PLUS PROGRAM-Abstracts-Nov7 - Portuguese Linguistics in the

Portuguese Linguistics in the
United States (PLUS) 2013
Photo by: Brian Ussery, Official UGA Artist
Inaugural Conference November 14-16, 2013
Program
3
Sponsors
8
Committees
9
Plenary Lectures Abstracts
10
Panels Abstracts
12
2 PROGRAM Thursday, November 14
Presentation Session I Location: University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries Chair: Patrícia Amaral 1:00-­‐1:30 “Rethinking the relation between compounds and complex predicates: clues from Brazilian Portuguese” Julio Barbosa (Universidade de São Paulo) 1:30-­‐2:00 “Two nominalizing suffixes in Brazilian Portuguese: locality constraints on morphophonological realization” Maria Luisa Freitas (UNICAMP/MIT) 2:00-­‐2:30 “Progressive pathways and the estar + gerúndio periphrasis in Brazilian Portuguese” Chad Howe (University of Georgia) and Ronald Mendes (USP) 2:30-­‐3:00 “Peculiarities in the Syntax of Brazilian Portuguese: a hypothesis for its emergence” Esmeralda Vailati Negrão (USP/CNPq) and Evani Viotti (USP) Location: Dogwood Room (Georgia Center) 4:00 Welcome Robert Moser (University of Georgia) 4:15-­‐5:15 Plenary I: “Museu da Língua Portuguesa, espaço de conhecimento e divulgação” Antonio Carlos de Moraes Sartini (Museu da Língua Portuguesa, São Paulo) 5:15-­‐6:15 Welcome Social Friday, November 15, 2013 Location: Georgia Hotel and Conference Center (Georgia Center) 7:30-­‐8:00 Coffee & juice available Session II Red Session: Syntax Black Session: Phonology Chair: Tim Gupton Chair: Gary Baker 8:00-­‐8:30 “The Loss Of Complementizerless Clauses “A cross-­‐dialect acoustic study of vowels in two varieties of Brazilian in Brazilian Portuguese” Portuguese” André Antonelli Virginia Meirelles (Universidade Federal de Pelotas) (Universidade de Brasília) 8:30-­‐9:00 “Inflected infinitives in control “A estrutura silábica no processo de structures in Brazilian Portuguese” aquisição da escrita infantil” Marcello Modesto (USP) Luciana L. Rodrigues (UNICAMP) 9:00-­‐9:30 "`As cidades da Amazônia chovem “Intonational Encoding of Pragmatic muito’: sujeitos não temáticos e as Information in Northeastern Brazilian propiedades de INFL no Português do Portuguese Yes-­‐No Questions” Brasil” Meghan Dabkowski Rozana Naves, Eloisa Pilati, and (The Ohio State University) Heloisa Salles (Universidade de Brasília) 9:30-­‐9:45 BREAK (Breakfast provided) 3 9:45-­‐10:45 Session III 10:45-­‐11:15 11:15-­‐11:45 11:45-­‐12:15 12:15-­‐1:45 Session IV 1:45-­‐2:15 2:15-­‐2:45 2:45-­‐3:15 3:15-­‐3:30 3:30-­‐4:30 Plenary II: “Advances in the history of Portuguese based on the Tycho Brahe Corpus of historical Portuguese” Charlotte Galves (UNICAMP) Red Session: Variation Black Session: Standardization & Chair: Lamar Graham Lexicon Chair: Susan Quinlan “Subsistemas dos pronomes você, cê, “A Contribuição da Neologia Lexical na ocê e tu no português brasileiro falado” Formação do Português de Marta Scherre, Carolina Queiroz Moçambique” Andrade, Edilene Patrícia Dias and Inês Machungo Germano Martins Ferreira (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane) (Universidade de Brasília) “Lexical frequency & language change: “O povo é quem mais ordena?: Object clitic placement in European Ideologies, control, and language Portuguese” purism in the configuration of Hannah Washington Contemporary Standard Galician” (The Ohio State University) Gabriel Rei-­‐Doval (University of Wisconsin-­‐Milwaukee) “Objeto direto anafórico: variação e “Portuguese Language Planning: The mudança na fala de Vitória/Brasil” New Orthographic Agreement of the Lilian Yacovenco and Aline Berbert Portuguese Language” Fonseca Caroline Machado (Universidade Federal de Espírito (Georgia State University) Santo) LUNCH 12:15-­‐3:15 Red Session: Functional approaches Special Panel on Portuguese-­‐
speaking Communities in the United Chair: Stephen Fafulas States ($13, includes lunch) “O comportamento funcional da locução conjuncional ‘no caso de (que)’ Chair: Meghan Armstrong no portugués brasileiro” Speakers: Edson Rosa Francisco de Souza and Don Warrin (University of California, Kátia Elaine de Souza Barreto Berkeley) (UFMS / Três Lagoas) Fernanda Ferreira (Bridgewater State “O estatuto gramatical do redobro de pronomes de 2ª pessoa no português University) brasileiro” Pilar Chamorro (University of Georgia) Fábio Bonfim Duarte and Márcia Cristina Chad Howe (University of Georgia) De Brito Rumeu Meghan Armstrong (University of (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) Massachusetts, Amherst) “Advérbios locativos na posição de Patrícia Amaral (University of North sujeito no PB” Carolina, Chapel Hill) Zenaide Teixeira (Universidade Estadual Ana Lúcia Lico (ABRACE) de Goiás / Universidade de Brasília) and Heloísa Salles (Universidade de Brasília) BREAK (snacks provided) Plenary III: "Differential Object Marking … in Portuguese?!" Scott Schwenter (The Ohio State University) 4 Session V 4:30-­‐5:00 5:00-­‐5:30 5:30-­‐6:00 Red Session: Semantics & Pragmatics Chair: Sarah Blackwell Black Session: Heritage Speaker Instruction & Proficiency Chair: Margaret Quesada “Pragmatic Constraints on Definite Article “To teach or not to teach? -­‐ Choices for Use with Anthroponyms in Brazilian teaching grammar and writing to heritage Portuguese” learners of Portuguese” Eleni Christodulelis Maria Teresa Valdez (The Ohio State University) (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth) “Pragmatics and Indexicality: The case of “Português como língua de herança: 'favelado'” registros e a prática pedagógica” Hannah Washington and Mary Beaton Juliana Luna Freire (The Ohio State University) (Framingham State University) “Gradable modality in Brazilian Portuguese” Ana Lucia Pessotto (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina) Saturday, November 16, 2013 Location: Georgia Hotel and Conference Center (Georgia Center) 8:00-­‐8:30 Coffee & juice available Session VI Red Session: Applied Linguistics Black Session: Syntactic interfaces Chair: Suzanne Franks Chair: Pilar Chamorro 8:30-­‐9:00 “The ‘Project Teletandem Brazil’ and the “O que causou o aparecimento de verbos institutional-­‐integrated modality in labílicos no português brasileiro?” teaching-­‐learning of Portuguese as a Janayna Carvalho foreign language” (USP/CNPq) Rubia Bragagnollo (UNESP -­‐ São José do Rio Preto / University of Georgia) and Solange Aranha (UNESP -­‐ São José do Rio Preto) 9:00-­‐9:30 “Brazilian Portuguese as a Foreign “The role of contrast in European Language: Insights from English Language Portuguese é que-­‐clefts” Aleksandra Vercauteren Teaching on Register and Purposeful (Universidade Nova de Lisboa / Instruction” Universiteit Gent) Maggie Bullock (Georgia State University) 9:30-­‐10:00 “Discourse Status and Syntax in the History of European Portuguese Marked Constructions” Aroldo de Andrade (Universidade de Campinas) 10:00-­‐10:30 BREAK (Breakfast provided) 10:30-­‐11:30 Plenary IV: “The development of syntactic dependencies in European Portuguese” João Costa (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) 11:30-­‐1:30 LONG LUNCH 5 Session VII 1:30-­‐2:00 2:00-­‐2:30 2:30-­‐3:00 3:00-­‐3:30 3:30-­‐4:00 Session VIII 4:00-­‐4:30 4:30-­‐5:00 5:00-­‐5:30 Red Session: Acquisition & Perception Chair: Rubia Mara Bragagnollo “How ‘Brazilian English’ is perceived by undergraduate students in the U.S.” Luciana Junqueira and Ashley Titak (Georgia State University) Black Session: Variation & Change Chair: Chad Howe “Evidências de mudança recente no português uruguaio de Aceguá (fronteira Brasil-­‐Uruguai)” Cintia Pacheco (Universidade de Brasília) “Non-­‐native Perspectives on the “O papel da origem das mães em dialetos Perception of Rhythm: Genre in two em formação (oriundos de dialetos em Varieties of Portuguese” contato) – o caso de Brasília” Emilia Alonso-­‐Marks, Zinny S. Bond, and Carolina Andrade Verna Stockmal (Ohio University) (Universidade de Brasília) “Português e Cultura Afro-­‐Brasileira: “Social and stylistic variation in the Experiências de Formação Crítica de reduction of Fortalezense Portuguese Estudantes Norte-­‐Americanos” para” Miriam Jorge Michael Gradoville (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) (Indiana University/Spelman College) “Aprendizes de Português como “O futuro verbal em português: Etnógrafos: Estranhamentos e mapeando uma mudança linguística no Significações de estudantes Brasil” intercambistas americanos no Brasil” Josane Oliveira Walkiria Teixeira (Universidade (Universidade Estadual de Feira de Estadual Paulista "Julio de Mesquita Santana) Filho") and Miriam Jorge (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) BREAK (snacks provided) Red Session: Comparative corpora Black Session: Syntax Chair: Amélia Hutchinson Chair: Marcello Modesto “Morphosyntactic Variation in Brazilian “What Can Prepositional Phrases in Portuguese, Spanish and English: Portuguese Teach us about Indirect Simultaneous Narrations of the Pear Recursion?” Stories Film” Luiz Amaral (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Stephen Fafulas (East Carolina University) “Book Reviews in Brazilian Portuguese “New patterns of agreement and deixis and English: A Corpus-­‐Based Analysis of with possessives in Brazilian Portuguese” Metadiscourse Features” Bruna Karla Pereira Luciana Junqueira (Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri) (Georgia State University) “A comparative study of lexical bundles in “Parametric Variation observations from history writing in American English and Brazilian Portuguese: is there dative shift Brazilian Portuguese” in Romance?” Viviana Cortes and Maggie Bullock Julio Barbosa, Paula Armelin, and Ana (Georgia State University) Paula Scher (Universidade de São Paulo) 6 5:30-­‐6:00 6:00-­‐6:30 6:30-­‐7:00 7:00-­‐9:00 “The pronominal use of se in academic written Portuguese” Cristina Perna and Karina Molsing (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul) Business meeting – PLUS transition Cocktail social Conference banquet 7 “Negação sentencial e elipse no Português Brasileiro” Lílian Teixeira De Sousa (UNICAMP) BREAK for those not attending the business meeting This program is supported in part by the President's Venture Fund through
the generous gifts of the University of Georgia Partners UGA
Willson Center for Humanities & Arts
Department of Romance Languages
Brian Ussery
The Red Zone
Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute
Portuguese Flagship Program
Program in Linguistics
8 CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
Patrícia Amaral
Meghan Armstrong
Pilar Chamorro
Timothy Gupton
Chad Howe
Robert Moser
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Rosane de Sá Amado
Alex (Luiz) Amaral
Patrícia Amaral
Paula Armelin
Meghan Armstrong
Marlyse Baptista
Rita de Cássia Barbirato Thomaz de Moraes
Ronald Beline Mendes
Felipe Venâncio Barbosa
Indaiá de Santana Bassani
Waldir Beividas
Alessandro Boechat
Elis de Almeida Cardoso Caretta
Hugo Cardoso
Ana Maria Carvalho
Maria Maura Cezario
Pilar Chamorro
Clancy Clements
Flávia Cunha
Julio Curvelo Barbosa
João Paulo Cyrino
Rafael Dias Minussi
Norma Discini de Campos
Jason Doroga
Maria Cristina Fernandes Salles Altman
Fernanda Ferreira
Olga Ferreira Coelho
Maria Cristina Figueiredo Silva
Inma Garnes
Denise Gomes Leal da Cruz Pacheco
Michael Gradoville
Lamar Graham
Elaine Grolla
Maximiliano Guimarães
Timothy Gupton
John Holm
Chad Howe
Orlando R. Kelm
Marcos Lopes
Ruth Lopes
Marcus Lunguinho
Ana Cristina Macário Lopes
Caroline Machado
Karina Molsing
Ana Müller
Christine Nicolaides
Paul O'Neill
José Pinto de Lima
Fernanda Pratas
Luciana Raccanello Storto
Gabriel Rei-Doval
Filomena Sândalo
Ana Paula Scher
Cristina Schmitt
Scott Schwenter
Antonio Vicente Seraphim Pietroforte
Marcelo Sibaldo
Gláucia Silva
Antônio Simões
Augusto Soares da Silva
Margarida Maria Taddoni Petter
Lorenzo Vitral
Hannah Washington
Melissa Whatley
9 ABSTRACTS
PLENARY LECTURES
Antonio Carlos de Moraes Sartini
Museu da Língua Portuguesa, espaço de conhecimento e divulgação
Inaugurado em março de 2006, o Museu da Língua Portuguesa já recebeu a visita de mais de
3.300.000 pessoas vindas de todas as parte do Brasil e do Mundo. Assim como a própria língua e
se valendo deste momento especial, o Museu atrai cada vez mais um público jovem e interessado
na nossa identidade e diversidade cultural.
Na apresentação o Museu será descrito e comentado em suas várias áreas expositivas e
ações culturais, contando um pouco de nossa história e sempre traçando paralelos com o
momento vivido pela língua portuguesa no Sistema Mundial, onde a mesma já figura como a 3a.
língua mais usada no facebook e idioma mais falado no hemisfério sul.
Charlotte Galves
Advances in the history of Portuguese based on the Tycho Brahe Corpus of historical
Portuguese
The Tycho Brahe Corpus, which is currently composed of 61 texts (2,691,859 words)
written in Portuguese by authors born between the end of the 14th century and the end of the
19th century (cf. www.tycho.iel.unicamp.br/~tycho/corpus), of which 16 are currently
syntactically annotated, has been a source of new knowledge on the history of Middle to Modern
Portuguese, including Brazilian Portuguese.
In my talk, I shall briefly introduce the formal aspects of the construction of the Corpus and
present the results we have obtained so far. They concern mainly aspects of Portuguese that have
changed over time: clitic-placement, subject position, verb position, the use of determiners, the
syntax of infinitival clauses, the use of lexical personal pronouns, and the types of topic
constructions. The quantitative analyses made possible by access to large quantities of data
enable us to draw a much more precise picture of the evolution of Portuguese grammar from the
16th century on, and locate an important syntactic change in European Portuguese at the
beginning of the 18th century. It also gives us a more precise picture of the competition of
grammars found in Brazilian texts in the 19th century. Moreover, unrestricted access to the
entirety of the texts is an important feature of the Tycho Brahe Corpus since it allows one to
study in detail the way syntax and information structure interact, both on the level of entire
periods and within individual authors.
This presentation aims to illustrate the fact that beyond the agility, reliability, and
reproducibility provided by automatic extraction tools, working with annotated corpora allows us
to pose exactly the same questions for different sets of texts, opening up entirely new
perspectives for comparative historical syntax.
10 Scott Schwenter
Differential Object Marking … in Portuguese?!
Portuguese is typically not considered a differential object marking (DOM) language, while its
close relative Spanish, with its accusative a, is one of the most well-known DOM languages. In
this plenary talk, I use quantitative multivariate analysis to argue that Portuguese—both
Brazilian (BP) and European (EP)—displays a clear-cut DOM system. Unlike Spanish, however,
the Portuguese DOM system is limited to strictly anaphoric direct object referents. Both BP and
EP oppose null objects with overt pronominal marking of anaphoric DOs, even though the
pronouns employed differ in each variety. In both Spanish and Portuguese, animacy, definiteness,
and specificity constrain the encoding of direct object referents in similar ways; most notably,
the hierarchical ordering of these constraints is the same across the two languages. The results of
this research not only have important consequences for the theory and typology of DOM, but
also for theories of discourse anaphora that have tended to lump together direct objects with
subjects in indiscriminate fashion.
João Costa
The development of syntactic dependencies in European Portuguese
This talk focuses on the acquisition of syntactic dependencies in European Portuguese. I will
present results from several experiments assessing children's knowledge of relative clauses, whquestions, and on the development of clitic production and clitic placement. Through the
comparison with other languages (in particular Hebrew, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese), I
will argue that the development of these constructions provides evidence in favor of the
following points:
a) Intervention effects yield delays in acquisition, due to relativized minimality (Friedmann,
Belletti and Rizzi 2009);
b) Uniformity plays a role in development, and there is early sensitivity to covert properties of
silent categories (Costa & Lobo 2007, Costa, Grolla & Lobo 2013);
c) Complexity in acquisition mirrors sensitivity to an interplay between lexical and syntactic
properties of the input (Costa, Fiéis & Lobo 2013).
For all these aspects, I will highlight the specific properties of European Portuguese conditioning
its development by contrast with other languages.
Time permitting, I will show how crosspopulation studies (comparing typically developing
children, adults, SLI children and hearing-impaired children) add to these conclusions, by
revealing which aspects of development can only be attributed to grammar.
11 Note: Abstracts are listed in the same order they appear in the program.
PANELS
Session I
Julio Barbosa
Rethinking the relation between compounds and complex predicates: clues from Brazilian
Portuguese
Snyder (2001) claims there is a parameter that correlates the productivity of N+N
compounds in a language to the presence complex predicates such as resultatives, locatives,
datives, double object, causatives, perceptual report and verb-particle constructions. However,
Brazilian Portuguese (BP) data show an early presence of datives, causatives, locatives and
perceptual report constructions (Barbosa 2012).
Based on these empirical discrepancies, it is argued that English’s N+N compounds are, in
fact, syntactic phrases, and there is an equivalent instance of romance complex nouns formed by
N+de+N that is compatible with the productive, compositional N+N compounds from Germanic
languages. With this hypothesis in mind, it is suggested that the only relevant parametrical
relation between the constructions mentioned above is the one between dative shift constructions
and compounds. Bauke (2011, p. 3) presents data from German which supports two types of
compound in that language. The first type (1a) has a fixed meaning, is not recursive, therefore, it
is formed as the result of a lexical process; the second type (1b) is highly productive, recursive
and its meaning is compositional. It is argued that BP’s N+de+N phrases present exactly the
“Germanic-only” productive and compositional behavior (2) of this second type of compounds
proposed by Bauke (op. cit.), allegedly the type not to be found in Romance languages in general.
In order to relate the constructions from both Germanic and Romance languages, it is
proposed that both N+N compounds/phrases and N+de+N share the same syntactic structure,
with the parametric variation stated in (3), which, in English, triggers a compulsory dislocation
operation on the way to PF linearization, yielding the superficial order seen in (5).
Taking Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993) as the theoretical background,
there is no lexical versus syntactic processes distinctions, what causes the distinction between
(1a) and (1b) to be explained otherwise. Moreover, it is claimed that the same analysis for
compounds can be extended to explain dative shift in English as well as its absence in BP; while
BP has only one vocabulary item to express both possession and location (the preposition para,
‘to’), compulsory dislocation applies to the dative structure whenever the [poss] feature is
present, since the corresponding Vocabulary Item for this feature in English is phonologically
null.
If the analyses presented for these constructions are correct, the empirical adequacy holds
for the relevant complex predicates under consideration, albeit excluding double-TP (or vP)
complex predicates (namely causatives and perceptual report constructions) from the
Compounding Parameter (Snyder 2001). Yet, another parameter must deal with resultatives and
verb-particle constructions, since these constructions are clearly not present in BP due to their
satellite-framed nature (Talmy 2000) and are, following Barbosa (2012), a product of a
composite dyadic structure (Hale & Keyser 2002). Dative shift and compounds, on the other
12 hand, are formed by a basic dyadic (idem) formation, while locative constructions are a
byproduct of the location/locatum alternation phenomena (idem).
