The passive construction in Brazilian Portuguese
Function explains its distribution and frame semantics influences its acceptability
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19230954 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Larissa Santos Ciríaco (0000-0001-8009-6839, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Yasmin Guimarães de Lima (0000-0002-6501-6973, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | DELTA Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0102-4450 • E-ISSN: 1678-460X |
| Publisher | FapUNIFESP (SciELO) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1590/1678-460x202642165281 |
| OpenAlex | W7143329358 |
| SciELO | S0102-44502026000101006 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
Verbs can be divided in three major groups when it comes to the passive construction in Brazilian Portuguese: while verbs such as ‘escrever’ (to write) are fully compatible with the construction; verbs like 'ganhar’ (to win) are conditionally compatible, depending on the argument it takes as its subject (eventive vs. non-eventive ones); and verbs like 'ter’ (to have) are not compatible with the construction (cf. Ciríaco, 2021). In this study we check these findings and argue that the use of passive construction is motivated by its function, namely to give prominence to a patient or an entity to which something happened, highlighting its affected status, in a context where the agent is less important, and that once the construction’s function is recognized, all its properties and distribution follow naturally, without need for lexical restrictions or stipulations of any kind. Acceptability judgments also confirm that stative frames are less accepted than processual and agentive conceptualizations
Argument (complex analysis) · Context (archaeology) · Distribution (mathematics) · Distributional semantics · Frame (networking) · Function (biology) · Semantics (computer science) · Subject (documents) · Linguistics and Language Studies · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
| Highly cited | No |
|---|