Subject Positions And Interfaces

by Costa, Joao

• ISBN13: 9783110181128
• ISBN10: 3110181126
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-15
• Publisher: Mouton De Gruyter

Summary

The primary goal of this book is to provide an analysis of the several positions where the subject may surface in European Portuguese. Departing from an architecture of the clause as sketched in early minimalist work, containing two subject-related functional categories above VP (AgrP and TP), it is shown that the subject may surface in all potential landing sites: Spec,AgrP, Spec,TP and Spec,VP. Moreover, just like any other argument of the clause, it is claimed that subjects also have the possibility of surfacing in a left-dislocated position, arguably adjoining to the clause's left periphery. Under this approach, three independent results are derived: i) an explanation is found for the patterns of word order variation; ii) syntax proper may be reduced to its own tools, not having to manipulate semantic, discourse or prosodic variables; iii) the intuition that European Portuguese is an SVO language is derived: this word order corresponds to the one in which the subject occupies the only specifier position in which the other interfaces play no role.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Introduction	1	(10)
Preview	3	(1)
Grammar model	4	(2)
Assumptions on V-movement and adverbs	6	(5)
Preverbal subjects: Spec, IP or left-dislocated?	11	(12)
Multiple preposing	13	(1)
Unstressed negative QPs	14	(1)
No minimality effects	14	(1)
Reconstruction	15	(1)
Unmarkedness of SVO	15	(2)
Raising constructions and definiteness	17	(1)
Pronominal doubling contextually limited (Costa 2000)	18	(1)
Subject positions in C-less if-clauses (Costa and Galves 2002)	19	(1)
Preverbal and postverbal pronominal doubling	19	(4)
Postverbal subjects: syntax and discourse -- VSO and VOS orders	23	(48)
Post-verbal subjects in VSO context	23	(7)
Postverbal subjects in VOS contexts	30	(5)
Objects in VOS: Scrambling in European Portuguese	35	(36)
Inversion and information structure	71	(36)
Introduction	71	(1)
Focus-movement?	72	(6)
Word order and focus	78	(3)
Mapping syntax-discourse	81	(10)
No focus-movement in Portuguese	91	(6)
Phases, locality and subjects in Spec, VP	97	(3)
Related evidence: agreement in copular constructions	100	(5)
Conclusions	105	(2)
Optionality and left-dislocated subjects: semantic and discourse properties	107	(22)
SV and VS in unaccusative contexts	107	(12)
Lack of agreement in postverbal position	109	(3)
Hypothesis and arguments	112	(6)
Summing up: is there optionality?	118	(1)
VSO and SVO in answers to multiple wh-questions	119	(10)
Semantic properties of multiple-wh questions	120	(5)
Syntactic consequences	125	(4)
Subjects in Spec, TP and the interface with morphology	129	(12)
Spec, TP available in I-to-C contexts only	129	(2)
The interface with morphology	131	(7)
The non-parametric availability of Spec, TP	138	(3)
Syntactic outputs and the interfaces	141	(18)
The behaviour of ditransitives in English and in European Portuguese	142	(11)
The behaviour of possessives in Portuguese and Italian	153	(2)
The differences between subject-verb inversion in Brazilian and European Portuguese	155	(2)
Conclusions	157	(2)
Summary and conclusions	159	(4)
Appendix: On the nature of agreement in European Portuguese	163	(22)
Introduction	163	(2)
1. The facts	165	(9)
1.1. DP-internal number agreement	165	(2)
1.2. Subject-verb agreement	167	(6)
1.3. Summary	173	(1)
2. Proposal	174	(8)
3. Further predictions	182	(1)
4. Conclusion	183	(2)
Notes	185	(10)
References	195	(14)
Index	209