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Hispanic Linguistics at the Crossroads: Theoretical linguistics, language acquisition and language contact
Edited by Rachel Klassen, Juana M. Liceras and Elena Valenzuela
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 4] 2015
► pp. 69–88

Sequence of tenses in complementation structures

Lexical restrictions and effects on language acquisition

ORCID logo | Universidade de Lisboa
| Universidade do Porto
| Universidade de Lisboa
ORCID logo | Universidade de Lisboa

In this paper we discuss the combinations of tenses in main and complement clauses of European Portuguese, focusing on the issue that restrictions on the tenses allowed in complement clauses are observed with some predicates but not with others. We show that these lexical restrictions are independent of the mood occurring in the complement clause, though an integrated analysis of mood and tense may be achieved. The proposal is made that the observed lexical restrictions on embedded tenses have a semantic basis and follow from the fact that Portuguese is an SOT-language, that is, a language where embedded tenses have semantic import. A preliminary investigation is conducted on the sequences of tenses produced at early stages of language acquisition.

Keywords: complement clauses, language acquisition, sequence of tenses, temporal dependence
Published online: 30 July 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.4.04mar
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Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Marques, Rui
2018. Subjunctive and subject obviation in Portuguese. In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17], ► pp. 213 ff. DOI logo

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