Differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese in the use of temporal adverbials

This paper attempts to provide a partial description of the main differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese concerning the form and interpretation of temporal adverbials. Two temporal domains are described in relatively more detail: the expression of anchored temporal measurement and the expression of duration. However, differences in other semantic domains – such as simple temporal location, quantification over time intervals, correlation of events and frequency – are also mentioned and briefly illustrated. It will be shown that, overall, the system of temporal adverbials is remarkably similar in European and Brazilian Portuguese, the differences being mainly lexical, lexical-syntactic or morpho-syntactic.


Introduction
The aim of this paper is to provide a description of the main differences between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) regarding the system of temporal adverbials.Some expressions that have sentential properties but are comparable, by their distributional and semantic properties, to temporal adverbials will also be taken into account, namely, phrases with predicates of amounts of time combined with the verbs haver ("there to be"), fazer ("to make") and ter ("to have") or with the past participle form passado ("passed").Two temporal domains will be described in relatively more detail: the expression of anchored temporal measurement (Section 2) and the expression of duration (Section 3).However, differences in other semantic domains -such as simple temporal location, quantification over time intervals, correlation of events and frequency -will also be mentioned and briefly illustrated (Section 4).
As will be seen, differences between EP and BP with respect to the issue at stake are mainly lexical or lexical-syntactic, and sometimes morpho--syntactic too.As a consequence, no important theoretical issues will be discussed in this paper, its aim being essentially descriptive.Nonetheless, the overall perspective on time issues expressed in previous works by the authors (especially Móia, 2000, 2003band Alves, 2003), within the framework of Discourse Representation Theory, is implied.
The data used in this paper is taken basically from two corpora1 : for European Portuguese, the Natura-Público Corpus (henceforth, NP), which contains ca.6.3 million words, taken exclusively from a recent Portuguese newspaper; for Brazilian Portuguese, the NILC-São Carlos Corpus (henceforth, NILC), which contains ca.32 million words, 85% of which taken from Brazilian newspapers, and the rest from other types of texts.Unless otherwise stated, all quantitative data provided here is taken from these two corpora.Of course, numbers should be compared taking into account the difference in size between the two corpora: a proportion of ca. 1 to 5. Given obvious space constraints, texts from the corpora will not be translated, although the relevant temporal expressions are discussed within the text and highlighted in the excerpts.

Anchored temporal measurement
The first area to be analysed involves a subset of adverbial -or adverbial--like -expressions whose common characteristic is that they i nvolve two semantic ingredients: (i) a temporal anchor point, which can either be the utterance time or a contextually determined perspective point, and (ii) a time measurement operation -either retrospective or prospective -from that anchor point2 .The relevant expressions may be used either to locate events in time or (simply) to refer to intervals, as in the following two sequences, respectively: (1) O museu foi inaugurado há cem anos.[TEMPORAL LOCATION] the museum was inaugurated there-is hundred years 'the museum was inaugurated one hundred years ago.' (2) Este quadro data de há cem anos.[TEMPORAL REFERENCE ] this painting dates from there-is hundred years 'this painting dates back to one hundred years ago.' These phrases with há ("there-is ") involve retrospective time measurement, and correspond to English expressions with ago.Although they behave differently in contexts (1) like ( 2) and (as a temporal locating adverbial and as a time -denoting expression, respectively), a unified analysis is possible and seems advantageous.In fact, they can be considered instances of the same category -that of time -denoting expressions -under an analysis where a null preposition with the value of em ("in" / "at") is postulated in adverbial contexts like (1) (cf.discussion of this proposal in Móia, 2000).Accordingly, sentence (1) would be interpreted as in (3) below: (3) O museu foi inaugurado ∅ em há cem anos.
the museum was inaugurated ∅ in/at there-is hundred years Phrases with daqui a ("from-here to"), which illustrate prospective time measurement, have similar properties: (4) O museu será inaugurado daqui a dez dias.[TEMPORAL LOCATION] the museum will-be inaugurated from-here to ten days 'the museum will be inaugurated in ten days.' (5) A reunião foi marcada para daqui a dez dias.[TEMPORAL REFERENCE] the meeting was scheduled to from-here to ten days 'the meeting was scheduled for ten days from now.' Sequences involving retrospective and prospective time measurement will be analysed separately in the following two sections.

Retrospective anchored temporal measurement
In order to refer to intervals that precede an anchor point by a certain amount of time, Portuguese uses different temporal expressions.Differences between EP and BP are more striking in three cases, which we will focus on here: (i) expressions with a form of the verb haver ("there to be") and/or the adverb atrás ("behind"); (ii) expressions with a form of the verb fazer ("to make"); (iii) expressions with a form of the verb ter ("to do").Among the retrospective expressions that will not be discussed in this paper are those with antes ("before") and a ("at") like those below, which appear to be used similarly in both dialects: (6) O museu reabriu em Maio.Tinha encerrado dois meses antes.
the museum reopened in May.
[it] had closed two months before 'the museum reopened in May.It had closed two months before.'(7) A dois meses das eleições, ninguém sabia quem iria ganhar.at two months from-the elections, nobody knew who would win 'two months before the elections, nobody knew who would win.' 2.1.1.Expressions with haver and/or atrás Intriguingly, there are four equivalent constructions involving these elements in Portuguese.

