Aline Jéssica Pires
Orientador(a): Sonia Maria Lazzarini Cyrino
Doutorado em Linguística - 2025
Nro. chamada: TESE - P665d
Resumo: This dissertation investigates the historical development of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Portuguese, focusing on the variation between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP). DOM is a cross-linguistic phenomenon (Bossong, 1983) in which direct objects, typically unmarked, receive morphological marking under certain semantic and/or syntactic conditions. In Romance languages, DOM commonly surfaces via a dative-homophonous preposition (Iemmolo, 2020; Gerards, 2023). In Portuguese, DOM is instantiated through the preposition a and is primarily sensitive to animacy; however, BP also exhibits DOM in particular syntactic configurations, such as coordination and comparative constructions (Cyrino; Irimia, 2019, 2023). While prior studies identify a 17th-century peak followed by an 18th-century decline in EP DOM (Ramos, 1992; Gibrail, 2003; Pires, 2017, 2020), the trajectory of DOM in BP remains understudied. Furthermore, DOM has been linked to clitic doubling and clitic left dislocation (CLLD), constructions where the object co-occurs with a matching clitic (Leonetti, 2008; Escandell-Vidal, 2009), though this relationship lacks systematic investigation in Portuguese. The study addresses two central research questions: (i) how DOM has evolved in Portuguese from earlier stages to contemporary varieties, and (ii) to what extent syntactic approaches — particularly Cyrino and Irimia’s (2019, 2023) framework — can account for DOM patterns across Historical and Modern Portuguese. The methodology is corpus-based, drawing on historical data from EP (13th–19th centuries) sourced from the WOChWEL, Tycho Brahe Parsed Corpus, and Post Scriptum corpora, as well as BP (17th–19th centuries) from the Colonia Corpus, and Tycho Brahe Corpus. Contemporary descriptions from reference grammars and studies of both varieties supplement the analysis (Cyrino; Irimia, 2019, 2023; Gerards, 2023). The study employs quantitative methods, including statistical modeling of DOM frequency across centuries, alongside qualitative syntactic and semantic feature analysis. The theoretical framework adopts Cyrino and Irimia’s proposal, according to which BP DOM involves a licensing condition beyond Case. The findings reveal that animacy is the primary trigger for DOM in both EP and BP, supporting Cyrino and Irimia’s framework, while also extending its applicability to EP. Syntactic contexts such as coordination, comparatives, clitic doubling and CLLD predominantly involve animate marked objects, suggesting that these constructions reinforce DOM rather than independently triggering it. Diachronically, EP exhibits a rise in DOM frequency by the 15th century, peaking in the 17th century before declining in the 18th century, consistent with prior studies. However, statistical modeling indicates that the 18th century remains a favoring context for DOM despite the overall decline. Notably, BP demonstrates higher DOM frequency than EP across all periods. Historical attestations of marked inanimate objects, absent in Modern Portuguese, suggest a gradual restriction of DOM contexts over time. The persistence of DOM in BP implies that it retained the more permissive system of Classical Portuguese, whereas EP underwent simplification. This dissertation provides a comprehensive diachronic comparison of DOM in EP and BP, supporting a unified animacy-based analysis while revealing variety-particular constraints.
Palavras-chave: Marcação diferencial de objeto; Língua Portuguesa - Sintaxe; Linguística histórica; Linguística de corpus.
