Chapter 9. Brazilian and European Portuguese and Holmberg’s 2005 typology of null subject languages

2021 ◽  
pp. 172-190
Author(s):  
Ana Maria Martins ◽  
Jairo Nunes
Author(s):  
Tammer Castro ◽  
Jason Rothman ◽  
Marit Westergaard

The present study examines anaphora resolution in two groups of speakers exposed to Brazilian and European Portuguese (BP and EP, respectively), considering the different null subject distribution in these languages. Our research question is whether late BP-EP bilinguals (age of EP onset: 29.1) and heritage BP speakers raised in Portugal (age of EP onset 5.6), tested in both dialects, will pattern like the native controls or display some effects of EP in their native BP or vice-versa. This is an interesting question in light of the Interface Hypothesis, which claims that external interfaces should be subject to general bilingualism effects irrespective of language pairing and age (Sorace, 2011). The results show that age has an effect, as the heritage speakers do not perform like the late learners, and that the high degree of typological proximity between the two languages could hinder bidialectal acquisition.


2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Madeira ◽  
Maria Francisca Xavier ◽  
Maria de Lourdes Crispim

Este estudo visa investigar a aquisição, em português europeu como segunda língua (L2), de propriedades morfo-sintácticas associadas ao valor positivo do parâmetro do sujeito nulo, por um lado, e, por outro lado, de propriedades pragmático-discursivas que determinam a distribuição de sujeitos nulos e expressos, procurando, simultaneamente, estabelecer o papel da língua materna (L1) dos aprendentes na aquisição destas propriedades. O estudo assenta em dados de produção e de juízos de preferência, de aprendentes de português L2 com diferentes níveis de proficiência. Os resultados indicam aquisição das propriedades morfo-sintácticas, o que constitui evidência de (re)fixação paramétrica, observando-se algumas assimetrias entre falantes de diferentes L1s relativamente ao ritmo de desenvolvimento destas propriedades. Quanto às condições pragmático-discursivas, conclui-se que a sua aquisição é problemática, particularmente para falantes de línguas de sujeito obrigatório.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Aquisição. Concordância. Segunda língua. Sujeito nulo. Transferência. ABSTRACT This study aims to investigate the L2 acquisition, by learners of L2 European Portuguese at different levels of proficiency, of the morphosyntactic properties associated with a positive value of the null subject parameter, as well as of the discourse-pragmatic properties which determine the distribution of null and overt subjects, whilst simultaneously seeking to establish the role of the learners’ native language in the acquisition of these properties. The study is based on production data and on data obtained from a preference judgement task. The results indicate that the morphosyntactic properties are acquired early, which constitutes evidence of parametric (re)setting, although some differences are observed between speakers of different L1s regarding the pace of development of these properties. As for the discourse-pragmatic properties, their acquisition is shown to be difficult, particularly for speakers of non-null subject languages.KEYWORDS: Acquisition. Agreement. Second language. Null subject. Transfer.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. e021021
Author(s):  
Maria Eugenia Lamoglia Duarte ◽  
Juliana Esposito Marins

The aim of this article is twofold. In the first place, we present evidence that the syntactic change towards overt pronominal subjects observed in Brazilian Portuguese is not a stable phenomenon; rather, our empirical results allow to follow the parametric change in course and to identify the progressive loss of crucial properties related to ‘consistent’ null subject languages. The contrastive analysis with European Portuguese shows the stronger and the weaker structural contexts in this continuous battle towards the implementation of overt pronouns. Personal sentences (with definite and ‘indefinite’ – arbitrary and generic – subjects, usually referred as “impersonal”) are analyzed in more detail than those we consider impersonal sentences, which include a variety of structures, with climate, existential and unaccusative verbs, . They are, however, shown to have been deeply affected by the re-setting of the value of the Null Subject Parameter. Then, we will briefly compare Brazilian Portuguese with Finnish null subjects to conclude that Brazilian Portuguese does not seem to fit the group of the so called ‘partial’ null subject languages, which seem to exhibit null subjects in very restricted contexts, have a lexical expletive in apparent variation with null and generic subjects as well as in impersonal sentences, when it seems to be merged to avoid a verb-initial sentence. 


