Sequence of tenses in complementation structures: lexical restrictions and effects on language acquisition

• Type: Chapter or Part of a Book
• Date: 2015

Authors

Marques , Rui (Author) Other; Silvano, Purificação (Author) FLUP; Gonçalves, Anabela (Author) Other; Santos, Ana Lúcia (Author) Other

Book

Title: Hispanic Linguistics at the Crossroads : Theoretical linguistics, language acquisition and language contact

Pages: 69-88

ISBN: 9789027258038

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Scientific classification

FOS: Humanities

Other information

DOI: 10.1075/ihll.4.04mar

Abstract (EN): In this paper we discuss the combinations of tenses in main and complement clauses of European Portuguese, focusing on the issue that restrictions on the tenses allowed in complement clauses are observed with some predicates but not with others. We show that these lexical restrictions are independent of the mood occurring in the complement clause, though an integrated analysis of mood and tense may be achieved. The proposal is made that the observed lexical restrictions on embedded tenses have a semantic basis and follow from the fact that Portuguese is an SOT-language, that is, a language where embedded tenses have semantic import. A preliminary investigation is conducted on the sequences of tenses produced at early stages of language acquisition.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific