Future in Brazilian Portuguese

1. The project

This page makes part of the Speiderproject 2012-Language Documentation and e-information, developed at the Department of Language and Communication of NTNU

We have learned that well constructed corpora are not only a result of an in-depth linguistic analysis, but that they also can inform linguistic research. But in spite of a growing number of public language corpora, finding the information that is relevant to ones specific research purpose is still a challenge. When looking for linguistic information on the web, a lot can be found, yet standard search engines give us very general information peppered with information that is totally useless making search on the net also for a researcher often a waste time.

The beginning of our needs as linguists regarding to the current search technologies can be represented by the question: How does one get close to the pulse of agents that deal with language? Our answer is that for those, dealing with languages, what really matters is to gain direct access to linguistic data and to find easy ways to interpret this data. Therefore, in our project, we would like to show one possible way to provide users of language with the access to data they seek and the necessary insight to interpret this data.

This project is meant to show that results of linguistic research can be made interesting not only to other linguists, but also to language learners and lovers of language in a simple and direct way. Our intention is to provide direct access to part of our research data, in our project, but beyond that goal, we would like to focus on how we can make our data-driven research interesting and easy to grasp.

Then, we talk here about future expression in Brazilian_Portuguese (BP). We will look at the effect of language change on the use of the Future Tense, gathering valuable bibliographic and multimedia material on this topic.

2. Brazilian_Portuguese (BP)

"Follow the link above for more about Brazilian Portuguese on TC!! Corpora, text, annotated data, information on large speech and text corpora, references, culture, society, and funny stuff :)"

3. Future in Brazilian Portuguese - Variability

The variability in the expression of future is a characteristic phenomenon of Romanic languages. Besides in Portuguese, this phenomenon has been described for French, Italian and Spanish (Oliveira and Olinda 2008, p. 94). Linguists have identified at least four “default” forms conveying primary future meaning. These are the simple future, the future present, the ‘haver’ (be to) periphrasis and the ‘ir’ (go) periphrasis.

Future expression in BP
FORM	STRUCTURE
Simple Future	V-future morpheme
Future Present	V.pres+Adv.temp
Haver (to be) Periphrasis	Haver.fut+V.inf
Ir (go) Periphrasis	Ir.fut+V.inf

In the following you get a view of annotated data of these future forms, as well as audio and video samples of occurrences of these forms of expression in Brazilian music. The songs included here can also be seen in annotated corpus by clicking the link respective to each youtube video.

Simple future

Caetano Veloso: Um índio (an Indian)

Viajarei a Paris.

“I will travel to Paris.”

Viajarei
viajar	ei
Travel	FUT1SG
V

a

a

to

PREP

Paris

paris

ParisOBJ

N

By clicking the link on the caption of the figure, you will be redirected to a youtube video of the performance of Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso (http://www.caetanoveloso.com.br/) with the song "Um índio" (A native), that counts with several occurrences of simple future expressions.

The link: Um índio (Brazilian song) directs you to a page where you can find the lyrics of the song (with the simple future occurrences highlighted) and the same lyrics in an annotated corpus.

Present Future

Viajo a Paris amanhã.

“I travel to Paris tomorrow”

Viajo
viaj	o
travel	PRES1SG
V

a

a

to

PREP

Paris

paris

Paris

N

amanhã

amanhã

tomorrow

ADVtemp

Periphrastic IR (go) future

Mulan - Vou fazer um homem de você (I will make a man out of you)

Vou viajar a Paris.

“I am going to travel to Paris.”

Vou

vou

go1SGPRES

AUX

viajar

viajar

travelINF

V

a

a

to

PREP

Paris

paris

Paris

N

Periphrastic HAVER (to be) future

Haverei de viajar a Paris

“I will travel to Paris.”

Haverei
haver	ei
there.be	1SGFUT
AUX

de

de

of

PREP

viajar

viajar

travelINF

V

a

a

to

PREP

Paris

paris

ParisOBJ

N

Prescriptive grammars, until recently, only acknowledge the synthetic or simple future, yet diachronic studies of future expression in Brazilian Portuguese agree that the simple future is in the process of being substituted by the periphrastic forms, specially the ‘ir’ periphrasis and to a minor extent by the future present.

References on Future in Brazilian Portuguese - Variability

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