That the Portuguese language is dynamic, everyone agrees. This statement is observed in the fact that the relationships as a whole are demarcated by the evolution of facts. Part of them are the communicative circumstances we make use of. But no one disagrees about one thing: while this evolution is perpetuated, we continue to be governed by a system that guides this same language – in this case, the formal standard of language. Thus, as much as lexical creations tend to intertwine, as long as they are not dictionized, they will not be part of the language pattern.
Such explanation served us to cite the fact that certain expressions are part of our daily communications and, sometimes, they even become crystallized, although they do not match the standard norm, thus configuring themselves as those inevitable deviations linguistics. One of them? “Fatal victim”, for example.
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Certainly we have already said or heard from someone that “in that accident there were fatal victims”.
As a matter of fact, we have to consider that it was the accident that was fatal, not the victims. Thus, the discourse urgently needs to be reformulated, in order to adapt to the appropriate semantic characteristics, now manifesting itself as follows:
That accident was fatal, given that there were victims.
By Vânia Duarte
Graduated in Letters
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
DUARTE, Vânia Maria do Nascimento. "Is there a fatal victim?"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/gramatica/ha-vitima-fatal.htm. Accessed on June 28, 2021.