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In:Adverbs and Particles at the Form-Meaning Interface
Edited by Marco Coniglio, Kalle Müller and Markus Steinbach
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 292] 2026
► pp. 42–71

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Manner adverbs in -mente from Latin to Brazilian Portuguese

A grammaticalization analysis under Distributed Morphology

 | Federal University of Juiz de Fora
 | Federal University of Juiz de Fora
 | Federal University of Juiz de Fora
Published online: 23 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.292.03gon
Abstract
This paper investigates the grammaticalization (Roberts & Roussou 1999, Lehmann 2015) of the adverbial constructions of the X-mente pattern from Latin to Brazilian Portuguese, under the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993, Marantz 1997). In Latin, these adverbials consisted of the feminine noun mens ‘mind’ and an adjective, and expressed the meaning of ‘in an X manner’ (with ‘X’ representing the adjective). In Brazilian Portuguese, they are formally adverbs, single words composed of a feminine adjective followed by the ending -mente. We propose that the noun mente changed into an adverbial categorizer head (adv) while preserving some properties from its lexical origin, notably the feminine gender, which is shared with the adjective to which it merges.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The X-mente formation from Latin to BP
  • 3.Theoretical model: Distributed Morphology
  • 4.Literature review: The category and internal structure of adverbs
    • 4.1The category of adverbs: An overview
    • 4.2The internal structure of X-mente formations
  • 5.Analysis
  • 6.Final thoughts
  • Notes
  • References
References (66)
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