Between shared expectations and possibilites: The discourse particle sempre in European Portuguese

Abstract

This paper examines the syntactic and semantic properties of the confirmative use of sempre in European Portuguese. Unlike its temporal counterpart which carries the meaning of `always', confirmative sempre is restricted to the pre-verbal position, disqualifying it as a prototypical adverb. In terms of its semantic contribution, the confirmative discourse particle sempre marks the proposition as given by suspending the stress on phonological constituents in the clause. Consequently, the nuclear stress falls on sempre. Contrary to the analysis proposed by Amaral & DelPrete's (2014), givenness is not equated with being part of the shared knowledge/common ground. Instead, there could have been disagreement about the validity of the embedded proposition between the speaker and the addressee at some earlier stage. Givenness, therefore, will be understood as being part of at least one party's discourse commitments, following the framework of Farkas & Bruce (2010).