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RoLinC: Vitor Nóbrega
Vitor Nóbrega (University of São Paulo/FAPESP) – Structuring the syntax of expressivity: The case of Brazilian Portuguese binomial DP
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Abstract: In this talk, I explore the descriptive and expressive meanings of two classes of nominal modifiers in Brazilian Portuguese (BP): (i) epithets (e.g., mala lit. suitcase ‘annoying’; cachorro/a lit. dog.M/F ‘shameless’; banana lit. banana ‘lazy’) and (ii) slurs (e.g., droga lit. drug; porcaria lit. garbage ‘no-good’). These nominal modifiers are licensed either an attributive position (1a) and in phrases that follow the DP1-of-DP2 scheme (1b). In both cases, they display an idiomatic interpretation, as can be seen with the readings of N2 in (1).
a. D N1 N2
O/esse/um vizinho mala/porcaria
the/this/a neighbor suitcase/garbage
b. D1 N2 of-D2 N1
O/esse/um mala/porcaria d–o/esse/um vizinho
the/this/a suitcase/garbage of- the/this/a neighbor
‘That/a annoying/no-good (of) a neighbor’
Nouns in predicative position are subject to two types of interpretation in BP. They can either display a descriptive interpretation, and hence contribute to the ordinary descriptive content of the DP, as illustrated in (1), or they can convey an expressive interpretation, where they are semantically opaque to descriptive content, and simply express a negative attitude of the speaker toward the proposition. Interestingly, an expressive interpretation is only obtained when the predicate (N2) inverts its position with the subject noun (N1) (1b) (Basso, 2020). Once the DP bears such configuration, expressiveness can either have a narrow scope, predicating over the DP, when the predicate noun is prosodically marked (2a), or it can have a wide scope and take as its semantic argument the entire sentence, when the main verb is prosodically marked, as in (2b) (see Potts, 2007; Gutzmann, 2019).
A Maria está namorandoEX2[o/aquele mala/porcariaEX1 do/aquele vizinho].
the Mary is dating the/that suitcase/garbage of-the/that neighbor
- Narrow scope (EX1): The speaker feels negatively about the neighbor.
- Wide scope (EX2): The speaker feels negatively about the fact that Mary is dating the neighbor.
To account for the idiomatic aspects of the descriptive layer of meaning, I examine how the syntactic structure of predication contribute to create a domain for idiomatic interpretation. Following the approach for DPinternal predication developed by den Dikken (2006), I argue that predicative positions, defined in terms of a relator head (R) within the DP, trigger root allosemy when hosting a nominal head in BP. This empirical observation puts forth some theoretical implications for the syntax of word meaning: it indicates that root allosemy can be conditioned not only by locality with a specific functional head, as largely observed in the literature (Arad, 2003; Marantz, 2013), but also by a dedicated syntactic configuration (viz., [R, Compl]).
With respect to the expressive layer of meaning, I provide a set of syntactic tests to show that expressiveness in BP is structure dependent, since it is only licensed in DP1-of-DP2 structures. Thus, expressiveness in BP is a structural rather than a lexical property (contra Bastos-Gee, 2011, 2013). With this in mind, I claim that expressiveness is the result of an agreement interaction of a syntactic expressive feature [Exp] (Gutzmann, 2019), codified in a linker head internal to the DP (den Dikken, 2006) —which triggers predicate inversion—, and an interpretable, but unvalued [Exp] feature in the speaker head composing a Speaker-Addressee Phrase (saP), which is available in the superordinate structure of the nominal extended projection, i.e. above DP. This is what gives rise to the narrow scope reading in (2a). Once such an agreement relation is obtained, an expressive interpretation is assigned to the whole DP, consequently overwriting the descriptive content of the inverted predicate noun. The wide scope reading in (2b), in turn, is argued to be the result of an agreement relation between the [Exp] feature of the saP layer in the DP with the saP layer of the clausal spine, i.e. above CP (Wiltschko, 2021; Miyagawa, 2020). Finally, I discuss a set of relevant counter-arguments against the predicate inversion analysis for (1b) recently put forth by Saab (2022).
References
Arad, M. (2003). Locality constraints on the interpretation of roots: The case of Hebrew denominal verbs. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 21, 737-778.
Basso, R. (2020). Use-conditional expressions and non-local interpretation: A case study of a Brazilian Portuguese structure. In Pires de Oliveira, R. et al. (eds.). Brazilian Portuguese syntax and semantics, 163-182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bastos-Gee, A. C. (2011). Information structure within the traditional nominal phrase: the case of Brazilian Portuguese. University of Connecticut: Doctoral dissertation.
Bastos-Gee, A. C. (2013). A descriptive study of Brazilian offensive phrases. Diacrítica 27(1), 40–68.
den Dikken, M. (2006). Relators and Linkers: The Syntax of Predication, Predicate Inversion, and Copulas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gutzmann, D. (2019). The Grammar of Expressivity. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Marantz, A. 2013. Locality domains for contextual allomorphy across the interfaces. In Matushansky, O. and Marantz, A. (eds.), Distributed Morphology today, 95–115. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Miyagawa, S. (2020). Syntax in the treetops. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Potts, C. (2007). The expressive dimension. Theoretical Linguistics 33(2): 165–198.
Saab, A. (2022). Introducing expressives through equations: Implications for the theory of nominal predication in Romance. Proceedings of SALT 32: 356–383.
Wiltschko, M. (2021). The Grammar of Interactional Language. Cambridge: CUP.