On low verbal negation in Brazilian Portuguese

• Cyrino, Sonia ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Campinas
• Localización: Isogloss: Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, ISSN-e 2385-4138, Vol. 11, Vol. 7, 2025 (Ejemplar dedicado a: RLLT26, Selected papers from Going Romance 38, Universidade do Minho), 33 págs.
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.569
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo  1    2  
• Resumen

  • In this paper, I discuss a new construction in Brazilian Portuguese, whereby the negative marker não ‘not’, which is syncretic with other types of negation in the language, appears in the slot [Aux_V] in periphrases, a position that is not common in other Romance languages. Among its properties, this type of negation must receive intonational stress, that is, it is a focus element and, as such, it conveys a specific meaning. A comparison with other types of low negation in the same position in Italian, Catalan and French shows that the new negator in Brazilian Portuguese is not the same as the ones that may occur in those languages. Observing this negation marker in relation to low adverbs and to the lexical verb in progressive and perfective periphrases in Brazilian Portuguese, I propose a syntactic position based on the nanosyntax approach, which can explain its focus nature and semantic/pragmatic properties.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • Ambar, Manuela. 1999. Aspects of the syntax of focus in Portuguese. In G. Rebuschi, & L. Tuller (eds), Grammar of focus, 23–53. Amsterdam:...
  • Araújo-Adriano, Paulo Ângelo. 2024. The present tense analyticisation process in Brazilian Portuguese: a diachronic approach. PhD Dissertation,...
  • Araújo-Adriano, Paulo Ângelo, & Sonia Cyrino. 2025. On the lack of adjacency in auxiliary constructions in Brazilian Portuguese. Caderno...
  • Batllori, Montserrat & M.Lluïsa Hernanz. 2013. Emphatic polarity particles in Spanish and Catalan. Lingua 128: 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.11.010
  • Belletti, Adriana. 2001. Expletive negation in Italian comparative clauses. In G. Cinque, & G. Salvi (eds), Current studies in Italian...
  • Belletti, Adriana. 2004. Aspects of the low IP area. In L. Rizzi (ed.), The structure of IP and CP: the cartography of syntactic structures,...
  • Belletti, Adriana. 2005. Extended doubling and the VP periphery. Probus 17: 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1515/prbs.2005.17.1.1
  • Belletti, Adriana. 2008. The CP of clefts. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 33: 191–204.
  • Belletti, Adriana. 2009. Structures and strategies. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203887134
  • Biberauer, Theresa & Sonia Cyrino. 2009. Negative Developments in Afrikaans and Brazilian Portuguese. Paper presented at the 19th Colloquium...
  • Bolrinha, Márcia. 2017. Clivada de SER e Estrutura Enfática com Mas SER: Uma mesma estrutura ou estruturas diferentes? Masters Dissertation,...
  • Breitbarth, Anne. 2022. Continuity, change, and linguistic recycling in Flemish dialects: negation, polarity focus and mirativity. Taal &...
  • Breitbarth, Anne & Liliane Haegeman. 2014. The distribution of preverbal en in (West) Flemish: syntactic and interpretive properties....
  • Breitbarth, Anne & Liliane Haegeman. 2015. ‘En’ en is niet wat we dachten: a Flemish discourse particle. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics...
  • Caha, Pavel. 2009. The nanosyntax of case. PhD Thesis, University of Tromsø.
  • Carrilho, Ernestina & Sandra Pereira. 2011. Sobre a distribuição geográfica de construções sintácticas não-padrão em português europeu....
  • Cavalcante, Rerisson. 2007. A negação pós-verbal no português brasileiro: análise descritiva e teórica de dialetos rurais de afro-descendentes....
  • Cavalcante, Rerisson. 2012. Negação anafórica no português brasileiro: negação sentencial, negação enfática e negação de constituinte. PhD...
  • Cinque, Guglielmo. 1976. Mica. Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Padova 1: 101–112.
  • Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads. A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.
  • CORDIAL-SIN – Corpus Dialectal para o Estudo da Sintaxe / The Syntax-oriented Corpus of Portuguese Dialects (A. M. Martins, coord.) [http://www.clul.ul.pt/en/research-teams/212-cordial-sin-syntax-oriented-corpus-of-portuguese-dialects]
  • Cyrino, Sonia. 2010. On complex predicates in Brazilian Portuguese. Ibéria 2(2). Available at: https://revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/iberia/article/view/96
  • Cyrino, Sonia. 2013. On richness of tense and verb movement in Brazilian Portuguese. In V. Camacho-Taboada, Á. Jiménez-Fernández, J. Martín-González,...
  • Cyrino, Sonia. 2022. More on negation in Brazilian Portuguese. Paper presented at the Romance Linguistics at Cambridge (RoLinC) Seminar. University...
  • Cyrino, Sonia. 2023. Exploring the syntax/diachrony of a recent type of negation in BP. Caderno de Squibs: Temas em estudos formais da linguagem...
  • Cyrino, Sonia & Gabriela Matos. 2005. Local licensers and recovering in VP ellipsis. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 4: 79–112. https://doi.org/10.5334/jpl.160
  • Cyrino, Sonia & Theresa Biberauer. 2009. Appearances are Deceptive: Jespersen’s Cycle from the Perspective of the Romania Nova and Romance-based...
  • Davies, Mark. 2016-. Corpus do Português: Web/Dialects. Available online at http://www.corpusdoportugues.org/web-dial/.
  • De Clercq, Karen. 2013. A unified syntax of negation. PhD Thesis, University of Ghent.
  • De Clercq, Karen. 2017. The nanosyntax of French negation: a diachronic perspective. In S. Cruschina, K. Hartmann, & E.-M. Remberger (eds),...
  • De Clercq, Karen. 2018. Syncretisms and the morphosyntax of negation. In L. Baunaz, K. De Clercq, L. Haegeman, & E. Lander (eds), Exploring...
  • De Clercq, Karen. 2020. Types of negation. In V. Déprez, & M.T. Espinal (eds), Oxford Handbook of Negation, 105–129. Oxford, NY: Oxford...
  • De Clercq, Karen, & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd. 2017. Why affixal negation is syntactic. In A. Kaplan (ed.), Proceedings of the 34th West Coast...
  • Duarte, Inês, & Maria Cristina Figueiredo Silva. 2016. The null subject parameter and the structure of the sentence in European and Brazilian...
  • Espinal, M.Teresa. 1991. Negation in Catalan. Some remarks with regard to no pas. Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics (Bellaterra) 1: 33–63.
  • Espinal, M.Teresa. 1993. The interpretation of no pas in Catalan. Journal of Pragmatics 19: 353–369. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(93)90093-5
  • Espinal, M.Teresa. 2002. La negació. In J. Solà, M-R. Lloret, J. Mascarò, & M. Pérez Saldanya (eds), Gramàtica del català contemporani,...
  • Fábregas, Antonio, & Raquel González-Rodríguez. 2019. Perífrasis e inductores negativos: un análisis en términos de domínios. Onomázedin...
  • Fábregas, Antonio, & Raquel González-Rodríguez. 2020. On inhibited eventualities. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 38: 729–773....
  • Fábregas, Antonio, & Raquel González-Rodríguez. 2021. Negation with Participles and Inhibited Events. Linguistic Analysis 43:1–2.
  • Frana, Ilaria & Kyle Rawlins. 2016. Italian ‘mica’ in assertions and questions. Sinn und Bedeutung 20: 234–251. Available at: https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/261
  • Frana, Ilaria & Kyle Rawlins. 2019. Attitudes in discourse: Italian polar questions and the particle mica. Semantics & Pragmatics...
