A INTERPRETA O PASSIVA/INDETERMINADA DE CONSTRU ES COM A PARTíCULA

The interpretation of sentences that presents the clitic SE in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is treated in this article. A experimental test was conducted to provide data on the preferred interpretationgiven by BP speakers to this type of construction, if passive, in which the internal argument is interpreted as a subject, or indeterminate, in which the internal argument is interpreted as adirect object of the verb. The results showed that the passive reading is preferred, especially in accordance with standard construction, with some ambiguity in sentences in the singular and in sentences that presents plural morphological affix appears only in the verb. The implications of this evidence for the traditional grammatical theory and the generative linguistic theory are discussed.