Evolution of the imperfect with modal functions in European Portuguese

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the use of the imperfect tense in the history of the Portuguese language in order to find out in which period of the evolution of Portuguese the imperfect began to express modal values. The analysis is performed in the linguistic diachronic corpus www.corpusdoportugues.org.

Keywords

• diachronic linguistics
• corpus analysis
• European Portuguese
• imperfect
• modal functions