Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

(101) a. Sóc jo (el president)
Am I (the president)
'It's me (the president)'
b. *El president sóc
The president am
Probably 0.b) is excluded because this kind of construction is precisely used to focalize
the subject, and hence it cannot be dropped. It is not clear why the preverbal DP can be dropped
if it is not recovered in content by AGR.
3. Indefinite I-subjects
So far, the predictions are that postverbal subjects can be:
- [-anaphoric] in NSLs.
- [+anaphoric] in non-NSLs.
Both kinds of languages, however, freely admit indefinite in post-verbal object position:
(102) a. There came a man
b. Viene un uomo
Comes a man
Within the theory sketched above, the question is: why are indefinites able to occur
post-verbally without violating BT in English? Recall that for NSLs the existence of indefinite
subjects is not a problem anymore than definite inverted subjects are: they both would be
licenced as far as they are both [-anaphoric] I-subjects. Indefinite I-subjects, however, are
uniformly acceptable independently of the null/non-null-subject contrast. So they should be
licenced independently of how inverted subjects are licenced in NSLs.
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