Direto: um quantificador ausente das gramáticas do português brasileiro

Abstract

This research analyzes the construction of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) composed of verb + direto in which 'direto' can be replaced by an adverb such as sempre,maintaining a similar reading. Searches were carried out for reflections and characterizations on the item in traditional grammars (GTs) and descriptive grammars (GDs), but none were found. Using Pires de Oliveira and Gallotti (2000) as a basis, who analyze semantic aspects of <direto=, we sought to perform a linguistic characterization of the presence of the item in BP sentences. Thus, the research proposed here is bibliographical and descriptive in nature, since we conducted a survey of what is available on the item in GTs and GDs, as well as in the literature on linguistics, and analyzed some occurrences of this expression to corroborate (or not) the characteristics found in the literature. Based on the analyses carried out, and in agreement with what Pires de Oliveira and Gallotti (2000) state, we found that the item "direto" is an adverb of event frequency, that is, it acts in relation to the verb of the sentence, generating a reading of high frequency of these events, similarly to what occurs in sentences with the item "sempre".