ABSTRACT:
In this paper, we analyze a type of locative inversion in Brazilian Portuguese in accordance with the theoretical and methodological assumptions adopted in studies in the field of the Syntax-Semantic Lexical Interface. This phenomenon occurs with verbs such as armazenar ‘store’, which are ditransitive and denote a change of state in relation to a location: o fazendeiro armazenou 25 mil toneladas de milho no depósito ‘the farmer stored 25 thousand tons of corn in the warehouse’/ o depósito armazenou 25 mil toneladas de milho ‘the warehouse stored 25 thousand tons of corn’. In a broader classification, these verbs belong to the class of locative change-of-state verbs, along with other verbs that do not undergo locative inversion, such as colocar ‘put’: a menina colocou o livro na caixa ‘the girl put the book in the box’/ *a caixa colocou o livro ‘*the box put the book’. Upon analyzing the specific meaning of store verbs, we observe that they denote a container relationship between their arguments, in which the 25,000 tons of corn become contained within the warehouse. This relationship allows for the occurrence of locative inversion, characterized by a reinterpretation of the thematic structure of the verbs and an aspectual change in the alternate form. We demonstrate that this thematic reinterpretation occurs by means of a semantic process known as coercion, and the aspectual change in the alternate sentence is an epiphenomenon of this process. Furthermore, we establish that the semantic relationship of container is grammatically relevant.
KEYWORDS:
Locative Inversion; Lexical Semantics; Verbal Alternation; Coercion Process.
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