Morphosyntactic analysis of the Wh-constructions in the Portuguese spoken in Cape Verde

Author(s)

Francisco João Lopes

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2017-05-04

Examining board members

Márcia Santos Duarte de Oliveira; Nélia Maria Pedro Alexandre; Gabriel Antunes de Araujo; Charlotte Marie Chambelland Galves; Marcelo Amorim Sibaldo

• Advisor: Márcia Santos Duarte de Oliveira

Abstract

This Thesis, entitled \"Morphosyntactic analysis of the Wh-constructions in the Portuguese spoken in Cape Verde (PCV)\", consists of the first morphosyntactic description and analysis of a group of construction called Wh-construction in the literature and their subgroups relative constructions, Wh-interrogatives and cleft constructions in the Portuguese spoken in Cape Verde Islands (hereinafter PCV). The analysis and description presented are: (i) done from a set of an original group of corpora collected during three field works, carried out in accordance with the techniques of field linguistics; and (ii) based on Grammar Theory, under the minimalist perspective of derivation by phases - (Chomsky, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2008). The results obtained corroborate the initial proposal that: (i) the Cape Verdean speakers present different degrees of linguistic competence in PCV. This linguistic variety, although not the first language of the Cape Verdeans, enters their lives, although only in the auditory and perceptive skills, from early childhood; (ii) the formal education process later develops the reading and writing skills, aiming to bring the grammar of the PCV closer to European Portuguese, in a process that generates different results at the individual level, depending on the degree of use of the PCV by the Cape Verdean speaker; (iii) The analysis of the Wh-constructions corroborate the PCV as an autochthonous variety of the Portuguese language in formation, in close relation of linguistic contact and whose origin can be traced as concomitant with that of the CCV; (iv) with regards to the grammatical aspects in which the PCV diverges from the Europiam Portuguese, although convergent with the CVC, cannot be taken categorically as cases of \'transfer\' from the CCV to the PCV, since such phenomena are also observed in other varieties of the Portuguese language in the world. In the part of analysis are presented derivational proposals for the relative, interrogatives-Wh and cleft constructions. With regard to the clefts, a derivational monoclausal proposal is made, which consists of the reformulation of the proposal presented by a group of researchers that diverge from the traditional proposal that is seen in the literature for this type of sentences. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/06629-8 - Wh constructions in the Portuguese spoken in Cape Verde islands
• Grantee: Francisco João Lopes
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate