Periphrases and prepositional phrases with 'a + infinitive' in Portuguese and Spanish: a further look on the grammaticalization of 'estar + a + infinitive' in European Portuguese

• Grant number: 24/08908-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2024
• End date: December 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Historical Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Charlotte Marie Chambelland Galves
• Grantee: Heloisa Nogueira Marques
• Supervisor: Anabela Proenca Leitao Martins Goncalves
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/13049-0 - Variation in the progressive forms of Portuguese from the 16th to the 19th century: a corpus-based study of Brazilian and Portuguese dramatic texts, BP.IC

Abstract

This research aims to compare the rise of the progressive form 'estar + a + infinitive' in European Portuguese and the lack thereof in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. The objective is to compare the frequency and the contexts of use of periphrases or prepositional phrases with 'a + infinitive' in European Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, so as to describe the factors in European Portuguese that lead to the grammaticalization of the construction 'estar + a + infinitive'. To that end, a quantitative analyses will be carried considering the frequency of the constructions in the languages, and a qualitative analysis will be held based on the categories of lexical and grammatical aspect, as well as the inflection values for the auxiliary verb 'estar' or the verbs that have an adjunct prepositional phrase of the kind 'a + infinitive'. The data used for the analysis of Spanish will be extracted from the Corpus Diacrónico del Español, in dramatic texts written by Spanish authors from the 17th to the 19th century; the chosen period of time seems to correspond to the years surrounding the grammaticalization of 'estar + a + infinitive'; the Portuguese and Brazilian data will be extracted from the corpus used in the main research project.