i. simple há construction
As illustrated in (1) and (2) above, the relevant temporal adverbials may simply contain a form of the verb haver (together with the predicate of amounts of time).The typical verb form is há ("there is"), morphologically a present tense, but semantically a neuter form, since it is used for any kind of anchor point (present, past or future).However, when the anchor point is in the past, structures with havia ("there was"), morphologically and semantically an imperfective past, are also possible, both in EP and BP, even if they are far less common than those with há, and will henceforth be ignored.The simple há-construction is frequent both in EP and BP.In (1), the há-phrase occurs adverbially in sentence-final position; however, it may also appear in sentence-initial position, in which case an optional complementizer que ("that") often appears: (8) Há cem anos (que) o museu foi inaugurado.
there-is hundred years (that) the museum was inaugurated [equivalent to (1): the museum was inaugurated one hundred years ago] ii. (redundant) há..

. atrás construction
The simple há construction competes, both in EP and BP, with a semantically equivalent structure where the adverb atrás ("behind") isredundantly -added to the temporal phrase.
the museum was inaugurated there-is hundred years behind [equivalent to (1): the museum was inaugurated one hundred years ago] (10) Este quadro data de há cem anos atrás.this painting dates from there-is hundred years behind [equivalent to (2): this painting dates back to one hundred years ago] Note that when the adverbial phrase occurs in sentence-initial position, the complementizer que cannot occur (in contrast to what happens with the parallel form without atrás -cf.( 8)).
there-is hundred years behind (*that) the museum was inaugurated Despite its redundancy, the há... atrás construction is rather common both in EP and BP (though less common than the simple há-structure, according to the consulted corpora).A slight difference in its frequency in EP and BP is also detected in the corpora: 96 occurrences in the BP corpus vs. 120 in the five times smaller EP corpus.

iii. simple atrás construction
The two constructions described so far compete with a third equivalent one where the verb form (há) is omitted and only the adverb (atrás) remains.This structure -curiously, a syntactic parallel of English ago-adverbials -is widespread in BP, but relatively rare in EP.In fact, most EP speakers consider it odd or ungrammatical.iv.constructions with bare predicates of amounts of time Finally, a fourth type of construction must be mentioned.In structures involving "lower-bound" temporal prepositions like desde ("since") and de (with the meaning of "from"), BP sometimes resorts to a construction, unused in EP, where both the verb (há) and the adverb (atrás) are dropped, leaving the temporal prepositions desde or de with a bare predicate of amounts of time as the complement.These structures are equivalent to the canonical ones, with há after the temporal preposition.Note that the form of the BP adverbial in ( 15) is parallel to French expressions with depuis and German expressions with seit, which can also co--occur with bare predicates of amounts of time to express how long a situation has been going on at a given anchor point.The BP corpus contains at least a few dozen occurrences of this elliptic construction with desde -some regarded as marginal by several Brazilian speakers -and more than one hundred occurrences with de.It must be noted that this particular type of temporal phrases expresses (time -anchored) duration.However, this information is, arguably, inferred rather than directly asserted, and they can therefore be taken as true locating adverbials, at the assertion level (cf.Móia, 2000 for a discussion of this issue, which, for space reasons, cannot be explored here).
The use of the four constructions just described seems to be particularly affected by the presence of prepositions immediately before the relevant temporal expression.This is true not only in the obvious case of construction iv (which, as mentioned, only occurs in the presence of the prepositions desde and de), but also of constructions i, ii, and iii.Furthermore, in prepositioned contexts, differences between EP and BP seem to be sharper.First, let us start by identifying the relevant prepositioned contexts we have in mind.These are of three sorts: (i) complement of a preposition selected by higher predicate, like the verb datar ("to date") in (2) above; (ii) complement of a preposition (often de) in a noun modifier, as in ( 18); (iii) complement of a temporal preposition, like até ("until"), desde ("since"), de ("from"), entre ("between") or antes ("before"), as in ( 19)-( 23 There is a relatively high number of occurrences in the BP corpus of: (i) sequences containing the vague quantifier pouco(s) ("little" or "few"), especially até há pouco (tempo) ["until there-is little (time)", until recently], and (ii) the temporal phrase de há muito ["from there-is long", for a long time (now)]. 6The example with desde há... atrás was taken from the CETEMP úblico corpus, given that no example of this sequence was found in the smaller NP corpus.The CETEMP úblico contains 10 instances of this combination.

Expressions with fazer ("to make")
Expressions with fazer ("to make") are semantically similar to those considered in the previous section: they serve basically to express the distance between a given situation and a certain anchor point.Two syntactic-semantic differences, however, must be noted: (i) they normally occur only in adverbial position, and not as preposition complements; consequently, they are essentially used to express temporal location, and not mere temporal reference; (ii) they allow -especially in EP -the anchor point to be lexically expressed.The generic form of these expressions is: [fazer (Y) X-TIME] ("to--make (Y) X-TIME"), where the verb fazer may be inflected -e.g.faz ("makes"), fez ("made") -, Y is an optional expression that marks the anchor point for time measurement -e.g.agora ("now"), hoje ("today"), amanhã ("tomorrow") -, and X-TIME is a predicate of amounts of time.The expression as a whole may be used at the end of a sentence, as in ( 27), or at the beginning, as in ( 28), in which case, an optional complementizer que ("that") often occurs.The following sentences are equivalent to those containing phrases with há and/or atrás in adverbial position.As said, fazer-constructions are used in both EP and BP, although the latter seems to make wider use of them (judging from the consulted corpora).The most noticeable difference between EP and BP, with respect to these expressions, is that EP seldom uses expressions where the anchor point is implicit (rather than explicit), whereas this subtype of construction is widespread in BP.Note, in particular, that the sequences with vague meaning -e.g. with bare plurals or with the sequence faz muito (tempo) ("makes much (time)") -are common in BP but odd to EP speakers: (29) "Hoje, os proprietários de imóveis são tão necessitados quanto os inquilinos, mesmo porque faz anos que se acabaram os latifundiários urbanos."(NILC, par Imóveis -94b-eco-2); "Aliás, não faz muito, comentei que o carioca prefere ir para o Caju." (NILC, par Opinião--94a -opi-1) [BP] Conversely, BP normally does not make the anchor point explicit by means of expressions like hoje ("today"), agora ("now"), amanhã ("tomorrow") or the like.In fact, no occurrences of the relevant sequence fazer hoje/agora/ amanhã, for instance, were identified in the BP corpus.The following examples are thus typical of EP.Structures with the verbs haver, fazer and ter may also be used to express a particular form of duration -temporally anchored duration -, which must not be mistaken for temporal location or temporal reference (as expressed in the structures analysed throughout section 2.1).
the museum is closed {there-is / makes (now) / has} ten days 'the museum has been closed for ten days (now).' These structures differ from those considered so far in that they directly express how long a given (atelic) situation has, or had, been going on at a given anchor point -i.e. they express duration.In contrast, the ones previously analysed serve primarily to identify intervals (that lie in the past of the anchor point) -temporal reference -, and, in adverbial contexts, to locate events relative to those intervals -temporal location. 8he differences between EP and BP, concerning these expressions of duration, are similar to those observed for parallel expressions in the previous section, namely those regarding (i) the (non-)expression of the anchor point in structures with fazer, and (ii) the non-use of temporal phrases with ter in EP.
The following examples are thus typical of BP: As for phrases with haver that express anchored duration, it must be emphasized that, in this particular use, they do not combine with the adverb atrás.
the museum is closed there-is ten days behind In fact, this impossibility may be used as a test to distinguish the time--denoting or locating há-phrase (analysed throughout the section 2.1), which is compatible with atrás, from the duration há-phrase, which is incompatible with it.Note, furthermore, that the former phrase corresponds to English expressions with ago, whereas the latter roughly corresponds to English expressions with for9 .As to the use of duration há-constructions, no differences between EP and BP were detected.

Prospective anchored temporal measurement
In order to refer to intervals that follow an anchor point by a certain amount of time, Portuguese uses different temporal expressions.Differences between EP and BP are more striking in five cases, which we will focus on here: (i) expressions with the preposition em ("in"); (ii) expressions with daqui por ("from-here by"); (iii) expressions with the complex connective ao fim de ("at-the end of") or similar ones; (iv) expressions with t he past participle passado ("passed"); (v) expressions with depois ("after") modified by predicates of amounts of time.Among those that will not be discussed in this paper are expressions with de... a ("from... to")10 and dentro de ("within of"), which behave quite similarly in EP and BP: (38) O espectáculo foi programado para {daqui a / dentro de } dois meses.
the show was programmed for {from-here to / within of} two months 'the show was programmed for two months from now.' [TEMPORAL REFERENCE] (39) O museu será inaugurado {daqui a / dentro de } dois meses.the museum will-be inaugurated {from-here to / within of} two months 'the museum will be inaugurated in two months.'[TEMPORAL LOCATION]

Expressions with em ("in")
One of the most striking differences between EP and BP concerning the use of temporal adverbials is that BP uses phrases headed by the simple preposition em ("in") to locate events in the future of an anchor point, i.e. as deictic or anaphoric temporal adverbials equivalent to dentro de... and daqui/daí a... (40) A aula começa em quinze minutos.[BP, *EP] the class starts in fifteen minutes 'the class will start in fifteen minutes.' It is important to note that EP and BP use the same preposition (em) to express the duration of accomplishments -either basic accomplishments, as in (41), or accomplishments resulting from Aktionsart shift, e.g.those derived from achievements by addition of a preparatory phase (cf.Moens, 1987), as in ( 42): (41) A ponte foi construída em seis meses.
the bridge was built in six months 'the bridge was built in six months.' (42) Os alpinistas chegaram ao topo da montanha em vinte minutos.
the climbers arrived at-the top of-the mountain in twenty minutes 'the climbers reached the top of the mountain in twenty minutes.' Therefore, the fact that BP uses the preposition em to express (anchored) temporal location may bring about ambiguity.The situation is, for that matter, similar to the one in English, where the preposition in has both these values as well.Of course, ambiguity depends on the conjunction of adequate grammatical and pragmatical conditions (which cannot be exhaustively explained here).Observe the following example: (43) O barco chega a Lisboa em vinte minutos.
the boat arrives to Lisbon in twenty minutes This sentence is ambiguous in BP, but univocal in EP.In the duration reading, available in both dialects, it has a generic interpretation, and means that the boat is capable of completing the journey (from an unspecified point up to Lisbon) in twenty minutes.In the location reading, available only in BP, it has an episodic interpretation, and means that the arrival in Lisbon is due to happen twenty minutes after the utterance time (in a situation where the journey may have already started up).The latter interpretation is expressed in EP with dentro de or daqui a (which are also alternative possibilities in BP): (44) O barco chega a Lisboa {dentro de / daqui a} vinte minutos.
the boat arrives to Lisbon {within of / from-here to} twenty minutes 'the boat will arrive in Lisbon in twenty minutes.' Accordingly, structures like the following, taken from the BP corpus, would normally be expressed by an EP speaker with the sequence dentro de or daqui a instead of em: The sequence daqui a ("from-here to"), mentioned at the beginning of this section 2.2, may be used in EP with the preposition por ("by") instead of a.
the museum will-be inaugurated from-here by two months 'the museum will be inaugurated in two months.' Although not so common as daqui a, there are at least 7 occurrences of daqui por with predicates of amounts of time as complements in the EP corpus.No occurrences were found in the BP corpus.

.)." (NP, par 67003) [EP]
Note, however, that both EP and BP use the sequence daqui por diante ("from-here by in-front"), a counterpart of English from now on.Other sequences used to express this generic prospective value, in both dialects, are: daqui em diante ("from-here in in-front"), de agora / hoje em diante ("from now / today in in -front"), daqui para a frente ("from-here to the front"), or the single adverb doravante ("henceforth").

Expressions with ao fim de ("at-the end of") and similar forms
Temporal expressions with ao fim de are used, both in EP and BP, to express the distance between two events, and involve prospective temporal measurement from an anchor point.Observe the following examples: (48) Houve um apagão e só ao fim de duas horas o problema foi resolvido.there-was a blackout and only at-the end of two hours the problem was solved 'there was a blackout and only two hours later the problem was solved.' (49) A Ana casou.Ao fim de três anos, teve o primeiro filho.the Ana got-married.At-the end of three years, [she] had the first son 'Ana got married.Three years later, she had her first child.' Let us consider example (48) to illustrate the semantic and syntactic properties of this construction.As we can see, three elements have to be taken into account: the previous event (the blackout), the subsequent event (the solving of the problem, i.e. the end of the blackout) and the intervening amount of time (two hours).The subsequent event is represented in the matrix clause, and the intervening amount of time is expressed in the temporal adverbial -notice the form [ao fim de X-TIME].As for the previous event, which serves as the anchor point for time measurement, it is typically represented in a different clause, i.e. it is contextually determined in the discourse (by anaphoric processes).Note that (48), which includes sentential conjunction, is equivalent to a sequence of two juxtaposed sentences (similar to (49)): Houve um apagão.Só ao fim de duas horas o problema foi resolvido.
The information conveyed via ao fim de X-TIME can also be expressed via (roughly) equivalent forms like: (i) passado X-TIME ("passed X-TIME"), (ii) X--TIME depois ("X-TIME after") or (iii) X-TIME mais tarde ("X-TIME more late"); the former two will be analysed in following subsections; the third is parallel to English expressions with X-TIME later, and will be ignored here.
at-the end of ten days of strike, the miners returned to-the work 'after ten days of strike, the miners returned to work.' This sentence mentions two abutting events -the strike and the return to work -rather than to two events separated by a given amount of time (as in ( 48)-( 49)).Syntactically, the temporal adverbial has a different form: ao fim de [X-TIME de N], rather than ao fim de X-TIME.The relevant operation involving the predicate of amounts of time is (temporal) measure quantification over events, rather than temporal measurement from anchor points -notice that the complement dez dias de greve ("ten days of strike") is, from a quantificational point of view, comparable to dez litros de água ("ten litres of water") or dez metros de tecido ("ten meters of cloth"), which involve measure quantification in other domains.Finally, note that the sequence does not have a direct counterpart with e.g.mais tarde ("more late", later); rather, the equivalent expressions are depois de [X-TIME de N], após [X-TIME de N], passado [X-TIME de N] 11 .In these particular contexts, ao fim de, depois de, and após are temporal locating connectives which express immediate posteriority. 12 In these contexts, the differences in the form of the connective ao fim de are similar to those observed above, in 2.2.3, although the three alternative forms do not sound so odd to EP speakers here: 11 Note, furthermore, that, in the structures at stake, the complement may also have the form . 12 Despite the differences underlined here, a uniform semantic analysis of the connective ao fim de in sentences like ( 48)-( 49) and (51) seems possible.Uniformity arises if sentences like (48) or ( 49) are analysed as involving some sort of anaphoric reference -in these cases, to the consequent state of the event mentioned in the first sentence (i.e. the blackout holding, or Ana being married, respectively).The relevant temporal phrases in those sentences would have the form ao fim de [X-TIME ∅] (where "∅" marks the anaphor whose content is to be deduced from the context; cf.Alves, 2003, for comparable anaphoric reconstructions), and would therefore be of a type very similar to that of (51).
( Expressions with the past participle passado ("passed") -sometimes, though not always, with gender and number inflection -are used in EP and BP -like expressions with ao fim de in contexts like ( 48)-( 49) -to express the distance between two events.The relevant temporal sequences come in two syntactic forms: one, akin to those with ao fim de, where the anchor point is determined by anaphoric means -cf.(53); another one, where the anchor point is explicitly mentioned within the temporal sequence (as a prepositional argument) -cf.( 54).In the construction illustrated in (53), passado has only one explicit complement: a predicate of amounts of time (with which it may -though need not -agree in number and gender).Other syntactic variants are ignored here: the predicate of amounts of time may appear in post-or pre-participle position -passado X-TIME or, sometimes, X-TIME passado -, and the whole temporal expression may appear in sentence-initial or in sentence-final position.With respect to this structure, no differences between EP and BP were detected.
In the construction illustrated in (54), passado has two explicit complements: a predicate of amounts of time (with which it normally agrees in number and gender) and a prepositional phrase describing the anchor-event.BP and EP diverge in the preposition that heads this phrase: BP normally uses only the preposition de ("of"); modern EP normally uses the preposition sobre ("over"), though sometimes the preposition de ("of") also occurs.Only 2 occurrences of de were detected in the EP corpus, and no occurrence of sobre was identified in the BP corpus.Accordingly, the first group of sequences below is typical of EP, while the second is more common in BP.

