p. 31-56.
FRANCHI, C.; NEGRÃO, E.a; VIOTTI, E.(1998). Sobre a gramática das orações impessoais com ter/haver.
DELTA, 14, número Especial, 105-131.
GALVES, C.M.C.(2001). Ensaios sobre as gramáticas do português. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp.
GRECO, D.; VITRAL, L.T.(2003). O advérbio LÁ e a noção de gramaticalização, 15f. Monografia de IC.
UFMG, CNPq.
HOLMBERG, A.(2000). Scandinavian Stylistic Fronting: How Any Category Can Become an Expletive.
Linguistic Inquiry, v. 31, n. 3).
_____; NIKANNE, U.(2002). “Expletives, Subjects, and Topics in Finish”, in: SVENONIUS, P. Subjects,
Expletives, and the EPP. New York: Oxford University Press.
_____; NAYUDU, A.; SHEEHAN, M.(2008). Three Partial Null-Subject Languages: a comparison of Brazilian
Portuguese, Finnish and Marathi. Studia Linguistica 63(1), 59-97.
KATO, M.A.(1999). Strong pronominals in the null subject parameter. Probus, 11, p.1-37.
LAMOGLIA DUARTE, M.E.(1993). “Do Pronome Nulo ao Pronome Pleno: a trajetória do sujeito no português do
Brasil”, in: ROBERTS, I.; KATO, M.A.(orgs). (1993). Português Brasileiro: uma viagem diacrônica. Campinas:
Ed.da UNICAMP.
_____. 2004. “O Sujeito Expletivo e as Construções Existenciais”. In: RONCARATTI et.al. (orgs). Português
Brasileiro – contato linguístico, heterogeneidade e história. Rio de Janeiro: 7. Letras.
MODESTO, M. (2004). Sujeitos Nulos em Línguas de Tópico Proeminente. São Paulo: Revista da Abralin, vol.
III, n. 1 e 2, pp. 121-148.
RAMOS, J.M.(2006). Mais um pronome em processo de cliticização: o par eles/es, in: VITRAL, L.T.; RAMOS,
J.M., in: “Gramaticalização: uma abordagem formal”. 1a ed. Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro; Belo Horizonte:
Faculdade de Letras FALE/UFMG.
RAPOSO, E.P.(1992). Teoria da Gramática. A Faculdade da Linguagem. Lisboa, Editorial Caminho.
RIZZI, L.(1986). Null Subjects in Italian end the Theory of pro. Linguistic Inquiry: 17:3, 501-558.
SIGURÐSSON, H.(1994). Argument-drop in Old Icelandic. Língua 89:247-280.
SILVA, H.S.(2006). O Parâmetro do Sujeito Nulo: confronto entre o Português e o Espanhol. Dissertação
(Mestrado em Letras Vernáculas). Faculdade de Letras da UFRJ: Rio de Janeiro.
SOUZA, E.M.de.(2007). O uso do pronome ‘eles’ como recurso de indeterminação do sujeito. Dissertação
(Mestrado em Estudos Linguísticos) - Faculdade de Letras da UFMG, Belo Horizonte.
VITRAL, L.T.; RAMOS, J.M. (2006). Gramaticalização de ‘Você’: um caso de perda de conteúdo semântico, in:
VITRAL, L.T.; RAMOS, J.M. “Gramaticalização: uma abordagem formal”. 1a ed. Rio de Janeiro: Tempo
Brasileiro; Belo Horizonte: Faculdade de Letras FALE/UFMG.
THE ASYMMETRY BETWEEN AGREEMENT AND NON-AGREEMENT VERBS IN LIBRAS
Guilherme Lourenço/UFMG
0. Introduction: One of the central assumptions of the Generative Program is that every human being is born
with a natural capacity to acquire and develop a language. Language itself is much more related to a certain
Language Faculty than to someone’s perceptual or articulatory systems. Thus, we can surely say that spoken
languages and signed languages are both produced by the very same human brain; and, therefore, the same
theoretical apparatus and assumptions can be used to describe and analyze both language modalities. Based on
that, this talk aims at presenting and discussing an asymmetry between two groups of verbs in Libras:
plain/non-agreeement verbs (verbs with no morphological agreement) and agreement verbs (verbs with
morphological agreement).
1. The data: Studies about Libras started in the 1980s; and, since then, it has been noticed that the language has
different possibilities for ordering the words in the sentence (Felipe 1989, Ferreira-Brito 1995, Quadros 1999).
However, Quadros (1999) pointed out that agreement verbs and plain verbs seem to behave differently in terms
of the order of the constituents. She argues that the basic word order is SVO (1), but agreement verbs have a
more flexible order, while plain verbs have a more rigid alignment. First, SOV order with reversible arguments
is only allowed in agreement verb constructions (2). Adittionaly, the topicalization of the object, resulting in an
OSV order, is allowed when the sentence contains an agreement verb (3a). On the other hand, with a plain verb,
the object can only be topicalized if a resumptive-like indexical pronoun (glossed as IX) appears in the object
position (3b-c). Another difference between plain and agreement verbs is what Quadros (1999) calls negation
asymmetry. In Libras, negation is marked by different elements: the sign NO (lexical negation) and a negative
non-manual marker (glossed as _____neg). In agreement verb constructions, negation is allowed in a pre-verbal
position (22a) and in the final position of the sentence (4). Additionally, although the negative item is not
pronounced in the pre-verbal position in (4b), the negative non-manual marker of negation is marked from the
position before the verb and it spreads over the rest of the sentence, through the non-manual marker. Then
again, the examples in (5) show that negation cannot occur in a pre-verbal position in plan verb constructions.
In these sentences, lexical negation is allowed only in final position. However, the non-manual marker has the
same behavior as in non-plain verb constructions: its scope starts on the verb and spreads through the end of the
sentence. This indicates that, in both constructions, negation is located in a NegP projection. However, it is
important to explain why lexical negation in plan verb sentences is only allowed in the final sentence position.
2. Proposal: Lourenço (2014) and Lourenço and Duarte (2014) claim that verbal agreement in Libras is the
result of Agree relations between the ϕ-probes of T and v and ϕ-features of the nominals. Although they
propose a syntactic derivation for agreement verb constructions, they do not address the question of how plain
verb sentences are derived or the consequences of agreement to the clause structure. So, in this work I propose
that (2b) is possible because the agreement is responsible for the identification of the syntactic relation of the
arguments. Moreover, I claim that SOV order is obtained because of a Probe-Goal Union operation (PGU), as
proposed by Miyagawa (2010). As for the rigid order of plain verb constructions, the proposal is that plain
verbs project a defective structure, in terms of ϕ-probes. Once there is no ϕ-probe in the syntactic derivation,
there is no movement motivated for agreement reasons. As a consequence, (3c) cannot be analyzed as a raising
topic sentence; instead, the ‘topicalized object’ is a base-generated topic. This fact explains, why you must have
a resumptive-like pronoun siting on the object position. Finally, negative asymmetry can be accounted if we
consider that the sign NO occupies the Spec,NegP (Pfau 2015); and, when the subject is raised to check the
edge feature of T (Lourenço 2014), you get the SNegVO order. On the other hand, the edge feature of T in a
plain verb construction cannot be checked based on agreement. So, as a Last Resort operation, the vP projection
moves up to Spec,TP and then the edge feature is checked. This explains why the order is SVONeg.
Examples:
1. a.
b.
JOHN LIKE MARY.
JOHNa aWATCHb TVb.
2. a. *JOHN
b. JOHNa
MARY LIKE.
TVb aWATCHb.
3. a. <TVb>topic JOHNa aWATCHb.
b. *<MARY>topic JOHN LIKE.
c. <MARYa>topic JOHN LIKE IXa.
______________neg
4. a. JOHNa NO aGIVEb CAR.
______________neg
b. JOHNa aGIVEb CAR NO.
5. a. *JOHN
b.
JOHN
______________neg
NO DESIRE CAR.
______________neg
DESIRE CAR NO.
References:
Felipe, T. (1989) A estrutura frasal na LSCB. In Anais do IV Encontro Nacional da ANPOLL. Recife.
Ferreira-Brito, L. (1995). Por uma gramática das línguas de sinais. Tempo Brasileiro. UFRJ. Rio de Janeiro.
Lourenço, G. (2014). Concordância, Caso e ergatividade em Língua de Sinais Brasileira: uma proposta
minimalista. MA Thesis. Faculdade de Letras, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte.
Lourenço, G.; Duarte, F. B. Caso e concordância em Língua de Sinais Brasileira: Investigando verbos de
concordância regular e verbos de concordância reversa. Veredas: Revista de Estudos Linguísticos. Vol. 18
(1), Juiz de Fora, 2014.
Miyagawa, S. (2010). Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-based and Discourse Configurational
Languages. MIT Press, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 54.
Pfau, Roland. (2015). A featural approach to sign language negation. To appear in: Larrivée, P. & C. Lee (eds.),
Negation and Negative Polarity. Cognitive and Experimental Perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer.
Quadros, R. M. (1999) Phrase structure of Brazilian sign language. Tese de Doutorado. PUCRS. Porto Alegre.
ON THE LICENSING OF NULL ARBITRARY AND NULL GENERIC PRONOUNS IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
Humberto Borges
(PhD student at University of Brasilia)
Rozana Reigota Naves
(Professor at University of Brasilia)
Roberts and Holmberg (2010) classify the Finnish and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as partial null subject
languages, given that the D-feature [+ definite], required on the trace-φ of consistent null subject languages, is
not required in these languages. Thus, the authors postulate that one of the properties of partial null subject
languages is the licensing of null generic pronouns. According to Holmberg (2010), Finnish: (i) has no any
overt generic pronoun; (ii) has null generic pronoun with (iii) feature [+ human]; its null generic pronouns do
everything overt subjects do, however, (iv) do not satisfy the EPP of T; moreover, (v) an expletive, or a locative
or temporal adverbial, or an object in the singular satisfies the EPP of T in constructions with null generic
pronouns, (vi) triggering, by incorporation, agreement with the third singular person and (vii) assign nominative
Case.
From the evidence that in a manuscript from Goiás of the 19th century were licensed impersonal null
subjects in the third singular person, we postulate that the BP have had properties of a partial null subject
language since 19th century (at least in Goiás). However, these impersonal null subjects have arbitrary reading,
as (1). Besides having verbs conjugated in the third singular person and an empty category in subject position,
the constructions in (1) also have the following syntactic-semantic properties: (i) verbs that in their canonical
argument structure require a argument with thematic role of agent and feature [+ human] in the subject position
(which is empty in the data); and (ii) no nominal or pronominal element preceding the verbs that, syntactically,
can refer to the empty category.
Comparing null generic pronouns in Finish (HOLMBERG, 2010) with null arbitrary and null generic
pronouns in BP (see, respectively: (1) and (2)), we come to some conclusions: unlike the Finnish, (i) BP has
overt generic pronouns, as in (2b-c); (ii) secondly, as well as the null generic pronouns in Finnish, null arbitrary
pronouns in BP do not have a overt pronoun, as we can be seen in (3); unlike the constructions with null generic
pronouns in Finnish, (iii) the object of constructions with null arbitrary pronouns in BP can be singular (1a, c),
plural (1d), or null (1b); (iv) in constructions with null arbitrary pronouns in BP, the object can occupy a
position on the left of the verb, possibly CP, as in (1e). Based on this evidence, we conclude that the properties
of impersonal null subjects with arbitrary or generic readings in BP do not match each other, and do not match
the same properties presented by null generic pronouns in Finnish. Our conclusion highlights the need for a
more detailed description of syntactic and semantic aspects of impersonal null subjects in BP in order to seek a
better characterization of BP’s properties as a partial null subject language.