Maria Luisa Freitas
Two nominalizing suffixes
morphophonological realization
in
Brazilian
Portuguese:
locality
constraints
on
Nominalizations have taken a central role in linguistic theory, as they involve
crosslinguistically different structures that show non-homogeneous behavior (Chomsky 1970;
Grimshaw 1992). Alexiadou and Rathert (2010) recognize two main models which attribute the
argument structure in the nominal domain from different theoretical viewpoints of the
representation: the lexicalist model and the structural/syntactic model. Taking Grimshaw (1992)
as representative of the first model, it is possible to say that nouns inherit their argument
structure from the embedded verb in the lexicon. Therefore, possible ambiguities (event vs. result
readings of the nouns, for instance) occur in virtue of the event structure attributed to the lexical
representation of the noun. The second model, on the other hand, argues that the presence of
argument structure follows from the existence of a VP node (or some functional projection of
VP) inside the nominal structure (see Alexiadou 2001; Embick 2000; 2004). In other words, the
13 event interpretation is made possible by the presence of verbal functional layers within the
nominal structure. Interestingly, both models agree on the idea that the nominal argument
structure is inherited from the verb. Alexiadou and Rathert (2010) claim that only nominals that
have been verbs as part of their derivational history can license argument structure. This suggests
a strict relationship between morphology and meaning.
In this work, taking into account a syntactic model of word formation such as Distributed
Morphology (Halle; Marantz 1993; 1994; among many others), I argue that the argument
structure of deverbal nouns is also responsible for the morphophonological behavior of
competing morphemes, in addition to any possible effect of event semantics. To do so, I analyze
two nominalizing suffixes in Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BP): -ção and –mento. These
suffixes are described together as the most productive nominalizing suffixes in BP (Rocha 2003
apud Santos 2006). They can take both roots and verbs to form derived nouns. Besides, they can
describe (i) actions; (ii) results of a process; (iii) states (Santos 2006). In this paper, I focus on
the morphophonological aspects of nouns formed by these two suffixes, such as: (i) the
neutralization of the verbal theme vowels -i- and -e-; and (ii) contextual allomorphy conditioned
by the root. Assuming that the syntactic derivation proceeds in terms of phases (Chomsky 2000,
2001), sent cyclically to the phonological component, I take the morphophonological differences
related to –mento and –ção nouns to be the surface result of two syntactic properties: first, the
argument structure type of the embedded verb; and second, the derivational point at which the
syntactic structure is sent to PF.
The quantitative data I focus on derives from a database of 1.035 words collected from the
electronic version 1.0 of the Houaiss Dictionary of Portuguese [Dicionário Eletrônico Houaiss
da Língua Portuguesa 1.0]. Our analysis intends to explain the patterns and tendencies found
within the sample.
Chad Howe and Ronald Mendes
Progressive pathways and the estar + gerúndio periphrasis in Brazilian Portuguese
In this study, we examine structural variation related to the estar + gerúndio periphrasis in
Brazilian Portuguese using a corpus of spoken language data. According to Mendes (2008), this
structure can have either a progressive/durative meaning, demonstrated in example (1), or an
iterative/habitual meaning, shown in (2). In the development of this form, the iterative/habitual
reading appears later, mirroring the development of the progressive periphrasis in Spanish (see
Torres Cacoullos 2012). We maintain, however, that observed parallels in the distribution of
these forms in Portuguese do not correspond to similarly analogous pathways of structural and
semantic change. In fact, we follow Norde (2009) who points out that researchers “tend to base
their analyses on results (a superficial comparison of initial and final states) rather than on a
detailed examination of the change itself” (2009:33). Similarly, we propose that the pathway
explanation of language change is overly constraining, obfuscating linguistic patterns particular
to dialect-specific cases of structural and semantic change.
One important distinction between the estar + GERUND constructions in Portuguese and
Spanish is their behavior with certain stative predicates. Note that in example (3a) from
Portuguese, the verb adorar 'to love/adore' can be used in the estar + gerúndio periphrasis to
indicate a state that holds at the moment of utterance. With the similar Spanish verb encantar,
this usage is infelicitous, as shown in (3b). Our analysis is based on the claim that, despite
typological and genetic similarities, structures across different languages often diverge in
14 processes of semantic change, a claim consistent with Amaral and Howe's (2010) discussion of
the periphrastic past in Portuguese as being distinct from similar Romance forms. Therefore, a
direct comparison of the progressive constructions attested in a number of Romance Languages
(see Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994, among others) obscures important language-specific
behaviors of these forms, in particular the variability of these constructions to combine with
different predicate types in order to express non-progressive/durative meanings.
In addition to these semantic divergences, we also observe patterns related to the
morphosyntactic features of the estar + gerúndio construction in Portuguese. Specifically, the
degree to which elements can be interpolated between the auxiliary estar and the gerund has
been argued to provide some indication of the degree of morphosytactic fixation (see Schwegler
1990). While the Spanish construction is particularly restrictive in this respect, the Portuguese
estar + gerúndio structure allows for a number elements to intervene between the auxiliary and
the gerund, including adverbials (as in 4), clitic pronouns (as in 5), or prepositional phrases (as in
6). To provide evidence for our claims, we extracted tokens of the estar + gerúndio periphrasis
from a corpus of spoken Brazilian Portuguese (Mendes 2005) and subjected them to multivariate
analysis. Our quantitative analysis focused first on status of intervening elements (i.e. presence
vs. absence), with results suggesting that, though not the more common pattern, presence of
material intervening between the auxiliary and the participle is favored by a number of factors
(e.g., past tense form of estar). Overall, our quantitative analysis reveals several interesting
findings regarding the level of cohesion between the components of the estar + gerúndio
construction, among which is the observation that, despite its parallels with other structures in
Romance, it patterns quite differently with respect to morphosyntactic properties. We conclude
our paper with comments concerning the variationist methods used and their limitations in
predicting the type non-obligatory patterns observed with structural interpolation in periphrastic
forms.
Examples
(1)
O meu pai está estacionando o carro. Vai estar aqui em um minutinho.
'My father is parking the car. He'll be here in just a minute.' (Mendes 2010:28)
(2)
Já faz tempo que ela está se dedicando ao balé.
'For a while, she's been dedicating herself to ballet.'
(Mendes 2010:30)
(3) a. Estou adorando esse filme.
'I love this film.'
(Mendes 2010:29)
b. ??Me está encantando esta película.
(4)
ele tava já chamando a polícia
‘He was already calling the police’.
(Mendes 2008:5)
(5)
igual eu tô te falando, ele era meu superior
'As I’m telling you, he was my superior.'
(Mendes 2008:5)
(6)
eu estava no ponto esperando ele
‘I was waiting for him at the bust stop'
(Mendes 2008:5)
Esmeralda Vailati Negrão and Evani Viotti
Peculiarities in the Syntax of Brazilian Portuguese: a hypothesis for its emergence
Recent studies have pointed out that Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BP) syntax exhibits
grammatical properties that distinguish it from European Portuguese (henceforth EP) and other
Romance languages. From the historical perspective, the literature registers a challenging debate
15 between proponents of the idea that BP shares many characteristics with creole languages, and
should be considered as resulting of a restructuring process due to the contact of BP with African
and Indigenous languages, and those that reject that idea, suggesting that the grammatical
features used to support the creole nature of the Brazilian vernacular were already attested in the
Portuguese language brought to the colony in the 16th century.
Against the series of studies that use the comparison between BP and EP to explain the
changes in BP grammar, Paixão de Souza (ms) argues that the focus of the comparison should be
Classical Portuguese, the grammar corresponding to 16th – 18th century Portuguese texts, from
which, according to Galves et al. (2006), both modern varieties of Portuguese emerged.
Negrão & Viotti (2008, 2010, 2011, among others), on the other hand, argue that the
grammar of BP emerged as a vernacular colonial variety that resulted from a process of intense
multilingual contact, which started in the “Atlantic Ocean”.
The aim of this presentation is to establish a dialog between the comparative analysis
between Classical Portuguese and BP performed by Paixão de Souza, on the one hand, and the
analysis of properties of three series of empirical facts from BP syntax: a) impersonal
constructions (Franchi, Negrão & Viotti ,1998 and Negrão & Viotti, 2008, 2011); b) absolute
sentences (Negrão & Viotti, 2008, 2010 e 2011); and c) two type of possessor raising
constructions in PB (Cançado, 2010, Cançado & Negrão, 2010 and Negrão, Cançado &
Lunguinho, 2013). The goal of this dialog, in turn, is to seek support for the hypothesis that both
the impersonal marker found in some passive constructions of Bantu languages such as
Kimbundu, and the ergative pattern of the Brazilian Indigenous languages could explain the
syntactic changes observed in Brazilian Portuguese.
Session II Red: Syntax
André Antonelli
The loss of complementizerless clauses in Brazilian Portuguese
The main goal of this work is to understand why Classical Portuguese (ClaP) allows the
optional omission of the complementizer que “that” in finite complement clauses (see (1)), while
Brazilian Portuguese (BP), which evolves from ClaP, does not (see (2)).
In order to reach this goal, firstly it is necessary to understand how clauses without que are
licensed in ClaP. Two differences between complementizerless clauses and sentences introduced
by que are investigated here.
Difference (i): In structures without que, the verb necessarily precedes the subject (see (3)). In
sentences with an overt complementizer, we find both pre and post-verbal subjects (see (4)).
Difference (ii): If there is no complementizer, the finite verb precedes adverbs (see (5)). If the
complementizer is present, adverbs can appear both in pre and post-verbal position (see (6)).
I argue that these differences are captured under the assumption that there is verb movement
to the left periphery in complementizerless clauses, but not in sentences introduced by que.
Following Antonelli (2011), I account for difference (i) assuming that, in ClaP, subjects can
remain in [Spec,vP] or raise to [Spec,TP]. Such a variation is dependent on the informational
status of the subject. Thus, in complementizerless clauses, since there is verb movement to the
Csystem, the subject is always licensed in a position lower than that occupied by the finite verb,
regardless of being in [Spec,TP] or even below in [Spec,vP]. In clauses with que, I assume that
the verb is raised only to T in view of the blocking presence of the complementizer in the
16 CPfield. This means that, when raised to [Spec,TP], subjects appear in pre-verbal position, but,
when in situ, subjects follow the finite verb.
Concerning difference (ii), the reasoning is similar. Following Cinque (1999), I assume that
adverbs are generated in the specifier of different projections within the inflectional domain. In
relation to complementizerless clauses, the logical conclusion is that the verb, having been
moved to the CP-layer, will be hierarchically higher than any adverb, thus explaining why
adverbs are always post-verbal in these clauses. In sentences with que, the finite verb remains in
T, since the complementizer blocks V-movement to the C head. This means that the verb is
located in the same functional domain where adverbs are generated, i.e., in the inflectional
domain. Assuming that an adverb can be associated to different interpretations (see Jackendoff
1972), and, consequently, to different structural positions, the variation between the word order
“verb-adverb” and “adverb-verb” is derived from the possibility of having the adverb in a
position higher or lower than that occupied by the finite verb in the inflectional domain,
depending on the semantic interpretation attributed to the adverb.
In view of this discussion, the ungrammaticality of complementizerless clauses in BP can be
related to a change in the syntax of verb movement, in particular the loss of V-raising to the left
periphery. Such an idea is interesting because it is in accordance with several works which attest
the loss of V-to-C movement in other specific contexts in BP: interrogative structures (see
Lopes-Rossi 1996) and declarative matrix clauses (see Torres Morais 1995). I propose that
Vmovement in complementizerless clauses is derived from a parametric property determining
the C head of complement clauses to have a lexical realization. Following Roberts (2001), I
assume that movement is triggered just where the lexicon makes available no lexical item which
can satisfy a realization requirement by merger. Thus, I propose that, if the complementizer que
is introduced in the derivation, it lexicalizes the embedded C head (que is a lexical item which
can satisfy the realization requirement by merger). However, if the complementizer is not
introduced in the derivation, no other constituent can be directly inserted into C, so that
movement of the finite verb to C is triggered in order to satisfy the realization requirement.
Diachronically, the absence of complementizerless clauses in BP can be explained by arguing
that finite verbs cease to have the ability to lexicalize C in complement clauses. According to my
approach, in BP only the insertion of que can satisfy this requirement, differently from ClaP,
which could satisfy the lexical requirement of the C head through insertion of que or Vmovement.
(1) a. lhe pareceu [ que morria.
to.him seemed that died
“it seemed to him that he was dying.”
b. mas parece [ quiz deixá-la na duvida,
but seems wanted leave-her in-the doubt
“but it seems that he wanted to leave her in doubt,”
(2)
Parece [ *(que) o João foi embora.
it.seems that the John went away
“It seems that John has left.”
(3)
parece [ quiz Deos nesta demonstraçaõ reprehenderlhe o enfado,
seems wanted God in-this demonstration rebuke-her the vexation
‘it seems that in this demonstration God wanted to rebuke her for her vexation,’
17 (4) a.
b.
(5)
(6) a.
b.
dizia [ que Deus dera à sagrada Ordem dos Pregadores,
said that God had-given to-the sacred Order of-the Preachers
“he said that God had given to the sacred Preachers Order,”
diz a Escriptura, [ que descançou Deus de tudo o que tinha obrado,
says the Scripture that rested God of everything the which had made
“the Scripture says that God rested from everything he had made,”
respondeo Dom Duarte, [ seria logo obedecida,
answered Sir Duarte would-be soon obeyed
“Sir Duarte answered that it would be obeyed soon”
[ que logo seria fácil conhecer a razão porque não voltava.
that soon would-be easy know the reason why not came-back
“that it would soon be easy to know the reason why he did not come back.”
Folgaria [ que fosse logo,
wanted that was soon
“He wanted it to take place soon,”
Marcello Modesto
Inflected infinitives in control structures in Brazilian Portuguese
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
18 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 Rozana Naves, Eloisa Pilati, and Heloise Salles
‘As cidades da Amazônia chovem muito’: sujeitos não temáticos e as propriedades de INFL no
Português do Brasil
Neste trabalho propomos que a possibilidade de concordância com sujeitos não temáticos no
Português do Brasil (PB), em oposição ao Português Europeu (PE) (cf. (1)), é consequência, por
um lado, das propriedades de Infl e, por outro lado, da forma como a gramática opera a
transferência de traços de C para T (Chomsky 2007, 2008). Partimos do fato empírico de que as
construções de (2) a (5), entre as quais incluem-se orações com DPs não temáticos como (1),
compartilham pelo menos duas propriedades relevantes: (i) ocorrem predominantemente em
contextos de 3ª pessoa e (ii) têm leitura dêitica (geralmente locativa ou temporal), conforme
atestado pela diferença de interpretação em construções com ordem VS (cf. (6)) e pelo contraste
de gramaticalidade em construções com sujeito nulo indeterminado (cf. (7)). Em relação às
propriedades de Infl no PB, explicamos o licenciamento dos dados de (1) a (5) com base na
proposta tipológica de Bhat (2004), que classifica as línguas naturais em ‘línguas de três pessoas’
– em que o pronome pessoal de 3ª pessoa tem comportamento distinto das formas pronominais
de 3ª pessoa (demonstrativos e indefinidos) – e ‘línguas de duas pessoas’ – em que não se
observa essa diferença. Tomando como referência esse duplo tratamento para a 3ª pessoa,
propusemos, seguindo parcialmente Rabelo (2010), que o licenciamento da referencialidade da
3ª pessoa em PB admite duas possibilidades: havendo um referente argumental manifesto em
posição de sujeito, a 3ª pessoa apresenta propriedades de pessoa do discurso (cf. (8)); não
havendo esse referente, a sentença é licenciada se houver um elemento dêitico que atribua
referencialidade à sentença (cf. (7a) vs (7b)). Em relação ao aparato teórico capaz de explicar o
licenciamento de construções com DPs não-temáticos manifestando concordância com o verbo
da oração, implementamos a proposta de Miyagawa (2010) que, com base na ideia de que
tópico/foco é um traço não-interpretável computacionalmente equivalente aos traços phi e que as
línguas diferem parametricamente quanto aos traços herdados de C, postula uma categoria α,
responsável por herdar os traços de C em línguas de proeminência de tópico. Adotando a
estrutura proposta por Miyagawa, postulamos que em PB é α (e não T) que herda os traços de
concordância de C, de onde decorre a concordância manifesta com DPs não-temáticos. Com essa
19 proposta, explicamos uma questão importante deixada em aberto no trabalho de Kato & Duarte
(2008) (e também Modesto (2004)), que é a impossibilidade de o sujeito da oração encaixada ser
correferente com o sujeito da matriz quando um elemento dêitico se interpõe entre C e o verbo
flexionado (cf. (9b)). Segundo nossa proposta, em (10), o elemento dêitico ocupa o núcleo de αP
e, nessa posição, impede a correferência. Embora as construções de (2) a (5) tenham sido
consideradas inovadoras na gramática do PB, em oposição ao PE, Costa (2010) demonstra que é
possível encontrar várias dessas construções em PE, o que, segundo ele, indica que essas línguas
não se distinguem em termos da tipologia ‘língua de sujeito’ versus ‘língua de tópico’ (que vem
sendo atribuída ao PB), devendo, antes, ser distinguidas em termos das propriedades sintáticas
abstratas de Infl, as quais se refletem na concordância entre o verbo e um DP pré-verbal. A
respeito disso, consideramos que os dados em (1) são decisivos para a validação da nossa
hipótese quanto à cisão das propriedades referenciais da categoria de pessoa no PB, mas não no
PE, conforme mencionado. Em particular, consideramos que em (1a-b) a flexão de 3ª pessoa no
verbo ocorre em virtude da possibilidade de ser acionada no PB, mas não no PE, uma 3ª pessoa
compatível com as propriedades locativas e temporais associadas ao DP que controla a
concordância, realizado em uma posição acima de TP (por hipótese α, nos termos de Miyagawa).
Esse fato oferece subsídios para a proposta deste trabalho, que defende que a concordância tem
aporte semântico em termos da referencialidade da sentença.
DADOS
(1) a. As florestas chovem muito.
[okPB; *PE]
[Costa 2010]
b. Essas casas batem sol.
[okPB; *PE]
(2)
Toma posse o deputado.
[ordem VS ou inversão locativa; Autora 2006]
(3)
A Sarinha tá nascendo dente.
[tópico-sujeito; Pontes 1986]
(4)
Nos nossos dias, não usa mais saia.
[sujeito nulo indeterminado; Galves 2001]
(5)
São Paulo chove; o Rio faz sol.
[sujeitos não-argumentais; Duarte 2004]
(6) a. Morreu Fellini.
[Fellini morreu neste momento][Autora 2006]
b. Fellini morreu.
[Fellini morreu há algum tempo]
(7) a. Aqui conserta sapato.
b. *Conserta sapato.
[em contextos out of the blue]
(8)
Ele conserta sapato.
(9) a. O Pedroi disse que consertaØi/*j sapato.
b. O Pedro disse que aqui consertaØ*i/j sapato.
(10)
O Pedroi disse [CP que [αP aqui [TP consertaØ*i/j sapato]]]
Session II Black: Phonology
Virginia Meirelles
A cross-dialect acoustic study of vowels in two varieties of Brazilian Portuguese
This paper examines two acoustic correlates of vowel identity in two varieties of Brazilian
Portuguese (BP): first formant (F1) and second formant (F2) in order to test the Theory of
Adaptive Dispersion (Liljencrants and Lindblom 1972, Lindblom 1975, 1990, Lindblom and
Engstrand 1989, Disner 1984) and the Quantal Theory of Speech (Stevens 1972, 1989) for
stressed vowels produced in those varieties of BP. In order to do so, data were collected with
literate speakers who live in the Federal District and in seven cities in Rio Grande do Sul,
resulting in a total of 1434 tokens for analysis. The acoustic results for the vowels produced by
20 men, on the one side; and women, on the other, were compared and showed that for both men
and women, there is more variation between the mid vowels than among point vowels /i/, /a/ and
/u/. This fact would confirm the Quantal Theory of Speech; however, according to the records,
the variation might be related to dialectal differences, indicating that the Theory of Adaptive
Dispersion might be working. Furthermore, concerning the organization of two vowel systems,
the comparison revealed that articulatory based differences can be discarded since no vowel
system is displaced with respect to the other, thus indicating that the variation between the mid
vowels, can be attributed to dialectal differences. Accordingly, the study proves inconclusive
with respect to both theories, but indicates that probably in the organization of the vowel system
two trends operate: one for point vowels and another for the rest of the vowels. These results are
consistent with the assertions of Recasens and Espinosa (2006, 2009) according to which the
characteristics of the acoustic vowel spaces may be associated with specific trends of different
dialects, not only with the number of members of the vowel system.
