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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 10: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 28, Lisbon
Edited by Ernestina Carrilho, Alexandra Fiéis, Maria Lobo and Sandra Pereira
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 10] 2016
► pp. 43–60

Explicative clauses in Portuguese as a case of parentheses

| Universidade de Lisboa
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A subset of causal explicative clauses in European Portuguese (EP) introduced by the connectors pois ‘for’, que ‘that’ and porque ‘because’ has been classified either as coordinate or subordinate clauses, or alternatively as autonomous discursive expressions. Extending previous work, we claim that, although the sentences they head present most of the characteristics of subordination, they establish with the host sentence a paratactic link, and involve secondary and non-restrictive information. We will argue that these explicative clauses arise from parenthetical inclusion via Par-Merge, in the sense of De Vries (2012). This analysis allows us to provide a syntactic account for these clauses, and to capture some of their correlated discursive properties.

Keywords: Causal explicative clauses, parataxis, parenthetical clauses, Parenthetical Merge, subordination
Published online: 8 December 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.10.03col
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