Expressions with X-TIME depois ("X-TIME after")
The structures with ao fim de and passado analysed in the previous two subsections (which take predicates of amounts of time as complements) are equivalent to structures where depois is (pre-)modified by a predicate of amounts of time.Compare the following two structures -where the anchor point is determined by anaphoric means, or is explicitly mentioned within the temporal sequence -with ( 53) and ( 54 The main difference between BP and EP, with respect to this use of depois, is that BP abundantly resorts to a structure similar to ( 59), but where a finite sentence, introduced by the complementizer que ("that"), is used instead of an infinitive sentence preceded by de: (60) Seis meses depois que foi enviada, a sonda chegou a Marte.

Basic facts about duration
Let us now turn to the domain of duration.One crucial property to notewhich is common to EP and BP, and, furthermore, has a parallel in English and other European languages -is that the choice of temporal connectives depends on the Aktionsart of the situation whose duration is being quantified upon: typically, adverbials with durante ("for") express the duration of atelic situations (i.e.states and activities), and adverbials with em ("in") express the duration of telic situations (namely, accomplishments): (63) O museu esteve encerrado durante dois meses.[STATE] the museum was closed for two months 'the museum was closed for two months.' (64) O museu foi construído em dois meses.
[ACCOMPLISHMENT ] the museum was built in two months 'the museum was built in two months.'Furthermore, when expressing the duration of atelic situations, there exists the possibility (in some cases, that we will not try to characteris e here) of omitting the prepositional connective, without any semantic change.For example, sentence ( 63) is grammatical if the preposition durante is omitted; the non-prepositioned predicate of amounts of time dois meses may either occur in sentence-final position (esteve encerrado dois meses) or right after the verb (esteve dois meses encerrado).
Apart from these relatively simple means of expressing duration, two other cases must be mentioned: (i) the expression of anchored duration, which was the topic of the Excursus 1 above, and will be ignored here; (ii) the expression of what can be termed planned duration, which involves the intendedrather than the actual -duration of a situation, and is typically associated with adverbials headed by the preposition por ("by"): (65) A Ana saiu da sala por cinco minutos (mas só regressou passado uma hora).the Ana left of-the room by five minutes (but only returned passed one hour) 'Ana left the room for five minutes (but only returned one hour later).' Planned duration is typically associated with an Aktionsart shift: note that the matrix clause expresses an achievement (the leaving of the room), whereas the (intended) duration associated with the temporal adverbial concerns the consequent state of that achievement (the absence from the room).These structures have been studied in the literature about English (cf.e.g.Binnick, 1969;Mittwoch, 1980;Hitzeman, 1993), where it is expressed via the same preposition that heads adverbials expressing the actual duration of atelic situations -for.
(66) The sheriff of Nottingham jailed Robin Hood for four years but he stayed in jail only three days.(Hitzeman, 1993: 17)
Besides its use to express actual duration (especially in BP), the preposition por is used both in EP and BP to express planned duration.It is sometimes difficult to distinguish planned from actual duration (in the written corpora), ambiguity often arising.Observe, however, the following unequivocal example of planned duration: (70) "Veio com intenções de «ficar cá por uns anos largos», representando os interesses da Continental na fábrica de Lousado."(NP, par 39340).

Other temporal values: some brief notes
In this short section, we will illustrate some differences between EP and BP in some semantic domains not yet considered.It should be merely taken as a point of departure, a preliminary list upon which a further more elaborate description can be built.

Simple temporal location
4.1.1.Explicit or implicit em ("in", "on", "at") In Portuguese, like in many other languages, temporal prepositions are often not visible in adverbial positions, that is, temporal adverbials may surface as simple NPs (cf.Móia, 2000).With respect to this issue, three different cases must be taken into account: (i) the presence of a preposition in adverbial position is mandatory, in which case temporal expressions surface as NPs in nominal contexts and as PPs in adverbial contexts -e.g.o ano de 1980 ("the year of 1980") vs. no ano de 1980 ("in-the year of 1980"), Janeiro ("January") vs. em Janeiro (in January"); (ii) the absence of a preposition is mandatory, in which case temporal expressions surface in the same form in both nominal and adverbial contexts -e.g.hoje ("today"), todos os dias ("all the days", everyday); this is also the case of an English expression like last week, which is semantically equivalent to "IN last week" when it occurs in adverbial position (cf.Kamp & Reyle, 1993); (iii) the presence of a preposition in adverbial position is optional, in which case temporal expressions may surface both as NPs or as PPs in adverbial contexts; this happens, for instance, with expressions including the deictic adjective passado ("passed", a counterpart of English last) -cf.(71) -, with the idiomatic expression o outro dia ("the other day"), which refers vaguely to a (not very distant) day in the past, or with the names of the weekdays (in which case a definite article is dropped together with the temporal preposition) -cf.( 73 There are some differences between EP and BP concerning the issue at stake.In particular, BP exhibits a stronger tendency than EP to drop the locating preposition em (together with a definite article).Forms involving deictically or anaphorically dependent expressions like [ no] ano que vem ("[in-the] year that comes") or [no] dia seguinte ("[in-the] day following"), for instance, are odd in EP if the forms within square brackets are omitted; these omissions are common in BP, as illustrated by the following examples from the BP corpus: Furthermore, BP -contrary to EP -often omits the definite article in adverbials with passado ("passed") of the type illustrated in (71).Observe the following example: (75) "Mas, em relação ao mesmo mês de 1995, o resultado é pífio: cerca de 13.300 unidades (...), contra 55 mil ano passado."(NILC, par 12475). [BP] Possibly, some of the differences at stake here are not specific of the time domain, involving instead the ampler area of nominal reference.We will not pursue this issue here.

Expressions with até ("until")
There are at least two differences between EP and BP with respect to the use of this temporal preposition: ( i) differences in the distribution of até ("until") and até a ("until at"); (ii) use, only in BP, of the complex connective até em ("until in").
Temporal connectives with até may come under two forms in both EP and BP: the simple form até ("until") or the complex, historically more recent, form até a ("until to").In each dialect, they tend to appear in complementary distribution, depending on the form of the complement.However, modern EP seems to make a wider use of the complex connective até a, frequently resorting to this form whenever the complement includes an explicit definite article: e.g.até ao ("until to-the MASC "), até à ("until to-the FEM ").For instance, with deictically or anaphorically dependent complements like (i) o fim/final do ano ("the end of-the year" 17 ), or (ii) o ano passado ("the year passed"), BP uses simple até, and EP até a in (well-nigh) 100 % of the registered cases.( 76 In section 2, it was noted that BP -contrary to EP -allows the preposition desde to take a simple predicate of amounts of time as complement, the result being an adverbial that indicates for how long a certain situation has been going on (cf.(17) above).One of the relevant examples is repeated here: (79) "Desde dez dias que se entregava a essa árdua tarefa, quando (...) lhe bateram à aporta, em meio de seu trabalho."(NILC, par 103558) [BP] Apart from this, BP differs from EP in that -somewhat marginally -it allows the preposition to occur within the complex connective desde em ("since in").This connective is parallel to até em (mentioned above), and appears to be a dialectal possibility in BP, though it is still very uncommon in written texts and is not accepted by many Brazilian speakers.Only one occurrence was found in the NILC corpus: (80) "Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva, 41, é correspondente em Washington da Folha desde em julho de 1991."(NILC, par Especial-94b-nd-1) [BP]

Universal quantification over time intervals
In order to express that a situation happens with a certain frequency, EP and BP may resort -just like English -to universal quantification over time--units (day, week, month, year, weekend, etc.).Both dialects use a relatively complex syntactic sequence formed by a plural universal quantifier applied to an NP with a plural definite article: todos os N ("all the N").( 81) "O Público inicia amanhã uma nova secção semanal, a publicar todos os domingos, intitulada Questões do Público."(NP, par 48186); "Vou à igreja todos os domingos."(NILC, In this semantic area, the main difference between EP and BP is that BP often uses the singular quantifier todo / toda ("every MASC / every FEM ") directly applied to the temporal noun, whereas EP does not.The following forms are thus typical of the Brazilian variety: (82) "Veja na Folha, todo domingo, como calcular os juros do crediário." (NILC, par Brasil-94b -pol-3); "(...) pense nos 100 mil brasileiros que todo ano morrem por doenças relacionadas ao tabaco."(NILC, par 32289); "Quase toda semana há um funeral para a vítima inocente de uma bala perdida."(NILC, par Brasil-94a -pol-1); "O problema é que todo dia surge um novo problema."(NILC, par 28436) [BP] It must be emphasized that the difference at stake is not specific of the time domain.Rather, it is a general tendency in the universal quantification with todo / todos os, which is independent of the type of entities quantified upon, as already assumed in Peres (2001).

