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In:Studies on Variation in Portuguese
Edited by Pilar Barbosa, Maria da Conceição de Paiva and Celeste Rodrigues
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14] 2017
► pp. 233–254

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Chapter 10
Analyzing a parametric change in Brazilian Portuguese

A sociolinguistic investigation

 | Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Published online: 2 November 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.10dua
Abstract
This chapter presents an empirical investigation of a process of change in course in Brazilian Portuguese related to the re-setting of the value of the Null Subject Parameter. Structural constraints that facilitate or refrain the change towards overt pronominal subjects come from diachronic and synchronic analyses. A discussion concerning how non-referential subjects are affected is also presented. Brazilian Portuguese topic prominence will be shown to be responsible not only for the lack of lexical expletives in the system but also for the emergence of a number of strategies consisting in the raising of referential contituents to Spec, TP, so as to avoid a null expletive. The theoretical framework guiding the analysis associates Principles and Parameters Theory (Chomsky, 1981 and subsequent work) and the model to study Language Variation and Change as proposed by Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1986). It will be shown that the theoretical support adopted highlights the path for the empirical analysis, from the establishment of hypotheses and linguistic factors constraing the process to the interpretation of the effects of the change.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Associating variationist sociolinguistics and Principles and Parameters Theory
  • 3.Brazilian Portuguese and the re-setting of the Null Subject Parameter
    • 3.1Diachronic evidence
    • 3.2Synchronic evidence
    • 3.3The ‘embedding’ of the change in progress
  • 4.Non-referential (or expletive) subjects
  • Final remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (58)
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