Series | SAIL
Edited book | Journeys in Portuguese Language
Chapter | Indeterminação do sujeito no português brasileiro: o pessoal tá inventando moda
Abstract
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.
Submitted: Oct. 2, 2019 | Accepted: July 28, 2020 | Published Dec. 9, 2020 | Language: pt
Keywords Indetermination • Brazilian Portuguese • Generic noun phrases • Subject syntax
Copyright © 2020 Sandra Quarezemin, Gabriel Fuchsberger. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-461-5/005