The morphosyntax of portuguese and spanish in latin american

i The Morphosyntax of Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America ii Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax Richard Kayne, General Editor Movement and Silence Aspects of Split Ergativity Richard S. Kayne Jessica Coon Restructuring and Functional Heads: The A Comparative Grammar of Borgomanerese Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Christina Tortora Volume 4 Cross-​Linguistic Studies of Imposters and Guglielmo Cinque Pronominal Agreement Scrambling, Remnant Movement and Edited by Chris Collins Restructuring in West Germanic Japanese Syntax in Comparative Roland Hinterhölzl Perspective The Syntax of Ellipsis: Evidence from Edited by Mamoru Saito Dutch Dialects Micro-​Syntactic Variation in North Jeroen van Craenenbroeck American English Mapping the Left Periphery: The Edited by Raffaella Zanuttini and Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Laurence R. Horn Volume 5 Functional Structure from Top to Toe: The Edited by Paola Benincà and Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Nicola Munaro Volume 9 Mapping Spatial PPs: The Cartography of Edited by Peter Svenonius Syntactic Structures, Volume 6 Chinese Syntax in a Cross-​linguistic Edited by Guglielmo Cinque and Perspective Luigi Rizzi Edited by Edited by Y. Audrey Li, The Grammar of Q: Q-​Particles, Andrew Simpson, and W.

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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–0–19–046589–6 (pbk) ISBN 978–​0–​19–​046588–​9 (hbk) 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paberback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America v CONTENTS Foreword  vii Mary A.

Kato and Francisco Ordóñez List of Contributors   xiii 1. Microparametric variation in Spanish and Portuguese: The null subject parameter and the role of the verb inflectional paradigm   1 Maria Eugênia Duarte and Humberto Soares da Silva 2. The null subject parameter revisited: The evolution from null subject Spanish and Portuguese to Dominican Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese   27 José Camacho 3. On the notion of partial (non-​) pro-​drop in Romance   49 Andrés Saab 4.

Rebel without a Case: Quantifier floating in Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish   78 Renato Lacerda 5. Subject and topic hyper-​raising in Brazilian Portuguese: A case study on reference sets for economy computations   107 Jairo Nunes 6. <V-​and-​V> constructions in Portuguese: The case of <ir-​and-​V>   135 Madalena Colaço and Anabela Gonçalves 7. Inflected infinitives and restructuring in Brazilian Portuguese   157 Marcello Modesto 8.

The null object in Romania Nova   177 Sonia Cyrino 9. The external possessor construction in European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese   204 Maria Aparecida Torres Morais and Heloisa Maria Lima-​Salles vi 10. Agreement and DOM with impersonal se: A comparative study of Mexican and Peninsular Spanish   236 Francisco Ordóñez and Esthela Treviño 11. Some syntactic and pragmatic aspects of WH-​in-​situ in Brazilian Portuguese   259 Maria Cristina Figueiredo Silva and Elaine Grolla 12.

Pseudo-​clefts and semi-​clefts: An analysis based on Portuguese   286 Mary A. Kato and Carlos Mioto 13. From [o[que]] to [o que] in Brazilian Portuguese Free Relatives: A diachronic view   308 Paulo Medeiros Junior 14. A study of truncated nominal forms in Brazilian Portuguese: Their derivation and their relation to nonverbal form classes   332 Ana Paula Scher Name Index   355 Subject Index   361 Language Index   365 [ vi ] Contents vii FOREWORD MARY A.

KATO AND FR ANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ The papers published in this book resulted from a project called Romania Nova, launched in 2005, in Monterrey, Mexico, and coordinated by the guest edi- tors and authors of this Foreword. Romania Nova was part of the Associação de Linguística e Filologia da America Latina (ALFAL), and its purpose was to compare Romance languages in Europe with those in Latin America and even- tually compare the Romance varieties in Latin America1 among themselves by using the common theoretical tools launched by the Principles and Parameter (P&P) theory (Chomsky 1981).2 That framework was the first serious attempt made in Generative Grammar to understand the patterns of variation found in natural languages. It pro- vided a formal and explicit theory of patterns of variation by proposing the notion of parameters, that is, principles subject to choice in natural languages. This change of focus in generative grammar—​to study syntactic variation in a formal and explicit way through the study of parameters—​has had a major impact to this day.

One early consequence of the P&P theory was that variation became fun- damental, not a side problem; and it needed to be tackled to understand our language faculty. Through the study of what is different and similar, we better understand the limits of variation. As a result, specific conferences and collec- tions comparing traditional language families are now rather frequent. The second consequence of the P&P theory was the revival of diachronic studies.