Data1
(1)
a. Dia 30 Baptizou á f.a do Snr’ M.el Thomaz, forão os pad.ros Ritinha f.a do Ant.o Pinto, e o Jozino f.o do
Angelo Gusmão (Memorial, July 1881)
Day 30th Øarb baptized.3SG the daughter of Sir Manoel Thomaz, were the godparents Ritinha, daughter
of Antônio Pinto, and Jozino, son of Angelo Gusmão
“On July 30th the daughter of Sir Manoel Thomas was baptized. Ritinha, daughter of Antônio Pinto, and
Jozino, son of Angelo Gusmão, were the godparents”
b. Dia 17 Faleceu ó Cadête Candido Gonsaga, e enterrou dia 18 (Memorial, January 1882)
Day 17th died the cadet Candido Gonsaga, and Øarb buried.3SG on the 18th
“On January 17th the cadet Candido Gonsaga died, and he was buried on the 18th”
c. Dia 14 principiou fazer estuqui aqui na Sala. / Dia 19 Pintou o estuque da Sala. / Dia 23 esteve aqui
trabalhando fazendo sualho.(Memorial, December 1898)
1
The diachronic data was taken from the manuscript Memorial de lembranças de Anna Joaquina da Silva Marques (1881-1930),
legally filed in the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Históricos do Brasil Central, in Goiânia, Goiás. The whole manuscript were
scanned by the authors through the research project Estudos sobre a constituição do Português Brasileiro, linked to the Graduate
Program in Linguistics at the University of Brasilia.
Day 14th Øarb began.3SG to do stucco here in the living room. / Day 19th Øarb painted.3SG stucco’s
room. / Day 23rd Øarb was.3SG working here, doing floor.
“On December 14th they started to do stucco in the living room. / 19th they painted the stucco’s room. /
23rd they were here working, doing the floor.”
d. Dia 3 de Março de 1885 Faleceu a D. Lin[...] / dia 4 Faleceu a S.ra Ninica derepente, nesse dia
enterrou ambas 1 demanhã aouta detarde. (Memorial, March 1885)
Day 3rd March 1885 died lady Lin[...] / Day 4th died lady Ninina suddenly. this Day Øarb buried.3SG
both 1 in the morning and the other in the afternoon
“On March 3rd, 1885 lady Lin[…] died. On March 4th lady Ninina died suddenly. On March 5th both of
them were buried. One of them was buried in the morning, and the other was buried in the afternoon”
e. Falecerão P.e José Iria e o C.ol Constancio Rib.o da Maia. este sepultou detarde e aquelle foi
depositado na Bôa morte .(Memorial, September 1898)
Died Priest José Iria and the Colonel Constancia Ribeiro da Maia. thiscolonel Constancia Ribeiro da Maia Øarb
buried.3SG afternoon and that(Priest José Iria) was deposited in the Good Death
“Priest José Iria and Colonel Constancia Ribeiro da Maia died. Colonel Constancia Ribeiro da Maia was
buried in the afternoon, and Priest José Iria was put in a crypt in the Good Death Church”
(2)
(a) É assim que Øgen faz o doce
is thus that makes the sweet
“This is how one makes the dessert.”
(b) É assim que a gentegen faz o doce
(c) É assim que vocêgen faz o doce
(d) * É assim que o doce faz.
is thus that the sweet makes
(3)
a. Dia 14 (*alguém) principiou fazer estuqui aqui na Sala
14th (someone) began.3SG to do stucco here in the living room
b. Dia 19 (*alguém) Pintou o estuque da Sala
19th (someone) painted.3SG the stucco’s room
c. Dia 23 (*alguém) esteve aqui trabalhando fazendo sualho
23rd (someone) was.3SG working here, doing the floor
References
ROBERTS, I.; HOLMBERG, A. 2010. Introduction: parameters in minimalist theory. BIBERAUER, T. et al.
Parametric Variation: null subjects in Minimalist Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1-57.
HOLMBERG, A. 2010. The null generic subject pronoun in Finnish: a case of incorporation in T. In:
BIBERAUER, Teresa; HOLMBERG, Anders; ROBERTS, Ian; SHEEHAN, M. Parametric Variation: null
subjects in Minimalist Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 200-231.
THE INTERPRETATION OF TWO QUANTIFIERS IN YE’KWANA (KARIB)
Isabella Coutinho Costa
UFRJ / UERR
This work presents a description and formal analysis for the distribution of two nominal quantifiers wanna ‘many’ and
ooje ‘many’ in the Ye'kwana language (Karib family) spoken in Venezuela and Brazil. According to the count/mass
typology (cf. Chierchia 1998, 2010), Ye'kwana can be classified as a number neutral language (Wilhelm 1998, Lima
2014), since it allows bare arguments (1) as well as optional plural morphemes (2). The quantifiers wanna and ooje can be
combined with both mass (3) and count nouns (4) (e.g. tuna ‘water’ and . wameedi ‘chicken’, respectively) This fact
raises an important question as to whether these quantifiers are interpreted as referring to cardinalities/individuals or
volume (such as many and much, respectively, in English – cf. Higginbotham 1994, Doetjes 1997, Chierchia 1998 among
others) in constructions with count and mass nouns. More precisely, we are interested in understanding whether those
quantifiers can be interpreted as referring to cardinalities (number of individuals similarly to many in English) and/or to
volume (similarly to much in English).
Study Participants: 10 monolingual Ye’kwana women (18-40 years of age) participated in a quantity judgment study
(cf. Barner and Snedeker 2005). Materials and methods: the participants were divided into two groups: the first group
(list 1; 9 items) heard just wanna questions 'Who have wanna x ?' and the second group (list 2; 9 items) only heard ooje
questions 'Who has ooje x?, being 'x' the tested noun, which could be a notional count (eg. wameedi ‘chicken’), mass (eg.
tuna ‘water’) or aggregate noun (eg. womo ‘clothes’). The task consists of presenting two men (5): one that had a big
portion of x (Volume answer) and another that had a high number of small portions of x (Number answer).
Simultaneously to the presentation of the images, the participants heard the question with wanna or ooje. Research
question: we will explore the hypothesis that wanna and ooje are count quantifiers that force a count interpretation
(Number) for all nouns, including mass. This hypothesis will be falsified if those quantifiers are ambiguous between a
count and mass reading depending on the noun they are combined with. Results: the participants answered ‘Number’
more frequently than ‘Volume’ for count nouns (100%) , mass nouns (100%) and aggregate nouns (90%) for questions
with wanna, and answered ‘Number’ more frequently than ‘Volume’ for count nouns (90%) , mass nouns (60%) and
aggregate nouns (95%) for questions with ooje, This suggests that wanna and ooje are count quantifiers that force a count
interpretation (Number) for all nouns, including mass. Those facts will be discussed on the light of the literature on count
quantifiers (cf. Higginbotham 1994, Doetjes 1997, Chierchia 1998 among others) and the count/mass distinction.
Key-words: Ye’kwana; Quantifiers; Count/Mass Distinction.
(1) Osmar faduudu n-aame-i
Osmar banana 3-eat-PPR
‘Osmar ate banana/bananas’
(2) Osmar faduudu-komo-de’a
Osmar banana-PL-REIT
‘Osmar ate bananas’
n-aame-i-cho
3-eat-PPR-PL
(3) Osmar ooje/wanna faduudu n-aame-i
Osmar many
banana 3-eat-PPR
‘Osmar ate many bananas’
(4) Osmar ooje/wanna tuna n-enö-i
Osmar many
water 3-drink-PPR
‘Osmar drank much water’
(5)
References
Barner, David and Snedeker, Jesse. (2005). Quantity judgments and individuation: evidence that mass nouns count.
Cognition, 97 (1), 41-66.
Chierchia, Gennaro. (1998). Plurality of mass nouns and the notion of ‘semantic parameter’. Events and grammar, ed.
Susan Rothstein, 53-103. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
_________________. (2010). Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation. Synthese 174 (1), 99–149.
Doetjes, J. (1997). Quantifiers and selection: on the distribution of quantifying expressions in french, dutch and english.
Leiden: The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
Higginbotham, S. (1994). Mass and count quantifiers. Linguistics and Philosophy 17 (5), 447 – 480.
Wilhelm, A. (2008). Bare nouns and number in Dëne Suliné. Natural Language Semantics 16 (1), 39-68.
Lima, S. (2014). The grammar of individuation and counting. PhD Dissertation. University of Massachusetts Amherst.
A RECIPE ON HOW TO SAVE A DERIVATION: THE LOCATIVE IMPERSONAL IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
Janayna Carvalho (University of São Paulo/CNPq)
In Brazilian Portuguese (BP), we find locative impersonals, i.e. sentences in which an arbitrary human
reading arises if: a) a locative PP is present; b) the locative is in complementary distribution with the external
argument/impersonal morphology (cf. (1) and (2)). Crucially, this meaning will not arise if the locative is totally
absent. It has to be at least implied. Differently from previous analyses that treated those sentences on a par with
locative inversion (Avelar and Cyrino 2008) or claimed that there is a pro that generates an arbitrary human reading
when anteceded by a locative (Barbosa 2010), my analysis for this phenomenon is that this locative is an overt
existential closure element to the event variable, employed in absence of an alternative element that could do that
(cf. Zimmermann (2007) for analysis of a locative expression in Bura with the same line of reasoning). The
alternative element in question is the clitic se, which is in a process of disappearing of BP grammar in a variety of
contexts, impersonal sentences included (cf. Nunes 1990; Galves 2001; Cyrino 2008; Ribeiro 2010, among many
others). Avelar and Cyrino (2008) develop an account in terms of locative inversion that treats alike the arbitrary
human reading in sentences as (1) and (2) and the ‘focus/presentational interpretation’, commonly attributed to
locative inversion. In other words, the arbitrary human arises in virtue of locative inversion. Hence, the
ungrammaticality of the locative impersonal reading in (3) is attributed to the impossibility of a locative inversion
with stative verbs. However, if the issue reduces to locative inversion, the impossibility of an impersonal reading in
(4) and (5) is left unexplained. Locative inversion can apply to light verbs (4) and non-alternating unaccusatives (5),
but (4) will never mean that ‘one grows mangos in my farm’, nor will (5) mean that ‘one swelled up my foot in the
party.’ It is important to note that the arbitrary human reading only arises if the verb can have an agent as external
argument. In other words, the verb must be either unergative or an accomplishment. Therefore, if the locative is
combined with verbs as ‘pular’ (to jump), ‘dormir’ (to sleep), ‘cozinhar’(to cook), ‘construir’ (to build), the arbitrary
human reading will arise, but not with ‘saber’ (to know), ‘chover’ (to rain), ‘crescer’ (to grow). Likewise, an account
where pro enters an anaphoric relation with the locative to derive an arbitrary human reading (Tomioka 2003;
Barbosa 2010) do not capture the conditions in which the relevant reading arises. In this account, it is left
unexplained why this pro would be dependent on constrains such as the type of the verb or a specific locative
relation. Locatives close the event variable: The phenomenon of locatives licensing post-verbal bare nouns and
indefinite DPs is well-known (Dobrovie-Sorin 1996; Borer 2005; Alexiadou 2011, for recent accounts).
Implementations for this phenomenon differ drastically, but Borer (2005, 2010) offers an interesting approach to this
data that links to the problem addressed here. For Borer, cases in which locatives license post-verbal bare nouns and
indefinites are not treated as instances of locatives existentially closing DPs, but, rather, closing the event variable
on vPs. More specifically, the author argues that, in the absence of definite expressions (strong DPs and pronouns),
which are argued to be inherent existentially closed, the locative binds the locus of existential closure (e), which, on
turn, binds the DP (cf. (6)).This analysis can be extended to the BP locative impersonals. A piece of evidence for the
assumption that locatives existentially close the event variable on vP in BP locative impersonals is the fact that they
are excluded from contexts where no event variable is introduced, as in (3) with stative verbs (cf. Kratzer 1995).
Given the loss of impersonal morphology, the clitic se, locatives are an alternative strategy to existentially close the
event variable.
1.
*(Aqui) vende doce.
Here sells sweet.
‘One sells sweets here.’
2.
*(No Brasil) usa saia.
In.the Brazil uses skirt.
‘People use skirts in Brazil.’
3.
*Na casa da Maria adora os livros do Harry Potter.
