Embedded null subjects in Capeverdean

2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOÃO COSTA ◽  
FERNANDA PRATAS
Keyword(s):  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Status ◽  
Embedded Contexts

The status of Capeverdean as apro-drop language is controversial. Baptista (2002) contends that this Portuguese-based creole has null referential subjects with some types of predicates, while Pratas (2002, 2007) proposes that it has only expletive null subjects. She argues that the rare cases of root null subjects can be analyzed as instances of null expletives. The aim of this paper is to show that in Capeverdean there is an asymmetry in the distribution of null referential subjects. These are ruled out in root contexts, but allowed in some embedded contexts; this is the case when the null subject is bound by awh-operator or a quantifier. Following Holmberg's (2005) and Holmberg, Nayudu & Sheehan's (2009) analysis of null subjects, we offer an analysis of Capeverdean null subjects exploring the properties of T in the language (in particular, the lack of a rich inflectional system), the syntax of subjects, and the type of null category available. We claim that Capeverdean embedded null subjects are variables, licensed by an operator in the matrix clause. We show that these specific properties explain minimal differences between null subjects in Capeverdean and Brazilian Portuguese.

scholarly journals Levels of Reality

Languages ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald W. Langacker
Keyword(s):  
Structural Features ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Levels Of Reality

Two fundamental aspects of conceptual and linguistic structure are examined in relation to one another: organization into strata, each a baseline giving rise to the next by elaboration; and the conceptions of reality implicated at successive levels of English clause structure. A clause profiles an occurrence (event or state) and grounds it by assessing its epistemic status (location vis-à-vis reality). Three levels are distinguished in which different notions of reality correlate with particular structural features. In baseline clauses, grounded by “tense,” the profiled occurrence belongs to baseline reality (the established history of occurrences). Basic clauses incorporate perspective (passive, progressive, and perfect), and since grounding includes the grammaticized modals, as well as negation, basic reality is more elaborate. A basic clause expresses a proposition, comprising the grounded structure and the epistemic status specified by basic grounding. At higher strata, propositions are themselves subject to epistemic assessment, in which conceptualizers negotiate their validity; propositions accepted as valid constitute propositional reality. Propositions are assessed through interactive grounding, in the form of questioning and polarity focusing, and by complementation, in which the matrix clause indicates the status of the complement.

The syntax and interpretation of embedded null subjects in Chinese, and their acquisition by English-speaking learners

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 191-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Xia Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Judgment Task ◽  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Government ◽  
Advanced Proficiency ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Matrix Subject

This article reports an investigation of embedded null subjects in both L1 and L2 Chinese. Chinese null embedded subjects can refer either to a matrix subject or to a discourse entity. In the Government-Binding (GB) framework, these two possibilities resulted from the null subject being either pro or a variable. Neither pro nor a variable is compatible with the assumptions of the more recent Minimalist Program, however. This article proposes an alternative account for null embedded subjects in Chinese that is consistent with the Minimalist Program: deletion of the anaphor ziji and deletion of a topic under identity with appropriate antecedents. It then reports a study of knowledge of such deletion in the Chinese of L2 speakers. Although the existing literature has found that embedded null subjects are allowed by L2 learners of Chinese at early stages of development, no research has investigated whether they are interpreted in a target-like way by L2 speakers. A picture judgment task and a written interpretation task showed that English-speaking learners of high-intermediate proficiency in Chinese allow an embedded null subject to refer to the matrix subject, but not to a discourse entity. It is only at advanced proficiency that L2 speakers allow co-reference with both a matrix subject and a discourse entity. The implications of these results are discussed.

scholarly journals Null subjects in contemporary Brazilian filmic speech

Gragoatá ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 244-267
Author(s):  
Gian Luigi De Rosa
Keyword(s):  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
L2 Learning ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Brazilian Film

