Phrase Structure of Brazilian Sign Language - Ronice.cce.prof.ufsc.br

(46) English<br />
a) She/he likes (agreement)<br />
b) She/he liked (past tense)<br />
c) *She/he likesed (agreement, past tense)<br />
The final characteristic that I want to discuss is presented by Bobaljik<br />
for Non-Free Agr languages. He shows that in these languages, verbs surface in V,<br />
since they are adjacent to the inflection projection. Although this is hard to see in<br />
LSB, I assume the existence of a virtual affix that must be adjacent to V. The<br />
examples that follow present the structure assumed for plain verbs.<br />
(47) English (Bobaljik, 1995:272, example number (7))<br />
[IP [D(P) Sam [I’ [I [past] [VP [V eat [D(P) lunch]]]]]]]<br />
Sam ate lunch<br />
(48) LSB<br />
[IP [D(P) JOHN [I’ [I [∅] [VP [V EAT [D(P) RICE]]]]]]]<br />
John eats rice.<br />
3 Phrase Structures of LSB<br />
Based on the evidence discussed up to this point, I assume that there<br />
are two possible representations that languages can access: the functional projection<br />
of agreement and tense, as proposed in the spirit of Pollock (1989), and the<br />
functional projection of only one inflection category IP, in the spirit of Chomsky<br />
(1995). Instead of putting these two analyses in opposition, I put them together to<br />
capture different behavior of languages. Actually, this is a natural result from the<br />
minimalist point of view, since projections result from features that have some<br />
independent motivation from the interfaces. When there is no motivation, there is no<br />
reason to have a functional projection. Also, I assume both possibilities for LSB,<br />
since there are plain verbs that activate an affixal approach, and inflecting verbs that<br />
activate a featural approach (as is the case with English (Lasnik, 1995)). The relation<br />
that I establish between these two analyses is in accord with the minimalist<br />
investigation that is based on economy principles.<br />
Figure 1 – Phrase Structure Projected with Plain Verbs<br />
IP<br />
Spec I’<br />
Position in which<br />
The subject is generated<br />
I VP<br />
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