A pessoa and uma pessoa: Grammaticalization and functions of a human impersonal referential device in European Portuguese

Abstract

The grammaticalization of nouns meaning 'man' or 'person' into impersonal pronouns (so-called man-impersonals) has been related to languages with obligatory subject expression, like Germanic languages and French. Albeit regarded as a null-subject language, European Portuguese (EP) presents a similar development: the noun phrases uma pessoa 'a person' and a pessoa 'the person' are used in ways that resembles man-impersonals. The present paper aims at shedding light to the semantics, pragmatics and morphosyntactic properties of the pessoa constructions in EP and discuss their status as potentially grammaticalized or grammaticalizing referential devices. It is argued that the emergence of these constructions is favored by pragmatic and morphosyntactic tendencies found in EP: avoidance of direct person reference and a preference for expressed subjects even in contexts permitting null subjects.

Portuguese a pessoa and uma pessoa

“…As typically observed in other processes of grammaticalisation, the functional changes are accompanied by other, rather formal changes not focused on in this study (but see Posio 2021 for European Portuguese and Amaral & Mihatsch 2019 for Brazilian Portuguese), such as their increasingly common occurrence in the syntactic subject position, decategorialisation, which leads to the loss of gender and number inflection and the possibility of adjectival modification, a certain degree of prosodic weakening (Posio 2021) and more specific developments leading to well-established impersonal pronouns such as the impossibility of referring anaphorically to an impersonal antecedent (Cabredo Hofherr 2008: 39-42, 45-48). Posio (2021) analyses these constructions in EP and discusses their status as potentially grammaticalised referential devices. Posio (2021: 3) assumes that human impersonal referential devices, in opposition to prototypical personal pronouns (such as I or you), receive their interpretation through inference rather than reference.…”

“…The different data types will be combined in order to trace the diachronic development of the restrictions determining the impersonal uses and the differences and parallels between the two expressions. We will close by comparing our results with existing studies by Posio (2017Posio ( , 2021 and Martins (2022) on parallel developments in European Portuguese. Eduardo Tadeu Roque Amaral & Wiltrud Mihatsch.…”

“…This study aims to analyse these expressions in order to shed light on the different restrictions determining the exclusive and inclusive impersonal uses and their referential functions, starting out with the classification by Gast & van der Auwera (2013). As typically observed in other processes of grammaticalisation, the functional changes are accompanied by other, rather formal changes not focused on in this study (but see Posio 2021 for European Portuguese and Amaral & Mihatsch 2019 for Brazilian Portuguese), such as their increasingly common occurrence in the syntactic subject position, decategorialisation, which leads to the loss of gender and number inflection and the possibility of adjectival modification, a certain degree of prosodic weakening (Posio 2021) and more specific developments leading to well-established impersonal pronouns such as the impossibility of referring anaphorically to an impersonal antecedent (Cabredo Hofherr 2008: 39-42, 45-48). Posio (2021) analyses these constructions in EP and discusses their status as potentially grammaticalised referential devices.…”

“…A considerable number of studies have shown the existence of impersonal and personal pronouns that originate from noun phrases with highly general human nouns such as French on (impersonal 'one' or 'you') or Portuguese a gente (personal pronoun 'we' with an earlier impersonal meaning, from a gente 'the people'). In Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and European Portuguese (EP) there are several expressions such as a pessoa, uma pessoa, as pessoas, o povo and o pessoal which take over impersonal functions (Amaral & Mihatsch 2019, Posio 2021). However, although all these expressions are originally third person noun phrases excluding speakers and addressees, a pessoa (literally 'the person') and uma pessoa (literally 'a person') are particularly used in contexts where speaker and addressee are included.…”

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In both Brazilian and European Portuguese, a pessoa ('the person'), uma pessoa ('a person'), as pessoas ('the persons'), o povo ('the people'), o pessoal ('the people') and some other, more colloquial expressions such as geral 'general' (Ornelas de Avelar 2023 [this volume]) are currently developing new impersonal uses (see Afonso 2008, Amaral & Mihatsch 2019, Posio 2021. In this contribution we will analyse the functional changes of a pessoa and uma pessoa, with a focus on Brazilian Portuguese.

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