buy · comprar

Places · who wears which marking

No printed line stacks a Seller, a Beneficiary, the goods, and a sum. Aulete’s jeweller frame has the ring and no price. Wiktionary’s para line has the doll and no seller. The price sentence has isto and no person.

Marking map. One letter can belong to several heads. Read the line, then the marker.

• Direct object of the goods. Priberam’s first sense is Adquirir por dinheiro, filed as a transitive verb, with no complement filled. Infopédia’s first sense is adquirir (bem, serviço) mediante pagamento. Aulete’s first sense is Adquirir (algo, bem, serviço etc.) em troca de pagamento, with comprar um sítio. Michaelis’s first sense is Adquirir coisa mediante pagamento em dinheiro ou qualquer outra compensação financeira, labeled vtd e vtdi, and the filled goods are um apartamento and entrada. The label names an indirect object. The examples do not fill one. Wiktionary’s example of the beneficiary frame is a boneca. Aulete’s adquirir prints uma estante/uma bicicleta and no seller. The direct object of the purchase is the thing bought. It is not the price and not the person, except in the bribe sense, which stays off this frame.
• The Seller is a or de. The a-phrase is not only that Seller. Aulete: [tdi. + a, de : Comprou ao / do joalheiro um anel.] The jeweller is the person of that frame. Ciberdúvidas’s answer, citing Luft and Fernandes, says both of these have the same sense, that Djalma was the seller: Comprei esse carro do Djalma and Comprei esse carro ao Djalma. The same answer then splits the two phrases. do Djalma can be an adnominal adjunct, the car that belonged to him, and not only the indirect object. ao Djalma can be the seller or the person who received the car as a gift, and there a equals para. The question prints Comprei esse carro a Djalma, without the article, and the questioner says he normally does not use a and says do Djalma. The answer’s footnote says the nomenclature is the Brazilian one because the questioner is Brazilian. The answer does not label a as European and de as Brazilian. Aulete, which prints both, is the dictionary that fills the frame. Priberam and Infopédia print no person.
• The Beneficiary that is printed as its own preposition is para. Wiktionary files a transitive-direct-and-indirect sense, realizar compra de (algo) para (alguém), and the example is João comprou a boneca para sua filha. That para is not given a second reading in the entry. Ciberdúvidas’s gift reading is the a-phrase, not a printed para+NP in that answer. English for of a person matches the Wiktionary para. A bare second noun, the shape of his mother, is unprinted.
• lhe is unprinted, so it is not glossed Seller or Beneficiary. Priberam’s page for the form compramos-lhe identifies the verb and repeats the transitive senses. It does not gloss lhe. Aulete, Infopédia, Michaelis, and Wiktionary print no lhe on comprar. The ambiguity that is printed sits on the full a-phrase, the piece Ciberdúvidas leaves as the seller or as para. That is not a double gloss of one clitic, the shape of Italian gli on comprare. It is not the Spanish split, where le is the Seller and para is the Beneficiary. A lhe that resumed the a-phrase would inherit the two readings of that phrase. No article prints the clitic, so this page does not assign it and does not construct it.
• No clitic doubling, and no personal a. The person phrases that are printed are full phrases, with no clitic in the same clause. A neutral doubling of ao joalheiro or para sua filha by lhe is unprinted. The direct object takes no preposition in the lines opened. The bribe person is the direct object. Aulete: O marginal comprou a testemunha. The a of a testemunha is the feminine article, not the preposition of ao joalheiro. Michaelis: Comprei um dos guardas. Priberam’s third sense is Subornar, peitar. Infopédia’s third sense is the same, with no clause. Those lines stay off the purchase frame. They are the citation for the missing personal a.
• Price is por plus a price name. A unit rate is unprinted. The older wording on the Aulete page, under v. tr., prints Comprei isto por bom preço, mas sob a condição de o pagar a prazo. por bom preço is the price name on comprar. a prazo is on pagar in the same sentence. Priberam’s definition Adquirir por dinheiro uses por for the means, and fills no sum. A filled por+numeral, and a rate a plus a sum per unit, are unprinted. Neither is constructed. Michaelis prints comprar a mangrado and glosses it comprar sem escolher. That a is the manner of choosing, not a price.
• em is the place of the apartment. A shop na loja is unprinted. Michaelis: comprou um apartamento na Av. Atlântica. na is em plus the article. The street is the place of the apartment, the shape of a city on the goods, not a shop where the buying happens. Aulete’s intransitive is Cada vez mais pessoas compram pela internet. pela is por plus the article. The line has no goods. na loja and em loja are unprinted. This page does not construct them.
• What Spanish assigns to le, and what Italian leaves on gli, Portuguese leaves on the full a-phrase, and does not print on lhe. On comprar the selected indirect object is the seller, and the beneficiary is para, and the two stack. On comprar Ciberdúvidas prints both readings of one a-phrase, and Wiktionary prints para as its own phrase. lhe is unprinted, so it is not the Italian clitic and not the Spanish le. On acheter Larousse prints both glosses of one full à+NP. Portuguese prints de beside a for the seller. German kaufen spells the beneficiary as a bare dative. German abkaufen spells the seller as a bare dative. Portuguese does not split the lemma. English from and for of a person are the split that de and para can make, and that one a-phrase does not make by itself.

EN ⇄ PT valency strip

Each row lines up one English slot with a Portuguese slot. The alignment type says what happens to the slot: = (same object status), or shift (from / for ↔ the Portuguese marker the line prints). Printed dictionary lines come first. Every other sentence is constructed, modelled on a printed line. They show the working alignment, not frequency, and not a bilingual corpus.

The strip below is a set of small multiples. Each card holds one frame, with English on top and Portuguese under it. The seller card keeps both prepositions of Aulete’s slash. The person card keeps both readings of one a-phrase. The price card stays inside por bom preço.