Luciana L. Rodrigues
A estrutura silábica no processo de aquisição da escrita infantil
O presente estudo se circunscreve no âmbito de pesquisas a respeito da aquisição da escrita
infantil. Foram investigadas características fonológicas no processo inicial de aquisição de
escrita, com a preocupação de flagrar a complexidade do contato entre o fônico e o gráfico.
As bases teóricas que direcionaram este estudo foram: (a) Interpretação dinâmica de aspectos
fonológicos, com base em pressupostos da Fonologia Gestual (BROWMAN e GOLDSTEIN,
1992; ALBANO, 2001); (b) Complexidade do processo de aquisição da escrita (VYGOTSKY,
1984; CHACON, 1998, 2005, 2008, CORREA, 1997, 2004; TFOUNI, 2000).
O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar e compreender características fonológicas da escrita
inicial de crianças à luz da concepção de sílaba da Fonologia Gestual (NAM et al, 2009).
A coleta dos dados foi realizada em uma Escola Municipal de Educação Infantil da cidade de
Marília, SP, no ano de 2008. Os 28 sujeitos participantes cursavam o Pré-III Integral (série que
corresponde atualmente ao 1º ano do Ensino Fundamental). Foram realizadas 9 sessões de
coletas de dados, com intervalo de aproximadamente 1 mês entre elas. Cada uma dessas sessões
consistiu na produção de um texto escrito, por parte dos sujeitos, com temática proposta pela
professora e trabalhada em sala de aula ao longo de cada mês.
Foi feito um levantamento de registros gráficos e omissões gráficas detectadas na escrita dos
sujeitos. Os registros gráficos foram, ainda, subdivididos em convencionais (acertos) e nãoconvencionais (substituições). Essas categorias foram organizadas de acordo com suas
ocorrências nas posições silábicas de ataque, núcleo e coda. Os dados foram separados em dois
blocos: 1º semestre (Sessões de coletas 01 a 04) e 2º semestre (Sessões de coleta 05 a 09), com a
preocupação de investigar mudanças no funcionamento da escrita dos sujeitos ao longo do ano.
Após uma primeira etapa das análises, com base nos resultados obtidos, as substituições
foram, ainda, subdivididas em fonológicas e ortográficas e as omissões foram subdivididas de
acordo com o tipo de coda – fricativa, nasal, rótico ou glide.
Os principais achados foram: (a) prevalência de registros gráficos de núcleo silábico; (b)
prevalência de omissões de coda; (c) maior quantidade de omissões de coda na classe das
fricativas; (d) prevalência de registros gráficos convencionais de núcleo silábico; (e) prevalência
de substituições no ataque e na coda; (f) substituições fonológicas associadas ao ataque e
substituições ortográficas associadas à coda; (g) mudança do padrão de registro gráfico de 12
21 sujeitos do 1º para o 2º semestre da coleta: de prevalência de registro gráfico de núcleo para
prevalência de registro gráfico de ataque silábico.
Quanto aos achados (a), (b), (c), (d) e (e), a concepção de sílaba formulada pela Fonologia
Gestual permitiu explicar porque o núcleo silábico parece ser a posição da sílaba mais estável
para os sujeitos e porque, dentre as posições de ataque e coda, a posição de coda é a mais
instável. Além disso, foi possível também explicar porque, nos registros gráficos dos diferentes
tipos de coda, a coda fricativa foi a mais difícil para os sujeitos. Assim, pode-se dizer que a
sílaba é uma unidade fonológica de extrema importância para a compreensão de características
fonológicas envolvidas no processo de aquisição da escrita infantil.
O achado (f) permite afirmar como as crianças mantêm características do funcionamento da
própria língua em seus registros gráficos e o achado (g) sugere que os sujeitos não se baseiam
apenas em intuições fônicas no seu processo de aquisição da escrita; a inserção desses sujeitos
em práticas de alfabetização parece modificar o modo como as crianças percebem a estrutura
fônica e gráfica da língua. Assim, diferentemente da ideia de que a aquisição da escrita
dependeria de habilidades fonológicas previamente desenvolvidas, pode-se dizer que as
modalidades falada e escrita da língua possuem, cada uma, modos próprios de organização que
se relacionam e se influenciam mutuamente.
Meghan Dabkowski
Intonational Encoding of Pragmatic Information in Northeastern Brazilian Portuguese YesNo Questions
Yes-no questions in Northeastern Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth NEBP) can be produced
with at least two distinct nuclear contours, namely L+H* L% and L*+H L%. Previous research
on intonation and pragmatics indicates that in addition to encoding phrase type (i.e. declarative,
interrogative, etc.), intonational contours (particularly the nuclear configurations) can also
encode fine-grained pragmatic information, such as speaker attitude (Ward & Hirschberg 1985)
and speaker belief regarding propositional content (Armstrong 2012). This intonational meaning,
when context-independent, is classified as conventional implicature (Grice 1975/1989); that is,
the meaning is encoded in and inseparable from the contour. If however, the meaning of an
intonational contour can be interpreted as a function of the context in which the utterance is
spoken, it is more likely that the meaning is conversationally, rather than conventionally,
implicated. The crucial difference between the two types of implicature is whether the meaning
in question is context dependent or context independent. This research sheds light on the type of
meaning conveyed with the use of these distinct contours and delineates pragmatic constraints
governing the use of each.
In order to confirm hypotheses about the pragmatic meaning of these contours, a discourse
completion task was administered to 2 female native speakers of NEBP, from Parnaíba, Piauí,
and Sobral, Ceará, respectively. These cities are located roughly 250 km apart in the northeast of
Brazil and assumed to have similar dialectal features. The task was designed to elicit productions
of both neutral and biased questions (examples given below in 1a and 1b), including some with
inner and outer negation (examples given below in 2a and 2b.)
Results from the production task indicated that speakers are more likely to produce the
L+H* L% contour for neutral contexts, doing so 80% of the time. Biased contexts elicited more
variability: L*+H L%, L*+¡H L% and H*+L L% all appeared in responses. Negative contexts
22 were more consistent, being overwhelmingly produced as L* +H L%, at a rate of 100% for outer
negation contexts.
Additionally, a perception test is currently in progress, with contours presented in one
neutral and several biased discourse contexts in a task and format adapted from Armstrong 2012.
In order to understand if the pragmatic meaning of the contour can be cancelled by discourse
context, the task was designed so that in some combinations, the context was congruent with the
contour, and in others it was incongruent. Participants had to rate the question on a 7-point Likert
scale with 1 corresponding to the rating “The speaker knows it’s true” and 7 to “The speaker
knows it’s not true”, or they could choose “The intonation does not make sense for this context.”
Results for the perception test are currently being collected and will be analyzed as soon as
possible in order to elaborate on study implications.
Detailed pragmatic accounts of intonation contours like this one are important because in
many cases intonation is the sole cue to utterance type, and in addition makes important
contributions to “what is understood”. This research not only gives insight into the pragmatic
division of labor between context and contour, but also helps to illuminate the interface between
intonational phonology and intonational meaning.
(1a) No specific response expected (Neutral)
Você sabe que tem reunião esta semana, mas não tem nenhuma ideia quando é. Uma colega
te pediu levar ao aeroporto terça-feira, mas você não sabe se pode por causa da reunião.
Então, você liga para a secretaria do escritório e pergunta:
Tem reunião terça?
You know there’s a meeting this week but you don’t have any idea when. Your coworker
asked you to take her to the airport Tuesday but you don’t know if you can, because of the
meeting. You call the secretary at the office to find out.
‘Is there a meeting Tuesday?’
(1b) Affirmative response expected (Biased)
Você tem uma reunião terça-feira, e outra na sexta-feira. Você acha que seu colega está
falando da reunião de terça.
Seu colega: Temos que preparar todo para a reunião.
Você: A reunião de terça?
You have a meeting tomorrow, Friday. You think your colleague is talking about that
meeting.
Your colleague: We have to prepare everything for the meeting.
You: The meeting Tuesday?
(2a) Inner negation (Biased)
Seu amigo: Como vocês são vegetarianos, não podemos comer neste bairro. Todos os
restaurantes aqui são mais para as pessoas que comem carne.
Você: Por aqui não tem nenhum restaurante vegetariano?
Your friend: Since you guys are vegetarians, we can’t eat in this neighborhood. All the
restaurants here are more for meat-lovers.
You: There are no vegetarian restaurants around here?
(2b) Outer negation (Biased)
Você está visitando um amigo em Nova Iorque e se lembra que a última vez que você
visitou, vocês comeram em um restaurante vegetariano.
Seu amigo: Onde é que você quer comer hoje à noite?
23 Você: (pensando no lugar onde que vocês comeram a última vez) Não tem por aqui um
restaurante vegetariano?
You’re visiting a friend in NYC and you remember the last time you visited him you ate at a
vegetarian restaurant.
Your friend: Where do you want to eat tonight?
You: (thinking about the place you ate last time) Isn’t there a vegetarian place around
here?
Session III Red: Variation
Marta Scherre, Carolina Queiroz Andrade, Edilene Patrícia Dias, and Germano Martins
Ferreira
Subsistemas dos pronomes você, cê, ocê e tu no português brasileiro falado
O principal objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar uma síntese dos subsistemas de pronomes de
segunda pessoa você, cê, ocê e tu no vasto território brasileiro, com base em diversas pesquisas
que se orientam pela Teoria da Variação e da Mudança Linguística (Weireich, Labov & Herzog
1968; Labov 2001). A síntese proposta evidencia que os pronomes você, cê, ocê e tu estão todos
vivos no português brasileiro, com matizes próprios, a depender de aspectos geográficos, mas
não necessariamente regionais.
A síntese proposta toma como base o tipo de forma pronominal, a frequência das formas e a
possibilidade de concordância com o pronome tu. Além disso, se utiliza da macro forma VOCÊ
pelo fato de muitas pesquisas não fazerem a distinção entre as variantes você, cê, ocê,
especialmente quando focalizam a análise do pronome tu.
Assim, a síntese dos subsistemas propostos se apresenta nos seguintes termos:
1) Subsistema só VOCÊ: uso exclusivo das variantes você/cê/ocê
2) Subsistema mais tu com concordância baixa: uso médio de tu acima de 60% com
concordância abaixo de 10%
3) Subsistema mais tu com concordância alta: uso médio de tu acima de 60% com
concordância entre 40% e 60%
4) Subsistema tu/VOCÊ com concordância baixa: uso médio de tu abaixo de 60% com
concordância abaixo de 10%
5) Subsistema tu/VOCÊ com concordância média: uso médio de tu abaixo de 60% com
concordância entre 10% e 39%
6) Subsistema VOCÊ/tu sem concordância com o pronome tu: uso de tu de 1% a 90%.
A ideia mais difundida é a de que o pronome você pleno e explícito (sempre com
concordância zero) tem uso sistematicamente mais generalizado do que o pronome tu
(usualmente sem concordância, mas com possibilidade de concordância). Nestes termos, o
pronome você teria um uso essencialmente não marcado. É mesmo verdade que o subsistema só
VOCÊ é suprarregional. Todavia, é também fato que, a depender da região e/ou da natureza da
interação, temos vocês, tus, cês e ocês com matizes diversos e plurais. É mais evidente ainda que
o pronome tu continua vigoroso no português brasileiro, com fortes inícios de focalização
dialetal na fala dos brasilienses, os nascidos em Brasília, a nova e jovem capital do Brasil
(Scherre et alii).
24 EXEMPLOS
[1] Caraca! Tu é muito chata, brother! Pára de jogar bem, velho! Cê rouba, né velho? Isso que é
o seu problema, você rouba. (fala brasiliense, Plano Piloto expandido, Brasília-DF, extraída
da amostra de Dias, 2007)
[2] “É, você vai lá e digita tudo o que tu queres aí vai aparecer aula de inglês, dicas, sei lá,
procura aula de inglês... gramática, vamos dizer assim, né, vamos dizer que é... aí tu vem
aqui, tu clica aqui. (falante amazonense, de Tefé-AM, extraída da amostra da amostra de
Martins, 2010)
[3] “Bom, se você conseguir uma fonte, tipo Paraguai, assim, coisa legal pra comprá umas
coisas e aí cê num ia preocupá com nota fiscal, cê ia vendê lá mesmo...” (fala capixaba, de
Vitória, extraída de Calmon, 2010, p. 20)
[4] “... hoje em dia... ocê não pode saí confiano” (fala mineira, extraída do texto de Coelho,
1999, p. 65)
[5] “... Qué dizê, uma mata daquela ali, tu olha uma mata daquela ali, é tudo escovadinha de
baixo. Cê só vê as árvre, mas debaxo você vê é... é... é caminho de boi, é... é assim lento,
num sabe? (fala baiana, de Santo Antônio de Jesus, extraída do texto de Oliveira, 2007, p. 5)
[6] “tu parte o bolo, 0bota o recheio e depois tu coloca o Leite Moça por cima e 0salpicas com
amendoim. Uma delícia” (fala catarinense, extraída do texto de Loregian-Penkal, 2004, p.
20)
Hannah Washington
Lexical frequency & language change: Object clitic placement in European Portuguese
European Portuguese (EP) displays a general trend of enclitic pronominal object placement,
with preverbal placement licensed by specific triggers. These proclisis triggers, which are
generally characterized as obligatory proclisis contexts, include environments following negation,
subordinating conjunctions, quantifiers, WH operators, and certain adverbs (Barrie 2000, Cunha
& Cintra 2002, Perini 2002, Galves & Sandalo 2012, inter alia). However, in these so-called
obligatory proclisis contexts, a great deal of variation is still found in clitic placement. Building
on Author’s (2012) variationist study that showed previously undocumented contexts in which
non-normative clitic placement is found in EP, the present study offers a new analysis, with a
focus on clitic placement in two-verb constructions. These constructions differ not only in terms
of the degree of grammaticalization as auxiliary-like vs. more semantically additive, but also
with respect to lexical frequency. The primary research question posed by this paper is as
follows: could the generalization of enclisis in EP (as put forth by Vigário & Frota 1998) be
spreading to contexts that are normatively proclitic based on verbal frequency?
Prior work on clitic placement in European Portuguese has shown that the person/number
reference of the subject, subject expression, the mood of the verb, the verbal construction, and
the type of source text all play important roles in non-normative enclisis in the presence of the
proclisis triggers que and talvez in EP (Author 2012). Furthermore, similarities have been found
in the rates of non-normative clitic placement in two-verb constructions in EP and enclisis in
two-verb constructions in Mexican Spanish (Schwenter & Torres Cacoullos 2010, Author 2012).
That is, for both EP and Mexican Spanish, two-verb constructions show differing rates of proand enclitic object placement, with more grammaticalized constructions (estar a + infinitive /
estar + gerund, ir (a) + infinitive ) showing higher rates of proclisis than less grammaticalized
constructions (querer + infinitive, poder + infinitive). Author (2012) takes this as evidence for
25 cross-linguistic patterns of change. Considering the interrelated nature of grammaticalization and
lexical frequency, this study adds to these previous analyses by showing that lexical frequency is
partially responsible for the current changes in progress. To address the question of the role of
frequency in EP, frequency counts for the verbs presented in Author’s (2012) work were
obtained from the Corpus do Português (Davies & Ferreira 2006-), with frequency counts from
the original data source.
In the present paper, I argue that the lexical frequency of the verbal hosts plays a crucial role
in synchronic trends toward generalized enclisis in the presence of proclisis triggers. The results
show specifically that there is a positive correlation between frequency and normative behavior:
as verbal frequency increases, so does the rate of normative clitic object placement. If the
“regression of proclisis” is indeed related to changes in the requirements of clitics with relation
to their hosts, and phonologically weaker triggers are leading the change (cf. Vigário & Frota
(1998)), then this frequency account offers predictions for which verbal hosts will be found to
have higher rates of non-normative enclisis in the presence of proclisis triggers. The findings of
this paper are suggestive of cross-linguistic differences between EP and Mexican Spanish, contra
Author’s (2012) findings, such that lexical frequency seems to be pushing clitic placement
patterns in different directions in the two languages.
Lilian Yacovenco and Aline Berbert Fonseca
Objeto direto anafórico: variação e mudança na fala de Vitória/Brasil
O português brasileiro (PB) passa por mudanças no que diz respeito ao preenchimento do
objeto direto anafórico. Estudos sociolingüísticos realizados sobre o português falado em
diversas cidades do Brasil (Omena, 1978, Duarte, 1989, Yacovenco & Berbert, 2011, entre
outros) mostram que os pronomes acusativos de terceira pessoa - clíticos - não são os únicos
elementos a exercerem essa função. Mais que isso, essas formas estão em desuso e são
substituídas por outras três: o pronome lexical - nominativo -, o sintagma nominal anafórico e,
com maior frequência, por sintagma nominal anafórico vazio – categoria vazia. Omena (1978) e
Duarte (1989) apontam diversas variáveis que atuam sobre essa mudança, destacando-se a
animacidade do objeto e a estrutura sintática da sentença.
O presente estudo, seguindo os pressupostos da Teoria da Variação e da Mudança
Lingüística (Weireich, Labov & Herzog 1968; Labov, 1972, 1994), analisa o preenchimento da
posição do objeto direto anafórico na fala espontânea de Vitória, capital do Espírito Santo,
localizada na região sudeste do Brasil. Para isso, toma por base uma amostra composta de 46
entrevistas do Projeto Português Falado na cidade de Vitória – PortVix (Yacovenco, 2012).
Em nossa pesquisa, observamos que a comunidade de fala de Vitória apresenta resultados
semelhantes aos de outros estudos sobre o PB: o clítico está em desuso (0,3%), o pronome
lexical é pouco utilizado (11,3%) e a categoria vazia é a estratégia mais frequente (56,9%).
Entretanto, diferentemente de outras pesquisas, o sintagma nominal anafórico é bastante
frequente, equivalendo a 31,5% do total de casos.
Para entendermos esses resultados, consideramos a proposta de Schwenter (2006), que
aponta para a necessidade de se observar a distribuição distinta entre o preenchimento do objeto
por pronomes ou por sintagmas nominais anafóricos, preenchidos ou vazios. O autor ratifica,
também, a importância da atuação da variável animacidade do objeto e destaca a relevância da
especificidade do objeto. Com base nessa proposta, entendemos que a especificidade do referente
é se suma importância para que se compreenda a diferença no preenchimento do objeto direto
26 anafórico por categorias nominais preenchidas ou não. Também discutimos, no presente trabalho,
a atuação dessas variáveis, de natureza mais discursiva e outras, de natureza mais sintática, como
a estrutura da sentença ou a função sintática do referente sobre o fenômeno analisado.
EXEMPLOS:
Pronome acusativo de 3ª pessoa – clítico - faço exame e nunca volto pra mostrá-los
Pronome lexical – pronome nominativo - a Fernando Ferrari... dizem que vão melhorar ela
Sintagma Nominal anafórico - tivemos que lavar o carro... porque ele sujou o carro todinho
Sintagma nominal anafórico – categoria vazia - quando vou pegar a bola geralmente os cara
chuta [0])
Session III Black: Standardization and Lexicon
Inês Machungo
A Contribuição da Neologia Lexical na Formação do Português de Moçambique
Num país multilingue como Moçambique, em que coexistem línguas bantu e a língua
portuguesa, sendo esta a única língua oficial, embora língua segunda para a grande maioria dos
falantes, o processo de apropriação e nativização (Firmino 2008) do português pelos
moçambicanos é já um fenómeno observável e irreversível .
A criação lexical é um dos domínios em que a mudança linguística que concorre para a
edificação desta variante não-nativa do português, se faz sentir. ë pois neste contexto de mudança
lexical, mais especificamente de formação de novos itens lexicais, que o nosso estudo se
enquadra.
A nossa abordagem ancora-se no modelo de morfologia construcional desenvolvido por Booij
(2010).
Mostraremos que os processos de construção de palavras têm como base procedimentos de
natureza morfológica, semântica e sintáctica.
Evidenciaremos que no processo de aprendizagem de uma língua, o aprendente armazena
mentalmente formas linguísticas adquiridas pelo uso e é capaz de a partir delas fazer abstracções
e generalizações construindo deste modo esquemas mentais de formação de palavras.
No esquema de construção/análise de um produto que exiba o sufixo -aria, por exemplo, [[X]Nj–
aria]Ni ↔ [ quantidade/local/actividade/conjunto de Y relacionado com SEMj]Ni estão
envolvidos subesquemas que permitem interpretar o produto como "quantidade", "local",
"actividade", "conjunto". É este tipo de conhecimento morfosemântico que os falantes de
Português L2 possui e que lhes permite criar novas palavras.
Gabriel Rei-Doval
O povo é quem mais ordena?: Ideologies, control, and language purism in the configuration
of Contemporary Standard Galician
The process of standardization of the Galician language in the 20th century has led to a
number of debates on what the acceptable or ideal model for the ‘common language’ is. This
debate, whose origins date back to the 19th century and the period known as the Rexurdimento,
is still alive and well nowadays. Once the identity and relationship between Galician and
Portuguese were recognized, the latter language (and not Spanish) became the main reference to
shape standard Galician.
27 This peculiar social history, as well as language contact, have conditioned all debates on the
configuration of the standard variety of Galician; said debates have been crucial in the
establishment of different standardization proposals, in particular after the 1970s, i.e. a scale
ranging from the reintegrationist model, also known as lusista (total identification with standard
continental Portuguese), to the total autonomy of Galician, which is also called isolacionista
(based on the documentation of spoken Galician).
This paper aims to analyze the criteria and ideologies used to legitimize those proposals for
a standard language, in particular the connections with respect to standards, oral language, elites,
and the people. While some have disregarded the connection between linguistic features present
in spoken Galician and its different geographical and social varieties, others have used it as a
legitimizing element for contemporary oral usage.
Apparently, a progressive ideology is present in the imaginary conception of all proposals,
including elitist and purist ones. In some cases, they even refer to the acclaimed leitmotiv o povo
é quem mais ordena, taken from Zeca Afonso’s Grândola, the famous song that inaugurated the
Portuguese Revolution in 1974. All this has occurred despite the fact that both oral and popular
language features were, in some proposals, totally disregarded, in particular by those selfdeclared followers of the (continental) Portuguese standard.
Caroline Machado
Portuguese Language Planning: The New Orthographic Agreement of the Portuguese
Language
This literature review tries to understand the Portuguese orthographic agreement as a means
of language planning and its implications for the Portuguese language. It provides a brief history
of the historical attempts to unify the Portuguese orthography, as well as what changes are being
proposed in the Novo Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa or New Orthographic
Agreement of the Portuguese Language. Finally, the arguments in favor and against this
unification are presented in order to reinforce the need for compliance between Portugal and
Brazil, the major players in projecting the future of the Portuguese Language.
Session IV Red: Functional Approaches
Edson Rosa Francisco de Souza and Kátia Elaine de Souza Barreto
O comportamento funcional da locução conjuncional ‘no caso de (que)’ no portugués
brasileiro
O objetivo do trabalho é analisar, sob a perspectiva teórica da Gramática Discursivo-Funcional
(HENGEVELD e MACKENZIE, 2008) e da Gramaticalização (HOPPER e TRAUGOTT, 1993;
TRAUGOTT, 1995; BYBEE, 2003), as orações condicionais introduzidas pela locução
conjuncional “no caso de (que)” no português brasileiro, tendo em vista os aspectos sintáticos,
semânticos e pragmáticos atrelados ao uso do referido conectivo para articular orações. Em
termos específicos, a proposta é (i) verificar as motivações funcionais que regulam a escolha da
locução conjuncional “no caso de (que)” para indicar condicionalidade, considerando-se o fato
de que o português brasileiro dispõe de várias outras conjunções simples e complexas para
marcar a relação semântica de condição, (ii) analisar o processo de gramaticalização porque vem
passando a locução conjuncional “no caso de (que)” no português brasileiro [do nome “caso” à
28 locução conjuncional “no caso de (que)”], em que se observa um deslocamento funcional do
domínio concreto [lexical] para o domínio mais abstrato [gramatical], com usos que vão,
conforme Traugott (1982), desde a esfera proposicional (usos lexicais) até a esfera expressiva
(usos interacionais), passando pela esfera textual (articulação de orações). O universo de
investigação é composto pelo Corpus do Português (DAVIS e FERREIRA, 2006), disponível no
endereço (www.corpusdoportugues.org), e os seguintes parâmetros de análise: unidade
composicional da oração principal, unidade composicional da oração subordinada, correferência
entre os sujeitos, factualidade, tempo verbal da oração principal, tempo verbal da oração
subordinada, forma verbal da oração subordinada, posição da oração subordinada e tipo de
gênero discursivo. A análise dos dados apontou o seguinte: i) As orações condicionais
introduzidas pela locução conjuncional “no caso de (que)” no português brasileiro tendem a
ocorrer na forma não-finita (com o verbo no infinitivo); ii) A forma de manifestação mais
recorrente dos sujeitos da oração hipotática (condicional) é o sintagma nominal, seguida da
forma pronominal; iii) As orações condicionais introduzidas pela locução conjuncional “no caso
de (que)” podem ocorrer no português brasileiro tanto na posição inicial (em 47% dos dados)
quanto na posição final (em 53% dos dados), evidenciando, assim, uma ordenação mais flexível
da oração condicional em relação à oração núcleo; v) Em geral, há poucos casos de material
interveniente entre a oração condicional e a oração principal, com destaque para elementos como
“então”, “e”, “porque”, “orações relativas”, “orações explicativas”, dentre outros tipos. Como
propriedades semântico-discursivas, verificamos que: i) As orações condicionais inseridas pela
locução conjuncional “no caso de (que)” tendem a designar uma entidade de terceira ordem
(proposição), ao passo que a oração principal tende a designar uma entidade segunda ordem
(evento); ii) As orações condicionais introduzidas pela locução conjuncional “no caso de (que)”
são não-factuais, exatamente por conta de sua própria natureza semântica (indicam uma hipótese:
algo que pode ser realizado/podia ser realizado); iii) Os sujeitos da oração condicional e da
oração principal não são correferenciais, fato que aponta para um grau menor de integração
sintática entre as orações; iv) Nas orações condicionais de “no caso de (que)” predomina sempre
a forma verbal no infinitivo, o que torna mais latente a sua dependência temporal da principal; v)
O tempo verbal das orações condicionais de “no caso de (que)” tende a seguir o padrão presente
do indicativo-oração principal/ sentença infinitiva-oração subordinada, resultado este que
referenda e explica a preferência dos falantes do português brasileiro pela forma não-finita na
oração condicional; e, por fim, vi) As orações condicionais inseridas pela locução conjuncional
“no caso de (que)” ocorrem com uma frequência maior nos gêneros discursivos acadêmico (com
116/40% das ocorrências) e fictício (com 89/29% das ocorrências), com destaque maior para o
gênero acadêmico.
Fábio Bonfim Duarte and Márcia Cristina De Brito Rumeu
O estatuto gramatical do redobro de pronomes de 2ª pessoa no português brasileiro
INTRODUÇAO E OBJETIVOS: Este trabalho tem por objetivo discutir o estatuto morfofuncional (gramatical) do pronome te que resistia na escrita mineira da 1ª metade do século XX
como um resquício de contexto de resistência do Tu pronome-sujeito, seja em contexto de
complemento dativo, seja como pronome redobrado na fala contemporânea (‘Eu te falo com ocê’’
(Fala de Venda Nova - MG) apud Duarte e Diniz (2013:93)). Nesse sentido, interessa-nos
averiguar a real função do redobro no português brasileiro dialetal, visto que ainda persiste
particularmente na primeira e segunda pessoa singular. A reconstrução da história de
29 pronominalização do Você no português brasileiro (doravante PB) escrito tem demonstrado que
a partir da 2ª metade do século XVIII tem-se uma Forma Pronominal de Tratamento, cf. Rumeu
(2004), que evoluiu para uma Forma Pronominal de 2ª pessoa, passando a competir
deliberadamente com o Tu no 2º quartel do séc. XX (entre os anos 20 e 45), cf. Rumeu (2012),
Soto ([2001] 2007) e Machado (2006). Análises à luz da Teoria da Variação de orientação
Laboviana vêm evidenciando que a entrada de Você no quadro de pronomes do PB acabou
configurando a formação de um paradigma pronominal supletivo (ou fusão de paradigmas) que
se faz perceber desde fins do século XIX. Se o emprego do pronome-objeto te com o pronomesujeito Você que se faz presente desde o século XVIII, mostra-se vigoroso na escrita culta
familiar dos séculos XIX-XX e se generaliza nos dados de fala e escrita atuais (“Você disse para
eu te ligar”, cf. Lopes e Cavalcante 2011:32), parece que não faz sentido a aceitação da dita
mistura de tratamento como desvio, cf. Almeida (1957), ou a atribuição à ênfase ou à vacilação
no emprego do pronome pessoal o redobro de pronomes, cf. Rocha Lima (2001 [1972]:321),
Bechara (2002:143), respectivamente. No PB do século XIX o subsistema pronominal que
prevalecia já era o do PB falado atualmente, cf. discutido por Scherre et alii (2009), ou seja, era o
Subsistema I, caracterizado pelo predomínio do Você (e variações ocê, cê) em Minas Gerais.
PROPOSTA TEÓRICA: Tendo em conta o paradigma descrito acima, a hipótese que conduz
este trabalho é a de que o redobro de pronomes é mais do que uma ‘marca do dialeto mineiro’, cf.
Duarte e Diniz (2013), constituindo-se, pois, como uma evidência de um contexto
morfossintático de sobrevivência do pronome Tu pronominal cuja produtividade como pronomesujeito está circunscrita a uma configuração diatópica, como, por exemplo, a do Rio de Janeiro
em que o Tu alterna com o Você (Subsistema III), cf. Scherre et alii (2009). Em diálogo com as
considerações finais tecidas por Lopes e Cavalcante (2011:61) acerca da cronologia da inserção
do Você e da retenção do clítico te no PB, entende-se que o “(...) você, apesar de não apresentar
traços formais, apresenta os traços semânticos de segunda pessoa; os mesmos traços semânticos
que te apresenta. Por isso, uma combinação você (sujeito) com te (complemento) não pode ser
analisada como mistura de tratamento, pois estamos lidando com os mesmos traços semânticos.”
Nesta linha de investigação, outra hipótese é a de que o redobro do objeto no PB sinaliza para o
fato de que o português do brasileiro ainda retém uma marcação diferencial do objeto (=MDO),
de maneira similar a que ocorre em espanhol e catalão. Mais precisamente, nossa hipótese é a de
que sua função é marcar o fato de que o objeto é alto na escala de animacidade e de definitude.
Neste aspecto, o MDO no PB difere do MDO que prevalece em outras línguas românicas, como,
por exemplo, no espanhol e no catalão. Enquanto, nestas últimas, o MDO se estende a objetos
pronominais e a DPs humanos específicos em geral, os quais vêm sempre precedidos pela
preposição a, no português brasileiro, o MDO se restringe apenas a contextos de primeira e
segunda pessoa singular. Outra diferença importante é que o MDO em PB não engatilha a
preposição a, fato que sinaliza que a marcação diferencial do objeto de primeira e segunda
pessoa em PB é gramaticalmente codificada por meio dos clíticos “me” e “te”, os quais
constituem um subtipo de concordância diferencial no português brasileiro dialetal, cuja função é
denotar que o objeto é alto tanto na escala de animacidade quanto na escala de definitude.
Zenaide Teixeira and Heloísa Salles
Advérbios locativos na posição de sujeito no PB
Pesquisas como as de Pontes (1986; 1987), Kato e Duarte (2008), Munhoz e Naves (2010)
demonstram que uma das estratégias utilizadas para o preenchimento do sujeito no PB é o
30 alçamento de advérbios locativos e/ou sintagmas locativos para a posição de sujeito. Entre os
argumentos para a hipótese de os locativos ocorrerem na posição de sujeito, constam: 1 – o
desencadeamento de concordância verbal “A Belina cabe 60l de gasolina”/ “*A Belina cabem
60l de gasolina” (Pontes, 1986:19); 2 – a ocorrência anteposta ao verbo (posição canônica de
sujeito); 3 – a possibilidade de serem coindexados a uma categoria (nula ou pronominal) que
desempenha o papel de sujeito em oração coordenada ou encaixada: “Essas casasi batem
bastante sol e não ei possuem sistema de captação de energia solar”, “Essas casasi batem
bastante sol porque ei ficam distantes das árvores” (Munhoz e Naves, 2010, p.2). Munhoz e
Naves sustentam ainda que as estruturas de tópico-sujeito locativo são licenciadas apenas com
verbos inacusativos biargumentais, definidos pelo contraste (Bate sol *(na casa)/ Furou o pneu
(do carro)). Assim, tópicos-sujeito locativos não ocorrem em contextos que envolvem o
alçamento de sintagma modificador, como a seguir: “O carro furou o pneu”/ “?Aqui furou o
pneu”. Adotando Cinque (1999), notamos que a possibilidade de ocupar a posição de sujeito
interage com a tipologia sintática dos advérbios, pois está restrita aos advérbios ditos de VP. Ao
contrastarmos dados em que advérbios e NPs locativos ocupam a posição de sujeito no PB,
notamos também que NPs locativos comportam-se de maneira distinta de advérbios locativos.
NPs locativos são capazes de desencadear concordância com verbos inacusativos biargumentais,
enquanto advérbios locativos não: “Esse sítio e essa fazenda dão muita banana”; “?Aqui e ali dão
muita banana”. Notamos, porém, que advérbios locativos desencadeiam concordância com
verbos copulativos: “Aqui e ali são meu refúgio”; “?Aqui e ali é meu refúgio”. O contraste
sugere que a possibilidade de desencadear a concordância de número no verbo em estruturas
copulativas deve-se ao fato de tais construções permitirem leitura distributiva da relação entre o
predicativo e o argumento locativo. Tal leitura não está disponível para verbo inacusativo
biargumental, em que o predicado denota um evento homogêneo, que exclui a leitura distributiva
da relação com o argumento locativo. Concluímos que, diferentemente do NPs plenos, os
advérbios não manifestam a categoria ‘número’, inerentemente, embora manifestem a categoria
‘pessoa’. Finalmente, assumindo a hipótese de Baker (2004), que postula que nomes são
marcados pelo traço +N por possuírem índice referencial, chegamos à conclusão de que
advérbios locativos podem ocupar a posição de sujeito porque possuem índice referencial, sendo
categorias [+N], como os nomes. Concluímos que a ocorrência de advérbios locativos na posição
de sujeito está vinculada ao requisito de que a categoria seja um advérbio de VP, em que se
configuram as seguintes propriedades: o traço [+N], a presença de índice referencial, o traço de
pessoa (3ª pessoa), que permitem sua ocorrência na posição de sujeito, como licenciador do traço
EPP.
Special Panel on Portuguese-Speaking Communities in the U.S.
Don Warrin
The Changing Face of Portuguese-Speaking Communities inthe American West including
Hawaii
This presentation details the changing dynamic of Portuguese-speaking communities in the
West, including Hawaii. Commencing essentially in the 1970s the active Azorean immigrant
communities began to decline, while at the same time Brazilians were arriving in ever-increasing
numbers. These communities are quite distinct, with the Portuguese tending toward the rural
while Brazilians most often settle in more urban areas. The latter arrive generally better educated,
31 but not infrequently undocumented, making head counts more difficult.
Fernanda Ferreira
That’s exactly how my grandmother says it: best practices and dialectal variation in the L2
Portuguese classroom
Since the publication of my 2005 article titled “That’s not how my grandmother says it:
Portuguese heritage learners in Massachusetts” as well as the innovative Portuguese language
textbook Ponto de Encontro (Klobucka et al) there have been a number of studies (Gontijo,
unpublished dissertation, Ferreira & Gontijo 2011, Silva 2010) that have addressed, however
tangentially, the issue of Portuguese dialectal variation in the classroom. These studies have
brought forth the idea that students find more appealing (and less stressful) when their instructor
speaks in the same dialect as their family of origin. Some instructors are able to navigate
between these dialects, and assume that embracing that diversity is positive for students. To be
sure, the textbook used in most classrooms indicates, by the use of flag icons, which of the two
major dialects are used in oral practice activities. The present study shows, by means of an inclass survey, how students understand and react to that dialectal variation in the classroom, and
whether or not they believe it affects their performance in learning the language.
Meghan E. Armstrong
The Portuguese-speaking community in Hartford, Connecticut
Portuguese migration to New England began in the 18th Century, and started a chain of migration
to this region that would last for 200 years. In fact, due to the present economic crisis in Portugal,
Portuguese migration to New England has begun once again. With respect to the linguistic
phenomena found today in these communities, work has mainly been centered on Portuguesespeaking communities in Eastern Massachusetts. Large Portuguese communities are also found
in various parts of Connecticut. This talk focuses on needed research in the Portuguese-speaking
community in Connecticut’s capital city, Hartford. While Hartford has been home to generations
of European Portuguese speakers, newer Brazilian immigration has put dialects of European and
Brazilian Portuguese in contact. I will discuss this and other intricacies of the linguistic situation
in Hartford that will be of interest to Lusophone linguists and linguists in general.
Chad Howe and Pilar Chamorro
The Portuguese-speaking community in Georgia
In the last several decades, the number of immigrants to the United States from Brazil has
increased substantially. The largest populations of Brazilian-Americans are located in California,
Florida, New York, and New Jersey. Of the 560,000 respondents in the 2000 census who
claimed Portuguese as their home language, and 200,000 were from the Miami area (Azevedo
2005). According to the 2010 census, the Portuguese speaking population in the US has nearly
doubled in the last 30 years, with the Atlanta area experiencing a considerable increase,
particularly in the context of other Mid-Atlantic states. Azevedo (2005) notes that the Cobb
County schools have reported a population of 5,000 Brazilian students. Crucially, Azevedo also
points out that, “no large-scale systematic studies of the speech of Brazilians living in the United
States have been carried out” (2005:210). In this presentation we will address some questions
32 regarding Brazilian-Portuguese speech communities in Georgia and discuss several approaches
to the study of their Portuguese varieties in contact with English.
Luiz Amaral
The New England Corpus of Heritage and Second Language Speakers
The New England Corpus of Heritage and Second Language Speakers (NECHSLS) is an online
repository of oral and written production of heritage and L2 speakers of Spanish and Portuguese
in New England, with a special focus on communities from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut. Spanish and Portuguese were chosen as the initial languages for this project
because of their significance to our region. The corpus will be extended to other languages once
the initial phase of building the computational infrastructure is over. The ultimate goal is to
establish an online repository for L2 and heritage language production that can be used by
researchers of different languages. This project is still in the initial phase; some materials are
currently available and we are in the process of transcribing more.
Session V Red: Semantics and Pragmatics
Eleni Christodulelis
Pragmatic Constraints on Definite Article Use with Anthroponyms in Brazilian Portuguese
While the semantic and pragmatic differences between definite and indefinite NPs (e.g. the
book vs. a book) may appear obvious, there seems to be a more nuanced distinction between the
common use of definite NPs with a single definite element and those with more than one definite
element. This is the case of anthroponyms (people’s names) in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), which
may appear with an “optional” preceding definite article (e.g., ø João vs. o João, ø Maria vs. a
Maria) (Bechara 2006, Thomas 1969). In work regarding a different kind of NP with two definite
elements, Haspelmath (1999) proposed that languages that permit the coexistence of an article
and a possessor in the same NP prefer to explicitly mark definiteness at the expense of being
economical. This paper extends Haspelmath’s model by identifying the pragmatic parameters
that govern the presence/absence of definite articles with anthroponyms in BP using data from
native speaker felicity judgments.
The proposed analysis suggests that there is a primary divide between cases of article
felicity and cases of article infelicity, drawing on Donnellan’s (1966) referential-attributive
distinction, in which a referential description points to an entity and an attributive description
assigns an attribute to an entity, and Sperber and Wilson’s (1981) use-mention distinction,
whereby “uses” point to an entity and “mentions” only represent the expression and not the
entity. The article is felicitous, though not required, when the anthroponym is referential in
Donnellan’s sense and a “use” as per Sperber and Wilson. It is infelicitous when the
anthroponym is attributive per Donnellan or a mention in Sperber and Wilson’s sense. The
anthroponym in example (1) is a mention of the name, whose purpose is to assign a label or an
attribute to an entity, but it does not point to the entity in and of itself; the article cannot
felicitously appear in this context. In contrast, example (2) contains a referential anthroponym;
the person’s name points to an entity, specifically the individual denoted by the name Lara. The
article is felicitous, though optional, in this case. Overall, the data collected also reflect a strong
preference for the inclusion of the article in cases of optionality (e.g. in example (2) below), a
33 tendency that may reflect parallelism with Haspelmath’s (1999) theory for languages without
complementarity in possessive NPs.
