| Name: | Description: | Size: | Format: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 325.63 KB | Adobe PDF |
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
This paper discusses the syntax of naming constructions with the verb chamar
‘to call’. We show that in some varieties of European Portuguese the verb
chamar displays an alternation in the expression of the named entity, which is
manifested by the presence/omission of the preposition a in sentences like
Nós chamamos (a) isso cruzeta ‘lit. We call (to) this hanger’. We will look at
this phenomenon from an areal, historical and theoretical perspective, trying
to relate the intricate patterns observed. We will show that the alternation
with the verb chamar is attested in the course of the diachrony of Portuguese,
but it is synchronically confined to two restricted geographical areas: the
archipelago of the Azores and the northern region of the Portuguese
continental territory. As for the theoretical analysis, we claim that both the
variants involve a small clause complement structure, with the named entity
in the subject position. The a that precedes the subject of the small clause is
taken to be a kind of ‘dummy’ preposition that showed up as a strategy to
resolve syntactic ambiguity in sentences exhibiting the verb chamar with the
personal pronoun se (which were ambiguous between an impersonal and an
anticausative reading).
Description
Keywords
Naming constructions Verb chamar Prepositional subjects Small clause Complement structures
Citation
Cardoso, A., & Magro, C. (2012). The syntax of naming constructions in European Portuguese dialects: variation and change. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 11(1), 23–43. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jpl.90
Publisher
Ubiquity Press