In this analysis, we avoid the awkward stranding of a conjunction as rightmost part of a disjunct dependent, while still marking both focus scope (the head of Dfoc Era) and cleft position (SUBfoc que).

We have seen that the "natural" order of topic and focus is left-to-right, and that a focus constituent can be marked by fronting and/or clefting. Subject topics are usually fronted and thus marked anyway, but non-subject topic constituents can be marked by fronting, too:

(T2) is quite different, since the topicalized constituent, com a princesa, still has a - pronominal - place-holder in its old position (com ela). Also, the topicalized constituent (unlike T1), is "normalized" to nominative case (a princesa, not com a princesa), i.e. normalized to subject case. Mateus et. al. (1989, "Gramática de Língua Portuguesa") call this construction for pending topic ("Deslocação à Esquerda de Tópico Pendente"). Pending topics with other than "nominative" case (T3) are only grammatical with enclitic placeholders (-lhe, but not a ela, -os but not os inimigos).

While (T1) allows a straightforward syntactic analysis - (Oacc P Opiv) or (Opiv P Oacc) -, pending topics do not. In (T2), there is in the topic constituent a clash between form and function ("nominative" np vs. Opiv), and (T3) looks like a violation of the uniqueness principle.

Since we don't want 2 Opiv's anyway, a solution for the "nominative" topic in (T2) could be to view it as a free topic predicative of the place-holder Opiv:

In (T3), the breach of the uniqueness principle can be cushioned somewhat by analysing pending topic objects as free objects (fO) , i.e. as not valency bound. Also, the syntactic distinction between enclitic Odat and non-pronominal Opiv helps defend the uniqueness principle in the dative case:

APPENDIKS 1:

Word classes (morphological form)

When discussing syntax, one does not usually pay much attention to the smallest building blocks of syntactic form, words. Word boundaries are viewed as stable and self-evident, with blank spaces being all that's needed to determine what a word is. Consider:

A glance at a list of Portuguese conjunctions reveals a majority of complex words like (5) and (7), that in theory would allow further syntactic analysis, but usually are regarded as smallest units of syntactic form. For complex prepositions (6) , the internal form of such units is typically that of adv+prp, or prp+np+prp, with the last preposition valency governing the complex preposition's argument.

Often, words are not assigned a form category at all, and word class is derived from syntactic function - as when calling como for all of adverb, conjunction and preposition, depending on its being used as adverbial, fcl-subordinator or acl-subordinator ("pp"). Similarly, adjectives are often assigned noun class when functioning as (head of) subject or object (um dinamarquês), and nouns are tagged adjectives, when they appear postnominally (um político pacifísta).

In this approach, Portuguese word classes will be regarded as form categories and defined primarily by morphological criteria, in particular by inflexion category inventory. Thus, nouns, proper nouns, adjectives and (cardinal) numerals feature number and gender, but while both these categories are word form categories for adjectives (i.e., freely inflecting for the individual word), only number is "free" in nouns, whereas gender is a lexeme category to be derived directly from the lexicon, i.e. fixed for the individual word. For numerals, the inverse is true: gender is a word form category (duas), while number is a lexeme category, i.e. fixed - as might be expected for semantic reasons ... In the case of proper nouns, finally, both gender and number are lexeme categories.

Pronouns can be subdivided morphologically by the same criteria: determiner pronouns (pron-det: estas, seus, cuja) inflect like adjectives, while independent pronouns (pron-indp: nada) inflect like proper nouns, i.e. they don't. Personal pronouns are morphologically special in that they also inflect for person and case. Articles should, along this line of reasoning, form part of the determiner pronoun class, but will be distinguished for reasons of grammatical tradition.

Finite verbs are easily defined morphologically due to their characteristic combination of inflection categories (person, number, tense, mode). From this perspective, it is the finite verbs that are the "true" verbs, while the non-finite verbal subcategories could logically be subdivided as "substantival" infinitives (inflecting for number and person, but not gender), "adjectival" participles (word form inflecting for both number and gender) and, finally, "adverbial" gerunds (without gender or number).

For adverbs (with the exception of -mente-adverbs), prepositions, conjunctions and interjections, morphological word class criteria are difficult or impossible to establish - barring closed word lists, and they might therefore be lumped together in one "particle" class. However, as a tribute to grammatical compatibility with other systems of analysis, the traditional categories (and syntactic definitions) have been maintained for these cases.

symbol			category	examples
n			noun nome substantiv (nomen)	árvores n(F P) um oitavo n(<num> M S)
prop			proper noun nome próprio proprium (egenavn)	Estados=Unidos prop(M P) Dinamarca prop(F S)
adj			adjective adjetivo adjektiv	belas adj(F P) terceiros adj(<num> M P)
num			numeral numeral numeralia	duas num(F P) 17 num(<cif> M P)
v	v-fin		finite verb verbo finito finit verbum (bøjet i tid)	fizessem v-fin(IMPF 3P SUBJ)
	v-inf		infinitive infinitivo infinitiv	fazermos v-inf(1P)
	v-pcp		participle particípio participium	comprados v-pcp(M P) [attributive] tem comprado v-pcp [verbal]
	v-ger		gerund gerúndio gerundium	correndo v-ger
art			article artigo artikel	os membros art(<artd> M P) [definite] uma criança art(<arti> F S) [indefinite]
pron		pron-pers	personal pronoun pronome pessoal personligt pronomen	mim pron-pers(1S PIV) tu pron-pers(2S NOM)
		pron-det	determiner pronoun pronome determinativo determinativt pronomen (adjektivisk pronomen)	estas pron-det(<dem> F P) [demonstrative] muita pron-det(<quant> F S) [indefinite] cujos pron-det(<rel> M P) [relative] quantos pron-det(<interr> M P) [interrogative] minhas pron-det(<poss 1P> F P) [possessive]
		pron-indp	independent pronoun pronome independente independent pronomen (substantivisk pronomen)	isto pron-indp(<dem> M S) [demonstrative] algo, nada pron-indp(<quant> M S) [indefinite] os=quais pron-indp(<rel> M P) [relative] quem pron-indp(<interr> M S) [interrogative]
adv			adverb advérbio adverbium	facilmente, devagar adv [modals] aqui, lá adv [pronominals] muito, imensamente adv [intensifiers] onde, quando, como adv [relatives or interrogatives] não, até, já adv [operators]
prp			presposition preposição preposition	contra prp em=vez=de prp <c>
in			interjection interjeição interjektion	oi! in
conj		conj-s	subordinating conjunction conjunção subordinativa underordnende konjunktion	que conj-s embora conj-s
		conj-c	coordinating conjunction conjunção coordenativa sideordnende konjunktion	e conj-c ou conj-c
pu			punctuation pontuação tegnsætningstegn	, pu [komma]