A semântica da exclusividade: uma tipologia dos exclusivos do português brasileiro

Abstract

In the Portuguese language, more specifically in Brazilian Portuguese, items such as só (“only”), somente (“only”), exceto (“except”), among others of this nature, can be classified in formal semantics as “exclusives.” There are no solid analyses in the formal semantics and pragmatics literature that examine these items in Brazilian Portuguese from this perspective. In light of this, the present study investigates exclusive items in Brazilian Portuguese through two theories of exclusives, which we will refer to as Coppock and Beaver’s (2013) “Maximum and Minimum Theory” and Wiegand’s (2018) “Morphosemantic Theory,” with the aim of proposing a minimal typology for these items and structures in Brazilian Portuguese. Both theories focus on exclusives in English, particularly the particles just and only: the former argues that exclusives contain a presuppositional component (minimum) and a quantificational component (maximum), while the latter argues that exclusives operate directly on sets of alternatives ranked by the speaker.We propose that Portuguese exclusives also fit within the theoretical frameworks presented and can initially be classified into two distinct groups: Focus Exclusives and Negation Exclusives. The former aim to delimit and/or exclude elements from a larger set to which they belong (as in só and apenas in sentences such as “Eu só/apenas falo português” — “I only speak Portuguese”); the latter focus on the contrast between two sets, necessarily involving the negation of one set in relation to the other (as in exceto in sentences such as “Todos vieram me ver, exceto João” — “Everyone came to see me, except João”).There are also cases in which certain exclusives behave differently from the proposals by Coppock and Beaver (2013) and Wiegand (2018), referred to by Beltrama (2021) as Emphatic Exclusives (EE). These operate by delimiting and/or negating alternatives within their scope (in English, the item just, and in Brazilian Portuguese, simplesmente), as in the sentence: “Este filme é simplesmente maravilhoso” — “This movie is simply wonderful.” In this case, for the speaker, there would be no other adjectives that could be inserted as alternatives to maravilhoso (“wonderful”).