I always find interesting those things that native speakers do automatically but which they aren’t sure about why they do them. This is one of those.
There are times in Portuguese when a linking verb agrees in number not with its subject but with its predicate complement. What got me thinking about it was this comment by Jacinto that included:
isto são três (ou quatro) perguntas distintas
It seems to me this can occur in other scenarios, too, such as this one:
- Os estranhos somos nós.
Notice how ser formally agrees not with its subject of os estranhos, but with its predicate complement of nós. Portuguese works quite differently from English in this regard, because in English the verb agrees only with its subject never with its complement. However, Spanish works like Portuguese, for whatever that’s worth. Perhaps we can blame Latin? :)
This is really only one question, but here are my thoughts:
Why does this happen? Does it always happen, or is there some latitude?
If it does not always occur, does the choice in agreement mean something one way or the other?
Does having a non-concrete subject like isto or tudo make it more likely?
Examples
Searching around in Google Books, I find these samples. These being to feel much more like inversion to me than a mismatched subject.
- A sombra não somos nós, mas uma espécie de fotografia em branco e preto apenas em forma de silhueta.
- O ponto nevrálgico de todo o problema somos nós mesmos, que nos debatemos nas angústias da vida e nas inquietações da existência.
- Devemos, portanto, enfatizar a ideia de que “nós” não somos o estado; o governo não somos “nós”.
- Como a igreja somos nós [...]
- [...] membro de um grande corpo somos nós.
- Cale a boca, quem decide isso somos nós.
Reference Update
I’ve found a reference about this at https://www.flip.pt/Duvidas-Linguisticas/Duvida-Linguistica/DID/902 :
À pergunta O que é o bolo alimentar? deve responder-se O bolo alimentar são os alimentos depois de mastigados e ensalivados. Regra geral, o nome predicativo do sujeito concorda em género e número com o sujeito (ex.: O João é famoso, A Maria é famosa, O João e a Maria são famosos). Todavia, no caso em apreço, esta regra geral não se aplica e a concordância faz-se com o nome predicativo do sujeito (os alimentos depois de mastigados e ensalivados), que identifica e realça os elementos que compõem o sujeito como um todo (o bolo alimentar).
Well yes, that’s the question isn't it? So that source is saying that it indeed works differently, but not much about why.
What I’d most to find, if possible, is a Portuguese resource that addresses this curious matter in a way similar to how the Spanish do so in sections 37.6i+j etc from the Concordancia chapter in la Real Academia’s 2009 Grammar of their language.
Although some of that chapter written about Spanish probably makes some amount of sense for Portuguese, too, plenty of it clearly does not, so I’m still looking for a purely Portuguese reference about this that’s more substantial in its treatment than what’s at Flip.PT.
