Comparatives in Brazilian Portuguese
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Susan Rothstein✝
Abstract
Comparatives in Brazilian Portuguese show that Bale and Barner’s (2009) generalizations do not hold cross-linguistically; this leads to reconsidering the role of cardinality in mass and count syntax. The paper discusses contrasts in the use of naturally atomic, or object, mass nouns in Brazilian Portuguese and English. Brazilian Portuguese has a productive bare singular, which is analysed, following Pires de Oliveira and Rothstein (2011) as an object mass noun with a count counterpart. However, in comparative constructions it does not behave as Bale and Barner predict. We give an account of the relation between counting and measuring which explains the data and we show, using data from Hungarian, that the contrasts with English are not unique to Brazilian Portuguese.
Abstract
Comparatives in Brazilian Portuguese show that Bale and Barner’s (2009) generalizations do not hold cross-linguistically; this leads to reconsidering the role of cardinality in mass and count syntax. The paper discusses contrasts in the use of naturally atomic, or object, mass nouns in Brazilian Portuguese and English. Brazilian Portuguese has a productive bare singular, which is analysed, following Pires de Oliveira and Rothstein (2011) as an object mass noun with a count counterpart. However, in comparative constructions it does not behave as Bale and Barner predict. We give an account of the relation between counting and measuring which explains the data and we show, using data from Hungarian, that the contrasts with English are not unique to Brazilian Portuguese.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Re-examining the mass-count distinction 13
- Activewear and other vaguery 37
- A comparison of abstract and concrete mass nouns in terms of their interaction with quantificational determiners 61
- Can mass-count syntax be derived from semantics? 83
- Countability and grammatical number 103
- Comparatives in Brazilian Portuguese 141
- Lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic sources of countability 159
- Countability shifts and abstract nouns 191
- Name Index 225
- Subject Index 227
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Re-examining the mass-count distinction 13
- Activewear and other vaguery 37
- A comparison of abstract and concrete mass nouns in terms of their interaction with quantificational determiners 61
- Can mass-count syntax be derived from semantics? 83
- Countability and grammatical number 103
- Comparatives in Brazilian Portuguese 141
- Lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic sources of countability 159
- Countability shifts and abstract nouns 191
- Name Index 225
- Subject Index 227
