STATIVE PREDICATES IN THE PROGRESSIVE IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate in which contexts stative predicates are possible in the progressive in Brazilian Portuguese (BrP). In the literature, especially on English, this is unexpected, because progressive aspect is applied on events composed by stages (event predicates). States, however, are known as segmentally homogeneous, which means that: i) they have no stages and ii) they have the subinterval property of being true at minimal instants. In the present paper, we argue that the progressive aspect can be acceptable if a stage structure is grammatically licensed on the events denoted by the stative predicate. Moreover, we also found some similarities between the constraints on progressive statives in BrP and progressive habituals in English. Then we propose that the difference in the acceptability between stative predicates in the progressive in BrP (estar amando) and in English (is loving) comes from grammatical constraints on the composition of a stage structure between these languages, rather than semantic distinctions in the progressive.