Graphic fluctuation between senao and se nao in Brazilian Portuguese: considerations about the connector's polysemy, morphosyntactic and prosodic structure

Abstract

This paper aims to advance hypotheses on the predominantly segmented spelling for senao found in texts written by secondary school students. These hypotheses shall be grounded in considerations about the interpretative mechanisms triggered by constructions with senao, along with syntactic and phonological features. We shall argue that the written data for senao may be construed as a clue to representations of senses and morphosyntactic structures which, on one hand, retrieve previous stages of language, and on the other hand, provide evidence for the manifold ways the relationship between speech and writing is developed.