Modal verbs’ morphology:: remarks on the morphological characterization of dever (‘must’), poder (‘can’/‘may’), and ter que/de (‘have to’)

This paper discusses morphological issues and behaviors of Brazilian Portuguese modal verbs dever (‘must’), poder (‘can/may’) and ter que/de (‘have to’). By aiming at contributing for the studies on modality (in Portuguese), which approach semantic and syntactic issues, the present work discusses sp...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Resende, Maurício
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2021
Country:Brasil
Institution:Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Letras e Lingüística (ANPOLL)
Repository:Revista da ANPOLL (Online)
Language:Portuguese
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.revistadaanpoll.emnuvens.com.br:article/1472
Online Access:https://revistadaanpoll.emnuvens.com.br/revista/article/view/1472
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Morphology
Modal verbs
Semantics
Syntax
Defective verbs
Morfologia
Modais
Semântica
Sintaxe
Verbos defectivos
Description
Summary:This paper discusses morphological issues and behaviors of Brazilian Portuguese modal verbs dever (‘must’), poder (‘can/may’) and ter que/de (‘have to’). By aiming at contributing for the studies on modality (in Portuguese), which approach semantic and syntactic issues, the present work discusses specifically morphological properties of modal verbs, such as lack of certain inflected forms, lack of semantic compositionality for the imperfective past, modal versus lexical verbal category, structural constituency and identity of ter que and ter de. Although some issues remain speculative and/or tentative, the present paper proposes a new view of posing certain questions on morph-syntax and morph-semantics of modal verbs.