This work addresses the question of the morphological structure of X-mente forms and of the degree of productivity of -mente in forming adverbs in Brazilian Portuguese. The author (a) shows that -mente is not properly a suffix in Brazilian Portuguese; (b) claims that, although the great majority of morphological types of adjectives can be involved in X-mente adverbs, the formative -mente does not have inflection level productivity; and (c) presents a preliminary study of productivity conditions of -mente in forming modal adverbs.
Lexical Productivity; Affixation; Adverb Formation; Brazilian Portuguese