Posse e existência: a história de haver e ter do Latim ao Português

The present uses of the possessive and existential constructions with ter and haver can be historically and sociologically tracked back to the different meanings these verbs assumed in the constructions they were part of throughout the history of Portuguese. In this paper, we discuss the emergence of a syntactic, semantic and discoursive differentiation between haver and ter and their respective specializations in distinct grammatical functions. Based on a usage-feature analysis and using corpus-based and multivariate statistical methods, we analyze the relevant linguistic factors underlying the grammaticalization and change of such constructions as well as other language internal motivations with a cognitive basis.