The relationship between subject position, focus and agreement in passive constructions in Brazilian Portuguese

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22481/el.v8i2.1132

Keywords:

Concordância, Foco, Construções Passivas, DPs pós-verbais

Abstract

This paper discusses the agreement patterns of passive structures in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). More specifically, we claim that the fact that postverbal DPs in such structures don’t necessarily trigger agreement on the verb and the participial head, whereas moved DPs always do, represents a problem for the Agree model proposed by Chomsky (1998 and subsequent work). We adopt Hornstein’s (2009) model, which eliminates Agree from the grammar, and propose that these postverbal DPs are actually focused in BP. The defective agreement patterns are suggested to be a consequence of the focused status of the DPs.
KEYWORDS: Agreement. Focus. Passive Constructions. Postverbal DPs.

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Author Biography

Leonor Simioni, University of São Paulo (USP/Brazil)

Leonor Simioni is is currently a PhD student in Linguistics at Universidade de São Paulo. Her main research interests are clausal and DP-internal agreement phenomena and the syntax and semantics of DPs. She is a member of the project "Sintaxe Gerativa do Português Brasileiro na Entrada do Século XXI: Minimalismo e Interfaces", coordinated by Jairo Nunes and funded by FAPESP.

References

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Published

2010-12-30

How to Cite

SIMIONI, L. The relationship between subject position, focus and agreement in passive constructions in Brazilian Portuguese. Language Studies, [S. l.], v. 8, n. 2, p. 173-187, 2010. DOI: 10.22481/el.v8i2.1132. Disponível em: https://periodicos2.uesb.br/index.php/estudosdalinguagem/article/view/1132. Acesso em: 22 nov. 2024.

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 2 (2010): Estudos da Língua(gem) - ISSN: 1982-0534

Section

Papers

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