Chapter published in:
Studies on Variation in Portuguese
Edited by Pilar P. Barbosa, Maria da Conceição de Paiva and Celeste Rodrigues
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14] 2017
► pp. 177–198

Chapter 7
Conditions on variation in pre-nominal possessives in European Portuguese

| University of Porto, Portugal
Developing previous studies by Brito (2001, 2007), Castro and Costa (2002, 2003), Castro (2005), Miguel (2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2004), this paper argues that there is a continuum of variation regarding the syntax of pre-nominal possessives in European Portuguese. There is a dominant, standard grammar, in which pre-nominal possessives occupy the spec of a high functional category in the DP (AgrP or PossP); in general they are used with definite articles and are [−degree]. Furthermore, there is a non-dominant grammar, where pre-nominal possessives are almost clitics to the definite article and can be phonetically reduced. In some written and formal registers pre-nominal possessives may occur immediately after indefinites and may even have the feature [+degree]. This paper argues that this is due to several linguistic conditions: in particular, lexical and semantic conditions. We also argue that the common property of possessives is that they are φP. Our paper also shows that the co-occurrence or non co-occurrence of the possessive with the definite article is not due to the different category of the possessive (contrary to Giorgi & Longobardi 1991 Parameter) but to the presence or absence of the definite article itself, a proposal already made in different ways by Brito (2007), Castro (2005) and Rinke (2010).
Keywords: pre-nominal possessives, variation, Possessive Parameter, relational nouns, DP structure
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pre-nominal possessives: Determiners or adjectives?
  • 3.Strong, weak and clitic possessives?
  • 4.Pre-nominal possessives and the definite / indefinite article
  • 5.The structure
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 02 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.07bri
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