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Brazilian Portuguese, Syntax and Semantics: 20 years of Núcleo de Estudos Gramaticais
Edited by Roberta Pires De Oliveira, Ina Emmel and Sandra Quarezemin
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 260] 2020
► pp. 107–134

Chapter 4
Brazilian double subjects and sentence structure

| Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina | CNPq

This research investigates syntactic, semantic, and prosodic evidence of double subject sentences in Brazilian Portuguese. The paper verifies whether (i) such constructions can be analyzed as left dislocation; (ii) the pre-verbal subject behaves as a topic; (iii) the subject has the same behavior as the dislocated object with the resumption of the pronoun; (iv) the resumptive pronoun that resumes the pre-verbal subject is a clitic (a nucleus, weak pronoun) or a strong pronoun, filling the position of specifier. Cartography is the theoretical background (Rizzi 1997, 2001; Cardinaletti 1997, 2004; Rizzi & Shlonsky 2006, 2007). The paper concludes that there are two distinct sentence structures in BP: a left dislocated topic, and a simple double subject.

Keywords: double subjects, topic, cartography, subject positions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Subject doubling in Brazilian Portuguese
    • 2.1Current positions on the status of double subject sentences
    • 2.2A new hypothesis and some questions
  • 3.The cartography of subject positions
  • 4.A cartography analysis of the double subject sentences
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.260.04qua
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