This dissertation deals with the semantics of temporal locating adverbials, comprising two main topics: first, the identification of this class of expressions, by distinguishing between it and other classesnamely temporal measure adverbials and time-denoting expressionswhose semantic proximity raises important categorisation issues; second, the semantic computation of temporal locating adverbials in the formal framework of Discourse Representation Theory, taking the presentation of Kamp and Reyle (1993) as the basic reference. The second topic necessarily leads to the analysis of the interaction between adverbial temporal location and other semantic domains that significantly affect the relations expressed by locating adverbials, among which Aktionsart, causality and quantification stand out. The semantic-syntactic identification of temporal locating adverbials, as opposed to the two mentioned "bordering" categories of temporal measure adverbials and time-denoting expressions, requires choices concerning their internal structure and their semantic function. Thus, temporal locating adverbials are analysed as containing a (basic or derived) time-denoting expression
This paper is concerned with the identification of two semantically close categories-temporal locating adverbials and time-denoting expressions. The dividing line between these categories is difficult to draw, inasmuch as there are several phrases that occur with the same surface form in the typical contexts of both of them (e.g. in adverbial position and as the complement of verbs like to date from). These ambivalent phrases include relatively simple expressions like yesterday or last week, but also-a fact that has gone practically unnoticed in the literature-structurally complex ones, like those headed by before, after, when or ago. In this paper, a uniform semantic categorisation of these phrases as mere time-denoting expressions is advocated and some of its consequences for the grammatical system are assessed. The analysis postulates a null locating preposition (with a value close to that of in) in the contexts where the ambivalent forms occur adverbially. A corollary is the partition of the set of particles traditionally classified as temporal locating into two sets: the truly locating ones-like in, during, since or untiland those that are mere heads of (structurally complex) time-denoting expressions-like before, after, between, when, ago, or from.
This paper provides a partial description of the main differences between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) concerning the use of the «gerúndio». Two rather distinct syntactic and semantic uses of this verb form are focussed: the periphrastic «gerúndio» and the adverbial «gerúndio». The periphrastic «gerúndio» occurs in combination with auxiliary verbs, forming complex sequences of two verbal elements. In modern EP, it tends to fall into disuse after some auxiliary verbs, the uninflected infinitive (preceded by a preposition) emerging instead. This paper identifies and briefly characterises the contexts where this competition «gerúndio»-infinitive takes place. The second kind of «gerúndio» occurs in adverbial clauses, where it may be associated with a wide spectrum of interpropositional semantic values, like cause, result or mood, just to name a few. After a brief semantic characterisation of the adverbial «gerúndio», the main differences between EP and BP involving its use will be described. Among them, those concerning the use of gerundive clauses preceded by the preposition em and, once again, those involving the competition «gerúndio»-infinitive, stand out.
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