Sobre o uso de orações gerundivas adnominais em português

Abstract

In this paper, the use of adnominal gerundive clauses in Portuguese is scrutinized, with observation and discussion of (predominantly semantic) restrictions on their distribution. The focus is on contemporary standard European Portuguese, though Brazilian Portuguese is also marginally taken into account. Electronic corpora of newspaper texts are systematically used in order to assess (and quantify) the use of this subtype of gerundive clauses, which has often been condemned in conservative instruments of language standardization. The conclusion is that adnominal Portuguese gerundive clauses are widespread with certain groups of verbs (e.g. envolvendo ‘involving’, aparentando ‘appearing/looking’, contendo ‘containing’), but not with all verbs, even within relatively similar groups; restrictions and instability phenomena typical of ongoing language change are indeed observed. Curious semantic and syntactic differences between adnominal gerundive clauses – acting both as nominal modifiers and as appositions – and relative clauses, their closest counterparts, are also examined.