Microvariation in null subject languages
This chapter focuses on linguistic variation within Romance languages, providing a reinterpretation of Uriagereka’s (1988a; 1995a; 1995b) FP, a left peripheral projection whose role is parasitic on language specific morphological properties. In the context of Phase Theory, I suggest to recast FP as a property of phase heads boosting their left periphery (their edge), arguing in favor of a cross-linguistic parallel behavior in phase domains: languages that have a more active CP edge, have a more active v*P edge. The chapter also addresses the status of defective T, paying special attention to Romance raising and subjunctive clauses, for which a Reprojection analysis is put forward. Finally, word order patterns are considered in detail, focusing on the licensing of (and dependencies established between) objects and subjects.