AS formações em -dor: uma análise sintático-semântica

Abstract

The present work investigates the words with the suffix -dor in Portuguese considering the assumptions in the Generative Grammar Theory. The suffix -dor is mostly characterized by its habitual agentive features, deriving words from verbs that carry those values (Oliveira, 2009). However, opposing what the linguistic literature says, our data has shown that those words present much more complexity. We found words with continuous reading, progressive and non-progressive, and words with perfective reading. Aiming a possible explanation, which can cover the range of the possibilities, we assume that -dor can be interpreted as a pro-form element, which is inserted in nonverbal contexts. This work is based on the assumptions of Distributed Morphology, and its main hypothesis consists in assuming that the variety of readings are due to the many possible configurations within the syntactic structure underlying those deverbal words. To understand how the word-formation with the suffix -dor works, we brought about a detailed description of the occurrences considering the elements which can interfere in the readings, such as the properties of the verb and the configuration of the layers that can be present in the structure of those words.