Chapter 4. Patterns of extraction out of factive Islands in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper discusses the patterns of extraction that different factive constructions allow in Brazilian Portuguese. In addition to the more familiar cases of weak or strong island effects, it is shown that some factive constructions in fact allow extraction of both arguments and adjuncts. I propose that the presuppositional character associated to factive complements is due to selectional restrictions; factive predicates select for a [+specific] complement, which in turn may require a TopP projection above CP in certain configurations. I show that the different patterns of acceptability with respect to extraction in BP follow from the different types of complement allowed and the presence or absence of TopP.

Published online: 15 April 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.142.06aug