The present research, based on a corpus of contemporary Brazilian filmic speech – Urban Carioca Sub-Corpus from the I-Fala Corpus of Luso-Brazilian Film Dialogues as a resource for L1 & L2 Learning and Linguistic Research (DE ROSA et al., 2017) –, illustrates how Brazilian Portuguese (BP) has undergone a process of change regarding the representation of referential subjects. A preference for overt pronominal subjects is on the rise, thus transitioning contemporary Brazilian Portuguese from a null subject language to a partial null subject language. The current paper revisits De Rosa (2017), this time including third person subjects and using actual film dialogue transcriptions rather than scripts. The occurrence of null and overt subjects in the corpus is discussed both quantitatively and qualitatively. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SUJEITOS NULOS NA FALA FÍLMICA BRASILEIRA CONTEMPORÂNEAO presente contributo, baseado numa amostra de fala fílmica brasileira contemporânea – Urban Carioca Sub-Corpus do I-Fala: Corpus of Luso-Brazilian Film Dialogues as a resource for L1 & L2 Learning and Linguistic Research (DE ROSA et al., 2017) –, propõe-se observar o processo de transformação que está atingindo o português brasileiro (PB) que está perdendo, à luz de toda uma série de mudanças linguísticas, as caraterísticas de uma língua de sujeito nulo. Nesse contributo, revisitamos De Rosa (2017), incluindo os sujeitos de terceira pessoa, sempre com o objetivo de registrar, em termos quantitativos e qualitativos, a presença do sujeito pleno nos diálogos fílmicos analisados e de confrontar os resultados com os dados da fala espontânea.---Original em inglês.

Null subjects, expletives, and the status of Medieval French

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Frequent Occurrence ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Status ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Fundamental Insight ◽  
Modern Standard

In view of considerable differences from prototypical null-subject (NS) languages and recent proposals of different types of NS language, this chapter reconsiders the status of Medieval French, generally analysed as a NS language, regarding the NS parameter. It is essentially shown that Medieval French displays traits incompatible with an analysis as a consistent or partial NS language, particularly the existence of overt TP subject expletives, the highly frequent occurrence of overt referential subject pronouns in embedded clauses, and the consistent occurrence of an overt generic subject pronoun. From this and the fundamental insight that, in prototypical non-NS languages such as Modern Standard French, null subjects (NSs) are licit in a restricted number of contexts, the chapter concludes that Medieval French constitutes a non-NS language in which, as in the modern stage, NSs are principally possible in contexts of left-peripheral focalization.

scholarly journals Pre-verbal position in BP: a reinterpretation of the "avoid pronoun principle"

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 610-626
Author(s):  
Mary Aizawa Kato ◽  
Eugênia Duarte
Keyword(s):  
Logical Form ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
The Other ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Initial Element ◽  
Null Subject Parameter ◽  
Present Distribution

The aim of this paper is to analyze the changes occurring in Brazilian Portuguese, regarding the possibility of null subjects, and suggest the kinds of constraints that explain its present distribution. In this paper, we will propose that the null subject parameter is defi ned at the interfaces. At the level of Logical Form, a constraint like Chomsky’s (1981) Avoid Pronoun will be atwork for languages that are prototypical null subject languages, like Spanish and Chinese. For languages like BP, a system with a particular distribution of null subjects, the constraint will be more specifi c: Avoid non-referential pronouns. We will also propose that at the other interface, the Phonetic Form, languages have fi lters regarding their rhythm. To account for the preference for certain forms, a constraint of the form: Avoid V1 will be proposed. This constraint hasnothing to do with an XP constituent in Spec of C, like in V2 languages, but with a phonetic requirement. This means that the initial element can be a head or an XP. 

scholarly journals The emergence of Brazilian Portuguese: Earlier evidence for the development of a partial null subject grammar

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Humberto Borges ◽  
Acrisio Pires
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Significant Rise ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Early Rise ◽  
The 19Th Century

Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth, BP) is currently analyzed as a partial null subject language (NSL). This work shows the earliest attested changes in the properties of null subjects in the Goiás dialect of Brazilian Portuguese. We analyze original data from colonial period manuscripts written in Goiás, a state located in Brazil’s center-west region, and provide empirical evidence of the loss of null subjects in BP grammars in historical data between the 18th and 19th century, preceding the period for which these changes have been reported regarding other dialects of BP. The analysis of our 18th and 19th century corpus shows an early significant rise in the realization of overt subjects. In addition, the loss of verb-subject (VS) free inversion, a property common to NSLs, drops from 57% in the 18th century to only 22.5% in the 19th century. On the other hand, a potential impoverishment of theverbal paradigm did not play a significant role in this early rise of overt subjects: only 15% of the clauses with a plural external argument in the 19th century data did not show overt agreement between the verb and the external argument, and all of them occur strictly with unaccusative or existential verbs. We take this as evidence that the loss of null subjects in BP was primarily linked to the loss of free VS-inversion, and not to the loss of clausal agreement. We propose that D-feature in T (an EPP-feature) was valued by V-movement to T in the 18th century, yielding a consistent NSL (Holmberg 2010). We argue that the loss of the requirement of the D-feature in T(tense) was a primary trigger for the partial loss of null subjects and parallel loss of free inversion from the 18th to the 19th century in Goiás BP, giving then rise to a partial NSL (without a D-feature in T).

