RCAAP Repository

Natural languages present distinct properties that can be classified into three types: [+arg, -pred], [-arg, +pred] and [+arg, + pred] (CHIERCHIA, 1998). These properties are related to the different occurrences of nouns in languages. The aim of this study is to verify the particularities of the occurrence of bare singular in Brazilian Portuguese, because it occurs quite differently from other languages with the same semantic properties. Still, there seems to be a similarity between English and Brazilian Portuguese in relation to the bare plural, however such similarity, as in the languages of the same type, does not occur in the bare singular. Pires de Oliveira (2012) and Müller (2004) present relevant studies that aim to understand these particularities, raising themselves the following hypotheses: (i) bare singular is similar to the mass noun and (ii) bare singular as sentential topic. Even so, according to Müller (2002), BP presents questions of generic readings that are captured in the other Romance languages, partially corroborating the semantic parameters of natural languages.

We investigated the phenomenon of pronominal and null subject through functional lenses. We assume the functionalist hypothesis of the ‘optimal discursive connection’ and investigate the contexts in which null and overt 1st person subjects are favored or disfavored. We analyzed 1,270 occurrences of 1st person subjects in a spoken language corpus, verifying the discursive context in which they occurred. We have made four crossings between the data (null subjects in optimal connection contexts; null subjects in non-optimal connection contexts; null subjects in optimal connection contexts; and overt subjects in non-optimal connection contexts) and presented our results.

This squib investigates the adequacy of hierarchical scales to describe the development of Differential Object Marking in Portuguese. Cases in which the direct object is marked by a preposition are classified as instances of Differential Object Marking. Many studies claim that the development of the phenomenon can be described according to the hierarchical scales of animacy and definiteness. Such scales predict that the first stage of the development of the phenomenon will be first- and second-person pronouns and third-person pronouns would be marked only at a later stage. However, both Old Catalan and Old Romanian exhibit cases of violation of the scales in that third-person pronoun cases are more frequent than the occurrences of first- and second-person pronouns. The same violation is found in diachronic Portuguese. Therefore, the present squib proposes that marking first- and second-person pronouns would be redundant at the first stage of the development of the phenomenon and that the third-person pronoun is marked due to the presence of the [-PERSON] feature.

This paper intends to discuss the cornerstone of a currently very relevant semantic tool regarding theory linguistic and analysis, specially for Possible Worlds Semantics, namely the anchors or the notion/process of anchoring. As a squib, three quite brief sections compose the architecture of this paper: a) characterization of the issue, identifying the rise of anchors on literature; b) this tool’s relevance on logic-linguistic scenario, associated to other two semantic properties, notably i) displacement and ii) aboutness; c) unfolding perspectives regarding this topic, suggesting some insights from Brazilian Portuguese description data, mainly concerning the phenomena of i) monsters-operators and ii) propositional attitudes.

This squib deals with cases of apparent doubling of the post-verbal negative marker não in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), documented in data from the Linguistic Atlas of Brazil. The phenomenon brings problems for the description of BP negative sentences, as it suggests the existence of two more sentential negative patterns in BP, i.e. [neg-V-neg-X-neg] and [V-neg-X-neg] (where “X” corresponds to a verbal complement of the type DP, PP or even InfP), in addition to the already widely known patterns [neg-VP], [neg-VP-neg], and [VPneg]. The position of the constituent between the two post-verbal markers can be seen as resulting from right dislocation of the complement phrase, but this analysis still does not account for the phenomenon of doubling the negative marker. The squib shows, however, that the data under discussion can be derived correctly if we see right dislocation as generated not by moving the so called “dislocated” XP within the sentence, but as a result of a juxtaposition structure and sentential ellipse (cf. TANAKA, 2001; OTT; VRIESS, 2016). The apparent doubling of the negation in BP can be seen as an additional argument for analyses that derive right dislocation by sentential juxtaposition and ellipse instead of by rightward movement, by remnant movement or even by base-generation.

