Open AccessSome notes on outro in Portuguese
Author(s) -
Laura Brugè,
Giuliana Giusti
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
linguística/linguística
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2182-9713
pISSN - 1646-6195
DOI - 10.21747/16466195/lingespa20
Subject(s) - quantifier (linguistics) , existentialism , syntax , linguistics , adjective , determiner , portuguese , animacy , ambiguity , philosophy , relation (database) , genitive case , mathematics , relative clause , humanities , noun , epistemology , computer science , database
This paper studies the syntactic behavior of outro(s) in Brazilian and European Portuguese. Starting from the syntax of its Italian counterpart un altro/(degli) altri, we argue that outro(s)in prenominal position is neither an adjective nor a determiner, but an existential quantifier and that the presence of the indefinite article, um outro/uns outros, gives rise to a complex existential quantifier, like the corresponding Italian form. We also argue that outro(s) and um outro/uns outros do not specialize for different interpretations since they both substantially show the same ambiguity (one/some more or a/some different one(s)) and behave in the same way in relation to possible semantic interpretations typical of existential quantifiers