Post Verbal Subjects and Agreement in Brazilian Portuguese

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(93) Chegara-m as cartas. arrived-pl the letters ‘The letters arrived.’ TP T T' Chegar 37 VP as cartas The counterpart of the sentence with third person singular agreement would then occur when there was no raising of the lower DP past the verb (so that they would never be in a spec-head configuration, accounting for the lack of agreement). Third person agreement could then be a reflection of some sort of default agreement or expletive insertion mechanism: 30 30 This would be a simplification. Assuming Sportiche (1988), quantifier float suggests some movement of the postverbal subject: (i) Chegou as cartas todas. Arrived.sg the letters all ‘The letters all arrived.’ However, the relevant point for this analysis would be to see whether the post-verbal stays low enough such that it does not trigger agreement.
(94) Chegou as cartas. arrived.sg the letters ‘The letters arrived.’ pro TP T T' Chegar VP 38 as cartas A full analysis along these lines would have to work out the details of verb raising above T, as well as the process of default agreement (which increases the number of possible mechanisms of agreement in the grammar). However, the problem which indicates that this analysis is probably not on the right track is that it assumes that the subject (and possibly, but not necessarily, the verb) occupy different positions in the cases in which there is agreement with the post-verbal subject and cases with third person singular agreement. However I have not found any empirical evidence that would support this. Consider for example the placement of adverbs with unaccusatives. Compare the two versions of VS unaccusatives and the non-inverted case (where there is only one possibility of agreement): (95) a. (*rapido) chegou (rapido) as cartas (?rapido). quick arrived.sg quick the letters quick
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 and 26: (70) a. [ SC [as meninas] pro-there
Page 27 and 28: Both of these options lead to the v
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: 5. COMMENTS ON SOME ALTERNATIVE ANA
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

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