Interrogativas indiretas encobertas em português brasileiro (PB) são frases interrogativas encaixadas que não apresentam (pelo menos aparentemente) a estrutura de uma construção interrogativa canônica com o fronteamento do sintagma-wh (ALVARENGA, 1981a, 1981b). Em geral, considera-se que sentenças desse tipo sejam constituídas de um DP/NP seguido de uma frase relativa. Neste trabalho, entretanto, proponho que tais construções (apesar das aparências) apresentam estrutura semelhante à de qualquer interrogativa canônica, com o deslocamento de sintagma interrogativo. A proposta que aqui se constrói é que o DP/NP que inicia as sentenças encaixadas desse tipo é, na verdade, um sintagma-wh encabeçado por um operador-wh nulo e ocupa a posição de Spec, Qemb (RIZZI; BOCCI, 2017); com isso, atinge-se uma análise unificada para as interrogativas encaixadas do PB. Fica em aberto, entretanto, a questão de que essa hipótese não consegue explicar por que efeitos de ilha de extração são observados nesse tipo de dado, o que pode sugerir que há de fato uma relativa na oração encaixada.

Aparentemente, os enunciados escritos são mais ambíguos do que os enunciados orais e, segundo opinião corrente, a prosódia seria um importante elemento desambiguador. Nossa questão se prende à falta de indicações claras sobre o modo como a prosódia se relaciona com as estruturas sintáticas e semânticas de forma a eliminar ”” ao menos parcialmente ”” as ambiguidades estruturais. Tomamos como exemplo uma sentença escrita que pode ter cinco leituras, na medida em que pode se estruturar sintaticamente de cinco formas distintas, e buscamos problematizar a opinião de que a prosódia poderia reduzir a ambiguidade da sentença pela associação de perfis melódicos específicos para cada leitura identificada.

In this squib we identify a group of bare singular count nominals in Rioplatense Spanish that can occupy any syntactic position. Even though it is considered to be a lexically restricted phenomenon, we argue for their productivity and systematic behavior. Considering that Spanish has rich determiner system, we depart from a semantic perspective to explain why these bare nouns appear in argument positions. To this end, we present some tests that aim to show their singular individual definite reading. In particular, our proposal assimilates them into the class of proper names, in that they are DPs which establish a biunivocal relation with their referent. However, they differ from canonical proper names, given that they are originally common nouns and on top of their literal meaning, they also add some semantic enrichment. That is to say, they are interpreted as a location that belongs (in broad terms) to the speaker, who performs a stereotypical task in there. This data suggests that the paradigm of Spanish bare singulars is broader than what the literature has so far attested.

This squib presents an analysis for a conceptual feature of a specific type of exclamative sentence, namely, the gradability feature, typical of wh-exclamatives starting with "que" ‘what’ and "quanto" ‘how much’. By basing my analysis on the cartographic version of the Principles and Parameters Theory ((RIZZI, 1997; CINQUE, 1999), I argue that more than one functional category is necessary to lexicalize the content of this subtype of exclamative. Besides that, I assume, in the vein of Delfito & Fiorin (2014), two types of gradability features, each one associated with a specific type of wh-exclamatives envolved. Thus, que-exclamatives have the E-deg quali feature, while quanto-exclamatives have the E-deg quanti one. In order to give support to the analysis, I bring some data from standard Italian (DELFITO & FIORIN, 2014) which are contrasted with their correspondents in Brazilian Portuguese.

Na cartografia sintática (RIZZI, 1997; CINQUE, 1999; CINQUE; RIZZI, 2010; RIZZI; CINQUE, 2016), vertente da teoria de princípios e parâmetros (CHOMSKY, 1991), os advérbios são considerados elementos fixos e, portanto, uma ferramenta fidedigna para determinar o movimento do verbo (POLLOCK, 1989). Desse modo, há na estrutura da oração, nomeadamente no Middlefield, cerca de quarenta projeções funcionais rigidamente ordenadas, cada uma podendo apresentar um advérbio de classe semântica distinta em seu Spec. Essa estrutura recebe o nome de hierarquia universal de IP (CINQUE, 1999). Este trabalho apresentará dados do movimento do verbo em espanhol colombiano (doravante, EC) em duas valências verbais: transitiva e intransitiva (inacusativa e inergativa). A intenção deste squib é discutir a associação entre valência verbal e a altura de pouso do verbo em relação à hierarquia anteriormente mencionada. Será examinada, do mesmo modo, a relação entre tempo verbal e movimento do verbo. Ao longo do texto, apresentaremos os instrumentos da sintaxe cartográfica, a fim de elucidar se a subida do verbo leva em conta valência e tempo.

This paper presents results of an experiment on epithets in Brazilian Portuguese, with sentences with the verb convencer ‘to convince’ and sentences with adjunct clauses. The assumption that the distribution of epithets is subject to Principle C of  Binding Theory (Chosmky 1981) goes back to Lasnik (1976) and is controversial in the literature. We argue that although this assumption is not able to explain all of our results, the experiment shows that the distribution of epithets is sensitive to c-command configurations. Therefore, we believe that the most appropriate analyses for epithets are those that take into account this syntactic notion in addition to semantic/pragmatic restrictions.

