Auxiliary verbs and the syntax of non-finite domains

Author(s)

Marcus Vinicius da Silva Lunguinho

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2011-12-19

Examining board members

Esmeralda Vailati Negrao; Juanito Ornelas de Avelar; Sergio de Moura Menuzzi; Jairo Morais Nunes; Marcello Modesto dos Santos

• Advisor: Esmeralda Vailati Negrao

Abstract

This dissertation puts forward an analysis of auxiliary verbs in general, and of Portuguese auxiliary verbs in particular. The proposal is to universally characterize auxiliary verbs as a class of verbal elements which (i) belong to the verbal category ; (ii) have a unvalued verbal feature [uV] ; (iii) do not assign theta roles ; and (iv), together with the main verb, compose one single phrasal domain. The presence of [uV] guarantees that the auxiliary verb will select a verbal projection as its complement, within which is the target that will value the uninterpretable [uV] feature by means of the operation Agree (Chomsky 2000, 2001). The four characteristics proposed to describe auxiliary verbs allowed for the derivation of criteria of auxiliarity, a reinterpretation of the criteria usually discussed in the literature. Eight necessary and sufficient criteria define an auxiliary verb in Portuguese. The composition of THE Portuguese auxiliary class with its four members ser, ter, estar and ir resulted from the application of these eight criteria. Passives were analysed by means of the smuggling system, proposed by Collins (2005) and the auxiliary ser was considered to be a functional verb which values the [perfective] feature of the passive participle. A non-canonical passive was found to co-exist with canonical passives, one which shows the auxiliary ter. We argue that ter is the computational product of features of the auxiliary ser with features of the functional node v*. For the analysis of perfective ter and progressive estar, we have adopted a decompositional view along the lines of Kayne (1993), which derives these verbs from the incoporation of prepositional elements to the features of an abstract auxiliary verb. So, three of the Portuguese auxiliary verbs result from syntactic computation: passive ter is the manifestation of the features [vSER - v*]; perfective ter is the manifestation of the features [vAUX - PDEPOIS]; and progressive estar includes the features [vAUX - PDENTRO]. And the auxiliary verb ir is treated as a modal head, which, when combined with features of the head T, generate a future reading. (AU)