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria do Pilar Pereira Barbosa

This paper argues that control and raising (non-inflected) infinitives have overt subjects in European Portuguese, in conformity with Szabolcsi’s (2009) generalization: (1) the overt subjects of control complements can only be pronouns; the overt subjects of raising complements can be pronouns or lexical DPs. It is shown that (1) constitutes a strong case in favour of a non-raising approach to Obligatory Control. Relying on the observation that all of the Romance Null Subject Languages comply with (1), we present an Agree-based theory of Obigatory Control that aims to capture the association between this phenomenon and the Null Subject Property.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-366
Author(s):  
Víctor Lara ◽  
Ana Guilherme

Abstract The employment of você in current European Portuguese is not clear. Although Brazilian Portuguese has specialised it as an informal pronoun in certain geographical areas within the country, the European variety presents its use in contexts which seem to be contradictory: informal address, formal address and pejorative address. Due to the lack of an in-depth study on the evolution of this form, we have collected data from three different corpora that reflect the real usage of você throughout the twentieth century, since it is from the nineteenth century that você started specialising as an informal pronoun. The results show a decreasing use of this pronoun and a certain degree of polyvalence due to a gradual marginalisation experienced for over one hundred years. As a consequence, the strategy of null subject plus 3sg has emerged as the unmarked politeness strategy in current European Portuguese.


Author(s):  
Joana Teixeira

The present article investigates the acquisition of a core syntactic property – the ungrammaticality of null subjects in English – by advanced and near-native learners whose first languages are European Portuguese (EP), a null subject language, and French, a non-null subject language. Two experimental tasks were used: an untimed drag-and-drop task and a speeded acceptability judgement task. Results show that French speakers behave target-like across all tasks and conditions, but EP speakers do not. At an advanced level, they fail to reject expletive and [-animate] null subjects in the speeded task. Crucially, at a near native level, EP speakers behave fully target-like across all conditions and tasks. These findings indicate that the syntax of subjects may exhibit significant developmental delays depending on first-second language combinations, but is completely acquirable. Developmental problems are argued to result from the misanalysis of (some of) the overt expletive subjects in the L2 input. This proposal is supported by an exploratory follow-up experiment, whose results are presented and discussed in the article.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Fiéis ◽  
Ana Madeira

It is known that knowledge of the interpretative properties of the standard inflected infinitive develops late both in L1 and L2 acquisition, and that subject control with most verbs is acquired early in L1. In this study we focus on a context which has not been addressed so far, and investigate how the interpretation of the null subjects of inflected infinitival complements of subject control verbs develops in the interlanguage of Englishand Spanish-speaking learners of L2 European Portuguese. We applied a selection task to intermediate and advanced learners in order to understand whether they differentiate between inflected and uninflected infinitives in these contexts and whether they assign control properties to the inflected infinitive. Our findings show that, although learners accept the occurrence of inflected infinitives with subject control verbs and assign a controlled reading to the infinitival null subject, knowledge of some of the properties of these constructions is delayed, namely, which verbs allow inflected infinitives and what are the interpretative properties of inflected infinitival subjects under different control verbs.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 173-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayara Nicolau De Paula

