Pronominal Clitics in European and Brazilian Portuguese

Duarte, Inés; Matos, Gabriela; Gonçalves, Anabela

doi:10.5334/jpl.161

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…One explanation that has been proposed in the literature is that a filled C 0 requirement gives rise to enclisis (as in Cypriot Greek), while proclisis arises from the absence of this requirement, as happens in Standard Greek (Agouraki, 2001). Clitic placement has thus been explicitly argued to be the outcome of the interplay between the Proclisis Parameter and verb movement (Duarte et al, 2005). This enables us to make the connection between our results and (parametric) theories of UG.…”

Section: Implications For Universal Grammarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functionally Equivalent Variants in a Non-standard Variety and Their Implications for Universal Grammar: A Spontaneous Speech Corpus

2017

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Findings from the field of experimental linguistics have shown that a native speaker may judge a variant that is part of her grammar as unacceptable, but still use it productively in spontaneous speech. The process of eliciting acceptability judgments from speakers of non-standard languages is sometimes clouded by factors akin to prescriptive notions of grammatical correctness. It has been argued that standardization enhances the ability to make clear-cut judgments, while non-standardization may result to grammatical hybridity, often manifested in the form of functionally equivalent variants in the repertoire of a single speaker. Recognizing the importance of working with corpora of spontaneous speech, this work investigates patterns of variation in the spontaneous production of five neurotypical, adult speakers of a non-standard variety in terms of three variants, each targeting one level of linguistic analysis: syntax, morphology, and phonology. The results reveal the existence of functionally equivalent variants across speakers and levels of analysis. We first discuss these findings in relation to the notions of competing, mixed, and fused grammars, and then we flesh out the implications that different values of the same variant carry for parametric approaches to Universal Grammar. We observe that intraspeaker realizations of different values of the same variant within the same syntactic environment are incompatible with the ‘triggering-a-single-value’ approach of parametric models, but we argue that they are compatible with the concept of Universal Grammar itself. Since the analysis of these variants is ultimately a way of investigating the status of Universal Grammar primitives, we conclude that claims about the alleged unfalsifiability of (the contents of) Universal Grammar are unfounded.

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Section: Implications For Universal Grammarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functionally Equivalent Variants in a Non-standard Variety and Their Implications for Universal Grammar: A Spontaneous Speech Corpus

2017

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“…My opinion is that, although making the right predictions, this hypothesis has to be further explored, especially in what concerns the contrasts in clitic placement between BP and EP. One alternative hypothesis is formulated and confirmed in Duarte, Matos & Gonçalves (2005). The authors claim that microvariation in clitic placement can be accounted for if we assume the interplay of: (i) verb movement; (ii) the Proclisis Parameter and (iii) the properties of the nodes T and Asp, namely their ability to attract V and/or to check uninterpretable features.…”

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confidence: 93%

The Minimalist Syntax of Defective Domains. Gerunds and Infinitives

Gonçalves

2007

Journal of Portuguese Linguistics

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“…According to Duarte et al (2005), differences between languages in what concerns clitic placement are determined by a Proclisis Parameter: ''The ϕ-features of pronominal clitics block Agree and Attract operations of the probe complete T: yes/no.'' This accounts for differences between languages such as BP, French, Spanish and Standard Italian, which set the value 'yes' for this parameter, on the one hand, and languages like EP, Berber and Cypriot Greek, on the other hand.…”

Section: Patterns Of Clitic Placementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Input variability and late acquisition: Clitic misplacement in European Portuguese

Costa

Fiéis

Lobo

2015

Lingua

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Please cite this article in press as: Costa, J., et al. AbstractThis paper reports a study on the acquisition of clitic placement by European Portuguese children aged 5, 6 and 7, using an elicitation task. Contrarily to what has been found for other languages, where children correctly place clitic pronouns from a very early age, our results show that European Portuguese children still misplace clitics at age 7, although there is a developmental effect from 5 to 7: they overuse enclisis in proclisis contexts, but not the other way round. This confirms previous studies based on spontaneous production. Our study shows, however, that: i) the rates of clitic misplacement are not identical in all proclisis contexts; ii) proclisis is acquired earlier in some contexts; iii) the contexts that are harder to acquire are the ones where we find more variability in the adult control group, and where diachronic data are not so categorical. We argue that, since clitic placement in European Portuguese is not linked to the finite/non finite distinction, there is a slower developmental path, reflecting the complexity of the input and the specific properties of lexical items and syntactic contexts.

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Pronominal Clitics in European and Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract: This paper addresses two issues, the categorial nature of (pronominal)

Cited by 11 publications

References 18 publications

Functionally Equivalent Variants in a Non-standard Variety and Their Implications for Universal Grammar: A Spontaneous Speech Corpus

Functionally Equivalent Variants in a Non-standard Variety and Their Implications for Universal Grammar: A Spontaneous Speech Corpus

The Minimalist Syntax of Defective Domains. Gerunds and Infinitives

Input variability and late acquisition: Clitic misplacement in European Portuguese

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