Prepositions in Brazilian Portuguese: on the rise of a novel system

Abstract

The study examines the prepositional system of Brazilian Portuguese, considering the loss of the dative preposition a (to) in constructions with dative arguments and differential object marking (DOM), as well as in unaccusatives predicates with directional motion verbs. It is argued that the occurrence of para (to) in both ditransitive predicates and predicates with motion verbs as well as the convergence of the preposition em (in) in the grammatical encoding of both innessive and allative interpretation point to their morphosyntactic identity in the relevant contexts. This hypothesis stems on Manzini; Franco’s (2016) unified analysis of dative as well as DOM constructions, in which the relevant argument is licensed in the projection of a prepositional head that introduces an inclusiveness/ possession relation with either the theme argument in ditransitive predicates or the embedded nominal layer in the internal structure of the event in monotransitive predicates, which amounts to the syntactic expression of oblique case. This analysis is extended to unaccusative predicates with motion verbs, in which the spatial preposition introduces a relation between the theme argument and the locative argument in the internal structure of the predicate.