Difference between revisions of ""Future Present Progressive in Brazilian Portuguese""

Revision as of 13:04, 24 May 2012

Master Thesis's Synopsis

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Edited by: Franciane Rocha

A construction that uses Present Progressive to express Future is gaining space o the domain of Future reference in Brazilian Portuguese. This construction is basically composed by the Present Progressive structure (Aux. pres + V. prog), followed by a temporal adverb that denotes future or, other expression of overt future reference.

This Portuguese construction is called Future Present Progressive in this work. Based on Garcia (2010) ^[1] and Cintra (2008) ^[2] we assume it to be an importation of similar English structures, such as the Futurates presented by Copley (2002) ^[3], paired to the English Futurate Present Progressive presents on this last reference.

This a study that intends first, to prove the productivity of Future Present Progressives in Brazilian Portuguese. Then, we will investigate the phenomenon that Brazilian Portuguese allows the composition of sentences of these kind with some verbs and completely forbids its combination with other verbs, as the data:

(1) Estamos nos mudando em duas semanas. (We are moving in two weeks.)

(2) *Ele está percebendo a verdade amanhã cedo. (*He is realizing the true tomorrow morning.)

The research will try to explain this compatibility pattern, going through the Future Present Progressive with primary focus on elements of its semantic domain. Tani (2004: 2) ^[4] states that “when a certain type of verb does not appear in a certain grammatical environment, the reason must lie in the relationship between the two aspects” and her though in shared by some other linguists as Lyons (1977) ^[5]. Then, we will consider the semantic nature of the progressive construction and the lexical aspect of the verbs that they combine with in order to explain the pattern that we have observed.

As a first generalization one can probably say that the aspect of the main predicate and the grammatical aspect of the syntactic structure must be compatible. To check compatibility patterns for Future Present Progressive (henceforth FPP) in Brazilian Portuguese, we will depart from the Vendler’s (1967)^[6] classification of verbs. According to this categorization, verbs are classified into four semantic categories namely: achievements, activities, accomplishments and states. The author uses semantic features for his classification and also observes their possible combinations with general progressive forms as a legitimation test to his theory.

However, while Vendler’s classification might work well for English this not necessarily means that is works equally well for BP. While for English only two aktionsarten can be construed with the progressive (Vendler, 1967) ^[7], that is, accomplishments and activities, for Portuguese all four aktionsarten are grammatically correct (Bastos, 2004)^[8]. So, departing from these observations, we will try to unveil the constraints and particularities of Future Present Progressive expressions in naturally occurring data from Brazilian Portuguese.

Corpus = Future Present Progressive In Brazilian Portuguese

Annotator =Franciane Rocha

References

1. ↑ Garcia A. S. . Verbos incompatíveis com o progressivo no inglês. SOLETRAS (UERJ), v. 20, p. 146-164, 2010.
2. ↑ Cintra MR. A perífrase “ir (pres.) + (es)ta(r) + gerúndio” como indício de inovação linguística. Estudos Linguísticos, São Paulo, v.37, n.1. 2008 p. 233-241.
3. ↑ http://copley.free.fr/copley.futurates.pdf
4. ↑ http://www.flet.keio.ac.jp/~colloq/articles/backnumb/Col_25_tani.pdf
5. ↑ J. Lyons (1977). Semantics. Volumes I and II. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
6. ↑ Vendler Z. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967.
7. ↑ Vendler Z. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967.
8. ↑ Bastos ACP. Progressive constructions in Brazilian Portuguese and English. Revista Letras, Curitiba, n. 63. Editora UFPR. 2004: p. 11-27, maio/ago.

Contact: franrocha.fsaATgmail.com