In its grammar Portuguese rather closely parallels Spanish. A great body of the substan tives has the distinctive endings of a for feminines and o for ma:culines. corresponding to the Latin first and second declensions. There are traces of the survival of the Latin nominative case (bras, Domingos, etc.), but the accusative is in general the norm of the Portuguese form. The sign of the plural is regularly s. As in Spanish, the regular verbs of the -ere conjugation have joined either the conjugation in -ire or that in -ire. An extremely interesting phenomenon is the appearance of a personal or inflected in finitive, which makes possible a very succinct construction, comparable to the Latin accusative and infinitive. Partir, for example. may be con jugated: partir co, '1 to depart:' partires to, to depart partir c//c, 'he to depart ;' par tirmos nos, 'we to depart ;' partircks ros, 'you to depart:' partirem elks, 'they to depart;' and 'it is time for us to depart' may be rendered tempo e de partirmos. The earliest written speci mens of Portuguese appear to be certain docu ments of 1192.
Consult : Cornu."Die port ugiesisehe Spraebe.” in Groeber's Grundriss der romanischen vol. i. (Strassburg, 188S) ; Coelho, A lingua par togue.:,-a ( Porto, 18811 ; id.. Theoria do conjuga fa° em latim e portuguez, (Lisbon, 1870) ; Gon calves Vianna. Bases do ortografia portugucza (i1).,1885) ; id., Exposicao do pro/lune/a normal portugueza (ib., 1892) ; Monad and F. d'Ovidio, Manueletti d'introduzionc agli studj neolatini, vol. iii., Portoghese (Imola, 1881); De Souza, Grammaire port ugaisc (Paris, 1S71) ; Von Rein ha rdstoettner, Grammatik der portugiesisehen Sprache (Strassburg, 1875) ; Elwes, A Grammar of the Portuguese Language (2d ed., London,
1884) Ribeiro, Grammatiea portugueza (3(1 ed., Rio de Janeiro, 1889) ; Pacheco da Silva and Lameira de Andrade, Nocaes de grammatica por tugueza (ib., 1887) : Leite de Vaseoncellos, Dia leeto brazileiro (Porto. 1SS3) ; 0 dialect° miran dez (ib., 1882) : Flores mirandczas (ib., 1884) : Mappa dialectologica do continente port agile:, preeedida de uma classilicacao summaria das linguas per :1. R. Gonealres 'Fianna (Lisbon, 1897) : De Fonseca, N'oro diccionario do lingua portugueza (3d ed., Paris. 1831); de Santa Rosa. de Viterbo, Elucidario das palorras, etc.. clue em Portugal antigamente se usaram (2d ed.. Lis bon. 1865) ; Vieira, Grande dieeionario portuguez our Thcsouro da lingua portugucza. etc. (Porto. 1871) : Da Silva. Diccionario do lingua portu go eza , coin grand(' numero do term as noros usclos no Brasil e no Portugue: da India (Lis bon, 1877-75) Callas Aulete. Diccionario temporaneo do lingua portugueza (lb.. 1881) ; Coelho, Dircionwrio manual ctomologieo do portugueza (lb.. 1890) : Roquette. Dictionnaire por•tugsis-franCais 1855); De Lacerda, .1 New Dictionary of the Portuguese and English. Languages (Lisbon, 1871) ; Michaelis. A New Dictionary of the Portuguese and English Lan guages (Leipzig, 1893) ; ii., Neues Wortecbuch der portugiesischen and deutsche?? Nprache (ib., ; Barhosa Rodrigues, Vocabulacio indi gen° comparado pare mustrac a adulteractio da lingua, romplemento do Poranduba amazonense (Rio de Janeiro. 1892) ; Dozy and Englemann, Clossaire des nuts espagnols et portugais dericc's de l'arahe (2d ed.. Leyden, 1869).