Os aspetos regulares e irregulares da construção ter PRON INF

Resumen

This study offers a cognitive analysis of the grammatical construction ter PRON INF (present in the familiar expression Não tem de agradecer). The construction is shown to have a preference for negative uses, and for the most part, it serves to express ‘incapacity’. Although it shares some characteristics with indirect question structures, the form of the construction is idiosyncratic as a result of conventionalization of fixed phrases and lexical gaps. These properties are then discussed in terms of their significance for acquisition and use of the construction. It will be assumed that the construction and its idiosyncrasy, otherwise widely believed to underlie all form-meaning pairings, require heavy exposure to input (contra the generative opinion or the poverty of the stimulus argument). However, the present study suggests that predictable (regular) properties cannot but simplify and expedite the learning process and should therefore receive a more prominent place in current usage-based models.