This study shows that the so-called optionality of definite articles with people’s names in BP
can be profitably analyzed from a pragmatic perspective. BP is therefore highly interesting for
study when compared to languages with near-categorical, highly grammaticalized use or non-use
of articles with anthroponyms, such as Modern Greek and English, respectively. BP may employ
definite articles to ensure a definite, referential reading of NPs that could easily be interpreted as
referential in other languages without the article, and the preference for inclusion of the article in
cases of optionality may be symptomatic of progress toward grammaticalization in referential
contexts. This study provides insight into a construction that is found in a variety of languages
and contributes to a better understanding of the pragmatic role of the definite article in NPs that
are already definite without it.
Hannah Washington and Mary Beaton
Pragmatics and Indexicality: The case of 'favelado'
A tendency of language is to avoid synonymy due to lexical blocking effects (Horn
2007:175, Blutner 1998:9, Kiparsky 1982). Through a socio-pragmatic lens, however, it appears
that blocking does not always come into play. For example, the lexical items favelado and
morador de favela, both meaning ‘slum-dweller’ in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), co-exist in
semantic space. Language communities often have ideas about the contexts in which one should
use terms that have the same referential value. To explain the existence of the two lexemes in BP,
Author (2012) turns to the sociolinguistic framework of indexicality and follow Silverstein’s
(2003) model of orders of indexicality. Furthermore, they utilize Eckert’s (2008) indexical field
to represent meanings associated with favelado. In their model, morador de favela maintains only
the nth order indexical value, whereas favelado indexes multiple socially-determined meanings.
In this paper, we utilize Gricean implicatures within the framework of indexicality to bridge the
semantic and social perspectives, thereby offering an explanation for what the two forms “mean”
and how speakers choose between them.
Prior studies on socially-charged lexical semantics do not consider discourse pragmatic
factors in the development and use of these lexical items (cf. McConnell-Ginet 2002, Wong 2005,
Wong 2008, Author 2012, inter alia). Gricean pragmatics provides a framework to account for
social differentiation of semantically equivalent forms. Grice’s Conversational Implicatures are
context-dependent and calculated based on linguistic and/or extra-linguistic factors.
Conversational Implicatures include Generalized Conversational Implicatures (GCIs) and
Particularized Conversational Implicatures (PCIs), both of which are cancelable. While GCIs
arise unless blocked by the context, PCIs arise only under specific conditions. Evidence obtained
from blogs, news sources, and other naturally-occurring data from internet sources demonstrates
that the majority of indexical meanings associated with favelado a) arise unless blocked and b)
can be cancelled by adding additional linguistic context to an utterance. Consider the following
example:
(1) Eu sou favelado, mas não sou traficante!
‘I am favelado, but I’m not a drug dealer!’
In the example above, the implicature that all slum-dwellers are drug-dealers is cancelled by the
adversative clause beginning with mas. This example suggests that speakers have access to
clusters of implicatures that arise unless blocked.
34 We show that indexical meanings of favelado are, in fact, GCIs in most cases. The use of
morador de favela instead of favelado represents a move by the speaker to block the GCIs that
arise with favelado. That is, using morador de favela is not functionally equivalent to favelado
because the former blocks the implicated n+1 order meanings associated with favelado (Author
2012). Like Sinnott’s (forthcoming) pragmatic approach to explain T/V address forms, we adopt
a model in which GCIs are layered together, separately from PCIs. The layered model allows for
the grouping together of implicatures based on their pragmatic behavior. For lexical items, a
similar model is appropriate: for favelado, we propose that the most common negative indices
(such as traficante, pobre, ladrão) form a GCI cluster. In example (1), the speaker denies being a
traficante, rejecting negative indices associated with favelado. This effectively cancels the entire
cluster of implicatures whose meanings are implicated by both favelado and traficante. In certain
limited contexts, favelado is reappropriated (cf. Author 2012), providing the necessary
conditions for the emergence of positively-valenced PCIs. Our analysis shows the role of
pragmatics in social deictics; in other words, we demonstrate that speakers manipulate
implicatures in the creation and attempted destruction of place-based ideologies. Furthermore,
social indices that depend on the discourse context—whether phonetic ([t]-release in American
English [Eckert 2008]), morphosyntactic (T/V forms in Spanish [Sinnott forthcoming]), or
lexical (favelado)—are in fact pragmatic devices that fit within existing theoretical frameworks.
Ana Lucia Pessotto
Gradable modality in Brazilian Portuguese
In this paper I investigate the semantics of gradable epistemic modality in Brazilian
Portuguese (BrP) by comparing the modal verbs ‘dever’ and ‘ter que’. It is common assumption
that both express necessity and are sociolinguistic variants. However, a close look in the uses of
these verbs shows they are not synonymous. I argue they give different semantic contributions
because (i) they mobilize different conversational backgrounds: ‘ter que’ is not compatible with
epistemic modal bases while ‘dever’ is; and (ii) ‘dever’ works like a probability operator,
expressing a grade of comparative possibility. I base my analysis on the relative and gradual
kratzerian approach for modality in natural language, where the meaning of modals depends on
contextually given parameters, namely, the modal base and the ordering source.
Apart from the sociolinguistic and morphosyntactic differences (‘dever’ conveys formality
and is a defective verb), ‘dever’ and ‘ter que’ express different meanings because ‘dever’ is
evidential, while ‘ter que’ is not. In other words, the use of ‘dever-p’ (p = embedded proposition)
requires the availability and evaluation of (indirect) evidences towards p, from which an
inference about p can be drown (example 1). A ‘deve-p’ sentence can also be complemented
with a sentence warning to the possibility of p not to be the case, which is an evidence that
‘dever’ does not express necessity (example 2).
On the other hand, ‘ter que’ does not require the availability and evaluation of evidences,
which blicks it to convey an epistemic inference, like ‘dever’ conveys (example 3). If ‘dever-p’
means that, according to the evidences available, p is a better possibility than non-p (without
excluding non-p), ‘ter que-p’, on the other hand, does not allow this comparison and intuitively
excludes non-p. Thus ‘ter que-p’ cannot be complemented with sentences warning to the
possibility of p not to be the case (example 4). Also, ‘ter que’ is adequate to be uttered when
there is no evidence towards p. One can use ‘ter que-p’ to express her wish, or a way to achieve a
goal (example 5).
35 I conclude that ‘dever’ and ‘ter que’ differ in force and in the types of conversational
background they are compatible with. While ‘ter que-p’ expresses necessity (in all worlds that
come closer to the ideal determined by the ordering source, p is the case), ‘dever-p’ expresses
that p is a better possibility than non-p: in the worlds that are closer to the ideal, the non-p worlds
are not better ordered than the p worlds. Moreover, different from ‘dever’, ‘ter que’ is not
evidential (not compatible with epistemic modal base), but conveys bouletic, deontic and
teleological meanings. This proposal points towards a new line of investigation of BrP modals
and indicates a specialization in this language modal system: ‘dever’ is preferably epistemic; ‘ter
que’ covers the other kinds of modalities.
EXAMPLES:
Example (1): Context: Ana, Sam and Ria are planning to go to the restaurant X. Sam tells Ana he
wants to drink whiskey. This is the first time they are going to the restaurant X, and don’t know
the menu. Ana asks Ria if she knows if they serve whiskey in the restaurant. Ria answers:
(1) Deve ter (whiskey).
Deve to.have (whiskey).
‘There must/might be (whiskey)’.
Sentence (1) is naturally paraphrased as “É provável que tenha” (it is probable that have).
Example (2): consider the same context in (1).
(2) Deve ter (whisky), mas pode ser que não tenha (precisamos checar pra ter certeza).
Deve to-have (whisky), but may to.be that not have.SUBJ (we need to check to be sure).
The derivation of the meaning follows along this lines: we’re going to a restaurant; as far as we
know about restaurants, they usually serve whiskey; so, since we’re going to a restaurant, there is
a probability of there to be whiskey; but we’ve never been there before, so we cannot be sure. A
‘ter que’ sentence would not convey an inference in this situation, but the speaker’s position: If
Ria utters ‘Tem que ter’, she conveys that she strongly wants there is whiskey there. A ‘ter que’
sentence is adequate to be uttered by Sam, since he is the one who declaredly wants whiskey.
Example (3):
‘Ter que’ is odd in a diagnosis scenario. Assume we are observing the weather conditions, which
are indicating rain (dark clouds, sultriness, etc). According to our knowledge about weather
conditions, we utter:
(3a)
Deve chover. (‘Deve to.rain.’)
(3b) # Tem que chover. (‘Tem que to.rain.’)
Example (4):
(4) ?? Tem que ter (whisky), mas pode ser que não tenha (precisamos checar pra ter certeza).
? Tem que to.have (whisky), but may to.be that not have-SUBJ (we need to check to be
sure).
Example (5):
Context: Ria meets the new neighbor, talks to him for few minutes, and finds him interesting (for
a date, for instance). He gives no clue about his marital status. Ria, planning to flirt with him,
may utter:
(5) Ele tem que ser solteiro! (He tem que to be single, so I can ask him out, etc.)
Sentence (5) is not an inference about him being single (because Ria has no information from
which she can infer that). She just hopes him to be single, so she can ask him out, etc., which
yields a teleological reading.
36 Session V Black: Heritage Speaker Instruction and Proficiency
Maria Teresa Valdez
To teach or not to teach? - Choices for teaching grammar and writing to heritage learners of
Portuguese
Teaching and/or learning grammar and writing ― formal and academic registers ― are two
of the abilities of the language that pose more questions to students and teachers of Portuguese
heritage language (PHL) and represent a important research topic on heritage languages.
Grammar and writing teaching methodologies and issues are topics relatively new to the field of
heritage language research when compared to SLA. Researchers as Lynch (2008, 2012), Montrul
& Bowles (2010), Montrul & Perpiñán (2011), Roca (1997), Schwartz (2003), Valdés (2001,
2005, 2006, 2012), among others, show how difficult grammar and writing are for heritage
learners, especially when compared to second language learners. In fact, studies on heritage
language show that the more traditional approaches on grammar development based on linguistic
terminology tend to lead students to consider their heritage language learning difficult and
complex (e. g. Montrul, 2012; Valdés, 2005, 2006).
As has been shown, both heritage and traditional learners of Portuguese language tend to
consider writing as one of the more challenging linguistic abilities inside and out the classroom
(Silva, 2011). Writing skills (formal and academic formats) present multiple challenges for
heritage learners mainly because they are able to write formal styles, but primarily in English,
not in their heritage language (Acevedo, 2003). In relation to grammar, Valdés (2005) notes that
students consider very difficult to learn grammar rules taught to foreign language students. The
present study contributes to this discussion study by showing that teachers and students have
similar expectations on the methodologies chosen to teach these topics.
The present study is based on a survey presented to students and teachers of PHL. Analysis
of the results shows that teachers and students tend to share a more traditional and similar view
of learning grammar and writing. These views’ are in many aspects different to what is done for
SLA (e.g. Carreira, 2004; Roca, 1997; Schwartz, 2003; Valdés, 1981). The study also shows
perspectives and possibilities for future materials and class preparation on these topics, taking
into consideration the beliefs shown by the teachers and students, and promoting a better
understating of what methodologies must be used for PHL. The paper concludes with a
framework of possible approaches that will minimize any negative feelings of students and
teachers in relation to grammar and/or formal and academic writing acquisition methodologies
for PHL, following Carreira (2012), Valdés (2012) and others, that is a theory that can be
resumed to be a blend of methodologies of heritage and second language acquisition for better
acquisition of these abilities of the language.
Juliana Luna Freire
Português como língua de herança: registros e a prática pedagógica
O presente estudo aporta propostas metodológicas para a prática do ensino de Português
como Língua de Herança (PLH), observando o processo da aquisição de registros adicionais de
língua portuguesa, e também lidando com a presença de certas variantes estigmatizadas dentro
do contexto da sala de aula. Como uma reconceptualização do campo de Aquisição de Segunda
37 Língua, analisaremos o aprendizado linguístico em vários contextos do processo de
aprendizagem para abarcar a aquisição de segundos dialetos, como sugerido por Guadalupe
Valdés (2005) e outros educadores no campo de Espanhol como Língua de Herança, e dos
estudos já realizados sobre o ensino de Português como Língua de Herança. Discutiremos alguns
dos fatores determinantes para o contexto do ensino de PLH na sala de aula da universidade
norte-americana e seus fatores teóricos para propor práticas eficientes segundo a experiência
descrita.
Ao levar em conta a necessidade de preparar os alunos com ferramentas para o futuro e a
diversidade presente, percebemos a competência linguística como uma ferramenta de aplicação
profissional, mas que também respalda-se na motivação do aprendiz de língua de herança
baseada na afiliação cultural do mesmo. Como lidar com essas diferenças em termos de
motivação, material didático a ser adotado, procedimento de correção e como adequadamente
avaliar o desenvolvimento destes alunos? Encontramo-nos com uma situação similar ao que Jeff
McQuillan definiu como uma série de “proficiências desiguais na HL que não se enquadram
perfeitamente numa sala de aula de língua estrangeira tradicional” (57, tradução minha). Este
estudo parte de exemplos de atividades escritas e orais desses alunos de PLH para demostrar
dificuldades como a influência da oralidade na ortografia, assim como investigando as variações
inter e intralinguísticas apontadas por Valdés e da necessidade de explorar mais o papel da
instrução formal na restruturação das interlínguas (416). Por último, partindo da pergunta
proposta sobre o valor dado à variante local, como proposta por Eliane Rubenstein-Ávila, “can a
native speaker feel like an expert even when the language he/she brings to school is not awarded
legitimate status?” (67), investiga-se esse surgimento de uma variante de contato (Valdés 2005,
414), para que deixemos de centrarmo-nos nos erros (Potowski qtd. in Beaudrie 2011 323) e que
evitemos a perda geracional da língua (Correa 310), e assim analisar os efeitos do insumo
recebido pelos falantes de língua de herança nos contextos de contato da língua. Faz-se
necessário, portanto, identificar essa língua comum (Valdés), uma variante de contato que é
distinta da língua padrão a qual estamos acostumados em espaços urbanos e/ou variante de
prestígio no Brasil ou variante europeia, e que envolvem elementos de contato como alternância
de registros, empréstimos lexicais e estruturais, assim como variação dialetal (tanto regional
como social) (Penny 2000 qtd. in Valdés 2005).
A questão do preconceito linguístico e, seguindo a sugestão de Glenn Martínez (2000) de
inclusão dialetos distintos dentro da sala de aula, com programas de CBDA (classroom-based
dialect awareness), revaloriza o registro que motiva os alunos a continuarem aprendendo
português, assim reconhecendo seu papel identitário e comunitário. Vai mais além do uso de
textos autênticos (como sugerido por Silva 2010), e de intento de um bidialetalismo (como
sugerido por Valdés 1981), mas requer contato com falantes nativos (como sugerido por JouëtPastré e Braga), e buscar formar educadores com embasamento teórico para o tratamento desses
grupos. Parte-se, portanto, da proposta de um diálogo entre a literatura de área para questionar
algumas das nossas práticas educativas e incorporar alternativas para uma melhoria dos
resultados pedagógicos.
38 Session VI Red: Applied Linguistics
Rubia Bragagnollo and Solange Aranha
The ‘Project Teletandem Brazil’ and the institutional-integrated modality in teaching-learning
of Portuguese as a foreign language
The teaching and learning of Portuguese as a Foreign Language has expanded for some time
not only in its classroom format, but also in the online one. In Brazil, it was created a project
called “Project Teletandem Brazil” (TELLES, 2006), which initially aimed to provide
autonomous and reciprocal languages learning, involving pairs of (native or competent) speakers
whose aim is to learn each other’s language by means of bilingual conversation sessions
(TELLES & VASSALLO, 2006), based on the principles of tandem (BRAMMERTS, 1996). In
the beginning of the project, Brazilian university students interacted weekly, through tools such
as Skype, MSN or Oovoo, with foreign speakers according to the pairing of students carried out
after their enrollment in the project website (www.teletandembrasil.org).
Over the project, a new modality of teletandem was developed due to needs and
opportunities that partnerships with foreign universities brought to this context: the institutionalintegrated teletandem (iiTTD) (XXXX & YYYY, in press), which means that language learners
in Brazil, enrolled in undergraduate degree at a university, interact with learners of Portuguese in
other countries, also university students, during some time established by the professors of the
subjects where iiTTD occurs, following an agenda pre-determined that includes tasks to be
accomplished and that are part of the syllabus of the subjects. Some features may vary depending
on the agreements between the professors of the two universities involved, such as interaction
time, types of activities that students should do, among others.
The first partnership of the iiTTD occurred in the first semester of 2011, between the
Laboratory of Teletandem in the campus of UNESP, São José do Rio Preto, Brazil, and the
Department of Romance Languages at the University of Georgia (UGA), and happens until today.
The iiTTD, in this case, is held twice a year, for a period of eight weeks, with eight meetings via
Skype, of 1 hour each, which are carried out involving students from UNESP – Rio Preto who
attend one of the disciplines of English Language (Bachelor of Letters with specialization in
Translator or Degree in Letters diurnal) and UGA undergraduate students who study Portuguese
as a Foreign Language at the university. In addition to participating in all interactions, students
must fulfill some activities provided by the modality, namely: a) writing of a reflective diary
after each interaction, taking into account the goals they set and linguistic practice that takes
place during the sessions; b) writing, review and rewriting of texts in the foreign language; and
c) posting of the documents relating to the practice of teletandem (initial and final questionnaires,
diaries, original, revised and rewritten texts) in their portfolio, available at an online platform of
the university.
The experience between UGA and UNESP reveals evidences of increasing in the frequency
of interactions by learners and a greater involvement with the activities of teletandem by the
professor of the undergraduate courses, who integrates such activities to the program of his/her
discipline of foreign language. Based on this thesis, this paper aims to present a new setting of
interactions in the “Project Teletandem Brazil” context and discuss the possible contributions
that it provides.
39 Maggie Bullock
Brazilian Portuguese as a Foreign Language: Insights from English Language Teaching on
Register and Purposeful Instruction
With hundreds of millions of non-native speakers, English is the most widely taught foreign
language in the world today. As a result, English Language Teaching (ELT) benefits from a
wealth of instructional materials, competitive teacher education programs, cutting-edge research,
and constant innovation. While many of the practices of ELT are applicable to any foreign
language instruction, less-commonly-studied languages have yet to take full advantage of such
developments. In this paper I will discuss some specific ways that Brazilian Portuguese language
teachers and materials designers can profit from the existing knowledge base in ELT, particularly
concerning register-sensitive presentations of language and purposeful instruction that
emphasizes communicative language teaching.
All language occurs in a certain context or register, and varies in level of formality and
means of expression (i.e. written or spoken). In recent years corpus linguistics research has
provided ELT with more and more accurate descriptions of register-specific language, and a
good example of a corpus-based grammar text is Longman Student Grammar of Spokenand
Written English. Besides being register-appropriate, language instruction must be meaningful
and take into account the learners' goals. Murphy (2001) discusses the importance of purposeful
instruction, contending that, “It should be easily recognizable to learners that course contexts,
materials, and tasks reflect purposes for which they will be using English in the real world” (p.
22). Depending on the circumstances, it may be essential that purposeful instruction incorporate
communicative language teaching (CLT). Commenting on the CLT approach, Brown (2007)
states, “Students in a communicative class ultimately have to use language, productively and
receptively, in unrehearsed contexts outside of the classroom. Classroom tasks must therefore
equip students with the skills necessary for communication in those contexts” (p.46).
The imperative, future simple, and object pronouns are particularly challenging structures
for learners of Brazilian Portuguese as a foreign language because their usage radically differs
from the normative grammar. I will examine materials currently available for Portuguese
instruction, including Ponto de Encontro and Falar... Ler... Escrever... Português, focusing on
how they approach these difficult structures. In light of the concepts from ELT mentioned above,
I will discuss ways that instructors can make more effective use of the existing resources and
also propose how new materials can better incorporate knowledge from ELT.
Session VI Black: Syntactic Interfaces
Janayna Carvalho
O que causou o aparecimento de verbos labílicos no português brasileiro?
Entre as várias opções possíveis de marcação morfológica em verbos alternantes entre uma
forma transitiva e uma intransitiva, existem línguas em que tanto a forma transitiva quanto a
intransitiva não aparecem com marcas morfológicas, fenômeno retratado na literatura,
geralmente, como labile alternation. Neste trabalho, concentramo-nos nos dados de alternância
labílica (tradução nossa para o termo labile) no português brasileiro, doravante PB. Nessa língua,
esse tipo de alternância tem se tornado cada vez mais comum, como mostrado em (1).