* In house of the Maria adores the books of the Harry Potter.
Intended: ‘One adores Harry Potter books in Maria’s house.’(Cyrino and Avelar 2008:65)
4.
No meu sítio dá manga. ~ Manga dá no meu sítio. (locative inversion ~ non-locative inversion).
In my farm give.IMPERF mango. ‘Mangos grow in my farm.’
5.
Na festa inchou meu pé. ~ Meu pé inchou na festa.
In the party swelled.up.PERF my foot ‘My foot swelled up in the party.’
6.
∃locative e [vP V DP] (Borer 2010:336, adapted)
SELECTED REFERENCES:
Avelar, J., & Cyrino, S. (2008). Locativos preposicionados em posição de sujeito: uma possível contribuição das
línguas Bantu à sintaxe do português brasileiro. In: Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto.
Vol, 3
Barbosa, P. (2010). Partial pro-drop as null NP anaphora. Manuscript.
Borer, H. (2005). The normal course of events (Vol. 2).
Borer, H. (2010) Locales. In: Lexical Semantics, Syntax, and Event Structure.
Zimmermann, M. (2007). Overt Existential Closure in Bura (Central Chadic). In: Proceedings of SALT Vol. 17.
PASSIVEP AS A PHASE NODE AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN EVENTIVE, RESULTATIVE, AND STATIVE
PASSIVES: DISPENSING WITH SMUGGLING MOVEMENT
João C. de Lima Júnior (PUC-Rio/LAPAL) & Marina R.A. Augusto (UERJ/LAPAL)
Recent analyses for Portuguese passive structures (Lunguinho, 2011; Dias & Naves, 2014) have adopted the
smuggling movement proposed by Collins (2005), despite a number of criticisms such analysis has evoked
(Gehrke & Grillo, 2009). In this paper, we pursue the possibility of dispensing with the smuggling movement
by adopting the idea that passive structures constitute phases (see Legate, 2003). For such, a node PassiveP
(roughly corresponding to VoiceP, in Collins’ terms) is adopted for eventive passives (see Embick, 2004) to be
contrasted to resultative and stative passives in Brazilian Portuguese (also see Duarte & Oliveira, 2010; Dias &
Naves, 2014). Although PassiveP is a phase, it does not value accusative Case of the internal argument, which
may move cyclically to an extra spec position projected by PassiveP. Being moved to the extra Spec, the
internal argument circumvents relativized minimality in respect to the external argument as the element to be
further moved to the subject position, in a way similar to the movement of object Wh-elements, through an
extra Spec,vP. This proposal also contemplates the status of the by-phrase in passives. In contrast to Collins
(2005), but in consonance to Boeckx (1998), the passive node, PassiveP in our analysis, projects an external
argument (PRO or pro), but no by-phrase. The by-phrase is thus taken as an adjunct oriented to the external
argument. The preposition by is of a functional nature (in Cançado's (2005) terms; see also Berg (2005)), being
responsible for valuing Case of the DP, although it shares with the verb the responsibility of attributing to the
DP its theta-role. Summing up, by-phrases are syntactically an adjunct and semantically an argument (also see
McIntyre, 2013; Bruening, 2013). In order to derive the three kinds of passives (stative, resultative and
eventive), PartP, AspP and PassiveP projections are assumed. PartP is responsible for the stative reading, AspP
brings eventivity and passiveP is responsible for agentivity [1-3]. The three complexily distinct structures
proposed are reflected in the paths of acquisition found (Brooks & Tomasello, 1999; Israel, Johnson & Brooks,
2000). We hypothesized that the acquisition of passives rests largely on the distinction of participles in the
language and the features associated with the AUX+PARTICIPLE complex (Lima Júnior & Corrêa, 2015). The
difficulty may lie then on the apprehension of the various layers necessary for the distinct interpretations
participles may assume and not to an association with a kind of more complex operation, as the smuggling
movement (see Hyams & Snyder, 2015).
(1) Eventive passive – [TP DPi [VP ser [PassiveP PRO [AspP [PartP [VP V DPi
(2) Resultative passive – [TP DPi [VP ficar [AspP [PartP [VP V DPi
(3) Stative passive – [TP DPi [VP estar [PartP [VP V DPi
SELECTED REFERENCES
Berg, M. (2005) O Comportamento Semântico-Lexical das Preposições do Português do Brasil. Tese
(Doutorado em Letras). Belo Horizonte: FALE/UFMG.
Boeckx, C. (1998) A minimalist view on the passive. University of Connecticut, Papers in Linguistics,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Brooks, Patricia J. and Michael Tomasello (1999) Young children learn to produce passives with nonce verbs.
Developmental Psychology 35, 29±44.
Bruening, B. (2013) By-Phrases in Passives and Nominals. Syntax 16: 1-41.
Cançado, M. (2005) Posições argumentais e propriedades semânticas. DELTA: Documentação de Estudos em
Linguística Teórica e Aplicada. São Paulo, vol. 21, n. 1.
Chomsky, N. (2000) Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in
honor of Howard Lasnik, ed. R. Martin, D. Michaels & J. Uriagereka, 89–155. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
_____ (2008). "On Phases". In Freidin, Robert; Otero, Carlos P.; Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa. Foundational
Issues in Linguistic Theory. Essays in Honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
pp. 133–166.
Collins, C. (2005) A Smuggling Approach to the Passive in English. Syntax 8(2):81–120.
Dias, B. & Naves, R. (2014) The auxiliary ser (be) and ficar (get) in passive construction with psychological
predicates in Portuguese. Paper presented in the X Workshop on Formal Linguistics, UFRGS, Porto
Alegre, RS.
Duarte, I. & Oliveira, F. (2010) Particípios resultativos. In: Textos Seleccionados, XXV Encontro Nacional da
Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, Oporto, p. 397-408.
Embick, D. (2004) On the structure of resultative participles in English. Linguistic Inquiry, 35(3): 355-92.
Gehrke, Berit & Grillo, Nino (2009). How to become passive. In Explorations of Phase Theory: Features,
Arguments, and Interpretation at the Interfaces, ed. Kleanthes K. Grohmann, Interface Explorations, 231268. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter.
Israel, M., Johnson, C., & Brooks, P. J. (2000). From States to Events: The Acquisition of English Passive
Participles. Cognitive Linguistics, 11, 1-2.
Legate, J.A. (2003). Some interface properties of the phase. Linguistic Inquiry 34:506–516.
Lima Júnior, João. C. ; Corrêa, L. M. S. (2015). A natureza do custo computacional na compreensão de
passivas: um estudo experimental com adultos. Letras de Hoje (Impresso), v. 50, p. 91-101, 2015.
Lunguinho, MVS. (2011) Verbos auxiliares e a sintaxe dos domínios não-finitos [online]. Tese de Doutorado.
São Paulo : Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo..
McIntyre, A. (2013) Adjectival passives and adjectival participles in English. In Alexiadou, Artemis & Florian
Schaefer (eds.) Non-canonical Passives. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Snyder, William & Hyams, Nina (2015) Minimality effects in children’s passives In: Di Domenico, Elisa,
Cornelia Hamann and Simona Matteini (eds.), Structures, Strategies and Beyond: Studies in honour of
Adriana Belletti. 2015 (pp. 343–368).
ADJUNCTION IN CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTION IN BRAZILIAN AND CLASSICAL PORTUGUESE
Joaquina Aparecida Nobre da Silva (UFU/IFNMG)
Maura Alves de Freitas Rocha (UFU)
The objective of this study is to compare the adjunction in periphrastic causative construction in
contemporary Brazilian Portuguese (1), and Classical Portuguese (2). The causative sentence is exciting to
present specific morphosyntactic configurations and strong cohesion between the causative verb and its
complement. Specifically, this work investigates the position of the terms on adjunction to causative/perception
and infinitival verbs. It was accepted that adjuncts are inserted in sentence structure somewhere in the
derivation. This insertion can take place either by movement, or directly by merge without movement. The
analysis was developed in the theoretical framework of Parametric Variation as proposed by Tarallo and Kato
(1989), an interface between Grammar and Variation Theory. The corpora consist of interviews provided by
UFMG and by IFNMG, written texts published on websites and studies about Classical Portuguese. Since
causative is a structure with significant cohesion between the causative verb and its complement, it is assumed
that there is syntactic restriction on the adjunct insertion. The results indicate that the position of the terms on
adjunction arises from the specifics of the causative construction in each variety. In addition, these terms
establish morphosyntactic variation, and they contribute to the existence of different structural configurations in
the causative. (Support: CAPES)
(1)
a. Comigo nunca aconteceu mais eu já vi muito isso acontecer. (D/ OP/F/O)
b. Pescoço negocia o recibo que mandou falsificar para convencer Delzuite
(3/E/RN)
do falecimento de sua avó.
c. E depois não deixava ninguém fazer os exercícios deles porque tinha que bater um papo.(G/BH/M/O)
(2)
a. De maneira, senhor, que até agora nos dizia êste mesmo ministro que França não havia de deixar de fazer a
paz por amor de Portugal, e nos mandava cada dia repetir êste desengano em Lisboa, em Paris e em Munster.
(Vieira, 1608)
b. Esperai aqui, amigos, pelo meu corpo, porque a oito de março me mandará o imperador Diocleciano
precipitar no mar, metido em um saco de areia, e dali a três dias, que é a onze do mesmo, sairá nesta ribeira às
costas de um golfinho, perto do meio dia. (Bernardes, 1644)
c. Assim, deixar os outros brigar, trabalhemos nós e ganhemos a nossa vida. (Garret,1799)
ASPECTUAL VERBS: ARGUMENT ALTERNATION
Luana Amaral/Poslin-UFMG
In the present research work we present an analysis of the syntactic argument alternation which occurs with the
so-called aspectual verbs or aspectualizers. These items occur in two types of sentence, transitive or
intransitive, which can be exemplified by pairs of sentences such as a professora começou a aula ‘the teacher
started the class’/ a aula começou ‘the class started’. First of all, we argue that this alternation is not the
causative-inchoative alternation, which occurs with change of state verbs, such as quebrar ‘break’ (o ladrão
quebrou o vidro da porta ‘the thief broke the door glass’/o vidro da porta quebrou ‘the door glass broke’). We
show how the analyzed phenomenon can be distinguished from the causative-inchoative alternation and we
present pieces of evidence to support our claim. We propose, following other authors, that aspectual verbs are
operators and monoargumental predicators. In our analysis of the alternation of these items, we propose, then,
that these verbs can have a derived transitive form, depending on the semantics of their only argument. As
aspectualizers are operators over eventualities, their arguments must necessarily denote an eventuality. If such
arguments are also predicates, their arguments will be able to appear in syntax in the subject position of the
aspectual verbs, deriving a transitive sentence (just as happens with auxiliaries and raising verbs). Thus, we
conclude that the argument alternation at stake is not an argument alternation of the aspectual verb per se, but
an argument alternation of the embedded predicate, the argument of the aspectual verb.
MOTION VERBS IN BP AND TAMY’S TYPOLOGY
Letícia Lucinda Meirelles (UFMG)
Talmy (1975, 1985, 2000) propõe que as línguas se dividem em dois tipos de acordo com a forma como
lexicalizam os componentes semânticos movimento, trajetória, maneira e causa: línguas emolduradas nos
verbos (verb-framed), que lexicalizam, na raiz verbal, movimento e trajetória, e línguas emolduradas nos
satélites (satellite-framed), que lexicalizam movimento e maneira ou movimento e causa. Os satélites são, de
acordo com Talmy, constituintes que se encontram em relação de irmandade com o sintagma verbal, como as
partículas verbais do inglês (go down/ back/ in ‘descer/voltar/entrar’), mas que não são sintagmas nominais
nem sintagmas preposicionados. No entanto, Beavers, Levin e Tham (2010) argumentam, através de uma série
de evidências, que os sintagmas preposicionados também devem ser tratados como satélites.
