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Articles • DELTA 39 (2) • 2023 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-460X202339251209   copy

A Survey on Generic Impersonal Structures in Brazilian Portuguese1 1 I want to express my gratitude to Diane Lillo-Martin, William Snyder and Željko Bošković for their careful reading and corrections. Thanks also to two anonymous reviwers for D.E.L.TA, who provided helpful comments and sugestions. All remaining errors are my own.

Uma pesquisa sobre estruturas impessoais genéricas do português brasileiro

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

ABSTRACT

This article presents a survey on null generic impersonal structures conducted with native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The objective of the survey was (i) to investigate whether null impersonal constructions with the generic reading need to have elements such as fronted adverbials to check the EPP, a hypothesis put forward by Holmberg (2005Holmberg, A. (2005). Is There a Little Pro? Evidence from Finnish. Linguistic Inquiry , 36(4), 533-564. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438905774464322
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1162/... , 2010aHolmberg, A. (2010a). Null subject parameters. In T. Biberauer, A. Holmberg, I. Roberts, & M. Sheehan (Eds.), Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511770784
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/... ,bHolmberg, A. (2010b). The null generic subject pronoun in Finnish: A case of incorporation in T. In T. Biberauer, A. Holmberg, I. Roberts, & M. Sheehan (Eds.), Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory . Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511770784
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/... ); (ii) verify to what extent BP-speakers require an overt marker of genericity (e.g., the generic clitic se and overt necessity deontic modals) in sentences with null generic pronouns, as suggested by Bertolino (2017)Bertolino, K. (2017). Modals and impersonal null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese (Master’s thesis). University of Connecticut. . The survey consisted of an Acceptability Judgment Test, conducted online. All sentences were presented with a context favoring the generic reading of the null subject. The results of this survey show that (i) the EPP does not need to be satisfied in null impersonal constructions in BP; (ii) although BP-speakers prefer null generic impersonal constructions with overt markers of genericity, they do not require it.

Keywords:
null impersonals; genericity; EPP

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