Locative DPs and deictic adverbs/pronouns in subject position in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

The paper investigates the licensing of locative DPs and deictic adverbs in subject position in Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth, BP), taking into consideration specifically the grammatical status of third person verb inflection in this language. We develop a unified analysis for related phenomena, which allow to identifying Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as a partial null subject language (cf. Holmberg 2010). In particular, we examine (i) sentences with a locative preverbal adverb/pronoun, which can be either overt or null (further allowing a locative adverb in postverbal position), in which the verb bears third person inflection and the subject has an arbitrary reading; (ii) VS word order sentences with an overt locative adverb, giving rise to a locative inversion configuration; (iii) sentences with weather verbs and a preverbal locative DP licensing agreement on the verb; (iv) the so-called topic-subject constructions, with a (selected) DP raised from an internal VP position. We assume that third person inflection on the verb, unlike first and second person inflection, is unable to license referential definite null subjects (cf. Rabelo 2010). We claim that the possibility of filling the subject position with a locative pronoun/adverb or a locative DP is due to the fact that the third person inflection in BP is no longer referential. In turn, null or overt locative adverbs/pronouns in preverbal position can check the EPP feature in these constructions, yielding arbitrary interpretation of the external argument as a consequence of the absence of a referential feature on (third person) T. We further claim that the (null) adverb/pronoun bears a locative feature in locative inversion constructions, existential predicates, and (internal) locative/part-whole arguments.

The emergence of Brazilian Portuguese: earlier evidence for the development of a partial null subject Grammar

“…One problem with our analysis is explaining how the EPP-feature was satisfied in constructions with VS order in the 19 th century data. Considering the proposals of Pilati, Naves & Salles (2017) and Teixeira (2015) that sentences with unaccusative verbs in VS order in PB can be cases of locative inversion in which a locative or temporal deictic element satisfies the EPP-feature of T, we assume that this case of inversion is a way of satisfying the EPP-feature only when the internal DP argument of unaccusative verbs does not move to spec TP, as in illustrated in (19).…”