O português, juntamente com as demais línguas românicas, é considerado uma língua emoldurada no
verbo, pois possui uma série de verbos que expressam a direção do movimento na própria raiz verbal, como
entrar, sair, descer e subir. Além disso, esses verbos têm como argumento interno um sintagma
preposicionado ou um sintagma nominal que expressa o ponto final (Meta) ou inicial (Fonte), ou ambos, de
uma trajetória, como em a menina entrou na sala/ o menino saiu do quarto/ a professora desceu do quinto ao
primeiro andar / o menino subiu o morro (DEMONTE, 2011).
As línguas emolduradas nos satélites, como o inglês, expressam a trajetória através desses constituintes:
John ran out of the house. No entanto, o português brasileiro (PB) possui uma série de verbos que apresenta a
trajetória codificada através de um sintagma preposicionado, o que seria um comportamento atípico de línguas
emolduradas nos verbos (TALMY, 1975, 1985, 2000): Ana enviou um presente para Maria/ o atleta correu
para/ até a linha de chegada/ o estudante hasteou a bandeira até o topo do mastro.
Além disso, é importante notarmos que nem todos esses verbos lexicalizam a maneira como ocorre o
movimento, o que evidencia que a propriedade semântica movimento pode ser lexicalizada com outras
propriedades que não maneira, causa e trajetória. Cançado, Amaral e Meirelles (em prep.) argumentam,
baseadas em Talmy (1985), que o conteúdo semântico da raiz verbal pode ser expresso fora da mesma através
de modificadores cognatos ou sintagmas nominais derivados do verbo. Dessa forma, verbos que lexicalizam a
maneira como ocorre o movimento devem apresentar um sintagma cognato modificador que denote esse
componente semântico, como em a menina balançou a rede com um balanço suave. Os verbos enviar, correr e
hastear não apresentam esse comportamento, o que evidencia que não lexicalizam a maneira como o
movimento ocorre. Podemos derivar desses três verbos um sintagma nominal que denota um tipo de evento no
mundo (AMARAL, 2013): o envio do presente para Maria/ a corrida do atleta/ o hasteamento da bandeira.
No entanto, esses verbos variam em relação ao número de argumentos que tomam para ter o seu sentido
saturado, o que faz com que façam parte de três classes verbais distintas, mas com raízes semanticamente
semelhantes.
Concluímos, portanto, que a tipologia proposta por Talmy não dá conta de explicar os verbos de
movimento do PB, uma vez que, apesar de essa ser uma língua que apresenta verbos que lexicalizam a direção
do movimento, ela também possui uma série de verbos de modo de movimento (AMARAL, 2012; 2015) e
verbos que lexicalizam um evento de movimento com a trajetória expressa nos satélites. Nossa proposta vai à
consonância da de Beavers (2008) e Beavers, Levin e Tham (2010) no sentido de que as línguas não podem ser
definidas, a piori, como pertencentes a uma das duas tipologias propostas por Talmy, pois uma mesma língua
pode apresentar comportamentos típicos de ambas as tipologias, além de apresentar outras propriedades, que
não maneira, causa e trajetória, que são lexicalizadas pelos verbos que denotam um evento de movimento no
mundo.
Classe
Verbos
verbos.de.
subir,.descer,.entrar,
movimento
sair, voltar, partir
direcional
verbos de modo de sacudir,.chacoalhar,
movimento
girar,.quicar,.rastejar
Conclusões
lexicalizam.a.direção.do.movimento.e.
possuem.um.argumento.interno.que
denota um ou mais pontos da trajetória.
lexicalizam a maneira como ocorre o
movimento, possuem dois argumentos e
podem apresentar a trajetória em
adjunção: o peão girou até o final do
corredor.
verbos.de.movimento lançar,.arremessar,
lexicalizam um tipo de evento.causado e
causado1
enviar,.entregar,.chutar possuem três argumentos, sendo que um
deles (satélite) expressa a trajetória.
verbos de movimento hastear,.aterrissar,
lexicalizam um tipo de evento causado,
causado2
ultrapassar
possuem dois argumentos e podem
apresentar a trajetória em adjunção: o
soldado hasteou a bandeira até o topo do
mastro.
verbos de realização correr, pular, nadar, lexicalizam um tipo de evento, são
de um evento
viajar, caminhar, andar ergativos e podem apresentar a trajetória
em adjunção: o atleta correu até a linha
de chegada.
REFERÊNCIAS
AMARAL, L. Os verbos de modo de movimento do português brasileiro: aspecto lexical e decomposição em
predicados primitivos. Estudos Linguísticos, v. 41, n. 1, p. 326-339, 2012.
AMARAL, L. A alternância transitivo - intransitiva no português brasileiro: fenômenos semânticos. 2015.
Tese (Doutorado em Linguística Teórica e Descritiva) – Poslin, Faculdade de Letras, UFMG, Belo Horizonte,
2015.
AMARAL, L. Os predicados primitivos ACT e DO na representação lexical dos verbos. 2013. Dissertação
(Mestrado em Linguística Teórica e Descritiva) – Poslin, Faculdade de Letras, UFMG, Belo Horizonte, 2013.
BEAVERS, J. On the nature of goal marking na delimitation: Evidence from Japanese. Journal of Linguistics
44, p. 283-316, 2008.
BEAVERS, J.; LEVIN, B.; THAM, S.W. The typology of motion expressions revisited. Journal of Linguistics
46, p. 331-377, 2010.
CANÇADO, M.; AMARAL, L.; MEIRELLES, L. Catálogo de verbos do português brasileiro: classificação
verbal segundo a decomposição de predicados. Vol. 2. em prep.
DEMONTE, V. Los eventos de movimiento em español: construcción léxico-sintáctica y microparámetros
preposicionales. In: OTAL, J.; FERNÁNDEZ, L.; SINNER, C. Estúdios sobre perífrase y aspecto. Munique:
Piniope, p. 16-42, 2011.
TALMY, L. Semantics and syntax of motion. In: KIMBALL, J. P. (ed.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 4, p. 181238. Nova York: Academic Press, 1975.
TALMY, L. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In: SHOPEN, T. (ed.), Language
typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, vol. 3, p. 57-149. Nova York:
Cambridge University Press, 1985.
TALM, L. Toward a cognitive semantics: typology and process in concept structuring, vol. 2. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2000.
GAPPING, STRIPPING AND VP ELLIPSIS IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
Lílian Teixeira de Sousa (UFBA)
1. Uma das grandes questões envolvendo os estudos sobre elipse diz respeito à existência ou não de estrutura
sintática não pronunciada. A hipótese semântica defende que a identificação elipse-antecedente é de natureza
semântica, não sendo necessário propor a existência de estrutura sintática, já a hipótese sintática argumenta a
favor da existência de identificação estrutural entre a elipse e o antecedente. As duas abordagens apresentam
argumentos consistentes, mas que nem sempre cobrem todos os casos analisados, o que tem provocado o
surgimento de teorias alternativas que relacionam condições de licenciamento de elipse a questões de estrutura
informacional, especialmente considerando os conceitos de foco e tópico. O Português Brasileiro apresenta
especificidades interessantes no que diz respeito à realização prosódica e estrutural de foco, o que constitui um
importante objeto de análise de estruturas elípticas, levando a um maior entendimento da natureza sintática ou
semântica da elipse. Dessa forma, o presente estudo teve como objetivo verificar a existência de estrutura
sintática ou proformas em construções com elipse no português brasileiro (PB). Para tanto, analisou-se tanto a
realização prosódica dessas estruturas (a partir da gravação de 12 falantes do PB), quanto as restrições em casos
de gapping, striping e elipse de VP.
2. A partir da análise da realização prosódica dos dados coletados, verificamos que há diferenças no
fraseamento prosódico a depender do tipo de elipse, a saber, há desacentuação e presença de contorno de foco
sobre o item em contraste em casos de gapping e marcação entoacional neutra com contorno de foco sobre o
elemento novo em casos de stripping e elipse de VP. Considerando que gapping envolve uma relação de foco e
tópico contrastivo, com o consequente movimento de itens para uma posição mais alta, propomos que, pelo
menos para esse tipo de elipse, há estrutura sintática suficiente para abarcar os traços deixados pelos itens
movidos.
3. No que diz respeito à ocorrência stripping e elipse de VP, observamos que, embora em alguns casos eles
sejam intercambiáveis, há diferentes restrições envolvendo esses dois tipos de elipse. Como mostram os dados
abaixo, stripping e elipse de VP parecem estar em distribuição complementar nessa língua:
(1) a. O motorista deveria ter reportado o acidente para as autoridades, mas ele não *(reportou).
b. Quando a Ana pôs os óculos na mesa, a Maria também *(pôs).
(2) a. Dois pedestres foram feridos no acidente, mas o motorista não (?foi).
b. A Ana pôs os óculos na mesa e a Maria também (?pôs).
Além de estruturalmente diferentes, as sentenças em (1) e (2) se distinguem também em termos informacionais.
Enquanto no primeiro caso há apenas apagamento de itens, no segundo caso, há contraste envolvido. Mesmo
nas sentenças em (2), em que ambas são possíveis para alguns informantes, a interpretação é diferente. No caso
de elipse de VP, perde-se a interpretação contrastiva. Considerando esses fatos, propomos que a derivação dos
dois tipos de elipse envolve movimento, de V para T no caso de elipse de VP, gerando interpretação de foco
informacional, marcado entoacionalmente no verbo, e de itens contrastivos para C no caso de stripping. Se há
movimento, há estrutura.
REVISITING DUARTE (1995): FOR A GRADIENT ANALYSIS OF INDETERMINATE SUBJECTS
IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
Maria Eugenia Lammoglia DUARTE (UFRJ/CNPq)
Juliana Esposito MARINS (UFRJ)
Humberto SOARES da SILVA (UFRJ)
Duarte’s (1993, 1995, 2003) studies show that Brazilian Portuguese (BP) undergoes a change related to
the Null Subject Parameter (NSP), from positive to negative setting. Over time, null subjects with definite
reference gradually lose ground to overt subjects. At the end of the 20th century, overt subjects are preferred in
all contexts, although still in variation with null subjects – while European Portuguese (EP), used as a control
group for comparison, keeps a null subject language, without change.
However, this change in BP does not cause only the filling of definite reference subjects, but it also
triggers (a) a change in the expression of indefinite reference subjects (DUARTE, 1995), (b) the increasing
preference for preverbal subjects with unaccusative verbs (SANTOS & SOARES DA SILVA, 2012), and (c)
subject raising from an embedded clause to fill the expletive subject position with raising verbs which select a
sentence complement (HENRIQUES, 2013). These empirical studies show that these properties (among others)
do seem to integrate the cluster of properties related do the NSL (cf. CHOMSKY, 1981; RIZZI, 1981;
ROBERTS, 1993). Other empirical investigations, including EP, Spanish (SOARES DA SILVA, 2011) and
Italian (MARINS, 2009) bring additional evidence that NSP properties seem to operate together, at least for
languages of the Romance group. Since they operate together in such consistent Null Subjects Romance
systems, one should expect them to change as a cluster if one of the Romance languages showed change in the
setting of the NSP. This is exactly what is found for Dominican Republic Spanish and Puerto Rican Spanish as
well as for BP, whereas change is not noticed in European Spanish and Italian, like in EP.
Therefore, following the track of the set of changes BP has been undergoing, showing a behavior that is
more distant from the null subject languages which were compared to BP regarding the NSP, this paper
proposes a reanalysis of Duarte’s (1995) data for indefinite reference subjects in spoken BP. Based on an
“apparent time” study, the author shows that generic subjects tend to become overt as well as definite subjects.
The standard indeterminacy strategies – clitic se and null third person of plural, respectively instanced in (1a)
and (1b) –, which show a null subject and appear more frequently in the data produced by older speakers, lose
ground for a null subject associated with a third person singular verb form, exemplified in (2). Besides this
particular third person, the progress of overt nominative pronominal forms, conveying generic/arbitrary
reference, were also observed in all contexts, especially with the pronouns você (“you”), in (3), and a gente
(“the people”), used for first person plural and generic reference, in (4); nominative pronoun nós (“we”) shows
a significant decrease as it loses the competition with a gente. Finally, the use of third person plural can be
attested in sentences like (5a) and (5b), respectively with null or overt eles (“they”) – forms in variation.
