The distribution of negative temporal adjuncts in contemporary Portuguese: Negation, negative concord, and degree constructions

Abstract

This paper analyses the distribution of negative temporal adjuncts in contemporary Portuguese, with a particular focus on the adverbs nunca and jamais (‘never’). The focus is on European Portuguese, but Brazilian Portuguese is also taken into account. Centre stage is occupied by the two prevalent syntactic contexts for the mentioned adjuncts, namely, pre-verbal position, as genuine negation operators (e.g., nunca minto ‘I never lie’), and post-verbal position, as positive existential negative concord items (e.g., não minto nunca, ‘I never lie’, literally ‘I don’t lie never’). Negative elliptical verbless contexts are also considered, although superficially. Sequences of more than one negative expression in pre-verbal position are studied separately in some detail, with focus on those introduced by nunca: nunca ninguém (literally, ‘never nobody’), nunca nada (literally, ‘never nothing’), nunca nenhum N¢ (literally ‘never no N¢’). These sequences, which have received little attention in the literature, illustrate the persistence of pre-verbal negative concord in contemporary Portuguese. Finally, two non-negative contexts where negative temporal adjuncts still occur today are analysed in some detail, viz. comparative constructions with nunca (e.g., melhor do que nunca, ‘better than ever’), and superlative constructions with jamais (e.g., a ponte mais comprida jamais construída ‘the longest bridge ever built’). All constructions are documented with corpus data, namely of contemporary newspaper text (cetempúblico, for European Portuguese, NILC/São Carlos, for Brazilian Portuguese) and of Portuguese literary text from the last 500 years (Vercial). Original data on the frequency of the various constructions is presented.