Abstract:
The aim of this work is to describe the variation in the domain of noun determination in 20th- and 21st-century Portuguese. The main focus lies on the use of bare nouns, especially in Brazilian Portuguese, that shows a series of remarkable phenomena in this regard. In opposition to the synchronic focus, as followed by Wall 2015, the intention is to bring out diachronic trends during the last century, also comparing European and Brazilian Portuguese (EP and BP).
Comparisons will be made not only with European Portuguese (EP), but also with some Romance languages, such as Spanish and Italian. The development of the grammatical categories of the article within the Romance languages - which, despite a common basis, shows significant differences in use – constitutes the starting point of this doctoral dissertation. This work tries to establish a link between the “use/non-use of articles” system and the problem of the grammaticalization process as well as of the language change. Furthermore, the aspect of the language usage in different communication environments will be discussed. The attention is focused on bare nouns, called nombres escuetos in Spanish or nominais nus in Brazilian Portuguese. Nevertheless, also nouns without article accompanied by other determiners are examined.
Bare nouns are not interpreted as a category, but simply as unmarked nouns. The purpose is to analyze in which contexts these nouns appear and whether the article as determiner is less and differently used in Brazilian Portuguese compared to European Portuguese. In addition, it will be shown how these developments can be reconstructed in a diachronic way and in which cases it is possible to speak about a decrease in the use of articles.
Synchronic research on bare nouns in Brazilian Portuguese were the starting point of the present work. On this basis, the most important differences between the Brazilian and European variant have been elaborated. In order to clarify those particular features, the diachronic development of EP was taken into account. This way it was possible to point out the commonalities between the older stages of Romance languages and today’s BP. As a noteworthy result, it emerged that structures, which were common in older stages of Romance languages, are revived in the contemporary use of Brazilian Portuguese, and that they create a link between past and present. In this context, the paradigm of discourse traditions is very significant, as it makes possible to furnish a contribution to the comprehension of differentiated developments in the history of language. The invention of telegraphy in the United States and its worldwide diffusion as a medium of communication forced the language system - not only the Portuguese, but also the system of the other Romance languages - to face new challenges. This example can help to understand how differently each language handles the inclusion of communication technology innovations. Cultural innovations can therefore provide an impulse for change in a language system and provoke the emergence of language structures, which meet the new communication requirements.
Press language, i.e. the language used in newspapers between the beginning of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, provided the data for this dissertation. A corpus made of Portuguese and Brazilian texts, based on examples taken from six newspapers (4 Brazilian and 2 Portuguese), was elaborated. The choice of the newspapers as macro-discourse traditions was in this respect important, as it provided the opportunity to access, by means of a unique support, different types and kinds of texts, written in different places. They belong to varied discourse traditions, enabling the analysis of the phenomenon of bare nouns.
The work is divided into five chapters. The first one deals with the common origin of articles from the Latin demonstrativa and their effect on the new system of the Romance languages in terms of a positive and negative grammaticalization. In this context, phenomena such as the singular aspectual or the semantic pendulum between the categories of countability and non-countability are discussed. The sub-chapter “Semantic of the article” approaches the topic of the meaning of article’s categories and their relationship with bare nouns in a synchronic and diachronic perspective.
Chapter 2 deals with the issue of genericity and analyzes both syntactic and semantic peculiarities of bare nouns with reference to the most important theories in the framework of formal-generative approaches. In addition, aspects of the conception of the discourse, with reference to the immediacy distance continuum, are briefly touched upon. It is demonstrated how specific forms belonging to older language stages can be transferred to new structures which, in turn, give rise to new kinds of texts. This involves the analogy between proverbs and expressive texts, e.g. in the framework of advertising. The interaction between new technologies and influential extra-linguistic aspects, such as text production models, i.e. editing rules in a specific environment (such as the press), is likewise taken into account.
After having provided, in the first two chapters, the theoretical basis for the contemporary understanding of the phenomenon of article elision, the second part of the work (Chapter 2 to 5) is devoted to the analysis of the excerpted passages and to the tracing of diachronic developments by means of statistic assessments of the whole corpus.
In chapter 3, the origin and peculiarities of the corpus are described. The criteria applied to analyze the 3.350 tokens of the corpus, using the Excel program, is also illustrated in this part. Bare nouns are examined with reference to their replaceability by means of definite and/or indefinite articles. For this reason, the nucleus of the nominal syntagm was isolated and a distinction was made between number (singular/plural), lexical-semantic criteria (including the types of substantives), syntactic description (such as the position of the nominal syntagm as far as the verb is concerned, i.e. before or after the verb), type of verb, mode and tense of the verb and type of sentence. The syntactic functions subject or object were also added in the chart.
