In Portuguese grammar, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and articles are moderately inflected: there are two genders (masculine and feminine) and two numbers (singular and plural). The case system of the ancestor language, Latin, has been lost, but personal pronouns are still declined with three main types of forms: subject, object of verb, and object of preposition. Most nouns and many adjectives can take diminutive or augmentative derivational suffixes, and most adjectives can take a so-called "superlative" derivational suffix. Adjectives usually follow their respective nouns.
Verbs are highly inflected: there are three tenses (past, present, future), three moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), three aspects (perfective, imperfective, and progressive), three voices (active, passive, reflexive), and an inflected infinitive. Most perfect and imperfect tenses are synthetic, totaling 11 conjugational paradigms, while all progressive tenses and passive constructions are periphrastic. There is also an impersonal passive construction, with the agent replaced by an indefinite pronoun. Portuguese is generally an SVO language, although SOV syntax may occur with a few object pronouns, and word order is generally not as rigid as in English. It is a null-subject language, with a tendency to drop object pronouns as well, in colloquial varieties. Like Spanish, it has two main copular verbs: and .
It has a number of grammatical features that distinguish it from most other Romance languages, such as a synthetic pluperfect, a future subjunctive tense, the inflected infinitive, and a present perfect with an iterative sense.
Sentence structure
Word classes
Like most Indo-European languages, including English, Portuguese classifies most of its lexicon into four word classes: verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. These are "open" classes, in the sense that they readily accept new members, by coinage, borrowing, or compounding. Interjections form a smaller open class.
There are also several small closed classes, such as pronouns, prepositions, articles, demonstratives, numerals, and conjunctions. A few grammatically peculiar words are difficult to categorize; these include ("where is"—Braz., colloq.), ("let's hope"), ("let's hope that"), and ("here is"; cf. Latin and French ).
Within the four main classes there are many semi-regular mechanisms that can be used to derive new words from existing words, sometimes with change of class; for example, ("fast") → ("very fast"), ("to measure") → ("measurement"), ("pilot") → ("to pilot"). Finally, there are several phrase embedding mechanisms that allow arbitrarily complex phrases to behave like nouns, adjectives, or adverbs.
Subject, object, and complement
Following the general Indo-European pattern, the central element of almost any Portuguese clause is a verb, which may directly connect to one, two, or (rarely) three nouns (or noun-like phrases), called the subject, the object (more specifically, the direct object), and the complement (more specifically, the object complement or objective complement). The most frequent order of these elements in Portuguese is subject–verb–object (SVO, as in examples (1) and (2) below), or, when a complement is present, subject–verb–object-complement (SVOC — examples (3) and (4)): (1) {A Maria}S {ama}V {o Paulo}O, "Maria loves Paulo." (2) {O pedreiro}S {construiu}V {a casa}O, "The mason has constructed the house." (3) {O presidente}S {nomeou}V o {Pedro}O {ministro}C, "The president appointed Pedro (as) minister." (4) {Ela}S {achou}V {o livro}O {uma chatice}C, "She found the book a bore."
Any of the three noun elements may be omitted if it can be inferred from the context or from other syntactic clues; but many grammatical rules will still apply as if the omitted parts were there.
A clause will often contain a number of adverbs (or adverbial phrases) that modify the meaning of the verb; they may be inserted between the major components of the clause. Additional nouns can be connected to the verb by means of prepositions; the resulting prepositional phrases have an adverbial function. For example: Ele carregou {sem demora} a mala {para ela} {do carro} {até a porta}, "He carried {without delay} the bag {for her} {from the car} {to the door}."
Null-subject language Portuguese is a null-subject language, meaning that it permits and sometimes mandates the omission of an explicit subject.
In Portuguese, the grammatical person of the subject is generally reflected by the inflection of the verb. Sometimes, though an explicit subject is not necessary to form a grammatically correct sentence, one may be stated in order to emphasize its importance. Some sentences, however, do not allow a subject at all and in some other cases an explicit subject would sound awkward or unnatural: "I'm going home" can be translated either as or as , where means "I". "It's raining" is in European Portuguese, or in Brazilian Portuguese, neither of which occurs with an explicit subject. Some older speakers say "it is raining", where "he/it" refers to the masculine subject "the weather". Nowadays this usage is uncommon and seen as old-fashioned. "what time is it?" (literally "what hours are they?"). Some older speakers say , where refers to "the time" ( can also mean "the weather"). Nowadays this usage is uncommon and seen as old-fashioned. In European Portuguese, only in exceptional circumstances would "I'm going home; I'm going to watch TV" be translated as . At least the second ("I") would normally be omitted, if not both. Meanwhile, in Brazilian Portuguese, the subject pronoun is more likely to be repeated.
As in other null subject language with a SVO word order, the subject is often postponed, mostly in existential sentences, in answers to partial questions and in contrast structures: ("There are many mice here!") — Verb , subject , complement indicating place. ("Who was it? It was me.") — Verb , subject . (European Portuguese) or (Brazilian Portuguese) ("She didn't eat the cake, but I did.") — Subject , negation , verb , object ; the complement divides itself into: adversative conjunction , verb , object , subject .
