A semantic analysis of ‘também’ with additive use in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a semantic and pragmatic analysis of the Brazilian Portuguese item ‘também’ (also) as an additive particle. In order to do so, we first identify some of the different uses of ‘também’, and then we isolate its use as an additive particle. Next we compare ‘também’ with the English ‘too’, which shows similar behavior in relation to the additive use. We then present the insights and analyzes found in some previous works and analyze in more detail the advantages and disadvantages of the theory proposed by Amsili and Beyssade (2010, 2013) on the additive particles ‘too’ in English and ‘aussi’ in French, when applied to the item ‘também’ in Brazilian Portuguese. We therefore propose, in contrast to Amsili and Beyssade (2010, 2013), an analysis of ‘também’ as an additive particle whose function is to create lists, based on the work of Zhang (2015), which accounts for the problems we detected in the analysis by Amsili and Beyssade (2010, 2013).