Gerund clauses in Brazilian Portuguese

• Grant number: 13/20648-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: January 20, 2014
• End date: July 19, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Marcello Modesto dos Santos
• Grantee: Suzana Fong
• Supervisor: Susanne Wurmbrand
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Connecticut (UCONN), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 12/23196-5 - Building a nonfinite domain: the syntax of gerund clauses in Brazilian Portuguese, BP.MS

Abstract

There seems to be a wide variety of clauses formed with a verb in its gerund form. Some occur in argumental position, others as adjuncts and still others independently; when in argumental position, they can be subjects or complements. Their internal properties are also quite varied. However, contrary to prima facie impression, it seems to be possible that some complement gerund clauses can be grouped in two neat categories. On the one hand, a subgroup of complement gerund clauses display a certain behavior concerning the properties X, Y, Z; on the other, the remaining subgroup display an almost diametrical behavior along the same axis. The research thus aims at answering questions such as the following: is such a behavior of complement gerund clauses just a coincidence? Are these properties amenable to a syntactic analysis, that is, can these properties be derived from their syntactic derivation? Do other, non-complement gerund clauses behave similarly? Can they be provided with a comparable syntactic analysis? In sum, the goal of the research is to outline an unifying syntactic analysis of gerund clauses, from which their properties fall out. (AU)