Types of sentences
Portuguese declarative sentences, as in many languages, are the least marked ones.
Imperative sentences use the imperative mood for the second person. For other grammatical persons and for every negative imperative sentence, the subjunctive is used.
Yes/no questions have the same structure as declarative sentences, and are marked only by a different tonal pattern (mostly a raised tone near the end of the sentence), represented by a question mark in writing.
Wh-questions often start with ("who"), ("what"), ("which"), ("where"), ("where... to"), ("when"), ("why"), etc. The interrogative pronouns , and can be preceded by any preposition, but in this case will usually be reduced to . Frequently in oral language, and occasionally in writing, these words are followed by the interrogative device (literally, "is [it] that"; compare French in wh-questions). Wh-questions sometimes occur without wh-movement, that is, wh-words can remain in situ. In this case, and are replaced by their stressed counterparts and (Brazilian Portuguese) or (European Portuguese).
For example: or "What did she do?"
"What did she do?" or, if emphatic, "She did what?" (Brazilian Portuguese) / (European Portuguese) "Why?"
"On what day did that happen?"
"On what day did that happen?" In Brazilian Portuguese, the phrase is more often omitted.
Replying
("no") is the natural negative answer to yes/no questions. As in Latin, positive answers are usually made with the inflected verb of the question in the appropriate person and number. Portuguese is one of the few Romance languages keeping this Latin peculiarity. The adverbs ("already"), ("yet"), and ("too", "also", literally, "as well") are used when one of them appears in the question.
Q: A: / Q: "Did you like the movie?" A: "Yes.", literally, "I liked." / "No." Q: A: Q: "Didn't I leave a key here?" A: "Yes, you did!", literally, "[You] did." Q: A: / Q: "Have you already read this book?" A: "Yes", literally, "Already." / "Not yet."
The word ("yes") may be used for a positive answer, but, if used alone, it may in certain cases sound unnatural or impolite. In Brazilian Portuguese, can be used after the verb for emphasis. In European Portuguese, emphasis in answers is added with the duplication of the verb. In both versions of Portuguese, emphasis can also result from syntactical processes that are not restricted to answers, such as the addition of adverbs like ("much") or ("very much").
It is also acceptable, though sometimes formal, to use yes before the verb of the question, separated by a pause or, in writing, a comma. The use of before the verb does not add emphasis, and may on the contrary be less assertive.
Q: A: Q: "Did you like the movie?" A:"Yes, I did!" Q: A: Q: "Did you like the movie?" A:"I did, I did!" Q: A: Q: "Are there any trains at this time?" A:"Yes, there are!" Q: A: Q:"Did he like the movie?" A: "He did, yes..."
Articles
Portuguese has definite and indefinite articles, with different forms according to the gender and number of the noun to which they refer:
{| class="wikitable" !rowspan=2| !colspan=2| singular !colspan=2| plural !rowspan=2| meaning |- !masculine !! feminine !masculine !! feminine |- !definite article |o, el |a |os |as |the |- !indefinite article |um |uma |uns |umas |a, an; some
The noun after the indefinite article may be elided, in which case the article is equivalent to English "one" (if singular) or "some" (if plural): ("I want one as well"), ("I want some as well").
Nouns
Nouns are classified into two grammatical genders ("masculine" and "feminine") and are inflected for grammatical number (singular or plural). Adjectives and determiners (articles, demonstratives, possessives, and quantifiers) must be inflected to agree with the noun in gender and number. Many nouns can take diminutive or augmentative suffixes to express size, endearment, or deprecation.
Portuguese does not inflect nouns to indicate their grammatical function or case, relying instead on the use of prepositions (simple and phrasal), on pleonastic objects, or on the context or word order. Personal pronouns, on the other hand, still maintain some vestiges of declension from the ancestor language, Latin.
Gender and number
Most adjectives and demonstratives, and all articles must be inflected according to the gender and number of the noun they reference:
("this beautiful white house") ("this beautiful white car") ("these beautiful white birds") ("these beautiful white cats")
The agreement rules apply also to adjectives used with copulas, e.g. ("the car is white") vs. ("the house is white").
Plural formation
Portuguese nouns form their plurals by adding -s if the singular ends in a vowel, and -es if the singular ends in n, r or z. If the singular ends in s, then if the last syllable is stressed, the plural adds -es, and otherwise the plural is the same as the singular. Words ending in m change that m into ns, and words ending in l change that l into -is (e.g. > ). Before 1943, the plural of words that ended in l, was -es, so: Crystal -> Crystaes, Papel -> Papees. Words ending in ão vary in how they form their plurals: some replace the ão with ães, others with ões, and others just add an -s like the other nouns ending in a vowel (ãos).
Gender determination
Grammatical gender of inanimate entities is sometimes different from that used in sister languages: thus, for example, Portuguese ("tree") and ("flower") are feminine, while Spanish and Italian are masculine; Portuguese ("sea") and ("map") are masculine, while French and are feminine.