The acceptability of the pre-verbal bare singular in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Our research investigates the judgements of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) native speakers with respect to preverbal bare singulars, considering the proposal that pragmatic factors such as contrastive focus might improve the acceptability of the constructions headed by this nominal. In an Acceptability Judgment Task, 20 native speakers of BP judged constructions with preverbal bare singulars within: i) generic sentences; ii) kind-predicate sentences; iii) stage-level predicate sentences. The results suggest that contrastive focus might interfere with the acceptability of these constructions, and that sentences with kind-predicates are grammatical in BP. Sentences with stage-level predicates received low rates of acceptance.

Keywords

• Singular nu pré-verbal, foco contrastivo, genericidade, tarefa de julgamento de aceitabilidade