This paper analyzes the grammaticalization of modal verbs in Brazilian Portuguese from a synchronic perspective. It takes as its point of departure the hypothesis that grammaticalization is a process in which linguistic elements widen their scope. Since this process is gradual and involves one step at a time, the synchronic correlate of this hypothesis is that if a modal verb has multiple meanings, these meanings should be of contiguous scope types on the grammaticalization scale in their synchronic distribution. The corpus data on which the paper is based show that this prediction is fully confirmed.

中文翻译：

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巴西葡萄牙语中情态动词的语法化：一种同步方法

本文从共时的角度分析了巴西葡萄牙语中情态动词的语法化。将语法化是语言要素扩大其范围的过程作为假设的出发点。由于此过程是渐进的并且一次涉及一个步骤，因此该假设的共时关联是，如果情态动词具有多种含义，则这些含义在它们的同步分布中应为语法化尺度上的连续范围类型。论文所基于的语料数据表明，这一预测已得到充分证实。