scholarly journals Genericity and the denotation of common nouns in Brazilian Portuguese

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Müller
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Generic Sentences

This paper investigates what the semantics of generic sentences in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) says about the denotation of Noun Phrases in that language. More specifically, it addresses the syntactic and semantic differences among the indefinite nominals that get a generic interpretation in BP. The paper may also be taken to test well-known hypotheses about the functioning of genericity in natural languages.

scholarly journals Brazilian Portuguese noun phrases: An optimality theoretic perspective

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Pires de Oliveira ◽  
Henriëtte de Swart
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese

Case-marking systems evolve to be easy to learn and process

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 534-535
Author(s):  
Maggie Tallerman
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Evolutionary System ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Case Marking

AbstractChristiansen & Chater (C&C) suggest that language is itself an evolutionary system, and that natural languages “evolve” to be easy to learn and process. The tight economy of the world's case-marking systems lends support to this hypothesis. Only two major case systems occur, cross-linguistically, and noun phrases are seldom overtly case-marked wherever zero-marking would be functionally practical.

scholarly journals Perception Verbs in Brazilian Portuguese: A Functional Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 268-310
Author(s):  
Kees Hengeveld ◽  
Edson Rosa Francisco de Souza ◽  
Maria Luiza Braga ◽  
Valéria Vendrame
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Functional Approach ◽  
High Extent ◽  
Perception Verbs ◽  
Discourse Grammar

AbstractThis paper examines the semantic and morphosyntactic complementation patterns of perception verbs in Brazilian Portuguese. Using the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar, five semantic complement types are identified. It is subsequently shown that these five types are in an implicational relationship, such that the set of semantic complement types that a certain perception verb in Brazilian Portuguese may take occupies a contiguous segment on a hierarchy of semantic complement types. The morphosyntactic complements of perception verbs in Brazilian Portuguese include noun phrases, finite, and non-finite clauses, the latter comprising progressive1 and infinitival forms. The second part of the study shows that the choice for one of these types can to a high extent be predicted from the semantics of the complements, using the same hierarchy of semantic complement types.

Noun phrases: logical and linguistic properties

1976 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-152
Author(s):  
Thomas G. Pavel
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Definite Description ◽  
Logical Analysis ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Logical Notion ◽  
Logical Semantic

Recent linguistic research has explored the possibility of using standard logical analyses to explain some phenomena of natural languages. The logical notion of scope in modal contexts has yielded to the linguistic dichotomy of [±specific] indefinite NPs. Donnellan’s (1966) distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite description has been used to extend this dichotomy to include definite NPs. The behaviour of moods in Romance subordinate clauses has been tentatively explained by the same notions.The purpose of this paper is to criticize some of these attempts to apply logical analyses to natural languages. Without denying the heuristic and even the explanatory value of standard logical analysis in linguistics, I will try to show that the correspondence between logical semantic notions and the categories of natural languages is much more approximate than is sometimes believed.

scholarly journals Head identification in binominal constructions

2021 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
Roberto Gomes Camacho ◽  
Monielly Cristina Saverio Serafim
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Easy Task ◽  
Selection Restrictions

Determining the head of complex noun phrases is in general not an easy task in Portuguese. In the case of uma garrafa de vinho ‘a bottle of wine’, in combination with quebrou-se ‘broke’ or derramou ‘spilled’, it is the selection restrictions of the verb that determine which noun functions as head. This paper deals with a specific type of Brazilian Portuguese NP, aquele idiota do médico ‘that idiot of a doctor’, called “binominal” by Aarts (1998). The two types of nominal elements, linked by the preposition de, are the first constituent, idiota ‘idiot’, which has an evaluative status, and the second constituent, médico ‘doctor’, which has a referential status. The hypothesis defended here is that the evaluative nature of the first constituent and the referential nature of the second consist in a conclusive criterion for the determination of headedness.

scholarly journals DECOMPOSING GENERALIZED QUANTIFIERS

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAG WESTERSTÅHL
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Generalized Quantifiers ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Determiner Phrases

This note explains the circumstances under which a type 〈1〉 quantifier can be decomposed into a type 〈1, 1〉 quantifier and a set, by fixing the first argument of the former to the latter. The motivation comes from the semantics of Noun Phrases (also called Determiner Phrases) in natural languages, but in this article, I focus on the logical facts. However, my examples are taken among quantifiers appearing in natural languages, and at the end, I sketch two more principled linguistic applications.

scholarly journals Indeterminação do sujeito no português brasileiro: o pessoal tá inventando moda

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Quarezemin ◽  
Gabriel Fuchsberger
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

This paper describes and analyses a new strategy of subject indetermination in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The new strategy presents generic noun phrases, such as tu/você (‘you’), a gente (‘we’), o cara (‘the guy’), a pessoa (‘the person’), etc., in the subject position without an explicit referent. We argue that the type of sentence addressed in this study is devoid of referentiality. Its emergence seems to have to do with the fall of the clitic se, on the one hand, and with the need to fill the pre-verbal position, on the other.

Bare singular noun phrases are mass in Brazilian Portuguese

Lingua ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 121 (15) ◽  
pp. 2153-2175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Pires de Oliveira ◽  
Susan Rothstein
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Singular Noun
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