Definite determiners: a study about DPs structure in the history of Portuguese

Author(s)

Tatiane Macedo Costa

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2016-12-02

Examining board members

Charlotte Galves; Sonia Maria Lazzarini Cyrino; Aquiles Tescari Neto; Aroldo Leal de Andrade; Telma Moreira Vianna Magalhães

• Advisor: Cristina Job Schmitt; Charlotte Galves

Abstract

Based on the theoretical framework of Generative Grammar, more specifically on the Principles and Parameters Theory (see Chomsky (1986) and subsequent works), this research seeks to conduct a diachronic survey on the definite articles in the grammars of Classical, European, and Brazilian Portuguese, through description of the structural, semantic and distributional aspects of definite noun phrases. More specifically, we aim to (i) describe the variability on the use of articles in Portuguese grammars, (ii) analyze the possible relationships between the occurrence of articles and the syntactic function of the noun phrase, and (iii) identify possible differences in interpretations associated with the presence of the article in the various grammars under examination. In order to fulfill these objectives, we studied the use of definite articles next to proper nouns, possessive pronouns and inalienable nouns. The motivation for choosing these contexts is based on the fact that proper nouns, possessive pronouns and inalienable nouns are considered to be able to convey definiteness, raising the question on what the role of the definite article could be when it co-occurs with those elements. The corpus of this study is composed of sixteen syntactically annotated texts available in the Corpus Tycho Brahe (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries) and journalistic articles published in the state of Bahia between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The results show a gradual increase in the occurrence of articles with proper nouns and unalienable nouns between classical Portuguese and modern European Portuguese whose distribution is influenced by the type of the noun and the textual genre. Regarding the possessive pronouns, there is a change detected in the seventeenth century, which stabilizes in the eighteenth century, and is the result of a period of grammar competition (KROCH (1989), (2001)), correlated to the homophonous form of the possessive masculine pronoun. In the Brazilian Portuguese data, variation was found in the use of articles in relation to proper nouns and inalienable nouns in all the surveyed periods, the latter context being the one that favors the application of the article over time. These data also revealed an oscillation in the nineteenth century regarding the incidence of the article with possessive pronouns, a result that is similar to the one found in the analysis of other phenomena in the same period (see CARNEIRO & GALVES, 2010). Thus, the differentiated application of the article in the studied contexts leads us to assume that, at least up to the 19th and early 20th century, this element is not an expletive in Portuguese, as some studies suggest (CASTRO (2006), MAGALHÃES (2011)). Finally, our results did not allow us to reach further conclusions about the structure of the noun phrase, but revealed that it is possible to find a freer order of words regarding the noun-adjective order within this phrase when the article is deleted (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/11291-6 - DEFINITE DETERMINERS: A STUDY ABOUT DPS STRUCTURE IN THE HISTORY OF PORTUGUESE
• Grantee: Tatiane Macedo Costa
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate