Diachronic path of complement clauses introduced by como in Portuguese

Abstract

As a more extensive issue, this paper deals with the polysemy attested in all Romance languages between interrogative pronouns and subordination markers in complex sentences. It investigates, specifically, the behavior of objective complement clauses introduced by “como” (“how”) in constructions in which they occur as equivalent to the meaning of prototypical declarative complement clause introduced by the conjunction “que” (“that”). It analyzes complement clauses introduced by “como” and “que” occurring in representative Portuguese texts from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. The results of the comparative analysis between the two forms of clausal complement show that in archaic Portuguese “como” was used primarily to introduce complement clauses of factive verbs. When the complement clause is introduced by “como”, the content that is presupposed as true due to the meaning of matrix verb has reinforced this factuality. In the passage from the archaic to the modern period, there was a drastic decrease in the frequency of occurrences of complement clauses with “como”, which are replaced by the form of completive introduced by the conjunction “que” in the context of factual constructions. In contemporary Portuguese, this replacement is fully established. Complement clauses with “como” remain rare and limited to specific contexts in which “como” maintains its reinforcement function of factual meaning.