scholarly journals Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonella Sorace ◽  
Francesca Filiaci
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Processing Strategies ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Subject Pronoun

This study presents data from an experiment on the interpretation of intrasentential anaphora in Italian by native Italian speakers and by English speakers who have learned Italian as adults and have reached a near-native level of proficiency in this language. The two groups of speakers were presented with complex sentences consisting of a main clause and a subordinate clause, in which the subordinate clause had either an overt pronoun or a null subject pronoun. In half of the sentences the main clause preceded the subordinate clause (forward anaphora) and in the other half the subordinate clause preceded the main clause (backward anaphora). Participants performed in a picture verification task in which they had to indicate the picture(s) that corresponded to the meaning of the subordinate clause, thus identifying the possible antecedents of the null or overt subject pronouns. The patterns of responses of the two groups were very similar with respect to the null subject pronouns in both the forward and backward anaphora conditions. Compared to native monolingual speakers, however, the near-natives had a significantly higher preference for the subject of the matrix clause as a possible antecedent of overt subject pronouns, particularly in the backward anaphora condition. The results indicate that near-native speakers have acquired the syntactic constraints on pronominal subjects in Italian, but may have residual indeterminacy in the interface processing strategies they employ in interpreting pronominal forms.

scholarly journals Brazilian Portuguese

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. e021021
Author(s):  
Maria Eugenia Lamoglia Duarte ◽  
Juliana Esposito Marins
Keyword(s):  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Overt Pronouns ◽  
European Portuguese ◽  
Progressive Loss ◽  
Null Subject Parameter ◽  
Parametric Change ◽  
Apparent Variation

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. 

Microvariation in thehave yet toconstruction

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-279
Author(s):  
Matthew Tyler ◽  
Jim Wood
Keyword(s):  
Matrix Clause ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
Main Verb ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
Embedded Clause ◽  
Treat All ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Lexical Content

AbstractThehave yet toconstruction, exemplified by sentences such asJohn has yet to visit his grandmother,is widespread across dialects of English. However, recent studies have revealed that behind this apparent unity, there is significant variation in the syntactic properties of thehave yet toconstruction. Speakers vary with respect to (i) the status ofhaveas an auxiliary or main verb, (ii) the status of negation tests, and (iii) the status of a variety of relatedyet toconstructions. The goal of this paper is to sort out the microsyntax ofhave yet toacross speakers, in the face of contradictory empirical claims and mutually incompatible proposals in the existing literature. We develop an analysis based in part on two wide-scale surveys we have conducted. With respect tohave,we show that speakers who can treat it as a main verb can also treat it as an auxiliary, but not necessarily vice-versa. We propose that the variation in this case has to do with where theperfect features are introduced in the clause. With respect to negation, we find that speakers do not treat all the negation tests the same, forcing us to contend with the question of how these tests work. We propose that for most speakers, only the embedded clause is syntactically negative. Negation tests split according to whether they must target the matrix clause, or whether they can target an embedded clause as well. In some cases, the tests reveal the same sentence to be both affirmative and negative, as we expect: the matrix clause is syntactically affirmative, but the embedded clause, which hosts the lexical content, is syntactically negative.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Kristian A. Rusten
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
The Status

This chapter introduces the issues to be investigated in the book. It defines the concept of referential null subject, and gives an outline of previous statements concerning the status of such subjects in Old English, as well as a presentation of the null subject phenomenon as it manifests itself in the wider Old Germanic context. Previous works on null subjects in Old English have reached widely diverging conclusions: some scholars say that null subjects did not occur in Old English, while others state that Old English was a canonical pro-drop language. Walkden (2013) suggested the compromise that null subjects are a case of diatopic variation. The question of the possibility of null subjects in Old English, and the diverging descriptions and explanations of this phenomenon, are presented as the main motivations for the book. The chapter also introduces the data material and methods used.

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