The Use Of Participle In Brazilian Portuguese

The main goal of this paper is to discuss what are the most usual/productive forms of participle in Brazilian Portuguese, to understand the distribution of regular and irregular forms in compound tenses (tinha pago/pagado – 'had paid') and passive constructions (foi pago/pagado – '(it...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Teixeira da Silva, Inaciane, da Silva Schwindt, Luiz Carlos
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2013
Country:Brasil
Institution:Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS)
Repository:letrônica
Language:Portuguese
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br:article/13398
Online Access:https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/letronica/article/view/13398
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Participle
Language variation
Productivity
Verbal alternance
particípio
variação linguística
produtividade
alternância verbal
Description
Summary:The main goal of this paper is to discuss what are the most usual/productive forms of participle in Brazilian Portuguese, to understand the distribution of regular and irregular forms in compound tenses (tinha pago/pagado – 'had paid') and passive constructions (foi pago/pagado – '(it) was paid'), and the unexpected choice of irregular participles in contexts where, according to grammatical tradition, one would expect the use of regular forms (tinha chego instead of tinha chegado – 'had arrived'). We performed a quantitative analysis using the VARBRUL software. The results, however, are shown only in terms of frequencies, since the phenomenon is not necessarily characterized as a variable rule. Data from two corpora have been analyzed quantitatively: VARSUL Database (Variação Linguística na Região Sul do Brasil) and tests of productivity containing dictionarized words and pseudowords. The results showed a general preference for regular forms in spontaneous speech data. We observed, however, a peculiar use of irregular participle in data from tests of productivity, possibly justified by the prestige of those forms.