  • Giorgi, Alessandra, & Fabio Pianesi. 1997. Tense and Aspect: From Semantics to Morphosyntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Höhle, Tilman N. 1992. Über Verum-Fokus im Deutschen. In J. Jacobs (ed.), Informationsstruktur und Grammatik, 112–141. Opladen: Westdeutscher...
  • Ledgeway, Adam, & Norma Schifano. 2023. Negation and Verb-Movement in Romance: New Perspectives on Jespersen’s Cycle. Probus 35(1): 151–211....
  • Lobo, Maria. 2013. Sujeito nulo: sintaxe e interpretação. In E. Raposo et al. (eds), Gramática do português. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
  • Magistro, Giuseppe. 2022. Mica preposing as focus fronting. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 7(1): 1–39. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.8494
  • Mioto, Carlos. 1992. Negação sentencial no português brasileiro. PhD Thesis, University of Campinas.
  • Namiuti, Cristiane. 2008. Aspectos da história grammatical do português: interpolação, negação e mudança. PhD Thesis, University of Campinas.
  • Jarrah, Marwan, & Nimer Abusalim. 2021. In favor of the low IP area in the Arabic clause structure. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory...
  • Ouwayda, Sarah, & Ur Shlonsky. 2016. The wandering subjects of the Levant: “Verbal Complexes” in Lebanese Arabic as phrasal movement....
  • Penello, Nicoletta, & Diego Pescarini. 2008. Osservazioni su mica in Italiano e alcuni dialetti veneti. Quaderni di lavoro ASIT 8: 43–56.
  • Pereira, Sílvia Afonso. 2014. Variação sintática em Portugal e a fronteira com a Galiza. Língua e identidade na fronteira galego-portuguesa....
  • Pescarini, Diego. 2009. ‘Presuppositional’ negation, modality, and the addressee. Padua Working Papers in Linguistics 3: 22–28.
  • Poletto, Cecilia. 2008. On negative doubling. Quaderni di lavoro ASIT 8: 57–84.
  • Poletto, Cecilia. 2017. Negative doubling: in favor of a big NegP analysis. In S. Cruschina, K. Hartmann, E.-M. Remberger (eds), Negation:...
  • Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon: A first phase syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486319.003
  • Ramchand, Gilian. 2018. Situations and syntactic structures: Rethinking auxiliaries and order in English. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10911.001.0001
  • Repp, Sophie. 2013. Common ground management: Modal particles, illocutionary negation and Verum. In D. Gutzman, & H-M. Gärtner (eds),...
  • Romero, Maribel, & Chung-hye Han. 2004. On negative Yes/No questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 27(5): 609–658. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LING.0000033850.15705.94.
  • Schifano, Norma. 2018. Verb movement in Romance. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198804642.001.0001
  • Schwenter, Scott. 2005. The pragmatics of negation in Brazilian Portuguese. Lingua 115 (10): 1427–1456. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2004.06.006
  • Starke, Michal. 2009. Nanosyntax: A short primer to a new approach to language. Nordlyd 36: 1–6.
  • Starke, Michal. 2011. Towards an elegant solution to language variation: Variation reduces to the size of lexically stored trees. Ms., Tromsø...
  • Teixeira de Sousa, Lilian. 2011. Sentential Negation in Brazilian Portuguese: Pragmatics and Syntax. Journal LIPP 1: 89–103. https://doi.org/10.5282/journalipp/28
  • Teixeira de Sousa, Lilian. 2012. Sintaxe e interpretação de negativas sentenciais no português brasileiro. PhD Thesis, University of Campinas.
  • Teixeira de Sousa, Lilian. 2015. Three types of negation in Brazilian Portuguese. Lingua 159: 27–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.03.003
  • Tescari-Neto, Aquiles. 2013. On verb movement in Brazilian Portuguese: A cartographic study. PhD Thesis, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia.
  • Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1997. Negation and clausal structure: A comparative study of Romance languages. Oxford / New York: Oxford University...