In studying Brazilian Portuguese (BP), linguists often resorted to internal changes to explain aspects of the grammar distinct from European Portuguese (EP) (cf. Duarte 1995; Cyrino, 1995, among others). In the future the intention is also to expand Romania Nova to compare Quebec French with the French spoken in Europe. Our research group also held meetings in Monterrey, Mexico (2005), Maceió, Brazil (2006), Montevideo, Uruguay (2008), Campos do Jordão, Brazil (2010), Alcalá de Henares, Spain (2011), Natal, Brazil (2013), and Buenos Aires, Argentina (2014).

viii One fundamental question in the P&P perspective is to what degree the languages being compared are different. It is obvious that the differences in syntax between BP and, say, Chinese are greater than the differences between EP and BP. Which is the right level of difference to examine? The answer depends on the focus of research. Baker (1996, 2009) provides advantages of examining large differences in the architecture of language by comparing radi- cally different languages like English and Mohawk.

However, Kayne (2000) has advocated comparing closely related languages or varieties of the same language. According to these two positions we might talk of macroparamters as in Baker’s work or microparameters in Kayne’s approach. This volume presents a series of works in comparative syntax ascribed more closely to the microparametric view in the area of the Romance languages in Latin America, which is the mission of Romania Nova. The extension and variability of the Romance languages in the Americas makes them the ideal scenario to understand how variation occurs or is restricted among closely related languages and varieties of languages.

For instance, the comparison of BP and EP in the distribution of null subjects has been crucial to providing an adequate formulation of the null subject parameter (see Kato and Negrão 2000). Also, the discussion about the distribution of subjects in Caribbean Spanish (Ordóñez and Olarrea 2006; Toribio, 2000) has been fruitful in the study of what the correct characterization of the structure of wh-​questions is in natural languages. Moreover, Romania Nova permits us to discover new dialectal differences not studied before. In fact, BP, EP, Caribbean Spanish, and Peninsular Spanish are all labels that hide further syntactic distinctions.

None of these macrovarieties are uniform syntactically. Of course it is likely that the Portuguese spoken, in, say, Salvador and São Sao Paulo differ less from each other than either do with respect to Lisbon Portuguese. Nevertheless, there are syntactic and morphological differences between Salvador and São Paulo that may be significant for the understanding of limits of variation as well. By the same token, Caribbean Spanish encompasses the Spanish spoken in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and possibly the shore of Colombia and Venezuela.

Nevertheless, there are notable syntactic differences between the Spanish spoken in these areas, some unexplored or even within supposed national varieties for that matter. Labels like “Brazilian Portuguese,” “European Portuguese,” and “Caribbean Spanish” in this book are used for simplicity, but we do not want to ascribe any particular theoretical meaning to them; we do not want to convey the idea that BP, Argentinian Spanish, or Mexican Spanish are uniform systems. We want to encourage the idea that discovering differences internal to these varieties is important because it makes our task richer and also more challeng- ing. Also, we think that the division between Spanish and Portuguese itself is part of a continuum of varieties.

There is no good reason why one should limit one’s studies to Spanish varieties or Portuguese varieties alone. As a matter [ viii ] Foreword ix of fact, studies on cleft sentences or pro-​drop in this book show that BP and Caribbean Spanish might have a lot of common properties, which makes them different from other varieties of Spanish or Portuguese spoken in Europe, for example. With all this in mind, we decided to unite the group of researchers working mostly on Spanish in Latin America and Portuguese in Brazil. This volume contains good examples of the type of study advocated for ear- lier.

The chapters either compare varieties of Portuguese and Spanish spoken in the Americas or explore a specific property of one of these varieties. The topics studied in the 10 years of the history of Romania Nova include subjects, objects, impersonal se constructions, wh-​constructions, floating quantifiers, control and infinitives, and one topic on morphology. In the domain of subjects, Duarte and Soares da Silva present a meticulous study of the occurrences of null subjects in Italian, BP, EP, Argentinian Spanish, Peninsular Spanish, and Caribbean Spanish. Their work shows the importance that inflection plays in the distribution of null subject.

Camacho also studies null subjects in BP and Caribbean Spanish and concludes that inflectional paradigms in these varieties are losing their referentiality. Camacho employs the Minimalist program to render this intuition in terms of feature composition of the inflec- tion. Saab’s work is an original contribution to the understanding of the so-​called partial (non-​) pro-​drop languages in Romance, which he claims is a nonuniform phenomenon. He starts by assuming that nominative subjects are deleted at PF in consistent null subject languages through head ellipsis.

One type of partial null subject language he considers is the Northern Italian dialects, which he sees as null subject languages with some subjects phonetically realized for the same reason as other cases of multiple copy realization.