An unified analysis for (null and overt) innovative subjects in the grammar of brazilian portuguese

Abstract

In this paper we have two goals: (I) to describe and to analyze the licensing of null and overt subjects in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) under a synchronic perspective, considering the proposal according to which the realization of the subject is crucially determined by the loss of the referential property in the third person of the pronominal/inflectional system (cf. PILATI e NAVES, 2011, 2013; PILATI, NAVES e SALLES, 2017a, 2017b); (II) to present diachronic data about the expression of the subject in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), in comparison with European Portuguese (EP) (cf. GRAVINA, 2014), as an evidence for the split in the pronominal/inflectional paradigm of BP (cf. RABELO, 2010) and for the analysis to the VS word order as locative inversion in this language (cf. PILATI, 2006). In this approach, in BP, the pronominal/inflectional category in the third person is realized as a cluster of phi features (cf. HOLMBERG, 2010), the presence of a locative DP (either lexical or null) in subject position being determined by the absence of the referential feature (cf. PILATI, NAVES e SALLES, 2017c).