The aim of this paper is to refine the analysis for the sentences whose subjects do not have a definite
reading, presented by Duarte (1995), in order to attempt to propose a typology for what is taken as “subject of
indefinite reference” or “undetermined subject”. We consider features, like [+/- specific], [+/- generic], [+/arbitrary] and [+/- first person], for identifying the reference of subjects so called indefinite in a gradient
referential scale. The main hypothesis is that the various “indeterminacy strategies” we mentioned are not in
competition, they are indeed ways to express subjects with different clusters of reference features: thus, in
addition to finding that indefinite reference subjects changes towards overt pronouns, as well as those with
definite reference, we noticed that different filling strategies are specialized for distinct indefinite references –
which used to be neutralized in the past. The corpus we analyze comes from a sample from NURC-RJ project,
which was recorder in the early 1990’s.
Examples:
(1) a. Aprendia-se isso na escola.
b. pro Aprendiam isso na escola.
learned-SE thas in-the school
learned-3PL that in-the school
“One/They used to learn this in school.”
(2) pro Aprendia isso na escola? (M3z,1220)
learned.3ps that in-the school?
(3) Quando você é menor, você não dá muito valor. Você acha que criança é só pra encher o saco, né? [...] Na
fase que você tá na adolescência, você á na praia, vem criança, te joga areia, você não vai entender que, pô,
isso é da criança. (M3a, 63,67)
When you is minor, you not give much value. You find that child is only for fill the bag, right? In the phase
that you is in-the adolescence, you is on-the beach, comes child, you.CL throw sand, you not will
understand that, well, this is of-the child
“When you are young, you do not value (children). You think children are only a nuisance, right? When
you are an adolescent, you are on the beach, a child comes, throws sand on you, you won’t understand that
this is a child characteristic.”
(4) Hoje em dia, quando a gente levanta as coisas, é que a gente vê tudo o que aconteceu. Mas na época a
gente não podia acreditar [...]. A gente não acreditava nisso, primeiro porque a gente era novo.(H3b, 162,
166)
Today in day, when the people raises the things, is that the people sees everything what happened. But inthe time the people not could believe. The people not believed in this, first because the people was new
“Nowadays, when one remembers things one understand everything that happened. But, at that time, one
couldn’t believe it. One didn’t believe that, firstly because one was young.”
(5) a. pro Roubaram a escola.
Robbed-3PL the school
“They robbed the school.”
b. Eles estão assaltando no centro da cidade.
They are robbing in-the center of-the city.
“They are robbing downtown.”
REFERENCES
CHOMSKY, Noam. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris, 1981.
DUARTE, Maria Eugênia Lammoglia. Do pronome nulo ao pronome pleno: a trajetória do sujeito nulo no
português do Brasil in: ROBERTS, Ian; KATO, Mary Aizawa (eds.). Português brasileiro: uma viagem
diacrônica. Campinas: UNICAMP, 1993. P. 107-28.
______. A perda do princípio “Evite Pronome” no português brasileiro. Doctorate’s. Campinas:
UNICAMP, 1995.
______. A evolução na representação do sujeito pronominal em dois tempos in: PAIVA, M.;
DUARTE (eds.). Mudança lingüística em tempo real. Rio: Contra Capa, 2003. P. 115-28.
HENRIQUES, Fernando P. H. Construções com verbos de alçamento que selecionam um complemento
oracional: uma análise comparativa do PB e PE. Rio: UFRJ, 2013.
MARINS, Juliana Esposito. O Parâmetro do Sujeito Nulo: uma análise contrastiva entre o português e o
italiano. Master’s. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 2009.
RIZZI, Luigi. Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris, 1982.
ROBERTS, Ian. Verbs and diachronic syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993.
SANTOS, Danielle de Rezende. A ordem VS/SV com verbos inacusativos: um estudo diacrônico. Master’s.
Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 2008.
SANTOS, Danielle de Rezende; SOARES DA SILVA, Humberto. A ordem V-DP/DP-V com verbos
inacusativos in: DUARTE, Maria Eugênia Lammoglia (ed.). O sujeito em peças de teatro (1833-1992):
estudos diacrônicos. São Paulo: Parábola, 2012. P. 121-42.
SOARES DA SILVA, H. Evidências da mudança paramétrica em dados da língua-E: o sujeito
pronominal no português e no espanhol. Doutorado. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 2011.
A ALTERNÂNCIA CAUSATIVO-INCOATIVA EM PORTUGUÊS BRASILEIRO (PB) MOTIVADA POR NÚCLEO
ASPECTUAL (ASPº)
Autor: Maria José de Oliveira
Universidade federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG)
O objeto empírico de investigação desta pesquisa é o verbo causativo-incoativo, amplamente conhecido na
literatura linguística por impor uma mudança de estado a seu argumento interno, como em apodrecer a maçã,
quebrar a janela e molhar a roupa, em que a maçã se torna podre, a janela se torna quebrada e a roupa se
torna molhada. Fato curioso é que esses verbos têm a habilidade de participar de duas construções diferentes:
uma construção transitiva (causativa) [DP1 V DP2] e uma intransitiva (incoativa) [DP2 V]. Diante dessa
constatação, a presente pesquisa busca uma explicação satisfatória e unificada para esse tipo de alternância,
focando principalmente nas propriedades da raiz desses verbos e dos afixos que com ela se concatenam.
Adotando os arcabouços da Morfologia Distribuída (HALLE; MARANTZ, 1993; MARANTZ, 1997;
ACQUAVIVA, 2008; EMBICK, 2010, 2012; HARLEY, 2014), tento responder as seguintes indagações: (i)
Raízes codificam traços semânticos e/ou sintáticos? Se sim, quais são esses traços e como são codificados? (ii)
Raízes e afixos projetam argumentos? (iii) Afixos selecionam raízes? Se tais indagações se confirmarem,
confirma-se, também, a afirmação de que as palavras não vêm prontas do léxico, elas se constituem nas
relações sintáticas, como assumido pela Morfologia Distribuída (doravante MD). A escolha pela MD se
justifica pelo fato de ser esta corrente teórica a mais adequada quando se busca um estudo sobre traços de raízes
e de morfemas. Entretanto, mesmo dentro da MD, há correntes divergentes: uma dessas correntes assume que a
raiz é guardiã de informações sobre sua participação em determinadas estruturas sintáticas e projeta argumentos
(cf. MARANTZ, 1997; HARLEY, 2014); já a outra corrente assume que a raiz não seleciona argumentos,
reservando esta capacidade aos núcleos nos quais os afixos são projetados (cf. ACQUAVIVA, 2008).
Antecipando minha análise, assumo que as raízes não projetam argumentos e que elas são categorialmente
neutras. No entanto, assumo que elas portam traços que devem ser compatíveis com os traços dos núcleos que
as selecionam (núcleo aspectual, por exemplo). E a pergunta que precisa ser respondida então é quais traços são
estes e como eles interferem na alternância verbal. Para nortear a análise, levanto a hipótese de que a
alternância é viabilizada mediante as seguintes condições: (i) a raiz é especificada para [+CAUSA]; (ii) a
projeção de um núcleo aspectual (Aspº) imediatamente acima da raiz, motivada pelos prefixos incoativos [a/en-, es- e ∅]; (iii) o núcleo v (verbalizador) é provido de traço aspectual incoativo [-ec-/∅]; (iv) a projeção de
um DP argumento interno quantificado, que deve sofrer a mudança de estado; (v) o evento resultante das
operações (i), (ii) e (iii) é necessariamente télico; e (vi) o argumento externo é subespecificado para
agentividade. Diante dessa constatação, levantamos outra hipótese inicial, qual seja: (i), (ii) e (iii) determinam
como (iv), (v) e (vi) ocorrem. Para comprovar ou refutar essas hipóteses é necessário testar cada uma
separadamente e verificar se de fato todas precisam ser satisfeitas no contexto da alternância. Os dados
utilizados nesta pesquisa são coletados de trabalhos existentes na literatura, como o de Cançado et al. (2013) e o
de Bassani (2013). Quando necessário, utilizo também dados intuitivos. A previsão é a de que morfemas
aspectuais possam interferir diretamente na estrutura argumental dos verbos causativo-incoativos, abrindo a
possibilidade de ocorrer a alternância causativo-incoativa.
Palavras-chave: verbos; alternância de transitividade; núcleo aspectual; sintaxe; português brasileiro
EXPLORING AGREEMENT DISPLACEMENT FROM THE IA TO THE EA IN THE TENETEHÁRA LANGUAGE (TUPÍGUARANÍ FAMILY)
Quesler Camargos/Poslin-UFMG
In the Tenetehára language (Tupí-Guaraní linguistic family), a portmanteau agreement morpheme is one that
encodes features from two nuclear arguments. An example can be seen in (1) where the agreement morpheme
{uru-} spells out the first person feature from the subject and the second person feature from the object. This
portmanteau morpheme is distinct from the agreement morpheme that cross-references the first person subject
(2) and from the morpheme that cross-references the second person object (3). The goal of this communication
is to answer the question of where and how portmanteau agreement is formed in the Tenetehára grammar.
Furthermore, we intend to answer the question of why and how the verb can agree with the external argument,
as in (2), and, on the other hand, it can agree with the internal argument, as can be seen from (3). In the
descriptive perspective, Duarte (2009) analyzes agreement in this language using person hierarchies, of kind
given in (4). In such an approach, the choice of which argument will be agreed with is an autonomous
component of φ-agreement, governed by a mechanism along the lines of (4). In other words, φ-agreement is
treated as a uniform phenomenon, but for the choice of agreement target. Following Bejar & Rezac (2009), we
assume that agreement displacement phenomena sensitive to person hierarchies arise from the mechanism of
Agree operating on articulated φ-feature structures in a cyclic syntax. According to the authors, the cyclicity
and the locality derive a preference for agreement control by the internal argument. Accordingly, articulation of
the probe determines when the agreement controller cyclically displaces to the external argument. We will see
that the system characterizes three classes of derivations corresponding empirically to direct, inverse and directinverse contexts.
(1)
uru-pytywà ihe
1sg/2sg-help I
“I helped you[SG]”
(2)
a-pytywà
Tentehar
1sg-help
Tenetehára
“I helped the Tenetehára”
(3)
ne-pytywà
Tentehar
a’e
2sg-help
Tenetehára he
“The Tenetehára helped you[SG]”
(4)
1st person > 2nd person > 3rd person [+FOC] > 3rd person [-FOC]
ihe
I
(> means “more prominent than”)
INFLECTED INFINITIVES IN CONTROL STRUCTURES IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
Marcello Modesto/USP
Though inflected infinitives (a rarity in natural languages) could provide crucial empirical data for the
theory of control (in the context of generative grammar), Portuguese data involving inflected infinitives have
not been thoroughly scrutinized. Modesto (2010) has argued against the movement theory of control (MTC,
Hornstein 1999 et seq.) on the basis that nonfinite inflection is used in Brazilian Portuguese to give rise to
partial control (PC) interpretations (see (01)).
(01)
A presidente disse estarem trabalhando em prol da igualdade social.
the president said be.inf.3pl working
in favor of.the equality social
‘The president affirmed to be working for social equality.’
Since PC is a kind of obligatory control (OC, cf. Landau 2004), and since the controller subject and the
controlee subject trigger different agreement patterns in the two clauses, OC cannot be explained by movement
of the embedded subject to the matrix position. Defending the MTC, Rodrigues and Hornstein 2013 (R&H)
claim that Modesto’s data is incorrect (sic) because inflected infinitives give rise to non-obligatory control
(NOC) readings.
In this presentation, I will review experimental data that proves that NOC readings are not grammatical
according to Brazilians speakers (whereas OC readings are). The experiment involved a judgment task in which
speakers judged the grammaticality or ungrammaticality of a sentence like (01) in an OC and a NOC context. In
an OC context, the null subject of the nonfinite clause is interpreted as being controlled by the matrix subject.