Anteriormente, o tipo de alternância mais frequente era o exemplificado em (2).
40 Letuchiy (2009), ao estudar sobre os sistemas de verbos labílicos no mundo, esclarece que
alguns dos casos de verbos alternantes sem marcas morfológicas são resultado de uma restrição
semântica. Para a língua Adyghe, uma língua com a marcação na forma transitiva, a marca
derivacional não está presente em verbos labílicos da língua por uma questão de
incompatibilidade semântica entre os verbos da classe labílica e a marcação morfêmica. Outro
caso de restrição semântica possível citada pelo autor é a possibilidade de os mesmos verbos, em
línguas como o francês e o alemão, aparecerem com ou sem a marca em virtude de distinções
semânticas, como: controle ou não do participante da ação ou situações de oposição (ver um
exemplo em (3)). Nenhum dos dois casos parece contemplar a alternância labílica em PB, uma
vez que não há um grupo de verbos que aparece com a marca morfológica, obrigatoriamente, e
outro tipo que não aparece, como em Adyghe. As oposições situacionais apresentadas pelo autor
para o francês e o alemão também não são refletidas no PB.
Tendo descartado um fator semântico como o desencadeador de verbos labílicos, causa que
parece estar ligada à coexistência, em uma língua, de verbos labílicos e verbos com marca
derivacional, a hipótese que aventamos é a de que esse rearranjo nos verbos alternantes seja um
fenômeno da mesma natureza da perda de morfologia de concordância no PB. A marca
derivacional presente nas sentenças intransitivas com verbos alternantes do PB é um clítico (se) e,
seguindo a proposta de Kato (1999), afixos de concordância, clíticos e pronomes livres seriam,
em um dado ponto da derivação sintática, determinantes. Nas línguas de sujeito nulo, os afixos
do verbo e os clíticos podem subir para a posição de especificador de TP e checar os traços
categoriais dessa categoria funcional (caso o clítico não seja objeto). Assumindo essa proposta,
uma consequência lógica, apontada por Kato (op.cit.), é a de alguns clíticos podem nascer na
posição de especificador de VP e serem interpretados em Forma Lógica como sujeitos da oração.
Isso é exatamente o que parece ocorrer com a anticausativa marcada no PB, representada por (2).
Seguimos o trabalho de Schafer (2007), no qual se defende que a marcação em anticausativas
está ligada a um argumento subespecificado, ver em (4). Como resultado de, no PB atual, os
afixos de concordância e os clíticos, progressivamente, não poderem mais checar os traços em
TP, as sentenças intransitivas têm aparecido sem essa marca derivacional e o responsável pela
checagem dos traços de TP nas construções intransitivas com verbos alternantes é o DP (A porta,
por exemplo, na sentença 1b), fato que explica a limitada ocorrência da ordem VS em sentenças
intransitivas inacusativas. Em suma, defendemos que, para o PB, a causa da alternância labílica é
estrutural e está ligada a um fenômeno geral de perda de morfologia verbal na língua.
Exemplos:
(1) a. O João abriu a porta. (sentença transitiva sem marca morfológica)
b. A porta abriu. (sentença intransitiva sem marca morfológica)
(2) a. O João abriu a porta. (sentença transitiva sem marca morfológica)
b. A porta se abriu. (sentença intransitiva com marca morfológica)
(3) Controle do participante sobre a ação responsável pelo uso ou não da marca derivacional em
alemão ( dados de Letuchiy 2009: 233):
a. Er stürzte hinunter. “Ele caiu”
b. Er kletterte auf einen sehr honen Berg und stürtzte sich hinunter.
“Ele escalou uma montanha muito alta e se jogou ’’ (literalmente ‘Ele se caiu’)
(4) Marca derivacional em anticausativas como a existência de um argumento altamente
subespecificado:
a. O João (agente)/O vento (causa)/O martelo (instrumento) abriu a porta.
b. A porta se abriu.
41 a.
b.
a.
b.
O João (agente)/ ? O recipiente(instrumento) /O fogo (causa) ferveu o leite.
O leite (*se) ferveu.
O governo (agente) / A medida provisória (causa) / *O martelo (instrumento) aumentou
o número de cadeiras no Senado.
O número de cadeiras (*se) aumentou no Senado.
Aleksandra Vercauteren
The role of contrast in European Portuguese é que-clefts
It has been claimed that the cleft constituent (CC) in European Portuguese (EP) é que-clefts
has a contrastive interpretation (Casteleiro 1979, Duarte 2000 a.o.). On closer scrutiny however,
we have to say this is not true. In this communication, I will discuss the role of contrast in é queclefts, showing it is particularly relevant for the integration of the cleft in the discourse.
Ultimately, I will argue that contrast is a linguistically relevant phenomenon (Molnár & Winkler
2010, contra Lambrecht 1994).
As discussed by Lobo (2006), é que-clefts differ from ‘canonical’ EP clefts in that (i) the CC
always precedes the copular verb é (‘is’) (1b vs. 2b); (ii) the copula é in the é que-cleft is
invariable (1a vs. 2a), surfacing in the 3PS indicative present and (iii) the relativizer in the é que
cleft is invariably que “that”. Additionally, (iv) é que-clefts have the restricted distribution of
Main Clause Phenomena (MCP): e.g. they are illicit in temporal adverbial clauses (3), while
canonical clefts are available in this environment.
From a discursive point of view, the CC has to be d-linked. This the case when the CC is (i)
discourse-old or (ii) physically present in the discursive context. As a consequence, it can’t
constitute an answer to a question (4) nor can the cleft occur in contexts banning a dlinked
interpretation like Speech Act adverbials (5). Speech act adverbials don’t contribute to the
information exchange but modify the enunciation, hence, d-linking can’t occur within them.
Contrary to what has been claimed, the CC doesn’t need to be contrastive (7), although it often is.
The role of contrast in é que-clefts is two-fold. First, contrast can “save” non-d-linked CCs
(8). When no contrast or d-linking is involved, é que-clefts are inappropriate (9). The reason why
contrast can save non d-linked é que-clefts is because contrast implies the existence of a set of
alternatives. The existence of this set integrates the CC in a larger discourse context (Molnár and
Winkler 2010), making it d-linked. Second, in several contexts banning MCP, é que-clefts can
occur if the CC is explicitly contrastive. This is the case in for example factive complements. In
the example in (6), the adverb só “only” makes the CC contrastive in relation to all other
alternatives. The same influence of contrast can be observed in peripheral adverbial clauses and
in complements of nouns.
These observations are particularly relevant for two reasons. On the one hand, it can shed a
light on the nature of MCP blocking contexts, and on the other, it indicates contrast is a
linguistically relevant phenomenon.
It has been argued MCP can be accounted for recurring to intervention effects (Haegeman
2010 a.o.): operator movement in certain syntactic contexts, like eg. central adverbial clauses,
interferes with a similar type of movement undergone by another constituent, giving rise to
ungrammatical structures. In the case of é que-clefts this constituent is the CC. Since contrastive
é que-clefts can occur in some of the contexts identified as blocking MCP (factive complements
and complements of nouns), we have to assume not all of the MCP-blocking contexts are
identical. More specifically, é que-clefts are blocked in those contexts where wh-movement takes
42 place, eg. central adverbial clauses (Haegeman 2010), independently of the interpretation of the é
que-cleft. In the MCP-blocking contexts where wh-movement is harder to argue for, eg. factive
complements, contrastive é que-clefts can occur.
Given that contrast can “save” the appropriateness of é que-clefts in several discursive and
syntactic contexts, we have to assume it is a linguistically relevant phenomenon, which does not
simply arise from inferences from the context, contrary to what Lambrecht (2004) argues for.
More specifically, contrast contributes to discourse linking (Molnár & Winkler 2010): it places a
constituent in a set of alternatives, integrating it in a larger discourse context.
Aroldo de Andrade
Discourse Status and Syntax in the History of European Portuguese Marked Constructions
The proposed talk aims at analyzing the realization of two marked constructions in the
diachrony of European Portuguese: Topicalization (Top) and Left Dislocation (LD), understood
in terms of the generativist terminology: both involve a preposed constituent ‘x’ in the left
periphery of the sentence, the difference being that, where the former (1) has a gap in the base
position of ‘x’, the latter (2) shows a resumptive pronoun, an epithet or even a repeated nominal
expression to ‘x’ (Chomsky 1977; Cinque 1990, a.o.). Once the contexts of application of Null
Objects coincide of those for Top, we have also included them as a subcase of Top in which ‘x’
is null—cf. (3) and Raposo (1986). This topic presents the following research problem: whereas
all Old Romance languages had some form of Top, most of them—except Portuguese—only
show LD constructions, as illustrated for Spanish in (4) (in this language an apparent
counterargument would consist of generic preposed NPs without a resumptive (5), but this has
been recently taken as a masked type of CLLD where the clitic cannot be realized—cf. CasiellesSuárez 2004). Obviously the answer to this crosslinguistic question passes by first assessing the
evolution of the data from Classical Portuguese (ClP) until Modern European Portuguese (MEP).
We have approached this problem with the tools provided by corpus linguistics, oriented by
the theories at the interface between Syntax and Information Structure. The database included
about 500 sentences—showing either (an overt or null) Top or LD—collected manually from 15
plays and selections from Portuguese playwrights. The choice of dramaturgy texts has
considered: (i) their closeness to the oral mode, and (ii) context explicitness indicated by scene
descriptions, both being relevant to data classification, which took into account factor groups
related to ‘x’ itself such as: its outer category, internal composition, information status (measured
in terms of a givenness scale and of its referential distance to a previous occurrence of the same
referent); and factor groups related to the base position of ‘x’: its grammatical function, its
syntactic context (in matrix, embedded clauses and so on) and its expression (as a gap or as one
of the various resumptive elements). Finally, Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl’s (2007) proposal of
cartography into three topic positions was applied to the data, where different positions in the
Cdomain are distinguished according to their discourse status; these are called Aboutness-Shift
Topics, Contrastive Topics and Familiar Topics. An overview of the database is shown in (6),
where the data are grouped into two main temporal clusters with about the same size: authors
born in the 15th and 16th centuries (A); authors born in the 19th and 20th centuries (B).
The attained conclusions are: (i) Aboutness-Shift Topics and Contrastive Topics could be
resumed in both ClP and MEP, the choice of either Top or LD being related to the type of Poset
involved—a higher-value or lower-value one, cf. Ward & Birner 2001—among other things,
including the availability of a resumptive clitic; (ii) Null Objects are only found in MEP and
43 refer to Familiar Topics; (iii) Yiddish-type Top (with topic-VS order) drop considerably in the
MEP data, in favor of English-type Top (with topic-SV order), the former indicating that the
topic referent does not fulfill the truth conditions of the clause exaustively. A consequence of
these results is that the emergence of English-type Top in MEP is the mere consequence of the
syntactic change that created a dedicated position for preverbal subjects in Spec,TP, a corollary
of the loss of verb movement into the C-domain in the transition between ClP and MEP (cf.
Galves & Paixão de Sousa 2005, a.o.). In other words, it is not necessary to consider a separate
informational change in order to account for this singular evolution of Portuguese grammar.
Examples
(1) A Pimentai já eu deitei fora eci.
(E.S. Lucci [19th c.], Postiços, 256)
the pepper already I thrown away
‘The pepper, I have already thrown away.’
(2) Estes taisi nunca osi vós vereis chegar a esta idade.
(A. Ferreira [16th c.], Bristo, 18)
these ones never them you will.see arrive at this age
‘These ones, you will never see them arrive at this age.’
(3) ... (o batoni) gosto muito eci: é fresco, gentil
(B. Santareno [20th c.], Anunciação, 95)
... (the lipstick) I.like much: it.is fresh, gentle
‘I like (it) a lot.’ (= this lipstick)
(4) [Ese libro], sólo *(lo) encontré en la FNAC.
(Raposo 2004:42)
[this book], only *(it) I.found in the FNAC
‘This book, I have only found it in FNAC.’
(5) [Luces naturales], no sé si tengo _.
(Contreras 1976:85)
[lights natural], not I.know if I.have _
‘Natural lights, I do not know if I have them.’
(6) Database overview (excluding Focus Fronting and Adjunct Topicalization)
TOP
LD
Total
Cluster A
154
90
244
Cluster B
148
91
239
Session VII Red: Acquisition and Perception
Luciana Junqueira and Ashley Titak
How ‘Brazilian English’ is perceived by undergraduate students in the U.S.
The speaking skills of international teaching assistants (ITAs) have received increasing
attention due to reported difficulties undergraduate students in the U.S. have understanding these
ITAs. Consequently, sociolinguistics research has attempted to investigate undergraduate
students’ perceptions of non-native accents in order to shed light on what nationalities and what
specific accents seem to be more problematic. This presentation will briefly review the results of
these studies and report on a study that examined undergraduate students’ (n=27) attitudes
towards Brazilian Portuguese speakers of English at an American University. The study
investigated whether knowing the speakers’ nationality (Brazilian or American) in a verbal guise
(Ball & Giles, 1982) influenced the undergraduates’ evaluations of the speakers. Further, the
study examined whether the speakers’ gender and English proficiency level affected the listeners’
assessment. An open questionnaire was also used to elicit explanations for the quantitative scores.
The speakers were 4 Brazilians (2 males; 2 females) with varying English proficiency and 2
44 Americans (1 male; 1 female). They were evaluated on 15 characteristics under three
dimensions: solidarity, social status, and quality of language based on Lindemann’s (2003)
attitude questionnaire. The results showed that the undergraduates’ attitudes differed
significantly based on whether they knew the nationality of the speakers. Specifically, the
Brazilians were rated more positively by the participants who knew their nationality on the
Solidarity and Social Status dimensions, and the high proficiency speakers received the highest
ratings overall. This is in contrast to previous studies on attitudes in which non-native speakers
of English have been rated more negatively (e.g., Cargile, 1997; Lindemann, 2003; Ryan &
Bulik, 1982), indicating that certain nationalities may be perceived differently by undergraduates
in the U.S. The findings also revealed that all females were rated more positively than males.
Implications for international teaching assistants (ITAs) and ESL/EFL teachers will also be
discussed based on the qualitative portion of the study, in which the undergraduates explained
which positive and negative characteristics of the speakers influenced their ratings and why.
Emilia Alonso-Marks, Zinny S. Bond, and Verna Stockmal
Non-native Perspectives on the Perception of Rhythm: Genre in two Varieties of Portuguese
Dialects of languages, such as Portuguese, have been described as having very different
rhythmic properties (Barbosa, 2000; Frota and Vigário, 2001; inter alia). In order to investigate
the possibility of distinguishing between dialects of the same language, Bond, Stockmal, Marks,
and Woods (2008) calculated rhythm metrics based on acoustic-phonetic measurements
employing two different reading genres, prose and verse. They showed that the rhythmic
categorization of the two genres and the two language varieties was not clearly categorical but
rather ranged along a continuum. Research in this area has focused on measurements to
categorize the rhythmic pattern of genres and dialectal differences using native speakers.
However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has had non-native speaking listeners judge
the effect of these two conditions on dialect identification. The current project investigates
judgments about genres – prose versus verse – and dialectal differences in languages listeners do
not know. Basing their judgments on different genres, are listeners able to make accurate
judgments and to tell dialects of the same language apart? What are the effects of genres on the
detection of dialectal differences in unknown languages?
Thirty-two non-native participants listened to 5-second speech segments using different
genres of the same language and seventeen non-native participants listened to 5-second speech
segments using different dialects of the same language. Then, they were asked to make
same/different judgments about those two conditions, genre and dialect. Results showed that
while listeners were able to make accurate judgments about genres, they were not equipped to
tell dialects of the same language apart. We will discuss the implications of our findings and the
effect that genre plays on how listeners perceive the rhythmic properties of language varieties.
45 Miriam Jorge
Português e Cultura Afro-Brasileira: Experiências de Formação Crítica de Estudantes NorteAmericanos
Este trabalho analisa, discute e apresenta resultados de uma prática de ensino de Português
para estudantes dos Estados Unidos, vivendo no Brasil, embasada, principalmente, em princípios
da Linguística Aplicada Crítica, do Multiculturalismo Crítico e do Letramento Crítico.
Contextualizado em um projeto de intercâmbio para estudantes de graduação do Brasil e dos
Estados Unidos, cujo foco são os legados da diáspora africana nos dois países, procuramos
desenvolver uma proposta de curso de Português e Cultura Afro-Brasileira, coerente com a
temática do projeto. Esperava-se, por meio dessa abordagem metodológica, criar oportunidades
de aprendizagem e desenvolvimento da competência linguistico comunicativa dos estudantes por
meio de uma compreensão crítica sobre a história, as identidades e a diversidade brasileira, tendo,
nos legados da diáspora africana, um eixo norteador para o planejamento do ensino, bem como
para a escolha do conjunto de textos, temas e atividades que constituiriam as unidades didáticas
trabalhadas. A Linguística Aplicada Crítica, considerada por Pennycook (2001), uma “linguística
com atitude” foi um dos principais referenciais teóricos que embasaram a formulação do curso.
Segundo o Pennycook (2001) é necessário ter uma nova atitude diante do ensino de línguas que
seja marcada por constante ceticismo e permanente questionamento sobre aquilo que se faz em
linguística aplicada, demandando que questões de gênero, classe, sexualidade, raça, etnia, cultura,
identidade, política, ideologia, discurso e poder sejam consideradas na delimitação dos objetos
de estudo nessa área. Igualmente importante para nosso projeto, foi a adoção do
Multiculturalismo Crítico como perspectiva para o ensino de Português e Cultura Afro-Brasileira,
pois consideramos que o ensino/aprendizagem de língua estrangeira (LE) sempre implica o
desenvolvimento de uma visão de cultura dos países onde a língua é falada, bem como
representações de seus falantes. No entanto, Kubota (2004) alerta-nos para o fato de o ensino de
LE ser historicamente marcado por um tipo multiculturalismo liberal, eurocêntrico e colorblind,
no sentido de naturalizar as diferenças e não tratá-las como construções socioculturais. No caso
do Letramento Crítico, esse pode ser considerado uma prática pedagógica que trabalha relações
de linguagem e poder, associando a linguagem a visões de mundo, práticas sociais, questões de
identidade e cidadania, além de outras questões de interesse local e global. Em síntese,
fundamentados nas teorias anteriormente mencionadas, procuramos construir um curso em que
múltiplas linguagens (literatura, cinema, música etc.) e disciplinas (história, geografia, cultura
popular etc.) pudessem significar, para nossos alunos, uma experiência de vivência no Brasil em
que linguagem e cultura fossem estudadas para permitir a participação em diferentes práticas
sociais mediadas pela linguagem, tendo como protagonista a presença africana no Brasil. Assim,
dos legados da diáspora africana, exploramos não só a cultura ou as identidades etnicorraciais
brasileiras, mas também as persistentes desigualdades sociais que acometem a população afrobrasileira e os mecanismos de superação e resistência ao racismo no Brasil. Assim, estamos
construindo um caminho de formação para a cidadania global de intercambistas.
46 Walkiria Teixeira and Miriam Jorge
Aprendizes de Português como Etnógrafos: Estranhamentos e Significações de estudantes
intercambistas americanos no Brasil
O foco deste trabalho é a formação de intercambistas americanos no Brasil por meio do
desenvolvimento da competência linguística comunicativa e cultural destes estudantes.
Discutiremos, portanto, um projeto de ensino em que a etnografia foi uma ferramenta importante
para a exploração das percepções dos alunos sobre a cultura de Belo Horizonte. A formação dos
intercambistas é compreendida como uma oportunidade única de levar o aluno-aprendiz da
língua/cultura estrangeira a vivenciar uma outra cultura buscando levantar os “estranhamentos
culturais” (Roberts, 2000) a partir da experiência de confrontação com a sua cultura natal
(NIEDERAUER, 2010). De acordo com Tsvetkova e Karastateva (2001) a etnografia foi usada
por ser esta uma abordagem que permite ao aluno atuar como observador e analista do seu
aprendizado (BUSNARDO, 2010), promover uma competência intercultural (JORDAN, 2001). e
apresentar a oportunidade para que esses alunos desenvolvam uma “sensibilidade antropológica”
(POCOCK, 1975). Além disso, na compreensão da cultura estrangeira, a etnografia pode colocar
o aluno como analista e observador das práticas sociais cotidianas, confrontando-as com sua
realidade, em lugar de ser apenas um mero aprendiz fechado em uma sala de aula (BUSNARDO,
2010). Os pressupostos teóricos da etnografia nos processos de aprendizagem de língua
desdobraram-se na proposta de uma abordagem de ensino que fizesse do aluno um observador e
atribuidor de sentidos àquilo que, muitas vezes, está “invisível” para os próprios brasileiros.