Correlation of events
In order to express that a situation happens whenever another situation takes place (i.e. that the two situations are correlated), EP and BP use temporal connectives like sempre que ("always that", whenever), cada vez que ("each time that") and, less frequently, de cada vez que ("of each time that") and a cada vez que ("at each time that").The last three f orms have the following frequency: in the BP corpus, 174, 10 and 29 instances, respectively; in the EP corpus, 25, 19 and 0 instances, respectively.As can seen, the form a cada vez que ("at each time that"), though recognised by Portuguese speakers, is very seldom used: (83) "Por conta dessa polêmica, existe uma frase na região que é repetida a cada vez que se discute o assunto" (NILC, par Brasil-94a -pol-3) [BP] Furthermore BP, contrary to EP, frequently resorts to complex expressions similar to those with cada ("each"), but with universal quantification expressed via the singular form toda ("every") or the plural form todas ("all").There are several variants, the more frequent being: toda vez que ("every time that"), toda a vez que ("every the time that") and todas as vezes que ("all the times that") -249, 13 and 35 occurrences, respectively, in the BP corpus; other registered forms, rather infrequent though, are the prepositioned forms em toda vez que ("in every time that"), em todas as vezes que ("in all the times that"), and de todas as vezes que ("of all the times that"), with a single occurrence each.In the EP corpus, only one relevant occurrence (of todas as vezes que) is registered.( 84 Correlation of events is also often expressed by the simple connective quando ("when") in association with the appropriate linguistic elements that trigger a universal interpretation (cf.Carecho, 1996), both in EP and BP.

Constant iteration
In order to express that a situation is constantly repeated, EP and BP often resort to adverbs like sempre ("always") or constantemente ("constantly").Furthermore, they may use phrases which contain universal quantification over time units, especially hora ("hour"), instante ("instant") and momento ("momento"); in this case, the differences between EP and BP are more striking.
As for expressions with hora ("hour"), three slightly different forms were detected in the BP corpus: toda hora ("every hour"), a toda hora ("at every hour") and, less frequently, a toda a hora ("at every the hour") -50, 48 and 4 occurrences, respectively.As for EP, it only uses the last expression, with a preposition and a definite article (although, given its relatively informal status, it is not frequent in the NP corpus: 1 occurrence).Accordingly, the following examples are typical of BP: (85) "Mas eleição não tem toda hora, como a TV interativa que a Globo está nos propondo."(NILC, par 12383); "Eles não mudam toda hora de ortografia."(NILC, par Ilustrada-94b-nd-2); "E devemos levar em conta que não se pode estar mudando a toda hora as regras do esporte mais popular do mundo."(NILC, par 19859) [BP] As for expressions with instante ("instant"), two slightly different forms were detected in the BP corpus: a todo instante ("at every instant") and a todo o instante ("at every the instant") -30 and 9 occurrences, respectively.The non-prepositioned form todo instante ("every instant") was not detected.As for EP, again, it only uses the expression with a preposition and a definite article, a todo o instante (although it does not occur in the NP corpus; cf.however several occurrences in the wider CETEMPúblico corpus).The following example is thus typical of BP: (86) "Precisava parar a todo instante , porque as mãos ficavam geladas, e as pernas entorpecidas pela posição."(NILC, par 110042) [BP] As for expressions with momento ("moment"), the two forms parallel to the ones above with instante -viz.a todo momento ("at every moment"), a todo o momento ("at every the moment") -occur in the BP corpus 57 and 6 times, respectively.Furthermore, the BP corpus provides 1 occurrence of the non-prepositioned form todo momento ("every moment"), and 2 of the sequence em todo momento ("in every moment"), which exhibits a different preposition.Once again, EP only uses the form with a preposition (a) and a definite article: a todo o momento.The following forms are thus typical of BP: (87) "Na imensidão estelar, os corpos celestes se entrechocam a todo momento, produzindo jatos descomunais de energia."(NILC, par 134811); "Quanto à técnica de escrever, o narrador oscila entre a terceira pessoa onisciente, mas que todo momento se interpõe, isto é, apresenta-se com recursos de primeira pessoa."(NILC, par Fovest--94a -eco-1); "O Defensor realizará as investigações, inspeções, reuniões e entrevistas que o exercício de suas funções requeira, e de tal dará conta ao ministro da Justiça e Graça (...) em todo momento que aquele considerar necessário."(NILC, par 55858) [BP] It must be noted that the expressions a todo o instante and a todo o momento are often used in EP -though not in BP -to express a semantic value that differs from the one considered in this section: imminent future occurrence (of some event), rather than constant iteration.Ambiguity between iteration and imminence is possible, though often the context gives enough hints to identify the relevant interpretation.

