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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 30, Frankfurt
Edited by Ingo Feldhausen, Martin Elsig, Imme Kuchenbrandt and Mareike Neuhaus
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15] 2019
► pp. 237–254

Chapter 12
Teasing apart 3rd person null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese

| Federal University of Minas Gerais

We discuss null impersonals in Brazilian Portuguese against the background of previous work by Holmberg (2005, et seq.), in which the properties of null impersonals play a role in the characterization of partial pro-drop languages. We show that although apparently similar, null impersonals in Finnish and BP cannot receive the same analysis. In Finnish, there is only one type of null impersonal. By contrast, there are two types of null impersonals in BP, each one employing dedicated null impersonal pronouns, i.e. pronouns that cannot receive a referential reading. We take the properties of null impersonals in BP to showcase that the different specifications of T in partial pro-drop languages can have an overall effect in the grammar of their constructions.

Keywords: partial pro-drop languages, null subjects, null impersonals, Brazilian Portuguese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Characteristics of partial pro-drop languages
  • 3.Properties of BP null impersonals
    • 3.1The EPP requirement
    • 3.2Existential and generic readings in BP null impersonals
  • 4.Properties of existential and generic null impersonals
    • 4.1Existential null impersonals
    • 4.2Generic null impersonals
    • 4.3Summary of the differences between existential and generic null impersonals
  • 5.Null indefinites
    • 5.1Diesing’s analysis of indefinites
    • 5.2Null impersonals in BP and Diesing’s typology
  • 6.Why two types of pronouns in BP but not in Finnish?
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.15.12car
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Martins, Ana Maria & Jairo Nunes
2021. Chapter 9. Brazilian and European Portuguese and Holmberg’s 2005 typology of null subject languages. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 357], ► pp. 172 ff. DOI logo
Ortega-Santos, Iván
2023. Is Chilean Spanish a Canonical Pro-drop Variety? On Subjecthood in Chilean Spanish. In Formal Approaches to Languages of South America, ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo

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