Predicação secundária : propriedades sintáticas, semânticas e pragmáticas

Resumo Ingles

This dissertation investigates depictive secondary predication constructions in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), illustrated by examples such as João entrou na sala zangado (‘João entered the room angry’) and Pedro comeu as cenouras cruas (‘Pedro ate the carrots raw’). Secondary predication is characterized by an argument that receives two θ-roles and participates in two distinct predicative relations (cf. Rothstein 1983; Foltran 1999, among others), and the eventuality denoted by the depictive predicate (zangado and cruas, in the examples above) temporally overlaps with the eventuality denoted by the main predicate (Halliday 1967; Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt 2005). Regarding the syntactic properties of these constructions, we build on the proposal developed in Ferreira (2017), assuming that they contain a small clause (SC) constituent encompassing the depictive and its subject, with this SC adjoined to a projection in the matrix clause: the vP in the case of subject-oriented depictives, or the VP in the case of object-oriented depictives. We further assume that these sentences are derived via sideward movement (Nunes 1995, 2001, 2004; Boeckx, Hornstein & Nunes 2010, among others) of the DP contained in the adjoined SC to a thematic position in the matrix clause. Consequently, there is no PRO category as the subject of the SC; rather, the subject arises through Copy + Merge of the moving DP. This proposal analyzes depictive constructions as control structures derived through movement and can thus be viewed as a consequence of the Movement Theory of Control (Hornstein 1999, 2001). Building on this, the dissertation offers an explanation for the availability of both subject control and object control in depictive constructions (O Joãoi cumprimentou o Paulok eci/k bêbadoi/k ‘Joãoi greeted Paulok drunki/k’), in contrast with the impossibility of object control in similar structures such as [O João]i cumprimentou [a Maria]k depois de [eci/*k entrar na sala] (‘Joãoi greeted Mariak after enteringi/*k the room’) (Nunes 2014: 79). We show that this contrast can be accounted for by adopting Nunes’s (2004) system of sentence linearization and by assuming that, in the main clause, there is an aspectual category Asp between vP and VP, and that the DP merged as the complement of V moves to the Spec position of Asp. Due to the different adjunction heights, only depictive constructions yield a configuration that allows the sentence to be linearized in a way that permits object control, unlike sentences with an adjoined temporal clause (cf. M. Ferreira 2000). Concerning the semantic and pragmatic properties of depictive constructions, we argue— following Foltran (1999), Rothstein (2004b), McNally (1993, 1997), Ardid-Gumiel (2001), Bosque (2022), among others—that such structures must satisfy the following licensing requirements: (a) the temporal coincidence requirement, according to which the eventualities in a depictive construction must coincide over a given interval; (b) the pragmatic requirement, according to which the simultaneity condition imposed on the state of affairs described by the primary predicate and that described by the secondary predicate cannot be trivially satisfied, except when the infelicity of juxtaposition is exploited for conversational purposes; (c) the stage-level predication requirement, according to which at least one of the predications composing the depictive construction must convey a stage-level interpretation, even if this interpretation arises through coercion from an individual-level predicate; (d) the aspectual compatibility requirement (for depictives proper), according to which the event structure of the primary predicate must allow the depictive to refer to a process (sub)event or a transition; (e) the relevance requirement, according to which the eventuality denoted by the depictive must be relevant to the eventuality denoted by the primary predicate. A crucial aspect of this dissertation, related to the pragmatic requirement in (b), is our claim—following McNally (1993, 1997)—that depictives in BP can be individual-level, without undergoing coercion to a stage-level reading (contra Foltran 1999). This occurs in sentences such as Robert Prevost saiu do conclave um papa (‘Robert Prevost left the conclave a pope’) or Ele voltou americano (‘He returned American’), where the default inference associated with the IL depictive is defeated, thereby licensing the sentence. We also explore another configuration that licenses an IL depictive, but in which the IL depictive undergoes coercion, as in A Madonnai lembra a Marilyn Monroe loirai (Lit.: ‘Madonnai resembles Marilyn Monroe blondi’).