Roberta Oliveira

This paper inquiries into negative polarity itens in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) Despite the large literature on this issue in other languages, in particular in English, almost nothing is known about BP. Exception is Ilari's (1984) paper, in which he describes and analyses idiomatic negative locutions. We investigate whether there are some items in PB that are negative polarity itens (NPI), and conclude that 'sequer', 'ainda', and 'N algum' are NPIs, while 'qualquer' and 'o que quer que seja' are free choice items. We investigate their distribution and license conditions, discuss two approaches: Ladusaw's (2002(1980)) and Giannakidou's (2001), and conclude that they cannot explain BP data.

This paper argues that the telic/atelic distinction cannot be reduced to a distinction between countable and non-countable predicates in the verbal domain. I show that telic and atelic predicates behave alike with respect to most countability tests and that both are cumulative. No verbal predicates, whether telic or atelic, can be directly modified by cardinal numerals, but all can be modified by a numeral together with the classifier time(s). I suggest that VPs do not denote countable sets. However, VPs, and in particular telic VPs, may denote sets of individuable events, making telic VPs similar to object mass nouns since the entities in the denotations of these VPs are individuable but not countable. Two general conclusions can be drawn from this. First, the contrast between atelic and telic predicates should be formulated in terms of constraints on individuability, not countability. Second, contrary to, e.g. Bach (1986), the mass/count distinction does not structure the verbal domain, and thus, in languages such as English, the nominal and verbal domains are very different.

This paper argues that bare singular noun phrases in Brazilian Portuguese are mass nouns denoting kinds. We show that the prima facie arguments against treating bare singulars as mass nouns do not hold water, since they contrast atomic bare singulars with substance mass nouns such as ouro ‘gold’, rather than with atomic mass nouns such as mobília ‘furniture’. We show that in fact bare singulars and atomic mass nouns show the same properties with respect to distributive predicates and reciprocals. We then show that in distribution and interpretation, bare singulars behave like mass nouns and not like bare plurals. We give an analysis of the semantics of bare singulars/mass nouns in the framework of Rothstein (2010), treating them as kind denoting terms, while proposing that bare plurals are generated as plural predicates NPs, as proposed by Krifka (2004), and show how this explains the differences in distribution and interpretation. We conclude that bare singulars can be the complements of mass quantifiers such as muito ‘much’ and quanto ‘how much’, in which case these behave semantically exactly like mass nouns: quanto livro with the bare singular asks about the overall measurements of a quantity of books in terms of volume or weight and is thus an expression of measure, while quantos livros with the plural count noun asks only for the cardinality of the set of books under discussion and thus is a question about counting.► Bare singular NPs in Brazilian Portuguese are like mass nouns in distribution and interpretation. ► Bare singular and mass NPs differ from bare plurals. ► Bare singular and mass NPs are lexical items denoting kinds, bare plurals are count predicates. ► An account of the above is given, based on Rothstein 2010's theory of the count/mass distinction ► Bare singulars occur with mass quantifiers, supporting this account.

The paper compares necessariamente p, p, and realmente p in Brazilian Portuguese. It argues that realmente is an epistemic modal. The main difference with respect to necessari-amente is the ordering source: the former takes the real world, the latter, the normal course of events. Realmente has a lexicalized ordering source: real-. The ordering is established by the similarity to the real world. The result is a hiper-realist basis. Thus, realmente p entails p, but since it activates an ordering source, there are alternatives; it implies that there are non-p worlds. To utter p implies that the speaker is faithful. To utter realmente p fires a generalized implicature that p is in discussion, as claimed by Guimarães (2016), because it suspends the maxim of quality: it states that the real world belongs to p. We present the contours of this implicature.

Esta coletânea apresenta alguns artefatos expostos ao público
na Feira de Linguística, no dia 23 de fevereiro de 2019, atividade
com a qual encerramos a extensão “O saber científico no
espaço escolar: construção de gramática e olimpíada de Linguística”,
supervisionada pelas professoras Roberta Pires de Oliveira
e Sandra Quarezemin. O objetivo da extensão era desenvolver novas maneiras de ensinar língua e gramática na escola do Brasil do século XXI, avançando a linha mestre em Pires de Oliveira & Quarezemin (2016) de que construção de gramáticas é uma heurística eficaz para não apenas os alunos entenderem como funciona uma língua e como se constrói uma teoria científica, mas, principalmente, como uma maneira de conscientização sobre fenômenos gramaticais. Isso tem efeito positivo na leitura, na compreensão do mundo natural e na cidadania. Os professores, que participaram do curso, tiveram como tarefa construir um artefato em gramática. Artefatos, na arqueologia, são objetos produzidos pelo homem. O desafio é construir objetos gramaticais que permitam entender as línguas naturais, incluindo programas que repliquem o comportamento linguístico. Robôs que entendem a nossa fala, que conversam. Esses artefatos foram apresentados na Feira Linguística.
ISBN 978-65-87206-02-8