Semantic peculiarities of temporal expressions with "até" ("until") and challenges in translating between Portuguese and English
Abstract
This paper addresses the semantic analysis of Portuguese temporal adjuncts headed by the polyvalent connective até and its English – also polyvalent – counterparts (chiefly, until and by), and discusses problems in translation between English and Portuguese, documented in the website linguee.com. Curious data obtained in machine translation services (Google Translate [GT], Systran Translate [ST] and DeepL Translator [DT]) is also briefly discussed. The semantic values under discussion include two modes of temporal location (durative and inclusive, the latter often marked by Portuguese até-phrases, but not by their prototypical counterparts, until- phrases), and a combination of temporal location with (explicit) quantification over eventualities. A seldom discussed discourse connective, até que, not exclusively temporal in meaning, is also explored, to a certain extent. The long-debated issue of the English construction not...until is revisited: a comparison with Portuguese data shows that this form of until does not have até as its perfect counterpart. The semantic analysis is made with the logic of the Discourse Representation Theory, elaborating on my previous work (Móia 1995, 2000, 2015, 2016).
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