Tipologia semântica das condicionais de se no Português de Moçambique

This paper discusses the semantic typology of the conditionals of the Mozambican Portuguese (MP), focusing on the occurrence of verb tenses and mood, in comparison with European Portuguese (EP). Based on data collected through a combination of different research methods, the analysis suggests that the differences between MP and EP are limited: in both varieties, there are three semantic classes of the conditionals (factual, hypothetical and counterfactual) and the correlation between tense/mood and interpretation of conditionals is not necessarily biunivocal. However, there are some differences between MP and EP in contexts where tenses and mood are used in a more marked way in hypothetical and counterfactual conditionals. Moreover, other differences result from ambiguous EP input, and the fact that MP speakers use distinct grammatical rules: common to EP and particular rules of MP.