Manner adverbs in - mente from Latin to Brazilian Portuguese

A grammaticalization analysis under Distributed Morphology

Bibliographic Data

ID24226864
AuthorsLydsson Agostinho Gonçalves (0000-0003-0875-7334, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora), Bianca Agrelli Rodrigues (0000-0003-0752-9575, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora), Paula Roberta Gabbai Armelin (0000-0003-4751-2831, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora)
Year2026
Pages42-71
Publication date2026-03-23
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueAdverbs and Particles at the Form-Meaning Interface (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/la.292.03gon
OpenAlexW7140084032
ISBN9789027233967
LanguageEN
References cited25

This paper investigates the grammaticalization ( Roberts & Roussou 1999 , Lehmann 2015 ) of the adverbial constructions of the X-mente pattern from Latin to Brazilian Portuguese, under the framework of Distributed Morphology ( Halle & Marantz 1993 , Marantz 1997 ). In Latin, these adverbials consisted of the feminine noun mens ‘mind’ and an adjective, and expressed the meaning of ‘in an X manner’ (with ‘X’ representing the adjective). In Brazilian Portuguese, they are formally adverbs, single words composed of a feminine adjective followed by the ending -mente . We propose that the noun mente changed into an adverbial categorizer head ( adv ) while preserving some properties from its lexical origin, notably the feminine gender, which is shared with the adjective to which it merges.

Brazilian Portuguese · Distributed Morphology · feminine gender · Grammaticalization · manner adverbs · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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