Non-mobile stress in non-verbs in Portuguese

a usage-based diachronic approach

Abstract

As did Cantoni (2013) for the Portuguese stress system as a whole, I propose in the present paper a diachronic explanation for a difference between verbs and non-verbs in Portuguese: the fact that verbs have mobile stress, whereas non-verbs do not. I adopt a diachronic perspective, considering, as proposed in dynamic systems approaches, that the knowledge of the initial state of a system helps us understand its current state. Based on that, I examine inflectional paradigms of Latin nouns and the changes that have taken place from Latin to Portuguese with the purpose of assessing to what extent those morphological changes have determined characteristics of the Portuguese stress system. The vast majority of nouns showed a stress shift in their paradigms in Latin. As is shown in the present paper, however, the accusative was the only case in which there was practically no change in stress between singular and plural. The fact that the accusative was the lexicogenic case in Portuguese, i.e., the fact that nouns and adjectives in Portuguese have their forms derived from the accusative of corresponding Latin words eventually produced fixed stress in Portuguese non-verbs. The accusative was the most frequent case in Latin and, as would be expected from a usage-based perspective, it was the only surviving case. The final section of the paper additionally discusses the fact that the same diachronic changes have kept noun and adjective theme vowels from ever being stressed in Portuguese.