Perception Verbs (ver, ouvir, sentir + Embedded) | Portuguese (Brazil) Grammar

When you perceive someone in the act of doing something — you see the children playing, you hear the rain falling, you feel the floor shaking — Brazilian Portuguese gives you three different ways to phrase the embedded action, and all three are correct. Take the sentence "I saw the children play(ing)":

Gerund: Vi as crianças brincando.
Personal infinitive: Vi as crianças brincarem.
Bare infinitive: Vi as crianças brincar.

This three-way flexibility is a signature feature of Brazilian Portuguese. Most languages — and most textbooks — teach learners exactly one of these and stop. English itself offers two ("I saw them play" vs. "I saw them playing") but no third. Native Brazilian speakers, by contrast, glide among all three without thinking, choosing based on a subtle difference in what they want to foreground. This page is built around that choice: not just what's allowed, but what each option does.

The three perception verbs that drive this construction are ver (see), ouvir (hear), and sentir (feel / sense). The same pattern extends to escutar (listen to / hear) and observar (observe / watch).

The three options, side by side

Form	Example	What it foregrounds
Gerund (-ndo)	Vi as crianças brincando.	the ongoing scene, the action in progress
Personal infinitive (-em)	Vi as crianças brincarem.	the event as a whole, that it happened
Bare infinitive	Vi as crianças brincar.	neutral, colloquial; the bare fact

All three translate as "I saw the children play(ing)." The differences are real but gradient — think of them as three camera angles on the same moment, not three different meanings.

Option 1 — the gerund: action caught in progress

The gerund (brincando) paints the perceived action as ongoing, a scene unfolding before your senses. This is the closest match to English "I saw them playing" with the -ing form, and it's the most vivid, descriptive option. Use it when you want the listener to picture the action mid-flow.

Vi as crianças brincando no quintal quando cheguei.

I saw the children playing in the yard when I arrived.

Ouvi alguém chorando no quarto ao lado.

I heard someone crying in the room next door.

Senti o chão tremendo embaixo dos meus pés.

I felt the floor shaking under my feet.

The gerund emphasizes duration and immediacy: in Ouvi alguém chorando, you tuned in while the crying was happening. This is the most common choice in everyday Brazilian speech and the safest default — if in doubt, use the gerund.

💡

If you can only remember one option, use the gerund. Vi as crianças brincando is natural, vivid, and never wrong. It's also the form most aligned with the rest of Brazilian Portuguese, which favors gerunds (estou fazendo, vou indo) where European Portuguese uses infinitives.

Option 2 — the personal infinitive: the event as a fact

The personal infinitive (brincarem, with the -em ending marking third-person plural) treats the embedded clause as a self-contained event with its own subject. It foregrounds that the event happened / was completed rather than its moment-to-moment unfolding. It feels slightly more formal and structured than the gerund.

Vi as crianças brincarem a tarde inteira sem brigar.

I watched the children play the whole afternoon without fighting.

Ouvimos os pássaros cantarem ao amanhecer.

We heard the birds sing at dawn.

Because the infinitive carries person marking, it stays clear who is doing the action even when the sentence is long — which is exactly why careful writing tends to prefer it. The personal infinitive also handles the boundedness of an event well: Vi as crianças brincarem a tarde inteira frames the whole afternoon as one completed span, where the gerund would emphasize the in-progress feel.

Option 3 — the bare infinitive: neutral and colloquial

The bare infinitive (brincar, with no person ending) is the most neutral and the most colloquial. It strips the embedded verb down to its plainest form and tightens the whole sentence into a single event. In speech it's extremely common; in formal writing it's the least favored of the three.

Vi as crianças brincar e fiquei mais tranquila.

I saw the children playing and felt more at ease.

A gente ouviu o trem passar bem longe.

We heard the train go by far in the distance.

When the subject is singular, the bare and personal infinitives look identical (Vi a criança brincar), so the three-way choice collapses to two — gerund vs. infinitive. The split only becomes fully visible with plural subjects, where the personal infinitive adds -em: brincar (bare) vs. brincarem (personal).

Vi o menino atravessar a rua correndo.

I saw the boy run across the street.

Choosing among the three — a practical guide

Since all three are correct, the choice is about nuance and register:

You want to...	Use	Example
describe a scene in progress (vivid, default)	gerund	Vi ela saindo de casa.
state that an event happened (formal/written)	personal infinitive	Vi as visitas saírem cedo.*
speak neutrally and colloquially	bare infinitive	Vi ela sair de casa.

(The personal infinitive ending (-em, here *saírem) only appears with plural subjects; with a singular subject it's identical to the bare infinitive, so Vi ela sair covers both.)

💡

The three options are NOT in free competition for every nuance — the gerund is the everyday workhorse, the bare infinitive is its more compact colloquial twin, and the personal infinitive is the careful, written-register choice that keeps the subject explicit. When you read Brazilian fiction you'll see all three on the same page; that variety is a feature of the language, not an inconsistency.

A note on pronoun causees

When the perceived subject is a pronoun, Brazilian colloquial usage uses the subject form before the embedded verb (Vi ela chegar — I saw her arrive), not the prescriptive clitic Vi-a chegar. The clitic version is correct and formal but sounds European/bookish in Brazilian speech.

Vi ela chegar atrasada de novo.

I saw her arrive late again. (natural BR)

Ouvi você falando comigo, mas não entendi.

I heard you talking to me, but I didn't understand.

Common Mistakes

❌ Vi as crianças a brincar no quintal.

Incorrect — the 'a + infinitive' pattern is European Portuguese, not BR.

✅ Vi as crianças brincando no quintal.

I saw the children playing in the yard.

❌ Ouvi alguém para chorar no quarto.

Incorrect — no 'para' before the embedded verb.

✅ Ouvi alguém chorando no quarto.

I heard someone crying in the room.

❌ Vi as crianças brincar — wait, is this wrong?

No — this bare-infinitive version is perfectly correct BR; don't 'correct' it to a gerund out of fear.

✅ Vi as crianças brincar / brincando / brincarem.

All three are valid ways to say 'I saw the children playing.'

❌ Senti o chão a tremer.

Incorrect — European 'a + infinitive'; BR uses the gerund here.

✅ Senti o chão tremendo.

I felt the floor shaking.

❌ Vi-a sair de casa (in casual speech).

Not wrong, but the clitic sounds bookish/European in Brazil.

✅ Vi ela sair de casa.

I saw her leave the house. (natural BR)

Key Takeaways

After ver, ouvir, sentir (and escutar, observar), three completions are all correct: gerund (brincando), personal infinitive (brincarem), bare infinitive (brincar).
The gerund is the vivid, in-progress default; the personal infinitive is the careful, written, event-as-fact choice; the bare infinitive is the compact, colloquial one.
The personal/bare difference is only visible with plural subjects (brincarem vs. brincar); with singular subjects they coincide.
Never use the European a + infinitive (a brincar) after a perception verb in BR — use the gerund instead.

Now practice Portuguese

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Portuguese→