Eckhard Bick - VISL

(1c)
emprestou- [emprestar] V PS 3S IND VFIN @FMV ‘[he] gave’
lhes [lhe] PERS M/F 3P DAT @N ‘even’
o [o] DET M S @>N ‘the’
poder [poder] N M S @N ‘the’
lei [lei] N F S @SUBJ> ‘law’
vale [valer] V PR 3S IND VFIN @FMV ‘is valid’
para [para] PRP @P ‘even’
para [para] PRP @N ‘the’
presidente [presidente] N M/F S @P< 'president'
In (1a), inclusive heads a PP, and in (1a') an adverbial with an NP-complement denoting
what is "to be included". Both have to be distinguished from (1b) and (1c), however,
which are semantically different. Here, inclusive functions as an operator adverbial,
operating on the following constituent, which makes it a prenominal in (1b) and a preprepositional
in (1c). With the latter meanings inclusive belongs in a group with the
(potentially prenominal) operator adverbials até and mesmo.
Similar considerations hold for the semantically antonymous group of exclusives
(salvo, exceto, menos, fora) as well as malgrado. Though traditionally defined as
prepositions, an ADV+NP analysis would be defendable, especially since also this
group contains members, that homonymously appear as adverbs, cf. menos and
especially the polylexicals nao=obstante, por=exemplo and por=fora, which differ
from all other complex prepositions (em=vez=de, encima=de etc.) by not even having a
preposition as the last element, which would otherwise "guarantee" a @P< reading for
the dependent NP also in an analytical (non-polylexical) parse.
For some complex prepositions (‘antes da festa’, 'depois de comprar ..' (2)), the
polylexical solution runs into technical problems, since assignment of "word status" is a
preprocessor task, and cannot easily be remedied later - failing in cases, where also an
analytic reading is feasible, as in ‘falam @FMV antes @