Com base na Teoria de Princípios e Parâmetros (CHOMSKY, 1995), apresento uma análise diacrônica das interrogativas-Q do Português Europeu (PE) seguida de uma comparação com as mesmas estruturas no Português Brasileiro (PB). Paralelamente, faço uma breve análise dos padrões de interrogativas-Q em entrevistas sociolinguísticas gravadas em dois momentos (anos 1970/80 e 2010). A hipótese inicial, a partir de descrições recentes de base teórica, era a de que a ordem QVS no PE seria a mais frequente, enquanto a ordem QSV estaria sempre condicionada à presença da clivagem. Sujeitos de 1ª. e 2ª. pessoas bem como os anafóricos seriam preferencialmente nulos no PE, um sistema descrito como de sujeito nulo consistente. Nesse aspecto, o PE teria um comportamento diferente do PB, que perdeu a ordem QVS, hoje atestada apenas em estruturas com verbos inacusativos, desde que o sujeito seja um DP lexical, uma mudança paralela à remarcação do valor do Parâmetro do Sujeito Nulo no PB. A amostra analisada para o estudo diacrônico é constituída de peças portuguesas escritas ao longo dos séculos 19 e 20, comparável à amostra brasileira que nos serve de ponto comparação. No caso das entrevistas sociolinguísticas, foram utilizadas as amostras NURC e Concordância para o PB, e Cordial-Sin e Concordância para o PE. A metodologia para o tratamento dos dados segue o modelo variacionista (TAGLIAMONTE, 2006; GUY E ZILLES, 2007). Os resultados mostram que o PE prefere o padrão QV, com sujeitos nulos; quanto aos sujeitos expressos, a ordem QVS é o padrão preferido; observamos, no entanto, uma curva descendente no último quartel do século 20, sugerindo o início de uma competição com QSV, desencadeada pela entrada da clivagem, a partir da segunda metade do século 19. Uma vez introduzida no sistema, a clivagem se expande para os três padrões de interrogativas-Q, o que é confrmado pelos dados da fala contemporânea.


Author(s):  
Norma Schifano

Chapter 3 extends the investigation of verb placement to other Romance varieties, in order to expand the macro- and micro-typologies identified in Chapter 2. It starts with a description of the placement of the present indicative verb across a selection of varieties of French, Romanian, Spanish, Catalan, European Portuguese, and Brazilian Portuguese. Following the methodology of Chapter 2, the remainder of the discussion is devoted to the description of cases of microvariation attested across the varieties above, which emerge once a selection of structural and interpretative distinctions are considered, such as lexical and auxiliary verbs, ‘have’ and ‘be’ auxiliaries, finite and non-finite verbs (cf. participle and infinitive), as well as a selection of modally, temporally, and aspectually marked forms (e.g. subjunctive, conditional, past, future, imperfect).


Author(s):  
D. Gary Miller

This reference grammar of Gothic includes much history along with a description of Gothic grammar. Apart from runic inscriptions, Gothic is the earliest attested language of the Germanic family in Indo-European. Specifically, it is East Germanic. Most of the extant Gothic corpus is a 4th-century translation of the Bible, traditionally ascribed to Wulfila. This translation is historically important because it antedates Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. Gothic inflectional categories include nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Nouns are inflected for three genders, two numbers, and four cases. Adjectives also have weak and strong forms, as do verbs. Verbs are inflected for three persons and numbers, indicative and nonindicative mood (here called optative), past and nonpast tense, and voice. The mediopassive survives as a synthetic passive and syntactically in innovated periphrastic formations. Middle and anticausative functions were taken over by simple reflexive structures. Nonfinite are the infinitive, the imperative, and two participles. Gothic was a null subject language. Aspect was effected primarily by prefixes, relativization by relative pronouns built on demonstratives plus a complementizer. Complementizers were the norm with subordinated verbs in the indicative or optative. Switch to the optative was triggered by irrealis (the unreal), matrix verbs that do not permit a full range of subordinate tenses (e.g. hopes, wishes), potentiality, and alternate worlds. Many of these are also relevant to matrix clauses (independent optatives). Essentials of linearization include prepositional phrases, default postposed genitives and possessive adjectives, and preposed demonstratives. Verb-object order predominates, but there is considerable variation. Verb-auxiliary order is native Gothic.


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