文章基本信息

标题：Brazilian Portuguese noun phrases: An optimality theoretic perspective
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作者：Roberta Pires de Oliveira ; Henriëtte de Swart
期刊名称：Journal of Portuguese Linguistics
电子版ISSN：2397-5563
出版年度：2016
卷号：14
期号：1
页码：63-93
DOI：10.5334/jpl.58
出版社：Ubiquity Press
摘要：In this paper we examine the nominal system in Brazilian Portuguese (BrP), a challenge to cross-linguistic studies which rely on the generalization that a language that has indefinites should not have bare nouns. BrP has bare singulars, bare plurals, singular and plural indefinites. We examine the behavior of these phrases, mostly in object position of episodic predicates, and propose that each has a different semantics. The nominal system of BrP can be successfully explained, we argue, within the bi-directional Optimality Theory (biOT) theoretical framework developed by Hendriks et al. (2010). This approach allows us to describe and explain patterns of competition, and accounts for language variation by constraint reranking. For BrP, we propose the synchronic coexistence of two grammars: bare plurals appear in the formal variety of BrP that maintains plural agreement, and bare singulars appear in informal spoken BrP, along with plural definites and indefinites that lack plural agreement on the noun. Under this analysis, BPs denote inclusive plurals, while BSs get a non-atomic semantics that covers both mass and plural interpretations.