In the NOC context, the two subjects have different references, i.e. a context in which the president is talking
about the ministers, saying that the ministers are working for social equality.
In the experiment, 30 different sentences involving 6 matrix predicates (3 propositional verbs and 3
factive verbs) were judged by 45 Brazilian informants in OC and NOC contexts. Speakers rated each sentence
in a 1 to 5 scale of grammaticality. The result was that, given a sentence like (01) in an OC context, Brazilian
speakers have a 85% chance of rating the sentence with a 4 or a 5 (full grammaticality); whilst under a NOC
context, the same sentence has the same chance of being rated with a 1 or a 5 (around 20% for each rating).
This result indicates that, whereas the OC reading is fully grammatical, speakers seem to be guessing in NOC
contexts. These results are understandable considering that NOC readings are allowed according to Portuguese
normative grammar, so speakers were not sure about how to rate such readings. The table below gives the
probability density function of grammaticality ratings for inflected infinitives interpreted under NOC (dark
gray) and OC (light gray). The two distributions are significantly different (Wilcoxon test: W=40216.5, p-value
< 0.001).
0,80
0,60
0,40
NOC
0,20
OC
0,00
1
2
3
4
5
References:
Hornstein. N. 1999. Movement and control. Linguistic Inquiry 30:69–96.
Landau, I. 2004. The scale of finiteness and the calculus of Control. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
22: 811-877.
Modesto, M. 2010. What Brazilian Portuguese says about control: Remarks on Boeckx & Hornstein. Syntax
13:78-96.
Raposo, E. 1987. Case Theory and Infl-to-Comp: The Inflected Infinitive in European Portuguese. Linguistic
Inquiry 18:85-109.
THE MORPHOSYNTAX OF DIMINUTIVE AND AUGMENTATIVE FORMATION IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
Paula Roberta Gabbai Armelin
Universidade de São Paulo (USP)
This work aims to analyse the morphosyntactic structure of diminutive and augmentative formation in
Brazilian Portuguese (BP), focusing on its most productive formatives, that is, the pair -inh/-zinh, for the
diminutive, and the pair -a/-zã, for the augmentative. All four formatives have to be completed by a final vowel,
and the underlying hypothesis of this work is the idea that the different behaviors the diminutive and
augmentative formations present with respect to their final vowel, and to the gender group they belong reveal
aspects that are central to the comprehension of these forms. An illustrative example of this fact can be seen in
diminutive and augmentative formation of masculine nouns ending in -a (cf. 1-4).
In the -inh diminutive formation illustrated in (1a-c), the final vowel completing the diminutive form is
the same as the one completing the non-diminutive form. As the final vowel -a is highly marked in the context
of masculine nouns, it must be mapped through a root-dependence. However, this vowel is able to surface
regardless of the presence of the intervening diminutive marker (cf. LEE, 1995; MENUZZI, 1993; MORENO,
1977, among others). Crucially, this is not a possibility when the other formatives are at stake.
In the -ã augmentative formation, illustrated in (2a-c), the final vowel completing the augmentative
form is completely predictable, as it reflects the general gender pattern of language, which is -o, for masculine
nouns. Interestingly, this fact is completely independent of the Root, and of vowel that completes the nonaugmentative form. Interestingly, the behavior of the final vowel completing the -z formations is, to some
extent, similar to what was observed in the -ã cases: the final vowel completing -zinh and -zã invariably reflects
the default gender patterns of the language, as can be seen in (3a-c) and in (4a-c), respectively.
In order to analyze these facts we adopt a syntactic view of word formation (cf. HALLE and
MARANTZ, 1993; MARANTZ, 1997; BORER, 2005a, 2005b, 2013), in which words are formed by the very
same mechanisms available to generate phrases and sentences. In order to deal with the expression of the final
vowel, we adopt the idea that Gender, and noun class markings occupy the same position in the syntactic
structure (cf. ARMELIN, 2014). Such syntactic position is identified as a Gender projection, which is part of
the extended projection of the noun.
Based on the empirical facts presented from (1-4), we propose that the diminutive -inh differs from the
other formatives, because it shares with the Root the same Gender head. More specifically, it is proposed that inh is attached inside the same Gender projection responsible for categorizing the Root. This structure is
capable of accounting for, among other empirical facts, the possibility that the final vowel of the diminutive
form is identical to the final vowel of the non-diminutive form, even if this final vowel is root-conditioned. On
the other hand, the augmentative -ã and the Root have independent Gender heads. The syntactic structure of the
-ã augmentative presents, then, two Gender heads: one that is attached to the Root and another one that attaches
to the augmentative itself. Well-established phonological rules, largely discussed by the literature on the
phonology of BP, are responsible for the fact that, although two different Gender heads are present in the
structure, only one of them – the one that follows the augmentative – is phonologically realized.
With respect to the augmentative and the diminutive headed by -z, the presence of an independent
Gender head is even clearer, as the vowel completing the -z formatives are both identified phonologically in the
output. The differences in the behavior between the -ã formations on the one hand, and the -z formations, on the
other hand, are explained by the fact that the former is attached below a number projection, while the latter
enters the structure after a number head. In other words, the -z formatives are even higher in the structure.
Illustrative Examples:
(1) Diminutive -inh in masculine nouns ending in -a
a. problema (‘problem’)
probleminha (‘small problem’)
b. planeta (‘planet’)
planetinha (‘small planet’)
c. mapa (‘map’)
mapinha (‘small map’)
*o probleminho
*o planetinho
*o mapinho
(2) Augmentative -ã in masculine nouns ending in -a
a. problema (‘problem’)
problemão (‘big problem’)
b. planeta (‘planet’)
planetão (‘big planet’)
c. mapa (‘map’)
mapão (‘big map’)
*problemona
*planetona
*mapona
(3) Diminutive -zinh in masculine nouns ending in -a
a. problema (‘problem’)
problemazinho (‘small problem’)
b. planeta (‘planet’)
planetazinho (‘small planet’)
c. mapa (‘map’)
mapazinho (‘small map’)
*problemazinha
*planetazinha
*mapazinha
(4) Augmentative -ã in masculine nouns ending in -a
a. problema (‘problem’)
problemazão (‘big problem’)
b. planeta (‘planet’)
planetazão (‘big planet’)
c. mapa (‘map’)
mapazão (‘big map’)
*problemazona
*planetazona
*mapazonha
Selected References
ARMELIN, Paula Roberta Gabbai. Classifying Nouns in Brazilian Portuguese: a Unified Account for Gender
and Noun Class. In: Complex Visibles Out There. Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium 2014:
Language Use and Linguistic Structure, edited by Ludmila Veselovská and Markéta Janebová. Palacký
University Olomouc 2014
BORER, Hagit. In Name Only: Structuring Sense, Vol. I. Oxford: Oxford University, 2005a.
Press.
______. The Normal Course of Events: Structuring Sense, Vol. II. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2005b.
______. Taking Form: Structuring Sense, Vol. II. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2013.
HALLE, Morris; MARANTZ, Alec. Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. In: HALE, K.;
KEYSER, S. J. (eds.). The view from Building 20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 111-176, 1993.
LEE, Seung-Hwa. Sobre a formação de diminutivo do português brasileiro. Revista de Estudos da
Linguagem, v.8, n.1, 1999.
MARANTZ, Alec. No Escape from Syntax: Don’t try Morphological Analysis in the privacy of your own
Lexicon. In: DIMITRIADIS, Alexis; SIEGEL, Laura; SUREK-CLARK, Clarissa; WILLIAMS, Alexander.
Proceedings of the 21st Penn Linguistics Colloquium. Philadelphia: UPenn Working Papers in Linguistics, p.
201-225, 1997.
MENUZZI, Sérgio. On the prosody of the diminutive alternation -inho/-zinho in Brazilian Portuguese.
Manuscrito. Hil/University of Leiden, 1993.
MORENO, Cláudio. Os Diminutivos em -inho e -zinho e a Delimitação do Vocábulo Nominal no
Português. Dissertação de mestrado, Porto Alegre, UFRGS, 1977.
PREPOSITIONS AND CASE IN A LATE LATIN TEXT
WHAT DOES THE PATH OF LINGUISTIC CHANGE SAY ABOUT CASE FORMAL FEATURES?
Ricardo Machado Rocha/ UFMG
rmachadorocha@ling.dout.ufmg.br
In this work I analyse the co-variation between morphological genitive case and a periphrastic
construction comprised by the preposition de and the ablative case in a Latin text from the 4th century2, as
showed in (1):
(1)
a. Genitive ending
“et ibi denuo legitur
ille locus evangelii” (38,2)
and there again read-3Pres-PASS that place gospel-GEN
(and there again it is read that passage of the Gospel)
b. Periphrastic construction “de + ABL”
“et legitur
ipse locus de
evangelio” (29,4)
and read-3Pres-PASS same place PREP gospel-ABL
(and it is read the same passage of the Gospel)
The Latin data were gathered from an exhaustive sociolinguistic work (Machado Rocha, 2006), which
deals with a total of 686 co-variable occurrences of GEN and DE+ABL, and deeply scrutinizes a sum of 135
more relevant cases, thus providing a great deal of data for this formal investigation.
Based on intra and cross-linguistic variation data, I argue that the well-known diachronic change from
Latin to Romance, triggered by the reanalysis of prepositions and the loss of case marking, can be seen in a
synchronic perspective as a division of labour between prepositions and case marking, in the task of checking
Case formal features. The main conclusion is that the more specified case morphologies GEN and DAT give
room to the underspecified endings ABL and ACC, which will have its ‘final’ Case reading in the sentence
determined by prepositions, items that in turn bear exclusively Case features. The shared role of prepositions
and case marks can be attested today in Brazilian Portuguese pronominal system, comprised by residual
morphologically case marked oblique forms, which occur only in the presence of some prepositions.
The main backgrounds of this work are related to approaches that ascribe the N-projection its own
functional extension, paralleling it to the C-I-V domain (Grimshaw, 1991; Cardinaletti & Starke, 1999;
Déchaine & Wiltschko, 2002, among some other developments). Core assumptions are based on (i) Bittner &
Hale (1996), which propose that the outermost layer of the extended N-projection is a Case head (KP); (ii)
Lagate (2008), which argues that case morphology is a not entirely faithful realization of syntactic Case
features; (iii) Pesetsky & Torrego (2011), a revision of Case Theory and its relation with the role of
prepositions; and (iv) Bayer et al. (2001), which recall Suñer’s (1984) and Grosu’s (1994) intuitions that case
inflections and prepositions are both manifestations of the more abstract notion ‘Kase’.
In this scenario, where Case ends up to be a functional projection of the very nominal head, it is
interesting to rethink some traditional assumptions, such as the distinction between real prepositions and
preposition-like case markings and the inclusion of prepositions in the set of lexical items (grouped together
with V, N and A), whereas Case features clearly belong to the functional domain.
References
Bayer, J; Bader, M; Meng, M. (2001). Morphological underspecification meets oblique case: Syntactic and
processing effects in German. Lingua 111, pp 465-514. 2001.
Bibliotheca Augustana: Peregrinatio vel itinerarium ad loca sancta.
augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost04/Egeria/ege_it00.html. Access on 06/05/2015.
2
Peregrinatio vel itinerarium ad loca sancta.
http://www.fh-
Bittner, M; Hale, K. (1996). The structural determination of Case and agreement. Linguistic Inquiry 27:1-68.
Cardinaletti, A; Starke, M. (1999). The Typology of Structural Deficiency: A Case Study of the three classes of
pronouns. In: van Riemsdijk (ed.). Clitics in the language of Europe. Berlin: Mouton et Gruyter.
Déchaine, R-M., Wiltschko, M. (2002). Decomposing Pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry, v.33, n.3, pp. 409-442.
Grimshaw, J. (1991). Extended projection. Ms., Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass, 1991.
Legate, J.A. (2008). Morphological and Abstract Case. Linguistic Inquiry, 39.1.
