On the semantics of 'alone': a description of your interpretations

Abstract

Brazilian Portuguese ‘sozinho’ (“alone”) is more complex than it seems at first sight, and presents several different interpretations, among which we identify temporal-spatial, argumental, anti-causal, emotional, behavioral, mereological and autonomous interpretations. Our initial hypothesis is that 'alone' (and its variations in gender and number) is an anti-comitative item, since in all its interpretations companies of some kind, such as, for example, arguments of a predicate, individuals in physical space and causes of events are excluded. The present work also seeks to identify and characterize all possible interpretations of ‘sozinho’, initially using as tools the possibility of gradual interpretation, intensification, locative and causative adjuncts and combination with other modifiers to separate the different types of 'sozinho'. Our theoretical framework is formal semantics and pragmatics and, using the hypothetical-deductive methodology, we will always seek to formulate falsifiable and verifiable conclusions, also relying on native speaker intuitions to test the hypotheses. As a result, we expect a detailed description of ‘sozinho’ and its interpretations, as well as the structure of anti-comitativity in Brazilian Portuguese, which highlights the originality of this research.