Post Verbal Subjects and Agreement in Brazilian Portuguese

More documents

Recommendations

Info

(75) *Duas meninas tinha/ tinha-m na festa. two girls had.sg/had-pl at-the party. ‘Two girls were at the party.’ As a solution to address this, I adopt Avelar’s (2004) proposal that the existential ter and the stage level copular estar (‘be’) are the spell out of the same verbal root. Based on a distributed morphology framework (Halle and Marantz (1993)), he proposes the idea that the verbal root is spelled out as estar when the verb attaches to a T containing a D feature (which attracts a DP to its specifier) (v- T D), and it is spelled out ter when it lacks that D feature(v-T). From this perspective the alternation in (72) and (73) also exists in BP and is spelled out as follows: (76) Tinha/ tinha-m duas meninas na festa. had.sg/had-pl two girls in-the party. ‘There were two girls at the party.’ (77) Duas meninas estam/ *esta na festa. two girls are/ is(stage-level) in-the party. ‘Two girls were at the party.’ Thus, existentials allow for the same possibilities as unaccusatives: either the expletive or the subject of the small clause may raise to spec-TP: (78) [ TP [pro-there] k are(V-v-T) j [ vP t k [duas meninas] i t j [ VP t j [[ SC t i t k] [ PP at the party]]] 20 (79) [ TP [duas meninas] k are(V-v-T D) j [ vP t k [ VP t j [ SC t k [pro-there]] [ PP at the party ]] 20 This representation is most likely a very simplified representation (adjoining the PP to SC, following Moro (1993, 1997)), given some recent proposals about the structure of PP in Koopman (1997) and Kayne (2004). However, it seems to suffice for the point discussed above. 25
Both of these options lead to the verb matching morphological agreement with the subject (though in one case this is actually agreement with the expletive pro-there). I propose that third person singular agreement arises from SC pronominalization. When clauses are pronominalized, the clausal pronoun (which is third person singular, as is English it) can raise up to spec-TP, triggering third person singular agreement. Just as in the other case of VS ordering, the case of as meninas can be checked vP internally. (80) a. [pro-it [ SC [as meninas] pro-there pl]] ] b. [ vP pro-it k [as meninas] i arrive j [ VP t j t k [ SC t i [pro-there]] c. [ TP pro-it k arrive j [ vP t k [as meninas] i [ VP t j t k [ SC t i [pro-there]] This section described the account for the agreement of unaccusatives and existentials. Subject agreement in VS order, is derived by raising or a predicate expletive (pro-there). Third person agreement is obtained through raising of a clausal expletive (pro-il, a pronominalization of the small clause) to spec-TP. In SV order, the subject of the small clause raises to spec TP, triggering subject agreement directly. The next section will apply the analysis to copular sentences. 4.2.2. Copular sentences One salient difference between unaccusatives and existentials versus predicational copular sentences is that the latter involves two overt DPs. This will turn out to be relevant in copular agreement. Despite this difference, copular sentences, existentials and unaccusatives will be accounted for by a unified analysis in which 26
Page 1 and 2: TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 1
Page 3 and 4: (5) O problema foi/foram as meninas
Page 5 and 6: 2. DATA This section provides addit
Page 7 and 8: Consistent with the idea that the v
Page 9 and 10: (21) As cartas chegadas vao ser gua
Page 11 and 12: Existentials can also be expressed
Page 13 and 14: fotos das meninas is post-verbal an
Page 15 and 16: Moro adopts the idea that copular v
Page 17 and 18: they would have parallel structures
Page 19 and 20: 4.1. Initial assumptions 4.1.1. Spe
Page 21 and 22: cases is translated with the Englis
Page 23 and 24: (67) is obvious [it [ CP that John
Page 25: (70) a. [ SC [as meninas] pro-there
Page 29 and 30: (81) a. [ SC [as meninas] [ o probl
Page 31 and 32: Italian is adjoined to IP, as in th
Page 33 and 34: (88) As meninas foram/ *foi o probl
Page 35 and 36: clausal expletive pro-it to spec-TP
Page 37 and 38: 5. COMMENTS ON SOME ALTERNATIVE ANA
Page 39 and 40: (94) Chegou as cartas. arrived.sg t
Page 41 and 42: ‘The letters already arrived.’
Page 43 and 44: If the possibility of singular agre
Page 45 and 46: to be some additional mechanism of
Page 47 and 48: 6. SUMMARY This thesis introduced t
Page 49 and 50: Duarte, M. E. 2000. The loss of the

Post Verbal Subjects and Agreement in Brazilian Portuguese

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?