On the structure of locative PPs in Brazilian Portuguese: noun or axial part?

ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate with Brazilian Portuguese (PB) data Svenonius’ (2006, 2010) syntactical-semantic proposal to the so-called “axial structures”, expressions such as ‘em frente a’ that are interpreted as denoting a spatial region projected from a GROUND. After critically evaluating the Svenonius’ (2006, 2010) proposal, which claims in favor of a specific functional head as the host for a lexeme such as ‘frente’, we present Matushansky and Zwarts’ (in press) solution, which claims that this is, in fact, a “weak noun”. Our analysis of PB axial structures leads to favor Matushansky and Zwarts’ (in press) proposal.