Some notes on outro in Portuguese

Abstract

This paper studies the syntactic behavior of outro(s) in Brazilian and European Portuguese. Starting from the syntax of its Italian counterpart un altro/(degli) altri, we argue that outro(s)in prenominal position is neither an adjective nor a determiner, but an existential quantifier and that the presence of the indefinite article, um outro/uns outros, gives rise to a complex existential quantifier, like the corresponding Italian form. We also argue that outro(s) and um outro/uns outros do not specialize for different interpretations since they both substantially show the same ambiguity (one/some more or a/some different one(s)) and behave in the same way in relation to possible semantic interpretations typical of existential quantifiers