Machado Rocha, R. (2006). Relatório de Iniciação Científica. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo
Horizonte.
Pesetsky, D, Torrego, E. (2011). Case. In C. Boeckx (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism,
pp.52-72. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
CLITIC DOUBLING AND PURE AGREEMENT PERSON FEATURES
Ricardo Machado Rocha / UFMG
rmachadorocha@ling.dout.ufmg.br
Jania Ramos / UFMG
jania.ramos@gmail.com
This study investigates clitic doubling constructions in dialectal non-standard Brazilian Portuguese, as
exemplified in (1).
(1) Brazilian Portuguese clitic doubling
1st person pronouns
a.
Ele me
ajuda eu
He 1P-CL helps I
(“He helps me.”)
2nd person pronouns
b.
Eu te
ajudo você
I 2P-CL help you
(“I help you.”)
3rd person pronouns
c.
*Eu o
ajudo ele.
I 3P-CL help he
(“I help him.”)
A wider set of data under analysis suggests that BP CD is an optional agreement structure. We also seek
to explain a very peculiar aspect of the doubled construction in this language, namely the fact that it occurs only
for 1st and 2nd person pronouns. Our approach assumes that the clitics me and te are hosted by a dedicated
functional projection and result from the checking of the sole person feature [speaker:±]. Moreover, we show
that, unlikely other cross-linguistic phenomena of pronominal doubling, Brazilian Portuguese Clitic Doubling
neither yields, nor is a result of any interpretive effect, but rather is an instance of a pure agreement chain
(Adger, 2006). We take the clitic head to be an optional Agreement head (cf. McCloskey, 1996), generated
between v and VP (cf. Sportiche’s (1996) CliticP/VoiceP). The core of the analysis is that this head bears only a
single, bivalent but unvalued φ-feature [speaker] (Adger, 2006).
The idea of a head bearing just uninterpretable φ-features is contra Chomsky’s (1995) theoretical
argument against AgrP. However, one might weaken this argument to one that suggests that heads bearing just
uninterpretable features are not theoretically ruled out, but rather diachronically unstable. For the case of BP,
this would appear to be right and to correlate with a gradual loss of featural richness in the pronominal system
(cf. Nunes 2008, 2011). In this sense, pure agreement chains emerge as a condition on well-formedness of
certain structures. This is the case of single clitic constructions in BP, and the doubled structure arises as a
possibility in the system, due to the availability of the clitic projection, though it is not obligatory in any
context.
References
Adger, D. Combinatorial Variability. Journal of Linguistics, Cambridge, v. 42, n. 3, p. 503-530, 2006.
Chomsky, N. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995.
McCloskey, J. (1996). Subjects and Subject Positions in Irish. In: Borsley, R.; Roberts, I. (Eds.) The Syntax of
The Celtic Languages: A Comparative Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 241-283.
Nunes, J. Inherent Case as a Licensing Condition for A-movement: The Case of Hyper-raising Constructions in
Brazilian Portuguese. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, v. 7, p. 83-108, 2008.
Nunes, J. On the diachronic reanalysis of null subjects and null objects in Brazilian Portuguese: Triggers and
consequences. In: Rinke, E.; Kupisch, T. (Eds.) The Development of Grammar: Language Acquisition and
Diachronic Change - In Honor of Jürgen M. Meisel, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2011, p. 331354.
Sportiche, D. Clitic Constructions. In: ROORYCK, J.; ZARING, L. (Eds.) Phrase Structure and the Lexicon.
Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996, p. 213-276.
INQUIRY OF A TASK PARAMETER AND A SAMPLING PARAMETER FOR SPEEDED ACCEPTABILITY JUDGMENTS
EXPERIMENTS
Ricardo Augusto de Souza/UFMG
Cândido Samuel Fonseca de Oliveira/Poslin-UFMG
Jesiel Soares-Silva/Poslin-UFMG
Alberto Gallo Araújo Penzin/Poslin-UFMG
Alexandre Alves Santos/Poslin-UFMG
The speeded sentence acceptability judgment task is a technique for the elicitation of judgments in
which temporal constraints are imposed on judges. It is suggested that such technique provides more reliable
observations of implicit knowledge and automatic processes. This study explored the setting of minimal
temporal ceilings for performance in the speeded acceptability judgment task by native speakers of the stimuli
languages, and it also assessed the impact of convenience sampling where participants with language studies
backgrounds are recruited. The results show that there is no critical impact of this kind of convenience
sampling, and they also show that grammaticality effects are detectable within a time window of 4 seconds per
sentence.
Keywords: Acceptability; Grammaticality; Speeded Judgments; Convenience Sampling.
POSSESSOR RAISING IN THE TENETEHÁRA LANGUAGE (TUPÍ-GUARANÍ)
Ricardo Campos Castro/Poslin-UFMG
This communication aims to confirm and refine the assumptions about nominal incorporation in the Tenetehára
language (Tupí-Guaraní linguistic family) which was examined by Castro (2007, 2013) and Duarte & Castro
(2010). According to the authors, a meaningful number of transitive predicates in Tenetehára become
intransitive when its object incorporates to the verbal root, as in (1). In this context, the result will be a
semantically transitive verb, but it c-selects only a nuclear argument in the subject function. Additionally,
Castro (2012) shows that, in the construction of possessor raising, as in (2), only part of the object (namely, the
possessed NP) can be incorporated to the little v. At the end of this morphosyntatic phenomenon, the initial
transitive structure is not changed. Therefore, in the possessor raising constructions, there is no valence’s
decrease, although there is incorporation. Furthermore, a more refined look reveals that in some possessor
raising structures, the versions without the argument possessed incorporated and unincorporated distance,
semantically, much more than would be stipulated under Baker’s (1988) theory, as can be seen in (3). In this
line of research, this presentation highlights such semantic differences, thus making a step forward in the
analysis of possessor raising and nominal incorporation in the Tenetehára language.
(1a)
u-kwaw
awa ma’e a’e
3-know
man thing he
“The man knows things”
(1b)
u-ma’e-kwaw
awa
3-thing-know
man
“The man knows things”
(2a)
o-’ok
awa miar
i-àkàg3
3-remove
man animal
POSS-head
“The man removed the animal’s head”
(2b)
u-zàkàg-ok
awa miar
3-head-remove
man animal
“The man removed the animal’s head”
(3a)
u-kutuk
awa w-a’yr
h-eme
3-pierce
man CORR-son
POSS-lip
“The man pierced his son’s lip” (on purpose)
(3b)
w-eme-kutuk
awa w-a’yr
a’e
3-lip-pierce
man CORR-son
he
“The man pierced his son’s lip” (by accident)
a’e
he
a’e
he
a’e
he
a’e
he
REFERENCES
BAKER, Mark Cleland. Incorporation: a theory of Grammatical Function Changing. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988.
CASTRO, Ricardo Campos. Interface morfologia e sintaxe em Tenetehára. Master’s thesis in Linguistics.
Belo Horizonte: Federal University of Minas Gerais, 2007, 90 p.
3
Abbreviations used in this abstract: POSS: possessor-marking prefix, CORR: correferencial prefix.
CASTRO, Ricardo Campos. O epifenômeno da alternância de valência na língua Tenetehára (Tupí-Guaraní).
Revista da Anpoll, Florianópolis, n. 34, p. 347-391, jan./jun. 2013.
DUARTE, Fábio Bonfim; CASTRO, Ricardo Campos. Inergatividade, Estrutura Causativa e Incorporação
Nominal em Tenetehára. In: CABRAL, Ana Suelly Arruda Câmara; RODRIGUES, Aryon Dall’Igna;
DUARTE, Fábio Bonfim (Org.). Línguas e Culturas Tupí. Campinas: Curt Nimuendajú, 2010. v. 2. p. 43-62.
HARRISON, Carl. Verb prominence, verb initialness, ergativity and typological disharmony in Guajajara. In:
DERBYSHIRE, Desmond C.; PULLUM, Geoffrey K. (Orgs.). Handbook of Amazonian Languages. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 1986. p. 407-439.
IMPOSITIVE MORPHEME IN SHIMAKONDE LANGUAGE, AN INCHOATIVE MORPHEME?
Ronaldo Rodrigues de Paula/Poslin-UFMG
This paper aims to describe the behavior of the verbal extension {-ik- -uk-} in Shimakonde language, a
bantu language spoken in the northern Mozambique and Tanzania. It is labeled as P23 according to Gunthrie
classification (GUNTHRIE 1967:71). This verbal extension is reported in literature under the label of
impositive/stative (LIPHOLA, 2001), pseudo-passive (NGUNGA, 2004; LANGA, 2013) and even neuter or
middle (SEIDL & DIMITRIADIS, 2003; KHUMALO, 2009). The addition of this morpheme to the verb steam
usually demotes or suppresses the external argument, making a basically transitive predicate into a intransitive
one. The main objective of this paper is to investigate if the alternations from dyadic into monadic predicates
through the use of {-ik- -uk-} morpheme in shimakonde language are instances of the phenomenon known in
literature as the causative/inchoative alternation (HASPELMATH, 1987; LEVIN & RAPPAPORT HOVAV,
1995; NAVES, 1998, 2005; KALLULLI, 2007; CANÇADO & AMARAL, 2012; etc.). In order to do so, I
analyzed the main characteristics and functions of this morpheme reported in some other bantu languages and
then turn to some constructions in Shimakonde (given by a consultant), focusing on the lexical aspect
(VENDLER, 1967; DOWTY, 1979; PARSONS, 1990). The predicates in Shimakonde using the (-ik- -uk-)
verbal extension most often displays a stative interpretation, but it's possible to have a telic reading by changing
the intonation which the sentence is spoken. When the verbal extension occurs in constructions of strictly
agentive verbs which are not expected to alternate, the telic reading is also possible. So In sum, this analysis
concludes that the instances of constructions in Shimakonde investigated using the mentioned morpheme have
many functions such as a stative and although it seems to be used to license causative/inchoative alternation
when occurring to verbs with verbal root cause unspecified (ALEXIADOU, ANAGNOSTOPOULOU &
SCHÄFER, 2006), it would be better described as a passive like morpheme.
COPULA OMISSION IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE: A SYNTAX-SEMANTICS INTERFACE STUDY
Simone Guesser (UFRR)
Marcelo Giovannetti Ferreira Luz (UFRR)
In the literature, different taxonomies have been proposed for copular sentences. The classic study
carried out by Higgins (1979), using as criteria different functions, makes a distinction between predicative,
specificational, identificational and equative copular sentences. According to Heusinger, Maienborn and
Portner (2011), there were successively presented different proposal on the reduction of the typology in Higgins
(1979). Heycock and Kroch (1999), for example, reduce the number of classes to three, by proposing that
specificacional copular sentences are a subclass of the equative class. Den Dikken (2006) assumes a similar
reduction regarding specificational and equative sentences, without a subclass relationship, however; he places
them in the same group, the especificaciotional one. Mikkelsen (2005), as well as Heycock and Kroch (1999),
proposes a tripartition of copular sentences, but it is made by separating predicative, specificational and
equative, and distributing identificacional copular sentences between the specificacional e equative groups.
Birner, Kaplan and Ward (2007), on the other hand, suggest a modification of Mikkenlsen typology and put
identificacional and equative sentences in a single group. A more radical reclassification is proposed, for
example, in Heller (2005), where only predicatives and equatives are assumed. The debate about the taxonomy
of copular sentences usually comes with the question on the semantic contribution of copula, more specifically,
about the existence of different types of copulas and, in case there exist copulas with different semantics, if they
reflect the different classes of copular sentences. In this regard, authors such as Schlenker (2003), Romero
(2005), and Comorovski (2007) argue for the existence of three types of copulas with different semantics, while
Mikkelsen (2005) and Heller (2005) take two copulas and Partee (1986) Geist (2007) and Heycock and Kroch
(1999) propose the existence of only one (cfr. HEUSINGER, MAIENBORN and Portner, 2011).
