SUBJP position: the case of locative subjects in Brazilian Portuguese

• Main Authors: Lívia de Mello Reis, Sandra Quarezemin
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro 2019-12-01
• Series: Revista Linguística
• Subjects: sujeitos locativos; português brasileiro; abordagem cartográfica.
• Online Access: https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/rl/article/view/28377

Brazilian Portuguese licenses cases where the first position can be filled by locative non-argumentative phrases, such as (1) Naquela loja do shopping vende/vendem roupas baratas. In this way, our main objective is to investigate the syntactic structure of pre-verbal PPloc and pre-verbal DPloc constructions, such as (2) [Na escola] aceita/aceitam cartão de crédito and (3) [A escola] aceita cartão de crédito. Our hypothesis is that the locative constituents in PB, PPloc and Dploc, occupy the same position in the middlefield, Spec,SubjP position, although the motivation for its rise is different, as shown in Italian data by Cardinaletti (2004). Regarding the methodology, a data analysis was carried out, taken from preliminary studies. It was possible to verify that the constructions with locative, in fact, do not present the same syntactic structure, although both configure as subjects of the predication in Spec,SubjP position.