Subject and object raising in subject-complement clauses of adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese

• Ryan Saldanha Martinez UFSCar
• Jorge Baptista Universidade do Algarve / INESC-ID Lisboa
• Oto Araújo Vale UFSCar

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/stil.2025.37866

Abstract

We describe two types of subject clause restructuring in Brazilian Portuguese adjectives: subject raising (Que João faça isso é bacana / João é bacana em fazer isso) and object raising (Fazer isso é incomum / Isso é incomum de se fazer). Their formation and extension are described based on the most frequent adjective lemmas in a corpus. Adjectives accepting subject raising were found to be a subset, composed mainly of behavior and evaluative adjectives, of those accepting object raising.

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