The syntactic environment of bare nouns is described by means of a chart containing seven possible combinations. Extra-grammatical peculiarities, such as the position of nominal syntagms in the support, e.g. headings, in the body of the text etc., as well as the referentiality of the nominal syntagms, are also considered. Altogether, fifteen criteria were used and applied to an Excel chart, which contain each 50 tokens from a single year of a newspaper.
Each time, the first page of an issue of the six newspapers considered, dated the beginning of January, was examined (altogether 67 issues), taking into account a ten years` gap. In some cases - which are underlined in the Dissertation -, if the first page did not contain 50 tokens, further pages or issues were used.
Chapter 4 is devoted to the evaluation of passages. Both textual and grammatical aspects were carefully discussed from a qualitative perspective. This way, it was possible to create a link between the presence of bare nouns and particular discourse traditions (e.g. headings), or the emergence of discourse traditions as a consequence of the use of telegraphy, in the editing of news in newspapers. Based on cases such as Notícias aqui recebidas dizem que (...) (JB 03.01.1900), it was possible to establish that, in order to disseminate news, particular structures (i.e. new discourse traditions) emerged.
Interpreting the examples related to modified plural bare nouns, the importance of going into the issue of the ambiguity of nominal syntagms also became clear. Interestingly enough, grammatical aspects - such as tense, mode, adverbs, kinds of predicates – and context play and important role within the sentence, in order to ascribe to the nominal syntagm a certain reading. This is the meeting point of grammatical and semantic-pragmatic aspects within the discourse. This relationship becomes also evident when unmodified plural bare nouns are taken into account. It is remarkable that these models in the newspapers language develop as stylistic elements (estilema).
Furthermore, the peculiarities of legal-administrative texts, which belong to the language of distance, as well as those of literary texts, characterized by immediacy, were dealt with. On the basis of both types of texts, it is possible to understand how specific kinds of texts outline their text constellation. In this sense, particular kinds of texts tend to establish forms of texts, which show a reduction or a stereotyped description of a similar content.
The non-use or the reduction of the article lead to different interpretations: syntactical, semantical or even stylistic. In this context, also the information structure seems to be important and it is possible to find singular bare nouns within focusing construction, e.g. as subject at the beginning of a sentence. In chapter 4, moreover, some grammatical constructions, which are common in the Corpus, are therefore analyzed.
In chapter 5, a diachronic statistic evaluation, based on selected examples, is carried out. The hypothetical development of non-determination, meaning the possible replaceability of a definite, indefinite, non-definite or “neutralized” article, in the considered timeframe, is portrayed. The resulting graphic descriptions offer an insight on the whole development of several linguistic combinations of relevant factors in the considered Brazilian and Portuguese newspapers and allow to draw conclusions on the development of the usage of language in both countries. The state of non-determination is analyzed from different perspectives. They are linked to the lexical classes of the noun, to the number of nomina, to syntactical positions and to extra-linguistic criteria, such as the position of the syntagm in the text media, i.e. in the heading, in the subtitle, in the body of the text, etc.
All these aspects help to gain a general understanding of the development of these categories in the newspapers. This process made it possible to note specific trends in the newspapers of both countries.
The graphs illustrate the relationship between the language of the press and the presence of bare nouns, e.g. in specific reading of headlines and, in general, in journalistic language, with its peculiar standardization attempts. The analysis of data and graphs brings to the assumption that, between BP and EP, there is a great difference in the usage of the “indefinite referential” category with reference to singular bare nouns, especially when the gerund is applied. However, the omission in particular constructions, e.g. in the case of its introduction by means of quantitative and intensifying adjectives as stylistic device of the language of the press, is permitted in both variants as well as in other Romance languages. Therefore, it can be stated that certain constructions can be considered discourse traditions in BP. It has to be likewise underlined that, in the corpus, in the European variant, non-modified bare nouns are barely found at the sentence beginning, both in singular and in plural. Furthermore can be observed, that bare nouns in pre-verbal subject position are more frequent in BP. The most relevant differences between BP and EP, with reference to the aforementioned corpus, emerge precisely from these perspectives.
In general, in can be affirmed that the presence of bare nouns in BP is considerable as far as it applies to all types of texts. What is unusual is that number in this constellation plays an important role. While plural bare nouns at the beginning of the sentence can be associated with specialized and sophisticated written forms, singular bare nouns, in the same position, are expressions of the language of immediacy. If they appear in printed texts, they carry pragmatic motivations. Furthermore, it can be stated that the presence of the article diminishes in case of non-opposing semantic meanings between definite, indefinite and Ø article. In those cases, BP tends not to insert articles.
The present dissertation makes therefore an important contribution to the comparison between BP and EP and shows diachronic developments within each variant as well as differences between the two variants based on the use or non-use of the article. By means of synchronic analysis of relevant language variants (EP or BP), the work also succeeds in identifying how articles are inserted or omitted according to the kind of text, the discourse or the context. The applied methodology, i.e. a newspapers texts based corpus linguistic, provides a research model that can be applied to similar phenomena in different languages.