Sendo assim, optamos por considerar nossos alunos como aprendizes-etnógrafos, sendo que os
mesmos eram solicitados a, diariamente, refletir sobre os eventos de seu cotidiano, a partir de
possíveis estranhamentos e da atribuição de sentidos a esse estranhamento. Neste trabalho,
apresentamos, portanto, os estranhamentos dos alunos e os diversos significados sobre esses
estranhamentos. Os resultados de nossas análises indicam como os cursos de língua portuguesa
como segunda língua, língua estrangeira ou adicional podem criar, tanto para os alunos quanto
para os professores, oportunidades para a reflexão e compreensão da outra cultura sem
“julgamentos e comparações etnocêntricas, além da oportunidade de pensar sua própria cultura
por meio de outra” (NIEDERAUER, 2010). Da mesma forma, discutimos como formar
professores que possam mediar as percepções que os estudantes têm das culturas locais, por meio
do contraste crítico e da construção de conhecimentos históricos, culturais e sociais que podem
mediar a compreensão das leituras do mundo (FREIRE, 1970) por aqueles externos a um
contexto socio-histórico-cultural especifico.
Session VII Black: Variation and Change
Cintia Pacheco
Evidências de mudança recente no português uruguaio de Aceguá (fronteira Brasil-Uruguai)
O objetivo do trabalho é mostrar que o pronome a gente, tipicamente brasileiro, ultrapassa a
fronteira do Brasil e chega ao Uruguai, em Aceguá, o que ajuda a corroborar a existência de uma
variedade do português também no Uruguai. Portanto, a análise variacionista é feita a partir da
alternância pronominal de nós e a gente no português brasileiro e no português uruguaio de
Aceguá, localizada na fronteira Brasil-Uruguai. O aparato teórico utilizado para a pesquisa é a
47 Teoria da Variação, proposta por Labov (1972), a Teoria da Mudança Linguística, desenvolvida
por Weinreich, Labov e Herzog (1968), e o estudo sobre o contato linguístico do ponto de vista
da variação linguística, que tem como precursora Poplack (1993). A análise quantitativa dos
dados é feita através do novo pacote de programas Goldvarb-X (Sankoff; Tagliamonte & Smith,
2005; Pintzuk, 1988). A hipótese geral é de que o pronome a gente estaria mais avançado no
português brasileiro de Aceguá do que no português uruguaio de Acegua, pois se trata,
possivelmente, de um fenômeno recém-chegado nessa variedade linguística, visto que o
português uruguaio é um dialeto conservador, falado nos meios rurais, e em geral distantes das
tendências urbanizadoras do Brasil. Diacronicamente, no caso do português brasileiro, o uso de a
gente como indefinido ou referência genérica é que ocupa a lacuna do sistema linguístico desde a
evolução do latim, uma vez que passou a indicar neutralidade. No espanhol, houve a inserção do
termo uno ou una como indefinido. Sincronicamente, a expressão lexical plena a gente passou a
equivaler a nós, tanto no português brasileiro quanto no português uruguaio. O pronome a gente,
tipicamente brasileiro, é utilizado de forma variável para expressar primeira pessoa do plural,
independentemente de ter a referência genérica ou específica. Se na língua espanhola há o
correspondente nosotros para a primeira pessoa do plural, o esperado era que houvesse
convergência no português uruguaio para o pronome semelhante nós do português brasileiro. No
entanto, mesmo tendo uma variante correspondente (nós e nosotros) em termos de forma e
função, os bilíngues passaram a utilizar também o pronome a gente nesse mesmo contexto
linguístico, ou seja, fazem a distinção inconscientemente de duas formas semelhantes, la(s)
gente(s) e a gente, em funções distintas, já que aquela é utilizada como 3ª pessoa do plural no
espanhol e esta como 1ª pessoa do plural no português. As evidências de ser uma mudança
relativamente nova no português uruguaio são: (i) a variação pronominal de primeira pessoa do
plural ainda não tinha sido investigada/encontrada no português uruguaio; (ii) a variável função
sintática demonstra que o pronome a gente no português uruguaio aparece mais na posição de
sujeito, ou seja, menos gramaticalizado; (iii) enquanto outras variedades do português brasileiro
já utilizam a concordância não padrão a gente vamos, no português uruguaio ainda inexiste essa
construção, o que mostra que o pronome a gente está de fato menos gramaticalizado na fronteira;
(iv) o pronome a gente não ocorre em qualquer tempo verbal no português uruguaio; (v) a
categoricidade do pronome nós em seis entrevistas de uruguaios em detrimento de uma
entrevista brasileira.
Exemplos
[1] Pronome A GENTE na fala de um bilíngue em português e espanhol
Entrevistadora: Lá é integral, como é que é que funciona?
Entrevistado: Eu entrava oito da manhã e saía às quatro da tarde. A GENTE almoçava lá.
(VAL, mulher, 15 a 30 anos, uruguaia, ensino médio)
[2] Pronome A GENTE na fala de um monolíngue em português
Entrevistadora: Hum. Mas esse curso você fez aqui mesmo?
Entrevistado: Aqui na receita, eu trabalhei direto né. Eu fiz o curso com eles também, é mais
palestras, não é uma coisa... a teórica deles é na prática, a minha teórica era fazer um despacho,
eu ganhando o dinheiro fazendo isso aí, entendeu? Então vem o cliente, A GENTE APRESENTA
a mercadoria, LIBERA a mercadoria, e aí é a aprovação do fiscal, se ele carimbou tu ta
aprovado. Se liberou o caminhão tá aprovado. Nós passamos 4 mil cabeças de gado aqui no
tempo que eu trabalhei...
(EDI, homem, 31 a 49 anos, brasileiro, ensino superior)
48 [3] Pronome NÓS na fala de um bilíngue em português e espanhol
Aqui o pessoal não tem, NÓS NÃO TEMO e aqui todo mundo tem lareira em casa, porque se
não tiver uma lareira tu não soporta o inverno aqui.
(ROT, mulher, adulta, uruguaia, ensino médio)
[4] Pronome NÓS na fala de um monolíngue em português
Se liberou o caminhão tá aprovado. Nós passamos 4 mil cabeças de gado aqui no tempo que eu
trabalhei...
(EDI, homem, 31 a 49 anos, brasileiro, ensino superior)
Carolina Andrade
O papel da origem das mães em dialetos em formação (oriundos de dialetos em contato) – o
caso de Brasília
O presente trabalho trata da variação linguística que ocorre em Brasília, capital do Brasil,
entre os pronomes de segunda pessoa do singular: você/cê/tu. Este último pronome, o tu, entrou
para o escopo linguístico do brasiliense recentemente, acerca de uma década, apenas (cf.
Andrade, 2004 e Lucca, 2005) e, talvez, seu estabelecimento no dialeto brasiliense ocorra em
função do importante papel do imput oferecido pela mãe quando da aquisição linguística pela
criança.
Nosso estudo se insere em Brasília, uma cidade que foi planejada e construída há pouco
mais de meio século (hoje com 53 anos) e que, portanto, passa por processos de difusão e
focalização dialetal, nos termos de Bortoni-Ricardo et al (2010). Brasília é composta por
imigrantes de todo Brasil, sendo que nordestinos, mineiros e goianos são os imigrantes mais
recorrentes. Essa tendência migratória tende a influenciar na formação linguística da variedade
brasiliense. Por exemplo, em nosso estudo, verificamos que o tu, uma forma bastante marcada
que é largamente recorrente no nordeste, mas ausente no centro do país, curiosamente ocorre em
Brasília (uma cidade localizada no centro geográfico do país), uma vez que sua população foi
composta massivamente por nordestinos em contato com as demais regiões brasileiras. O
resultado é que a cidade é um local de uso do tu isolado geograficamente.
Nosso estudo se baseia na sociolinguística variacionista, ou Teoria da Variação Linguística.
Entre muitos pressupostos, Labov (2001: 447) estendeu o período de aquisição da linguagem até
os 17 anos, observando que as crianças mais novas (entre zero e cinco anos) seguem,
inicialmente, o padrão linguístico de seus pais (com foco na linguagem materna) e, mais tarde,
após esta primeira fase de aquisição, elas costumam seguir o padrão linguístico de seus pares.
Hazen (2005: 516) analisa o papel dos pais em várias pesquisas realizadas a partir de fenômenos
de variação em função dos falantes e seus familiares, e chega à conclusão de que as crianças que
mais seguem os padrões linguísticos de seus pais são aquelas as quais pertencem às famílias que
imigraram recentemente.
Temos, assim, que o dialeto que surge em Brasília, segundo nossos estudos, se encaixa nas
teorias anteriormente apresentadas. Em Brasília se verificou a forte tendência, decorrente do
contato entre dialetos, de apagamento de formas marcadas do uso da língua, de forma que a
presença do tu, por agora, não seria esperada. Observamos, porém, que os brasilienses que estão
formando esse novo dialeto, nesse período posterior da primeira fase de aquisição, apresentam,
fortemente, traços da influência da variedade materna no dialeto que estão adquirindo e
formando. Uma evidência disso é que, em Brasília, filhos de mães mineiras tendem a usar mais a
variante cê, enquanto os filhos de mães nordestinas tendem a usar mais a variante tu.
49 Exemplos: (usados em Sherre et al (2009) e Andrade (2010)).
P: “parece, mas não é, cara, se TU for ficar lá uma semana, véi, TU vai querer voltar no
primeiro dia, porque lá, véi, as brincadeiras é tudo diferente das daqui, véi, não tem polícia e
ladrão, não tem pique esconde, não tem nada, véi, é muito paia. “ (origem da mãe: nordestina)
F: “já, é muito massa a guitarra lá, aí tem uma hora que (...), aí CÊ tem que fazer assim, CÊ tem
que fazer assim depois ó. E aquela...a do {init.}” (origem da mãe: mineira)
Michael Gradoville
Social and stylistic variation in the reduction of Fortalezense Portuguese para
Although the reduction of Portuguese para to pra (and several contracted forms) is certainly
a well-known phenomenon, it is not particularly well studied. Many authors (e.g. Perini 2002,
Thomas 1969) assert that the reduced forms are used (almost) categorically in speech. Gradoville
(2012), in a real and apparent time study of educated Portuguese from Rio de Janeiro found
evidence that the reduction of para to pra was increasing in that variety. The present study
examines the social and stylistic patterning surrounding the reduction of para in the educated
spoken Portuguese of Fortaleza. Fortalezense Portuguese contributes an additional layer of
complexity compared to many varieties of Portuguese in that, as in other varieties of Northeast
Brazilian Portuguese (Marroquim 2008 [1934]), complex onsets with a rhotic also alternate with
a simple onset such that both pra and pa occur in this variety. This study looks both at the
syllable reduction and the rhotic alternation portions of this process.
This study employs variationist methodology using data from the Corpus Português Oral
Culto de Fortaleza (Educated Oral Portuguese Corpus of Fortaleza; Porcufort; Monteiro 1993).
This corpus of approximately 500,000 words includes data from seventy-five different
individuals with conversation, interview, and formal styles represented. The first dependent
variable of this study examines the reduction of para to p(r)a. The second independent variable of
this study investigates the alternation between the rhotic form pra and the non-rhotic pa.
Independent predictor variables being used in this study include sex (male, female), age (defined
scalarly), father's origin (Fortaleza, other area of Ceará), mother's origin (Fortaleza, other area of
Ceará), and type of interaction (conversation, interview, formal). To account for the hierarchical
nature of the variables, the tokens were collapsed on the basis of individual speakers and then
analyzed using linear regressions in R (R Development Core Team 2012).
Looking at the reduction of para to p(r)a, of the 4775 tokens in the sample, 83.0% are
reduced. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that, while the differences between the
conversations and the interviews are not statistically significant, the data from the formal
elocutions exhibit significantly less reduction than the interview data (p ≤ .01). The most notable
pattern in the reduction of para to p(r)a, though, is a negative correlation between age and
reduction (p ≤ .001). In other words, reduction increases, the younger a speaker is. Although
speaker sex does not approach statistical significance, females reduce at a much higher rate than
males.
With respect to the rhotic alternation in p(r)a, of the 3962 reduced tokens in the sample,
24.0% are of the non-rhotic pa. None of the predictor variables analyzed contribute a
statistically-significant effect on the rhotic alternation. Nevertheless, there are a few interesting
tendencies that warrant future research. The non-rhotic pa occurs at a much lower rate in the
formal elocutions and in the speech of women. The non-rhotic form also occurs at a much higher
rate in the speech of individuals who have a parent from outside Fortaleza, which might
50 correspond with an association of the form with rural areas of Ceará.
The quantitative evidence in the current study of Fortalezense Portuguese coincides with
Gradoville's (2012) finding for Rio de Janeiro Portuguese that the reduction of para is increasing
and, given the already high rates of reduction, approaching the categoricity to which Perini
(2002) and Thomas (1969) refer. This study also finds evidence that in formal situations
educated speakers of Fortalezense Portuguese use less of the reduced form p(r)a. The present
study contributes to our knowledge of the social and stylistic aspects of this understudied
variable.
Josane Oliveira
O futuro verbal em português: mapeando uma mudança linguística no Brasil
Analisa-se a expressão variável do futuro verbal no português brasileiro, do ponto de vista
sociolinguístico, com destaque para a relação entre as modalidades oral e escrita. Para este
estudo, a partir de dados dos séculos XX e XXI, foram consideradas várias cidades de todas as
regiões do Brasil. Os dados de fala foram coletados de entrevistas sociolinguísticas e os dados de
escrita advêm de jornais. São apresentados também resultados de outros pesquisadores que se
dedicaram ao tema (SANTOS, 1997; GIBBON, 2000; SANTOS, 2000; MALVAR, 2003;
MENON, 2003; OLIVEIRA, 2006; SOUZA e OLIVEIRA, 2009; TESCH, 2011; OLIVEIRA,
2012; OLIVEIRA e MENON, 2012; OLIVEIRA e ALMEIDA, 2013).
O fenômeno estudado não é exclusivo do português; é atestado em muitas outras línguas (e
não somente romanas ou latinas), como em inglês, em francês, em espanhol, em italiano, em
romeno e em sardo. Em português, essa variação apresenta quatro formas: a) o futuro simples
(viajarei amanhã); b) o presente (viajo amanhã; c) a perífrase com ir no presente + infinitivo
(vou viajar amanhã; e d) a perífrase com ir no futuro + infinitivo (irei viajar amanhã).
De acordo com o qadro teórico-metodológico da sociolinguística quantitativa laboviana e
segundo os princípios do paradigma da gramaticalização, a análise dos dados mostra que: a) há
uma inversão parcial entre o futuro simples e o futuro perifrástico, este para a fala e aquele para a
escrita; b) o presente é mais utilizado na fala e em contextos bem específicos, ficando fora da
concorrência; c) as perífrases com ir + infinitivo invadem a língua escrita e chegam mesmo a
ultrapassar o futuro simples na fala; d) há um processo de gramaticalização do verbo ir, que
passa de verbo pleno a auxiliar na composição da forma perifrástica com o infinitivo para
exprimir o futuro.
Admite-se a hipótese de uma mudança em curso, ou seja, a substituição do futuro simples
pelo futuro perifrástico (condicionada por certos contextos sociolinguísticos), já estabilizada na
fala e em implementação na escrita, já que a forma inovadora chega a 100% nos dados orais e a
30% nos dados de escrita.
Session VIII Red: Comparative Corpora
Stephen Fafulas
Morphosyntactic Variation in Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and English: Simultaneous
Narrations of the Pear Stories Film
Brazilian Portuguese (BP), Spanish, and English differ in their expression of progressive
aspect, notably in the present (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca, 1994). In BP and English, the
51 progressive is obligatory in referencing ‘ongoing’ action while in Spanish it is not. In contrast,
the simple present is overwhelmingly used to reference generic and actions/states covering a
broader time frame than the present. This is illustrated in the following example in which both
the Spanish simple present and present progressive are used to encode the meaning ‘action in
progress’ (example 1), while in BP and English only one form (estar + V-ndo/be + V-ing) is
available for this function (example 1b).
(1) a. Simple present verb form:
*Olha, agora sai o sol.
Mira, ahora sale el sol.
*Look, the sun comes out now.
b. Present progressive verb form: Olha, agora está saindo o sol.
Mira, ahora está saliendo el sol.
Look, the sun is coming out now.
In Spanish, the progressive form alternates with the simple present in certain contexts
(Fafulas & Diaz-Campos, 2010), but is disfavored with achievement and stative verbs. Similar to
BP, the English progressive is considered to be obligatory (Bybee et. al, 1994) but it is not
accepted with all stative verbs, although this trend is changing (Aarts, Close, Wallis, 2010).
(2) Progressive w/stative:
Estou gostando esse pão de queijo.
*Me está gustando este pan.
*I’m liking this cheese roll.
Furthermore, as shown by Mendes (2010) for BP, and Fafulas & Diaz-Campos (2010) for
Spanish, the progressive is available for “repetitive action”, while in English it is less acceptable:
(3) Progressive w/repetitive:
Cada dia o doutor está chegando tarde.
Cada día el doctor está llegando tarde.
*Everyday the doctor is arriving late.
This state of affairs leads to a number of interesting questions of import to scholars of
crosslinguistic variation. However, studies that empirically test the uses of the simple present and
present progressive in Spanish, English, and BP, with the same data set, are scarce.
In total, 30 participants, including speakers of BP, English, and Spanish, watched the Pear
Stories Film (http://www.pearstories.org/) and were asked to simultaneously tell the story with as
much detail as possible. Recently, Croft (2010) analyzed 20 NS English narrations from the
‘Pear Stories Film’ and concluded that morphosyntactic variation is pervasive in pear story
narratives and that this method is appropriate for viewing morphosyntactic change in synchrony.
The current study departs from previous studies of the ‘Pear Stories Film’ by investigating
data obtained from simultaneous narrations, rather than participant retells of the story (e.g.,
Chafe, 1980). Each present-time token was coded for nine linguistic factors, including: lexical
aspect, adverb, clause-type, polarity, animacy of the referent, and object type, form, position and
number. Significant differences were found between each language regarding frequency of the
variants of the dependent variable. Furthermore, each language displayed a distinct prototype for
the progressive. This study adds to previous studies of simple present/progressive variation by
offering the first cross-linguistic analysis of simultaneous narrations in Spanish, English and BP.
52 Luciana Junqueira
Book Reviews in Brazilian Portuguese and English: A Corpus-Based Analysis of
Metadiscourse Features
Book reviews are an invaluable tool in helping academics select what to read and also play a
major role in graduate students’ academic careers as one of the first genres they attempt to
independently produce and publish (Motta-Roth, 2001). However, despite the importance of
book reviews in academia, this genre was, for a long time, neglected in applied linguistics
research (Hyland, 2000). Only in the past two decades works have begun to be published on the
rhetorical patterns (e.g., Carvalho, 2001, 2002; Motta-Roth, 1995; Suárez & Moreno, 2008) as
well as linguistic features of book reviews (e.g., Gianonni, 2006; Moreno & Suárez, 2008, 2009;
Tse & Hyland, 2009).
Hyland (2000) used a qualitative methodology to investigate praise and criticism in book reviews
and further introduced a metadiscourse framework divided into two models: textual
metadiscourse and interpersonal metadiscourse. This model has been used in the study of
academic texts such as research articles (Hyland, 1999) and dissertations (Hyland & Tse, 2004),
but to our knowledge it has not yet been applied to the comparison of book reviews across
languages. This model has been used in the study of academic texts such as research articles
(Hyland, 1999) and dissertations (Hyland & Tse, 2004), but to our knowledge it has not yet been
applied to the comparison of book reviews across languages.
