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Eckhard Bick - VISL

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4.5.3 Tagging the quantifier 'todo'<br />

The generalising Portuguese quantifier ‘todo’ [all] is both gender and number inflecting<br />

(‘todo’, ‘toda’, ‘todos’, todas’), usually in agreement with an NP-head, and does not<br />

take premodifiers. According to my morphological word class criteria, it must therefore<br />

primarily be categorised as a determiner (DET). ‘Todo’ is related to the invariable (male<br />

singular) pronoun quantifier ‘tudo’, which can not be used as a determiner, and<br />

therefore is tagged SPEC (“specifier”). Syntactically, however, the situation is much<br />

less clear, since the use of ‘todo’ is not restricted to NP-modifier or even nominal<br />

function. As a result of its syntactic variability, the word gives rise to a fair amount of<br />

semantic ambiguity relevant in a translational context, even when used as a pre- or<br />

postnominal modifier. Still, in spite of such lexemic ambiguity, 'todo' allows a<br />

distributional definition/disambiguation for most of its uses/meanings. Consider the<br />

following modifier cases:<br />

(1a) em toda a minha vida ...<br />

(1b) ... deixá-la por lá a vida toda.<br />

(1c) ... todo o mundo sabendo, menos ele.<br />

(2a) Toda célula tem seu conteúdo separado.<br />

(2b) Todo mundo tem fotógrafo aqui ...<br />

(3a) Todas as manhãs, depois do café, ...<br />

(3b) ... engole as raças todas com a mesma graça ...<br />

(3c) Tenho andado muito envolvida com todos eles.<br />

(3d) o que eles conseguiram ? Eles todos ?<br />

By applying the criteria of position, number and (added) definiteness, four main groups<br />

can be distinguished in the examples:<br />

added definiteness<br />

(article, demonstrative,<br />

personal pronoun, name)<br />

Prenominal position 3a, 3c<br />

enumerative<br />

[all of them]<br />

Postnominal position 3b, 3d<br />

enumerative<br />

[all of them]<br />

Plural<br />

- 294 -<br />

Singular<br />

yes no yes no<br />

- 1a, 1c<br />

integrative<br />

[all of it]<br />

- 1b<br />

integrative<br />

[all of it]<br />

2a<br />

enumerative<br />

distributive<br />

[each of them]<br />

-

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