Chapter 4
Brazilian double subjects and sentence structure
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.
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
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Acknowledgements
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Notes
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References