Null subjects and agreement marks in European and Brazilian Portuguese

Maria Eugênia Lammoglia Duarte,Filomena Varejão

doi:10.5334/jpl.69

Maria Eugênia Lammoglia Duarte, Filomena Varejão

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5334/jpl.69

Copy DOI

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss the relation between the presence of agreement marks and null subjects in contemporary European and Brazilian Portuguese based on very recent samples of speech collected in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. In order to bring additional evidence to support the analysis, we will briefly review the issues involving the Null Subject in Romance Languages and some diachronic and synchronic analyses which distinguish Brazilian and European Portuguese as far as null subjects are concerned. We will finally show that recent samples of spoken European and Brazilian Portuguese confirm the stability of EP as a null subject language and the change affecting referential subjects in BP.

Highlights

This article provides a discussion related to the presence or absence of person and number morphemes to express the agreement between verb and subject in Brazilian and in European Portuguese
It has been a general belief that standard European Portuguese (EP) exhibits agreement verb marks systematically, whereas in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) it is a variable rule, constrained by structural and social factors, especially as far as third person plural is concerned
Our main focus it to show that null subjects in EP and BP are quantitatively and qualitatively different as the change affecting the representation of referential subjects in BP, in favor of overt pronouns, proceeds

Summary

Introduction

The paper is organized as follows: section 1 contains a brief review of the issues involving rich agreement and null subjects in the context of Romance languages. This same section brings the main results offered by diachronic and synchronic empirical researches based on Brazilian and European samples coming from different sources. We conclude the paper with a brief discussion of some of the main differences found in the samples analyzed

Null subjects and “rich” agreement morphology

The studies on variable use of agreement marks

A new comparative analysis: null subjects and agreement marks in EP and BP

II III IV V

Findings

Some final remarks