The morphosyntactic status of Brazilian Portuguese cardinal bases

• Grant number: 25/00602-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: August 11, 2025
• End date: February 10, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Ana Paula Scher
• Grantee: Fernando Valls Yoshida
• Supervisor: David Embick
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Pennsylvania, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/17997-0 - The bases of counting on language: a systematization of the bases of the Brazilian Portuguese numeral system, BP.MS

Abstract

The proposed research internship project aims to determine the morphosyntactic status of Brazilian Portuguese cardinal bases. Although it is generally recognized that numerals across languages may behave like traditional parts of speech such as nouns and adjectives, there is variation regarding (i) the composition of a numeral system in terms of the category of its members; (ii) in systems divided between adjective- and noun-like numerals, the point in the counting sequence where numerals of different categories split; and, (iii) for numerals of the same category, the set of category-specific features each of them overtly realizes. When it comes to Brazilian Portuguese cardinal bases, the crosslinguistic scenario is well represented in both its generalizations and empirical challenges. In this sense, the characterization of -enta '-ty', cem 'hundred' and mil 'thousand' - which do not manifest categorial behavior in the same fashion as the adjective-like base -centos 'hundred (bound)' or the noun-like milhão 'million' - is particularly puzzling. In this regard, we consider three main hypotheses, formulated along the lines of the Distributed Morphology (DM) framework: categorially covert bases are (I) Root modifiers of functional nodes, (II) nouns occupying specifier positions along the nominal functional projection, or (III) morphologically defective adjectives. The predictions of these hypotheses are to be evaluated from not only numeral-noun constructions, but also from approximatives, diminutive-modified cardinals and de-numeral derivatives. As such, the research internship with Professor David Embick not only benefits from his experience on the morphology-syntax interface and his leading position in DM theorization, but it also directly contributes to the Scholarship in Brazil project's main goal of determining the status of bases in verbal counting systems.