Representation and Processing of the Inflected Infinitive in Brazilian Portuguese: an eye-tracking study

Abstract

Este estudo examina a representação sintática e as características de processamento de sujeitos nulos de orações infinitivas flexionadas em português brasileiro (PB). Após revisão de parte da literatura atual sobre a Teoria do Controle e discussão das peculiaridades da diacronia do PB, o artigo apresenta um experimento envolvendo rastreamento ocular que comprova que a interpretação controlada do sujeito da infinitiva flexionada é não apenas real psicologicamente, mas também a opção preferida numa tarefa em que se compara a leitura controlada à leitura arbitrária. Discute-se, então, as implicações desse experimento com relação à teoria sintática e à Análise do Controle e especula-se sobre o papel de explicações com base no conceito de terceiro fator na arquitetura da linguagem humana.

Does inflection matter? A few more notes on BP Inflected Infinitives

“…Schooling may reinforce the use of inflection, but it does not determine where speakers will use it. Modesto and Maia (2017) have shown exactly that: the normal use of NI by "educated speakers of BP" is in control structures, something frowned upon by school grammar. Their experiment shows that BP speakers do not use the grammatical system taught in school when reading inflected infinitives.…”

“…BP speakers have native judgments on the distribution of NI, and those judgements are not what one would expect if those speakers were following the grammar taught in Brazilian schools, as shown by the experimental results of Modesto and Maia (2017). It is then concluded that results already obtained by the study of NI are scientifically interesting.…”

“…This seems contradictory with what has been said so far, but it is not. The two dialects influenced each other throughout Brazilian history and have been mixed up in the 20 th c., as discussed in Modesto and Maia (2017) and the articles cited above, resulting in a plural and polarized sociolinguistic system, but not two different (I-)languages.…”

“…If inflection was in fact an artifact of schooling, as R&H argue, BP speakers should not have converging judgments about inflection that differ from the set of rules taught in school, which is what happens with NI. As Modesto and Maia (2017) have shown, BP speakers treat the null category in subject position of inflected nonfinite verbs as controlled PRO, which goes against the rules they learnt in school. Consider some of Modesto and Maia's test sentences:…”

“…Though the study of NI in BP has resulted in an important confirmation of the distinction between PC and EC, since Modesto (2010) started discussing NI in BP, within the realms of Generative Grammar, he had to defend somehow that NI was worth studying (see MODESTO, 2016, to appear;MAIA, 2017). Mainly, Modesto replies to Rodrigues and Hornstein (2013) (R&H from now on), but many other linguists seem to believe in the arguments discussed (and the ones presupposed) by R&H.…”