The verb ‘dar para’ as an expression of modality in brazilian portuguese

a study based on syntactic cartography and formal semantics

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a syntactic and semantic analysis for the modal ‘dar para’ (give to) in Brazilian Portuguese, following syntactic cartography (Cinque, 1999; 2006; Cinque; Rizzi, 2008) and formal semantics (Kratzer, 1977, 1991). Two methodological procedures are used: (i) the analysis of 125 spontaneous data on the internet (on social network X and news websites) and (ii) the preparation of tests using the introspection method. In the literature, ‘dar para’, in its modal use, is analyzed as a quasi-auxiliary verb (Salomão, 2008; Souza, 2016), lexical verb (Duarte, 2012; Souza, 2016) or auxiliary verb (Coelho; Silva, 2014). Semantically, ‘dar para’ is treated as a weak verb (Oliveira, 2001) which expresses epistemic modality (Duarte, 2012; Coelho; Silva, 2014), facultative modality (Souza, 2016) or root and deontic modality (Veloso, 2007). We argue that ‘dar para’ is a functional verb that expresses only weak root modality, preferably expressing circumstantial modality, and less frequently deontic and teleological modalities. It differs syntactically from other modal functional verbs such as ‘poder’, ‘dever’ and ‘ter que’ because it does not favor raising to the subject position and, semantically, because it is more restricted in relation to the types of modality it expresses.