Habitual constructions in European Portuguese

Abstract This chapter examines two habitual constructions in European Portuguese, costumar + infinitive and the present perfect, from a Functional Discourse Grammar perspective. Through a variety of collocation and interpretation tests designed to determine the semantic scope of grammatical expressions, the conclusion is reached that both constructions express operators belonging to the same two adjacent layers of semantic organization. However, costumar displays a closer association with the higher of these two layers, while the present perfect more often applies to the lower one. Moreover, the chapter reassesses the communis opinio that the Portuguese present perfect is not a resultative aspect marker, concluding that a resultative operator is in fact one of the inherent components of the complex semantics of this construction.