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Variable past participles in Portuguese perfect constructions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2019

Scott A. Schwenter ,
Mark Hoff ,
Eleni Christodulelis ,
Chelsea Pflum  and
Ashlee Dauphinais
Scott A. Schwenter
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Mark Hoff
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Eleni Christodulelis
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Chelsea Pflum
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Ashlee Dauphinais
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
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Abstract

Some Portuguese verbs have two past participle forms: one regular (stem + -do), and the other irregular (often identical to the first person singular present indicative). Per grammars, the perfect auxiliaries ter/haver take regulars, while irregulars appear with passive/adjectival ser/estar. To test these claims, we analyzed naturally-occurring data from Brazil (twentieth century) and Portugal (nineteenth and twentieth). We coded 1077 tokens from 21 verbs for ten predictors and performed mixed-effects logistic regressions in R. Irregulars appear with ter/haver 54% overall and in 68% of cases from Portugal. Our results demonstrate that past participle choice is determined by the interaction of several linguistic factors. While lexical verb is the most significant predictor of participle selection, verbs with irregular participles identical to the first person singular present indicative occur in the irregular significantly more than other verbs. We conclude that analogical processes underpin the variation. This conclusion allows us to adjudicate between competing accounts of past participle choice in Portuguese.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 69 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

We are grateful to the other participants in Scott Schwenter's Portuguese 5611 class at The Ohio State University in Spring 2016 for their invaluable help on this project. Thanks as well to the audiences at NWAV 45 in Vancouver (2016) and ICLaVE 9 in Málaga (2017), and to Patrícia Amaral, Ana Carvalho, Janayna Carvalho, Luana Lamberti, Lachlan Mackenzie, Marie-Eve Ritz, Malte Rosemeyer, Kim Schulte, Nigel Vincent, and three anonymous LVC reviewers for helpful feedback.

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