Irregular low frequency
In order to express that an event has a very low and irregular frequency, happening "once in a while", Portuguese may resort to adverbs like raramente ("rarely"), esporadicamente ("sporadically"), pouco ("little") or muito pouco ("very little"), for instance.It may also resort to different complex expressions involving the noun vez ("time"), like: (i) expressions where this noun is vaguely quantified (cf.English sometimes) -às vezes ("at-the times"), por vezes ("by times"), algumas vezes ("some times"), poucas vezes ("few times"); (ii) expressions containing also the form quando ("when") -de vez em quando ("from time in when"), and, much less frequently, de quando em quando ("from when in when"), de quando em vez ("from when in time") or de vez em vez ("from time in time") (the latter with only 1 occurrence, in the BP corpus); (iii) the idiomatic expression (uma) vez por outra ("one time by other").The latter normally occurs with the indefinite article in EP (only 1 occurrence without the article), and without the indefinite article in BP (no register with the article): As for strictly lexical differences between EP and BP with respect to the expression of this semantic value, note the use of the idiomatic phrase vira e mexe ("turn and move"), only in BP.

Conclusions
Overall, the system of temporal adverbials is very similar in European and Brazilian Portuguese.As said at the beginning of this paper, differences are mainly lexical or lexical-syntactic, and sometimes morpho-syntactic too.Among the most striking ones, we can underline the following: (i) BP makes wide use of the adverb atrás without a form of the verb haver to locate events in the past of a given temporal perspective point, whereas EP normally does not drop the verb form -cf. ( 12)-( 13); (ii) BP uses simple predicates of amount of time (together with lower bound temporal prepositions desde and de) to express anchored duration, whereas EP normally doesn't -cf ( 15)-( 17); (iii) BP uses the verb ter to locate events in the past of a given temporal perspective point -cf.( 31)-( 33) -or to express anchored duration -cf.(36) -, whereas EP doesn't; (iv) BP uses the preposition em to locate events in the future of a given temporal perspective point -cf.( 40) and ( 45) -, whereas EP doesn't, resorting instead to phrases with e.g.dentro de or daqui/daí a; (v) BP makes wide use of the preposition por to express the actual duration of atelic situations, whereas EP normally uses durante -cf.( 67)-( 68); (vi) BP amply resorts to universal quantification over the noun vez to express correlation of events, whereas EP makes very scarce use of this construction -cf.( 84).There are also some minor differences in the actual form of the temporal connectives (especially the complex ones) or of the temporal phrases as a whole, e.g.(i) in structures with fazer, BP does not normally express the anchor point for time measurement, whereas EP does -cf.(29) vs. (30); (ii) BP does not normally use the complex connector daqui por, which is common in EP -cf.( 46)-( 47); (iii) BP uses the four connectives ao fim de, no fim de, no final de and ao final de, in constructions like (50), where EP only normally uses the former; (iv) BP makes wide use of depois applied to finite sentences, whereas EP normally uses depois (de) applied to infinitive sentences -cf.( 60)-( 62); (v) there seems to be a stronger tendency in BP to drop the locating preposition em (sometimes together with an ensuing definite article) -cf.(74); (vi) BP uses the simple preposition até in contexts where EP uses the complex connective até a -cf.(77); (vii) B P uses -though, marginallycomplex forms unknown in EP, like até em -cf.(78) -or desde em -cf.( 80); (viii) BP uses the universal quantifier todo applied to temporal nominal elements -cf.(82) (and still (84)-( 87)) -, whereas EP normally uses the universal quantifier todos applied to nominal phrases (with definite articles)cf.( 81); (ix) BP has a specific idiomatic expression to express irregular iteration -vira e mexe.Some of the differences mentioned above, especially those pertaining to temporal connectives, are specific of the semantic domain under consider-ation.Others, however, have a more widespread presence in the grammar, which includes its manifestation in the temporal domain.Such is the case, for instance, of the differences concerning the universal quantification with todo or of the tendency to drop definite articles and/or prepositions in BP.Unsurprisingly, the temporal domain is not immune to the general tendencies in the grammar of the language.
Finally, a brief note to stress that the present descriptive paper merely aims at being a departure point for a more thorough and general characterisation of the temporal adverbials in Portuguese, considered in its full diversity.

( 53 )
Uma sonda espacial foi enviada para Marte.Chegou passado(s) seis meses.a probe s patial was sent to Mars.[It] arrived passed SING (PL) six months 'a space probe was sent to Mars.It arrived six months later.' (54) Passados seis meses sobre o envio da sonda, a NASA anunciou a sua chegada a Marte.passed PL six months over the launch of-the probe, the NASA announced the its arrival in Mars 'six months after the launch of the probe, NASA announced its arrival in Mars.'