Este squib tem como objetivo principal diagnosticar as possíveis posições que o adjunto temporal de medida em x tempo pode vir a ocupar na estrutura sentencial do português brasileiro. Para isso, recorremos à hierarquia de Cinque (1999) como instrumento para diagnosticar a posição desse sintagma de medida, no espírito da metodologia do Programa Cartográfico (CINQUE, 1999, 2004, 2006; RIZZI, 1997, 2004; entre outros). Veremos que o adjunto em x tempo parece ter certa flexibilidade posicional, a depender de sua interpretação, o que pode ser demonstrado se tomarmos os advérbios da hierarquia de Cinque como diagnósticos.

Neste squib, apreciamos parte da proposta de Lacerda (2012), que associa o fenômeno de Q-float a movimentos sintáticos para projeções informacionais da sentença. De acordo com o autor, a existência da ordem DP+Quantificador (favorecida em determinados contextos discursivos) é uma idiossincrasia dos itens todos e tudo, derivada por movimento do DP para uma projeção de tópico à esquerda do QP. O autor propõe que o português brasileiro (PB, doravante) apresenta camadas informacionais de tópico e foco na periferia esquerda do QP. Assumindo a hipótese de Trannin (2016) de que o PB coloquial apresenta duas gramáticas distintas em relação ao uso de tudo e a análise de Guerra Vicente (2006) de que a relação entre Q e DP é a de complementação (não de adjunção), nosso intuito é apontar o problema da postulação ad hoc de uma projeção vazia (qP) na proposta de Lacerda (2012) para a derivação da ordem DP+Q no PB.

Recursion in human languages ”‹”‹has been an important topic of discussion among language scholars since, at least, the XVII Century. Most studies, however, are restricted to oral languages ”‹”‹(cf. Amaral et al. 2018 for a recent broad discussion, for example). In sign languages ”‹”‹(and in Brazilian sign language - LSB, especially), the existing studies are few and inconclusive regarding its existence and manifestation. The objective of this squib, therefore, is to discuss some hypotheses about recursion in LSB, such as: 1) is there recursion in LSB? 2) is the recursive manifestation in LSB different from that usually found in oral languages ”‹”‹(due to the spatial-visual modality of sign languages)? 3) are there, in LSB, manual and non-manual recursion markers? and 4) can recursion manifest itself in the intensification of the movement parameter? Keywords: Recursion; LSB; Sign languages; Syntax.

En este squib presento datos que muestran que estructuras temporales de futuro en combinación con verbos modales pueden dar lugar a lecturas implicativas. Analizo dos construcciones de futuro con verbos modales: el futuro perifrástico del tipo ir + a + infinitivo modal (voy a tener que) y verbo modal en futuro simple (tendré que), construcciones cuya única interpretación posible es no epistémica. Muestro que, en determinados contextos, estas construcciones dan lugar a lecturas implicativas, lo que supone considerar que bases modales circunstanciales pueden tener una orientación temporal no futura. A partir de datos de la lengua escrita del español del Uruguay, describo este tipo de lecturas y presento los problemas que suscitan en lo que se refiere a la configuración temporal propuesta en la literatura para ambas estructuras de futuro.

Este squib tem como objetivo analisar o processo de causativização morfológica na língua tenetehára realizado por meio dos morfemas causativos {mu-} e {-(u)kar}. O prefixo {mu-} tem a propriedade de causativizar verbos intransitivos, tornando-os transitivos, enquanto o sufixo {-(u)kar} se afixa a verbos transitivos e os torna ditransitivos. Os dados foram coletados a partir de entrevistas e analisados sob a perspectiva da teoria gerativista, com destaque para a proposta de Pylkkänen (2008). Os resultados das análises preliminares confirmam que a causativização morfológica na língua tenetehára ocorre por meio dos morfemas {mu-} e {-(u)kar}; contudo, apresentam-se algumas variações quanto à causativização dos predicados inacusativos.

This paper is about ineffable forms in Portuguese verbal inflection paradigms. To account for the absence of phonological material corresponding to certain morphosyntactic feature combinations, we make use of recent formulations for a theory of vocabulary insertion in Distributed Morphology (cf. EMBICK, 2015). We also resort to some proposals, in this very model, which suggest that there are restrictions for the phonological realization of some roots in certain contexts (cf. HARLEY, 2014).

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