Portuguese: A Constrastive Study on Semantic Basis (original) (raw)
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The perfective aspect in english and portuguese: a constrative study on semantic basis
Alfa Revista De Linguistica, 1980
An exam of the occurrences of the PRESENT PERFECT in English was made in such a way as to establish the prevailing semantic features of this verbal form. It was verified up to what an extent the meaning of the PERFECTIVE thus characterized is expressed in the corresponding Portuguese sentences in the PRETÉRITO PERFEITO. It was found that in Portuguese the verbal inflexion itself characterizes in a much smaller degree the PER-FECTIVE ASPECT.
The perfective aspect in English and Portuguese. A contrastive study on semantic basis
1980
An exam of the occurrences of the PRESENT PERFECT in English was made in such a way as to establish the prevailing semantic features of this verbal form. It was verified up to what an extent the meaning of the PERFECTIVE thus characterized is expressed in the corresponding Portuguese sentences in the PRETÉRITO PERFEITO. It was found that in Portuguese the verbal inflexion itself characterizes in a much smaller degree the PER-FECTIVE ASPECT.
Revisiting the Semantics of the Portuguese Present Perfect
This study reexamines the semantics of the Portuguese Present Perfect and proposes an analysis of this periphrastic past that does not appeal to type-shifting coercion mechanisms. Aspectual coercion was claimed to explain purported mismatches between selection restrictions of the Portuguese Present tense and the aspectual properties of the Perfect (Schmitt 2001). The present study proposes a truth-conditional compositional analysis of sentences with the Portuguese Present Perfect in which the lexical meaning of the auxiliary ter 'have' combined with the meaning of the Present Indicative tense (ter+PresInd) contribute a universal quantifier whose domain is the topic time interval.
Universal and existencial perfects in Brazilian Portuguese
Revista Letras, 2007
O presente trabalho trata do pretérito perfeito composto (PPC) ea possibilidade de leituras universais e existenciais. Váriosestudos recentes sobre o “Present Perfect” (“Presente Perfeito”)em línguas mais estudadas (e.g. Inglês, Alemão, Grego, Turco,etc.) descrevem as ambiguidades entre os dois tipos de leiturasque frequentemente são definidos em termos da abordagem“Extended Now” (“Presente Estendido”) (RATHERT, 2003;IATRIDOU et al., 2003; MCCOARD, 1978). A caracterização doPresent Perfect nesta abordagem sofre de alguns problemasmesmo quando se trata de fenômenos nas línguas maisestudadas e também é sujeita a outros novos problemas naanálise do PPC. Dado que análises anteriores têm tratado oPresent Perfect somente em contextos com advérbios durativos,a natureza dos rótulos de ‘universal’ e ‘existencial’ ainda nãofoi testada com advérbios de frequência, por exemplo. Alémdisso, as poucas referências feitas em relação ao PPC têmdeclarado que este apresenta somente a leitura universal(...
On the Raison D'être of the Present Perfect, with Special Reference to the English Grammeme
Athens Journal of Philology, 2020
The present perfect is a mystery and most linguists agree that its definitions are inadequate. The paper deals with two major issues: (i) what is its second meaning, beside the temporal one; (ii) what is its raison d'être? Is it the expression of notions such as current relevance or resultativeness? The analysis is based on recent findings that the present perfect performs a grammaticalizing function with certain sentences belonging to a semantico-syntactic schema in two languages, Bulgarian and Montenegrin. It shows that, as regards (i), the present perfect is a form that can be termed non-witnessed in itself in Bulgarian and English. However, while in English and Montenegrin it is not grammatically marked as non-witnessed (in Bulgarian it is), in English and Bulgarian it signals this value-but not by default. Conversely, the indefinite past in English, to which the present perfect is invariably contrasted, is a witnessed form by default, hence its witnessed value can be canceled in a sentence/context. In other words, the English indefinite past is not grammatically marked as witnessed and does not signify this value-but signals it by default. As regards (ii), the raison d'être of the English present perfect is argued to be the signaling (not by default) of the value non-witnessed to counterbalance the default value witnessed in the indefinite past. Bottom line: the raison d'être of the present perfect across languages appears to be found not in its "meaning" but in certain functions related to language structure that it performs.
Perfect Semantics. How universal are Ibero-American Present Perfects ?
2008
The semantics of perfects presents a number of interrelated puzzles which have received a lot of attention in recent years. At the heart of these puzzles lies the fact that Present Perfects usually exhibit a restricted distribution when compared to other perfect forms. This distribution can be described as an array of different 'readings' and it is subject to a considerable degree of cross-linguistic and dialectal variation. Portuguese and some American Spanish varieties make a very restricted use of the Present Perfect, and they are widely held to instantiate a stage of development in which Present Perfects only exhibit universal readings (Harris 1982, Squartini & Bertinetto 2000). On the basis of original descriptive work on a Brazilian Portuguese variety and of a comparison with data on two American Spanish varieties, Mexico and Rio de la Plata Spanish, this paper shows that the Portuguese and the (restricted) Spanish Present Perfects differ in some crucial respects, and ...
Languages, 2019
This article focuses on the use of the present perfect (he cantado) with aoristic value, or rather, on pre-hodiernal contexts in which, as a rule, the simple form (canté) should appear. This verbal form is examined on the basis of a corpus of semi-guided interviews provided to Latin American students living in Genoa and taking into account its characteristics, the syntactic environment in which it is used, combinations with other verb forms, adverbial complements, temporal expressions, deixis and the communicative context in which it is inserted. This phenomenon has already been analyzed in several recent studies carried out by Azpiazu, Kempas, Montoro del Arco, Bermejo Calleja and Soto, both in European and American contexts, and has led to the conclusion that it could be related to discursive strategies of the speaker as well as to a convergence towards the local language (i.e., Italian).
Simultaneity and "increased present" in the European Spanish perfect
Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 2018
This paper deals with the concept of "simultaneity" in relation to the Spanish Present Perfect based on the descriptions made by Rojo (1974) and Rojo & Veiga (1999), and seeks to link it to other similar concepts proposed by other scholars, such as Alarcos' presente ampliado ("Increased Present" (IP)), McCoard's Extended Now (XN), and Iatridou et al.'s Perfect Time Span (PTS). Although not all these terms refer to the same concept, as their limits depend on the respective languages they account for, they all share the notion that there is some kind of temporal coincidence between the event and the speech act that informs the Perfect. We posit that the way this temporal coincidence is conceived may explain the temporal and aspectual differences between the Perfect in languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and English. Resum. Simultaneïtat i "present estès" en el perfet de l'espanyol europeu En aquest treball ens ocupem del concepte de simultaneïtat associat amb el perfet en castellà a partir de la descripció de Rojo (1974) o de Rojo & Veiga (1999), i cerquem com relacionar-lo amb d'altres conceptes semblants com ara el "present ampliat" d'Alarcos, "l'ara estès" de McCoard o el "lapse temporal de perfet" d'Iatridou et alii. Tot i que no tots aquests conceptes es refereixen exactament al mateix, donat que els seus límits vénen imposats per les llengües per a les quals són ideats, tots abarquen la idea que el perfet només és possible si hi ha algun tipus de coinci-dència temporal amb el moment de la parla. Defensem que el mode en el qual es concep aquesta coincidència pot explicar les diferències temporals i aspectuals del perfet en unes llengües com ara el castellà, el portuguès o l'anglès.