From latin gerund and gerundive to portuguese gerund: Revised consensus and incidental findings

Abstract

This research seeks to review, in light of a broad empirical basis and recent studies, the consensus that the Portuguese gerund derives from the Latin ablative gerund, considering the hypothesis that the Latin gerund (identical in morphological terms) may have participated in the Portuguese form drift. In order to do so, data from two corpora are analyzed, one from Latin, the other from Old Portuguese, in order to verify the extension and use of forms with the mark -nd- in these languages. The results generally confirm the consensual understanding, although they present some incidental findings, such as the widespread occurrence, in Latin, of a phenomenon that converted the gerund into gerundive, the variety of Portuguese gerund uses that do not coincide with Latin gerund uses, in addition to isolated uses of pseudo-gerundive forms in archaic Portuguese.