The present exploratory study used Hyland’s (2000) metadiscourse model to investigate
book reviews in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and English in order to analyze how the writers of
these reviews engage with their texts as well as with their readers. Drawing on the
aforementioned research on metadiscourse and book reviews but taking a more quantitative
methodological approach, the objective of the present study was to examine how interpersonal
metadiscourse is used in book reviews in BP and English across three disciplines (Applied
Linguistics, History, Psychology) and to explore what corpus-based analyses of metadiscourse
features can reveal about evaluation in book reviews. The corpus compiled for this study
comprised 180 (90 from each language) academic book reviews (approximately 300,000 words
total) published in international academic journals from 2001 to 2010. Among other findings, the
study revealed that the total number of metadiscourse features was considerably higher in the
English corpus than in the BP one, especially emphatics and personal markers, suggesting that
BP reviews may be less evaluative than the English counterparts as was the case with book
reviews in Spanish and Italian (Moreno & Suarez 2008; Giannoni, 2006). Additionally, hedges
were the most frequent features in both languages and attitude markers were the least frequent.
Finally, the metadiscourse expressions used in the study proved very useful in the investigation
of evaluative language in book reviews. Possible explanations for cross-cultural and disciplinary
differences are offered along with applications of corpus-based genre studies to evaluative
language.
53 Viviana Cortes and Maggie Bullock
A comparative study of lexical bundles in history writing in American English and Brazilian
Portuguese
The study of recurrent word combinations such as lexical bundles has become a focus of
many corpus-based studies in the last decade. Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan
(1999) defined lexical bundles as sequences of three or more words that occur frequently in a
register. In English academic writing, frequent lexical bundles are expressions such as as a result
of, on the other hand, and from the perspective of to mention only a few.
This presentation reports the findings of a study that analyzed the use of lexical bundles
identified in a one million-word corpus of history articles from Brazilian publications. The most
frequent 4-word lexical bundles were identified in this corpus and classified structurally and
functionally. Some examples of these lexical bundles are ao mesmo tempo em, de acordo com o,
and com o objetivo de, among many others. As a second stage in the analysis, the use of these
bundles was compared to lexical bundles in English and Spanish that had been previously
identified in two corpora of history articles from American and Argentinean publications (Cortes,
2008).
The bundles identified in the corpus of Portuguese showed structural characteristics that are
closely related to bundles frequently found in academic writing (phrasal bundles). In addition,
the functional classification showed that some bundles shared functions connected to academic
prose and to the essence of the discipline (referential bundles and discourse organizers), as well
as to the topics discussed in the publications from where the texts had been extracted. These
functions occurred across the three languages analyzed in the study.
This presentation will also introduce various pedagogical applications of the findings of the
present project, as well as suggested paths for future research.
Cristina Perna and Karina Molsing
The pronominal use of se in academic written Portuguese
There seems to be an evolution under way in the Brazilian Portuguese (BP) pronominal
system, as found in spoken corpora (Menon 1993, Bandeira 2007), and also with respect to the
null subject status of this Romance language (Duarte 1995, Barbosa et al 2005). The present
study aims to investigate whether any such changes occur in academic written BP. This corpusbased research builds on an ongoing research project focused on Portuguese for Academic
Purposes. The current state of our corpus-based research includes the following areas: Computer
Science, Engineering, Linguistics and Literature. The corpus is composed of undergraduate
materials produced by students as well as teaching materials used by professors in a small
selection of Brazilian universities. With a focus on author presence and the author-reader
relationship in academic texts, we present a classification of the meaning and uses of verb-final
pronominal clitic se and apply it to the four areas mentioned. This classification results from a
two-stage analysis: (1) a syntactic-semantic analysis and (2) a discourse-pragmatic analysis. We
also analyze verb-independent pronominal uses of se as well as the use of overt first person
pronouns, in singular and plural forms. In addition to comparing these four academic areas, we
also compare the use of pronominal stance in student-produced materials to that of teaching
materials. Regarding the aforementioned evolution in pronouns, academic writing still appears to
54 follow conservative, traditional linguistic patterns when compared to changes found in spoken
corpora, but is also showing signs not typical of null subject languages. Despite this, traditional
grammars were shown to be unsuccessful in accounting for all the uses of se, particularly in
academic contexts. Future stages of this research include the construction of a spoken corpus in
academic contexts such that further investigations can be made regarding the apparent changes
occurring in the BP pronominal system. This study can be useful for research related to academic
language, use of corpora for research on the acquisition of Portuguese as an Additional Language
(PAL), for building teaching methodologies in the area of PAL and for the future elaboration of a
proficiency exam for Academic Portuguese.
Session VIII Black: Syntax
Luiz Amaral
What Can Prepositional Phrases in Portuguese Teach us about Indirect Recursion?
Ever since Hauser et al. (2002) presented the idea that recursion is the fundamental property
of language that allows for its basic computational mechanism, there has been a great interest in
the phenomenon and its various realizations in different languages (cf. eg., Roeper and Snyder,
2004; Everett, 2005; Nevins et al., 2009). There are basically two different kinds of recursion:
direct and indirect (Limbach and Adone, 2010). Direct recursion is sometimes also referred to as
numeration, concatenation or conjunction, such as in example (1). Indirect recursion presupposes
a hierarchical embedding of categories, as in example (2).
One of the most important properties of indirect recursion is that it affects the interpretation
of the constituents in a way that the each phrase modifies all embedded ones. There are several
examples in human languages of constructions that are utterly ambiguous when it comes to
indirect (3a) vs. direct recursion (3b). Despite the claim made by Chomsky (1995) that only
indirect recursion involves the strong minimalist thesis, there has been little or no debate on what
linguistic mechanisms/structures favor indirect versus direct recursion.
In this paper, I argue that we have to look at individual lexical properties of phrasal heads to
identify general tendencies in preferred interpretations for embedded constructions. More
specifically, I argue that Portuguese has two types of prepositions "de" that behave differently,
favoring different types of embedding. The first one establishes possessive or relative relations
(pos) between the two adjacent nominal constructions, while the second one establishes other
types of relations (rel), such as origin, type, etc. PP attachment will ultimately depend on the
type of its head. In cases where both PPs are headed by depos the reading tends to be less
ambiguous, favoring indirect recursion, such as in (4), where the most readily available reading
is the one where "the toy belongs to the dog and the dog belongs to João". However, a lower PP
headed by derel tends to be much more ambiguous in terms of its attachment. In (5), the PP "da
Bolívia" can either license a case of direct or indirect recursion, where the fiancée could be both
"da Bolívia" and "do homem", or she could be "the fiancée of the man and the man is from
Bolivia". Notice that in the first reading we have a clear case of direct recursion, where the order
of the constituents does not modify the final interpretation, while in the second one the order is
crucial to establish the correct reading. The same phenomenon can be observed in (6), where
both "the friend" or "the man" could be "in a bad mood".
It is important to notice that the classification presented here is purely based on the role that
different types of the preposition "de" play in embedded constructions, and it differs significantly
55 from other attempts to classify this preposition (e.g. Cunha and Cintra, 1985; de Moura Neves,
1999; Bechara, 2001). The idea that lexical features (or cluster of features) could favor specific
types of recursion has important implications for generative theories of language acquisition,
since it allows the development of different hypotheses about the acquisition of a fundamental
property of human language that responsible for its basic computational mechanisms.
Examples
(1)
John saw [[Mary], [his brother] and [his teacher]].
(2)
[John's [bother's [teacher]]] saw Mary.
(3) a. The man [that saw the woman [that was wearing a hat]].
b. The man [that saw the woman] [that was wearing a hat].
(4)
O brinquedo dopos
cachorro
dopos
João.
the toy
of the dog
of the John.
'John's dog's toy.'
(5)
A noiva dopos
homem darel
Bolívia.
the fiancée of the man
of the Bolivia
'The man's fiancée from Bolivia.'
(6)
O amigo dopos
homem derel
mau
humor.
the friend of the man
of
bad
humour
'The man's friend in a bad mood.'
Bruna Karla Pereira
New patterns of agreement and deixis with possessives in Brazilian Portuguese
In standard Brazilian Portuguese (BP), either prenominal or postnominal possessives agree
with the noun in gender and number, as in (1). In non standard BP, however, it is common to
find sentences in which 2nd person possessives do not agree in number with the noun, as in (2).
This paper investigates the syntax of this pronoun in postnominal position under a comparative
and formal approach (GIORGI & LONGOBARDI, 1991; CHOMSKY, 2001; MIYAGAWA,
2010; KAYNE, 2012). Comparatively, in (2), the possessive establishes gender agreement with
the noun, as in Spanish (3a), but number agreement with the possessor, as in English (3b).
Formally, the possessive pronoun, just like the genitive de vocês, is prevented from being in
prenominal position (4b), which means that the possessive suas is lower than the NP in the DP
hierarchy.
According to Bernstein (2005), based on Cardinalleti (1998), postnominal possessives are
strong forms, because they show more complex morphology than the prenominal ones, weak
forms. For instance, in Spanish, postnominal possessives (5a) have gender and number
agreement while prenominal possessives (5b) do not show gender agreement, which means that
the former is richer in its morphological composition. Though the authors consider that
postnominal possessives are more complex, it is not expected, under this assumption, that a
postnominal possessive in Romance may show a plural affix while the noun is singular. That is
why Spanish (7c) is ruled out. However, against expectations, non-standard BP (6c) is not ruled
out.
In BP (6a) and in Spanish (7a), the DP genitive (de vocês and de ustedes) makes clear the
agreement with a plural possessor and hence the reference to more than one possessor, but sua
(6b) and suya (7b) do not do so. Therefore, it seems that, in the lack of a possessive pronoun
which is able to mean exactly what de vocês (6a) means, speakers (especially in dialects from
56 Minas Gerais) have been choosing the plural pronoun even with singular nouns (2, 6c). With this
kind of agreement, the possessive pronoun has its 2nd person deictic value enhanced as the
speaker wants to make sure the speech is being properly addressed to two or more listeners. In
order to formalize the features that have been described, we may consider the diagram in (8). The
possessive is merged in a low position but still higher than the NP. That is why the NP raises to
Spec,AgrPossP. AgrPossP is explained, following Cinque (2005, p. 325-326), by the fact that
each phrase (e.g.: AP, NumP, DemP) needs to be endowed with a nominal feature to be counted
as part of the extended projection of NP. When merging above it an Agr(eement) head, this
requirement is met. AgrPossº, merged above the PossP, has only one feature (FEM) agreeing
with the possessive. In contrast, another head, Possº, has person and number features (2PL)
agreeing with the possessor. Therefore, number agreement is not held inside AgrP with the noun,
but with the possessor in some other projection (PossP), under different conditions.
(1) a. As suas casas (the your-FEM-PL house-FEM-PL – your houses)
b. As casas suas (the house-FEM-PL your-FEM-PL – houses of yours)
(2)
“Fico imaginando [a alegria suas] quando viram o relatório pronto”(Lavras, August,
2013)
(I) keep imagining [the-FEM-SING joy-FEM-SING your-FEM-PL] when (you) saw the
report done
I imagine how happy you were after having finished the report.
(3) a. las casas suyas (the-FEM-PL house-FEM-PL your-FEM-PL – houses of yours);
b. the house of its/theirs/yours
(4) a. a alegria de vocês/ a alegria suas (the-FEM-SG joy-FEM-SG of you-PL / the-FEM-SG
joy-FEM-SG your-FEM-PL)
b. *a de vocês alegria/ *a suas alegria (the-FEM-SG of you-PL joy-FEM-SG/ the yourFEM-SG joy)
(5) a. casas suyas (house-FEM-PL your-FEM-PL)
b. sus casas (your-PL house-FEM-PL)
(6) a. o seio da família de vocês (the core of-the-FEM-SG family-FEM-SG of you-PL)
b. o seio da família sua (the core of-the-FEM-SG family-FEM-SG your-FEM-SG)
c. o seio da família suas (the core of-the-FEM-SG family-FEM-SG your-FEM-PL)
(7) a. el seno de la familia de ustedes (the core of the-FEM-SG family-FEM-SG of you-PL)
b. el seno de la familia suya (the core of the-FEM-SG family-FEM-SG your-FEM-SG)
c. *el seno de la familia suyas (the core of the-FEM-SG family-FEM-SG your-FEM-PL)
(8)
[DP Dº A [...AgrPossP ALEGRIAi Agrº FEM-SG [PossP SUAS Possº FEM-PL [NP
ti]]]]
Julio Barbosa, Paula Armelin, and Ana Paula Scher
Parametric Variation observations from Brazilian Portuguese: is there dative shift in
Romance?
In this work, we bring light to the debate between micro- (e.g., Kayne, 2005) and macrovariation (e.g., Baker, 2008) approaches by looking at the phenomena of dative constructions in
Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and the challenge presented by one of its dialects, spoken in the Zona
da Mata region in the state of Minas Gerais (henceforth MBP), which superficially resembles
English double object constructions (cf. (2)). Our claim is, following Scher (1996) and Armelin
(2011), that the constructions in MBP, though superficially similar to double object constructions,
57 do not behave like English-type double-object constructions. According to Armelin (2011), these
constructions present topic characteristics, which suggests the change in the order of arguments
is due to vP left periphery displacement (Rizzi, 1997, Belletti, 2002, apud Armelin, 2011) (cf. (1),
(2)). In order to explain the asymmetry in these constructions, two aspects of datives in MBP are
essential: (i) the alternation between the prepositions a and para (both akin to the English
preposition to), since only verbs that take a are able to omit their preposition, and (ii) the topic
reading for the indirect object is the same with or without the preposition (cf. (1b)-(2b)).
Furthermore, in both BP and MBP, verbs that are not supposed to occur in the double object
construction, such as verbs of fulfilling (3) or verbs of continuous causation of accompanied
motion in some manner (4) (Levin, 2006) cannot have even a traditional dative form. That means
the prepositional forms in BP and MBP carry both the dative and the so-called allative form (cf.
Levin, 2006) readings, which allows for an interpretation of both forms as based from a single
structure, with the sole variation being the presence of the preposition.
Based on this and other empirical evidence, we claim that, no matter what the construction (or
language) in case, all dative/double object constructions are derived by the same prepositional
structure P, following the lines of Hale & Keyser’s (2002) basic dyadic structure, yet relying on
the Distributed Morphology framework (Halle & Marantz, 1993), which, consequently, allows
another important independent evidence relation – the proximity between the structure of N+N
compounds and datives (Barbosa, 2012).
In order to explain the relation between compounds and dative/double object constructions,
we follow the adaptation of the Compounding Parameter (Snyder, 2001) made by Barbosa
(2012), in which BP expressions with the preposition de (of, from) share the locative and
possessive readings. Based on the [poss] and [loc] features, Barbosa (op. cit.) suggests that
compounds (5) and datives (6) share the same structure P, varying only the surface realization of
their vocabulary items. In English, possession dominated by v has a phonologically null
vocabulary item, which allows the complement of the functional projection (i.e., the goal), to
adjoin – and consequently – be linearized in front of the theme, which occupies the position of
spec, P. In BP, the same vocabulary item is used for both possession and location (the same
occurring in MBP), and the phonological content always blocks the compulsory dislocation
effect, what blocks any double object-like structures in both dialects.
Furthermore, the data in (2b) can be ruled out as being double object constructions, since the
ambiguity is granted even in the BP dialect where no inversion is allowed. The absence of the
preposition’s phonological content in the case of MBP lies in a microparametric variation that
occurs between MBP and BP, in which both displaced and in situ topics selected by verbs that
allow the a preposition can be deleted. The difference in this case is that the preposition is out of
v’s c-command domain, and, therefore, is only erased due to informational issues, which are not
subject to the compulsory dislocation operation.
(1) a. A Maria deu [o livro] [a/para o Paulo]. (BP/MBP)
The Mary gave the book to the Paulo
b. A Maria deu [a/para o Paulo] (topic) o livro. (focus)
The Mary gave to the Paulo the book
(2) a. A Maria deu [o livro] [o Paulo]. (MBP)
The Mary gave the book the Paulo
b. A Maria deu [o Paulo] (topic) [o livro]. (focus)
The Mary gave the Paulo the book
58 (3) a.
b.
(4) a.
b.
(5) a.
b.
(6) a.
b.
?Eu creditei/confiei/abasteci/confiei isso para você.
‘I credited/entrusted/supplied/trusted this to you.’
*Eu creditei/presenteei/confiei/abasteci/confiei (para) você isso.
(Based on Gropen et al 1989, p.244, apud Levin, 2006, p.7)
?Eu carreguei/puxei/empurrei/carreguei/levantei/abaixei/arrastei isso para você.
‘I carried/pulled/pushed/schlepd/lifted/lowered/hauled this to you.’
*Eu carreguei/puxei/empurrei/carreguei/levantei/abaixei/arrastei (para) você isso.
(Based on Gropen et al 1989, p.244, apud Levin, 2006, p.7)
Carrot cake = a cake made of[loc]/with[poss] carrots
Bolo
de cenoura = a cake made of[loc]/with[poss] carrots
Cake
of carrot
A Maria deu o livro a/para[loc/poss] o Paulo.
Mary gave a book to[loc/*poss] Paul./Mary gave Paul[poss/*loc] a book.
Lílian Teixeira De Sousa
Negação sentencial e elipse no Português Brasileiro
1. Os fenômenos de elipse são geralmente tratados a partir de duas hipóteses conflitantes: a
hipótese semântica, que defende a identificação elipse-antecedente é de natureza semântica; e a
hipótese sintática, que 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. Nesse estudo, discutimos dados do
Português Brasileiro (PB) que evidenciam o papel da estrutura informacional no licenciamento
de elipses.
2. Nos dados em (01) e (02a-b), tanto em inglês quanto em português, o item negativo na
segunda sentença compõe a informação nova. No inglês, o item negativo é anexado ao verbo
auxiliar e a informação redundante não é pronunciada; no PB o não, embora única informação
nova, não pode ocorrer sem a presença do verbo, como pode ser observados nos dados em (02ab). No entanto, se o conjunto “sujeito-negação” é interpretado como informação contrastiva, o
não pode ocorrer isoladamente, como mostra o exemplo (03). Intuitivamente, a distinção entre as
sentença (02) e (03) está na interpretação contrastiva observada em (03), mas não em (02).
3. Teixeira de Sousa (2012), ao analisar as estruturas negativas [Neg V], [Neg V Não] e [V Não],
argumenta que há no PB três itens lexicais diferentes com a mesma forma morfológica: 1) o não1,
marcador de negação sentencial, que ocorre sempre em posição pré-verbal e que pode ser
reduzido para num; 2) o não2 presente na posição final de sentença em estruturas [Neg V Não],
que funciona como uma variável sobre tempo indicando negação de proposição; e 3) o não3 das
estruturas [V Não], funciona como negação externa, analisado enquanto foco
contrastivo/exaustivo. Nessa análise, o não1 tanto em estruturas [Neg V] quanto [Neg V Não]
tem características de um clítico, necessitando de um verbo como hospedeiro, enquanto o não3,
foco contrastivo, seria fonologicamente independente. Considerando a proposta, podemos dizer
que enquanto em (02) a estrutura é não contrastiva e o elemento negativo representa a negação
semântica não1, em (03) nós teríamos a presenta do item contrastivo, o não3. Tal explicação
encontra respaldo ainda no trabalho de Namiutti (2008). Segundo a autora, em construções
elípticas como em (02), o não não pode ser reduzido para num, além de ser essencial a presença
59 de acento tonal (ver (04)). Assim, o que os dados em (02) e (03) parecem indicar é que o
licenciamento da elipse, em alguns casos, se dá devido a questões de estrutura informacional.
Disso podemos ainda inferir que os dados em (02) e (03) correspondem a duas diferentes
estruturas, o que serve de evidência para a interpretação de que há estrutura nas sentenças
elípticas ou que, pelo menos, há estrutura em um caso, mas não em outro.
4. Considerando a proposta de Teixeira de Sousa (2012) para a negação sentencial, observamos
que os diferentes itens negativos têm escopo sobre diferentes elementos da estrutura, ou melhor,
eles são derivados em diferentes fases (Chomsky 2005, 2008). O não1 teria escopo sobre a fase
vP, o não2 sobre o TP na fase CP e o não3 sobre o item movido para a periferia à esquerda da
fase CP. Assim, enquanto o não3, contrastivo, corresponde a uma estrutura de deslocamento, o
não1 permanece amalgamado ao verbo. Assim, podemos interpretar que quando há deslocamento,
o constituinte movido é interpretado como foco/tópico contrastivo e o local da elipse precisa de
uma representação sintática; quando não há nenhum movimento envolvido, como nos casos
ilustrados pelo dado em (02b), não há a necessidade de se propor um estrutura sintática e a
construção é explicada pelo recurso da proforma.
60