The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian Portuguese
In a corpus study and two acceptability experiments, we investigated whether there is a preference for null or overt subjects with ambiguous (syncretic) and exclusive (unambiguous) verbs in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Previous literature has proposed that BP (i) is deactivating the “Avoid Pronoun Pr...
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Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pós-graduação em Linguística
2019-04-01
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| Series: | Fórum Linguístico |
| Online Access: | https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/59964 |
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| author | Eduardo Correa Soares Philip H. Miller Barbara Hemforth |
| author_facet | Eduardo Correa Soares Philip H. Miller Barbara Hemforth |
| author_sort | Eduardo Correa Soares |
| collection | DOAJ |
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In a corpus study and two acceptability experiments, we investigated whether there is a preference for null or overt subjects with ambiguous (syncretic) and exclusive (unambiguous) verbs in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Previous literature has proposed that BP (i) is deactivating the “Avoid Pronoun Principle” and (ii) is a partially pro-drop language, whose morphosyntactic contexts for null subjects are restricted. The corpus study and the acceptability experiments show that there is an effect of person syncretism in the verbal paradigm on the relative frequency of null subjects and on the acceptability of sentences with null subjects in the first-person singular: there is a tendency to avoid ambiguity due to null subjects with ambiguous verb forms, but only in contexts with competing antecedents. These results are analyzed in the light of a general theory of anaphora resolution (ARIEL, 1990, etc.), as resulting from a calculation taking into account the accessibility of potential antecedents and the cost of the anaphoric form (ALMOR, 1996).
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-2a9b1652b76942fdb2ff4429b3980ad1 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 1415-8698 1984-8412 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2019-04-01 |
| publisher | Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pós-graduação em Linguística |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Fórum Linguístico |
| spelling | doaj-art-2a9b1652b76942fdb2ff4429b3980ad12025-08-20T03:17:46ZengUniversidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pós-graduação em LinguísticaFórum Linguístico1415-86981984-84122019-04-0116110.5007/1984-8412.2019v16n1p357930878The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian PortugueseEduardo Correa Soares0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4526-3299Philip H. Miller1Barbara Hemforth2Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (DLLV/PPGLin)Université de Paris VII Denis Diderot (CLILLAC-ARP/LLF)Université de Paris VII Denis Diderot (CLILLAC-ARP)Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Université de Paris VII Denis Diderot (LLF) In a corpus study and two acceptability experiments, we investigated whether there is a preference for null or overt subjects with ambiguous (syncretic) and exclusive (unambiguous) verbs in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Previous literature has proposed that BP (i) is deactivating the “Avoid Pronoun Principle” and (ii) is a partially pro-drop language, whose morphosyntactic contexts for null subjects are restricted. The corpus study and the acceptability experiments show that there is an effect of person syncretism in the verbal paradigm on the relative frequency of null subjects and on the acceptability of sentences with null subjects in the first-person singular: there is a tendency to avoid ambiguity due to null subjects with ambiguous verb forms, but only in contexts with competing antecedents. These results are analyzed in the light of a general theory of anaphora resolution (ARIEL, 1990, etc.), as resulting from a calculation taking into account the accessibility of potential antecedents and the cost of the anaphoric form (ALMOR, 1996). https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/59964 |
| spellingShingle | Eduardo Correa Soares Philip H. Miller Barbara Hemforth The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian Portuguese Fórum Linguístico |
| title | The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian Portuguese |
| title_full | The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian Portuguese |
| title_fullStr | The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian Portuguese |
| title_full_unstemmed | The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian Portuguese |
| title_short | The effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects: a quantitative study of first person singular in Brazilian Portuguese |
| title_sort | effect of verbal agreement marking on the use of null and overt subjects a quantitative study of first person singular in brazilian portuguese |
| url | https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/59964 |
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