On The Indexicality of Portuguese Past Tenses

Autor(es)

Ferreira, Marcelo

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: JOURNAL OF SEMANTICS; v. 34, n. 4, p. 633-657, NOV 2017.
• Citações Web of Science: 0

Resumo

This article investigates the semantics of Portuguese past tenses, focusing on their indexical behavior. I show that under certain circumstances, even when they are used anaphorically and refer to a contextually salient interval, these past tense heads can denote intervals that do not precede the speech time. I argue that the best way to capture this behavior is to construe its presupposition as a shiftable indexical (Schlenker 2003; Anand 2006), with a meaning roughly paraphrasable as `earlier than socthorn', with socthorn being set to some context (attitude-like) time, not necessarily the speech time. I also argue that nonanaphoric uses of the Portuguese verb form called Preterito Perfeito should be analyzed as present tense + perfect aspect combinations, as was suggested in Giorgi \& Pianesi (1998). In particular, I show that Portuguese instantiates what is called double-access readings in past under past configurations that mimic the more well-known cases involving embedded present tenses in attitudinal contexts (Ogihara 1996; Abusch 1997, inter alia). (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 13/21993-8 - Referência e quantificação nos tempos verbais do português
• Beneficiário: Marcelo Barra Ferreira
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Exterior - Pesquisa