This work takes part in the discussion on the semantics of the copula through a study about the syntax of
copula omission in different types of copular sentences. Therefore, we consider different syntactic phenomena
such as argumental and non-argumental topicalization, contrastive and new information focalization and
insertion of high and low adverbs. Our data suggests the existence of two groups of copular sentences as for
copula omission. The first one is composed by predicative and especificational clauses, which restrict copula
omission to the higher position in the structure. The second one includes equative and identificational
sentences, which do not allow copula deletion. In order to account for these data, we will assume, along the
lines of Mikkelsen (2005), the existence of three types of copular sentences (predicative, especificational and
equative) and two types of copula. Regarding the semantics of copula, Mikkelsen proposes a distinction
between an identity copula and a predicative one. Identity copula is found in equatives (and identificacional)
sentences, while predicative copula in predicative and especificational copular sentences. Assuming a
Cartographic Approach, we will propose that each of these two copulas instantiates different functional heads,
which are dedicated, respectively, to the predicative and equative readings. The possibility or not of copula
deletion will be a consequence of the different positions that each type of copular head occupies in the clause
structure. Finally, the specificacional reading will be analyzed as consequence of two factors: the semantics of
the predicational copula and the existence of a focalized constituent in the specifier of one of the focus
projections in Brazilian Portuguese, namely, FocP in the left periphery (Rizzi, 1997) or FocP in the vP
periphery (Belletti, 2004).
REFERENCES
BELLETTI, Adriana. Aspects of the Low IP Area. In: RIZZI, Luigi Rizzi (org.). The Structure of IP and CP.
The Cartography of Syntactic Structures. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 16-51.
BRAGA, Maria Luiza; KATO, Mary Aizawa; MIOTO, Carlos. As Construções Qu no Português Brasileiro
Falado. In: KATO, Mary Aizawa; NASCIMENTO, Milton (org.). Gramática do Português Culto Falado no
Brasil. Campinas: Editora da UNICAMP, 2002, p. 237-290.
COMOROVSKI, Ileana. Constituent questions and the copula of specifi cation. In: I. Comorovski & K. von
Heusinger (eds.). Existence. Semantics and Syntax. Dordrecht: Springer, 49–77, 2007.
DEN DIKKEN, Marcel. Relators and Linkers. The Syntax of Predication, Predicate Inversion, and Copulas.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
GEIST, Ljudmila. Predication and equation in copular sentences. Russian vs. English. In: I.Comorovski & K.
von Heusinger (eds.). Existence. Syntax and Semantics. Dordrecht: Springer, 79–105, 2007.
GUESSER, Simone; QUAREZEMIN, Sandra. Focalização, cartografia e sentenças clivadas do português
brasileiro. Revista Linguística/Revista do Programa de Pós-graduação em Linguística da Universidade Federal
do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, v. 9, n 1, p. 188-208, junho de 2013.
HELLER, Daphna. Identity and Information. Semantic and Pragmatic Aspects of Specifi cational Sentences.
Ph.D. dissertation. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 2005.
HEYCOCK, Caroline; KROCH, Anthony. Pseudocleft connectedness. Implications for the LF interface level.
Linguistic Inquiry 30, 365–397, 1999.
HIGGINS, Roger Francis. The Pseudo-cleft Construction in English. New York: Garland, 1979.
MAIENBORN, Claudia; VON HEUSINGER, Klaus; PORTNER, Paul (orgs.) Semantics: An International
Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Germany: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011.
MIKKELSEN, Line. Copular Clauses. Specifi cation, Predication and Equation. Amsterdam: Benjamins,
2005.
MIOTO, Carlos. Sobre o Sistema CP no Português Brasileiro. Revista Letras, Curitiba, v. 56, p. 97-139,
jul/dez. 2001.
MORO, Andrea. The Raising of Predicates. Predicative Noun Phrases and the Theory of Clause Structure.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
PARTEE, Barbara 1986. Ambiguous pseudoclefts with unambiguous be. In: S. Berman, J. Choe & J.
McDonough (eds.). Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistic Society (= NELS) 16. Amherst,MA: GLSA,
354–366.
PARTEE, Barbara 1987. Noun phrase interpretation and type-shifting principles. In: J. Groenendijk, D. de Jong
& M. Stokhof (eds.). Studies in Discourse Representation Theory and the Theory of Generalized Quantifiers.
Dordrecht: Foris, 115–143.
RESENES, Mariana. Sentenças Pseudoclivadas no Português Brasileiro. 2009. 144fls. Dissertação (Mestrado
em Linguística) – Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2009.
RIZZI, Luigi. The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery. In: HAEGEMAN Liliane (org). Elements of Grammar:
a handbook of generative syntax. Kluwer: Dordrecht, 1997, p. 281-337.
RELATIVE DEGREES IN PB: SEMANTIC-SYNTACTIC IMPLICATIONS
Wagner Luiz Ribeiro dos Santos/PPGL/UnB
This paper aims to discuss, by using generative grammar, relative clauses and to propose a new semantic way to classify
those clauses: maximalization. Based on Grosu & Landman (1998), Grosu (2002), Bianchi (1999), Szczegielniak (2012)
and De Vries (2002), we are going to analyze the relative degrees in Brazilian Portuguese (PB) from a maximalization
perspective. Those relative clauses, in Portuguese, can be divided in two groups: the existential relatives and the amount
relative, considered in this paper as a relative name, a relation between amount and degree.
Grosu and Landman (1998), consider as maximalizing relatives those that have a semantic meaning related to amount
specified by the relative, examining the relative nucleus for complete. Besides, in the authors’ opinion, the interpretation
in this kind of relative lays inside the relative-CP, not in the main clause domain, as it happens on the restrictive and
appositive clauses, as thought before. Szczegielniak (2013) affirms that the degree clause studied here, the
maximalization, would occur because of a DegP movement inside the relative, taking a Spec-CP position, phonetically
null.
In general, the relatives are analyzed, traditionally, as a semantic pack related to what we call NP-head, and based on this
relationship, we would classify the relative. The maximalization propose of analysis is different from the linguistics
traditional way (including normative grammar) because those clauses do not highlight part of a bigger group by using an
intersection, as it happens when we have a restrictive relative; or they couldn’t be two similar groups, as in a appositive.
The application of this new semantic classification to the degree relatives happens, because, according to Grosu &
Landman (1998), the relatives do not mark individuals, but part of them, making directly a sense of amount, not only
about the modified noun. The idea is that ALL the individuals are influenced by the notion brought by the relative.
REFERENCES:
BIANCHI, V. Consequences of Antisymmetry: headed relative clauses. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999.
GROSU, A. & LANDMAN, F. Strange relatives of the third kind. In: Natural Language Semantics 6, pp. 125-170, 1998.
______, A. Strange relatives at the interface of two millennia. In: Glot International, v. 6, n. 6, pp. 145-167, June 2002.
KAYNE, R. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1994.
DE VRIES, M. The Syntax of Relativization. Utrecht: Lot, 2002.
SZCZEGIELNIAK, A. Degree phrase raising in relative clauses. In: Camacho-Taboada, Victoria, Ángel L. JiménezFernández, Javier Martín-González and Mariano Reyes-Tejedor (eds.), Information Structure and Agreement. vi, 376
(pp. 255–274), 2013.
ORDEM DE PALAVRAS E PROSÓDIA EM ORAÇÕES RELATIVAS DO KARITIANA
O objetivo dessa apresentação é analisar a interação entre ordem de constituintes e prosódia em orações
relativas de objeto no Karitiana, uma língua da família Tupi-Arikém. De acordo com Storto (1999), as relativas
do karitiana seriam de núcleo interno, i.e., o NP relativizado se encontraria dentro da própria oração encaixada.
Nos casos em que o elemento relativizado é objeto do verbo subordinado (as orações relativas de objeto), a
ordem de constituintes seria OSV e o verbo exibiria o morfema de construção de foco do objeto {ti-}.
Vivanco (2014) detectou em um experimento de produção outras ordens possíveis nas relativas de
objeto além da OSV previamente atestada. Especificamente, os falantes permitem uma alternância entre as
ordens OSV e SOV (veja exemplos na página seguinte).
A ordem variável de palavras é característica de muitas línguas do mundo (Van Valin 1999, Hale 1983,
2013, inter alia). Nelas, a ordem linear dos sintagmas nominais é regulada por outros fatores além de sua
função sintática (Fanselow 1990). A prosódia seria um desses fatores, visto que ela interage com a posição do
objeto em línguas como o alemão e o ucraniano (Fanselow 2010; Antonyuk-Yudina & Mykhaylyk 2013).
A prosódia também parece ser relevante para a ordem de constituintes no karitiana. O exame dos dados
de Vivanco (2014) mostrou que há uma diferença entre relativas de objeto OSV e SOV: o objeto é
prosodicamente proeminente apenas no primeiro caso. Mostraremos que a duração parece ser um correlato
acústico dessa proeminência e que as pausas, obrigatórias após o sujeito em relativas SOV, também seriam um
fator relevante.
Dado que a ordem de constituintes default (visível em orações subordinadas) é SOV em karitiana,
assumimos que o objeto se move para a periferia esquerda da oração relativa em relativas de objeto OSV (em
consonância com a análise de Storto (1999)) e que essa operação não ocorreria nas relativas com a ordem
SOV. Nos contextos de produção das sentenças analisadas, o referente do núcleo da relativa tinha sido sempre
previamente estabelecido no discurso. Segundo Enç (1991), DPs definidos e específicos têm seus referentes
ligados a referentes discursivos previamente estabelecidos; assim, podemos considerar o núcleo de relativas
restritivas como definido e/ou específico seguindo essa visão. Por razões semânticas, DPs desse tipo precisam
se mover para fora do sintagma verbal (Diesing & Jelinek 1995).
Nossa análise é de que, quando o
deslocamento do objeto não ocorre (i.e., nas relativas de objeto SOV), o componente fonológico executaria uma
restruturação prosódica. Finalmente, mostraremos que essa operação seria similar ao observado em alguns
outros fenômenos de movimento opcional, que apresentam uma prosódia marcada na ausência de movimento.
Dados
(1)
Oração relativa de objeto com a ordem OSV
Yn
Ø-na-aka-t
i-pyting-Ø
1s
3-DECL-COP-NFUT NOM-querer-CON.ABS.
‘Eu quero o colar que a Luciana fez.’
[boet Luciana
ti-m‘a]-ty.
[colar
CFO-fazer- OBL
Luciana
(2)
Oração relativa de objeto com a ordem SOV
Yn
Ø-na-aka-t
i-pyting-Ø
[Ana pykyp ti-pipãram<a>]-ty.
1s
3-DECL-COP-NFUT
NOM-querer-CON.ABS
[Ana
roupa
CFO-costurou<v.e.>]-OBL
‘Eu quero a roupa que a Ana costurou.’
REFERÊNCIAS
ANTONYUK-YUDINA, S. & MYKHAYLYK, R. (2013) Prosody of Scrambling. Proceedings of NELS 40, MIT.
DIESING, M., & JELINEK, E. (1995). Distributing arguments. Natural Language Semantics, 3 (2).
ENÇ, M. (1991). The semantics of specificity. Linguistic inquiry, 22 (1).
FANSELOW, G. (1990) Scrambling as NP-Movement. In: GREWENDORF, G. & STERNEFELD, W. (orgs.)
Scrambling and barriers. Amsterdã/Filadélfia: John Benjamins publishing company.
_________. (2010) Scrambling as formal movement. In: KUČEROVÁ I. & NEELEMAN A (orgs.). Contrasts and Positions in
Information Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
HALE, K. (1983). Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 1
HALE, K. (2013). On nonconfigurational structures. Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca" Julio de Urquijo", 20(2),
STORTO, L. (1999) Aspects of a Karitiana Grammar. Tese de doutorado. MIT, United States of America.
VAN VALIN, R. (1999) A typology of the interaction of focus structure and syntax. In: RAXILINA, E & TESTELEC, J.
(eds.). Typology and the theory of language: From description to explanation.
VIVANCO, K. (2014) Orações relativas em karitiana: um estudo experimental. Dissertação de mestrado, São Paulo,
Brasil.