The argument structure of deverbal nouns in Brazilian Portuguese

c. migr-ação d-a caça
migrate-NMLZ of-the.F hunted
‘the migration of the hunted’
Furthermore, although when first mentioned a caça do lugar ‘the hunted of the place’
consists of pragmatically new information, when mentioned again, it consists of given
information; as such, one would expect this argument to be expressed as zero
anaphora. Instead, however, it is represented by the full NP a caça ‘the hunted’ in
order to not produce confusion between both types of migration, man’s migration and
hunted’s migration; therefore, the overt expression of this argument is prompted by
pragmatic and semantic motivations.
It is exactly the pragmatic role of verb-derived nouns in creating discourse
continuity that determines the formal expression of the arguments. If the pragmatic
function is the introduction of a new referent, the verb-derived noun should allow an
overt NP corresponding to this argument; if, on the other hand, there is a discourse
function of preserving text cohesion by recovering a preceding complete predication,
the potential arguments are not overtly expressed. 8
To sum up, there are two cases of zero anaphora: one triggered by semantic
considerations and the other by pragmatic considerations. Both kinds of zero anaphora
are governed by a pressure towards the maximal simplification of expression.
4.3. Some theoretical generalizations and implications
The data just analyzed seem to show that deverbal nouns preserve the argument
structure of the corresponding input verb and that the overt or non-overt expression of
their arguments within the term depends on a set of semantic and pragmatic factors,
mainly related to the shared short-term information by the speech act participants. In
the functionalist literature these motivations have been collectively referred to as the
Economy Principle (Givón, 1980; 1990; Haiman 1983). Cristofaro (2003) describes
this principle as follows:
Syntagmatic economy is the tendency to reduce the length or complexity of
any utterance, so that the most frequent expressions tend to be reduced
phonetically and information that is redundant and/or recoverable from the
context tends to be omitted (Cristofaro 2003: 248) .
In my own examples syntagmatic economy is strongly correlated to predetermination
of semantic information in related states of affairs and non-overt expression of shared
information for pragmatic reasons.
If, for example, the tense, aspect and mood of a dependent predication are
predetermined by the semantic features of the main predication, they do not need to
be specified in the verb of the dependent predication, as can seen in (29a), an instance
of a complex construction from Maricopa.
Maricopa (Northern Amerindian, Hokan)
(29)a [nyaa m-mii-k] ´ii-m
I 2-cry-SUB say-REAL
‘I said you cried’ (Gordon 1986: 247 apud Cristofaro 2003: 66)
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