57 research outputs found
Null possessives in European Portuguese
No full textThe paper investigates the referential properties of so-called null possessives in European Portuguese. The term refers to the phenomenon that the possessor argument of relational nouns may be left unrealized. Structural diagnostics like locality of binding and c-command, and interpretative diagnostics like readings under ellipsis and in only-contexts, split antecedents, and binding by a quantifier are discussed. The result of these tests is that a syntactic analysis in terms of movement or agreement is not feasible in EP. Furthermore, a comparison of the referential properties of simple and complex possessives is presented with the aim of outlining a possible semantic analysis
Extraction from DP in French: A minimalist approach
No full textThis article is about the extraction of French PP complements of nouns headed by de, mostly in wh and relative clause contexts. After a review of the literature on extraction in French, it addresses the issue of the constraints on extraction in cases with multiple arguments, eventually following Kolliakou (1999) in assuming that there can only be one argument of a noun, whereas other expressions are adjuncts. I then explain the relevant extractions within the Minimalist Program: on the assumption that DPs are phases, an extracted item must first move to the phase edge, as assumed in previous accounts. The exact extraction mechanism is then modeled by assuming a phi-probe plus an unvalued operator feature on the D head. The fact that only complements introduced by the preposition de can be extracted from the DP is explained by considering de as a post-syntactic marking for genitive case, which is assigned by the phi-probe
Il mondo finisce a Rio: «Demônios» di Aluísio Azevedo
No full textThis essay analyses Demônios, a short story by the Brazilian writer Aluísio Azevedo published in 1893 in a collection bearing the same title. The text – unrelated to the naturalistic production of the author – describes a catastrophic nightmare, a carioca apocalypse reverting the evolutionary process and affecting the only two survivors, whose lives revert until they dissolve themselves in an aerial entity floating in the space. While trying to fit such an extravagant work within the production of its author, I will also explore the connection between the end of the world narrated by Azevedo as a positivist and a republican and the events involving the Brazilian republic in the early 1890s
On the distribution of adjectives in Romanian : the cel construction
No full textThis paper deals with the variable position of adjectives in the Romanian DP. As all other Romance languages, Romanian allows for adjectives to appear in both prenominal and post-nominal position. In addition, however, Romanian has a third pattern: the so-called cel construction, in which the adjective in the post-nominal position is preceded by a determiner-like element, cel. This pattern is superficially similar to Determiner Spreading in Greek. In this paper we contrast the cel construction to Greek DS and discuss the similarities and differences between the two. We then present an analysis of cel as involving an appositive specification clause, building on de Vries (2002). We argue that the same structure is also involved in the context of nominal ellipsis, the second environment in which cel is found
A BICICLETA DE JAIME DE MAGALHÃES LIMA
No full textJaime de Magalhães Lima is the first divulger of Tolstoyism in Portugal and, in the works published in the last decade of the 19th century, he develops a relentless diagnosis of the finissecular decadence, identifying the capital errors of the Century in
the materialism prevailing in society and in the divorce between nature and man. In the context of a rigorous and uncompromising neo-franciscanism, the author of The Vegetarianism and Morality of the Races (Oporto, 1912) comes to consider the sport exemplary of the crisis of values of a society that «languishes and dies because it lacks the belief in a higher destiny»
Lezioni italiane di José Saramago
No full textOver the years José Saramago has maintained a close relationship with Italy, frequently visiting the country. On several occasions, often invited by Italian universities, the writer gave lectures of great interest which, even if not limited to literary issues, are extremely useful for interpreting his work and reconstructing his intellectual biography. The article presents eight Italian lessons by the Portuguese author
In support of long distance agree
No full textIn the recent literature the phenomenon of long distance agreement has become the focus of several studies as it seems to violate certain locality conditions which require that agreeing elements in general stand in clause-mate relationships. In particular, it involves a verb agreeing with a constituent which is located in the verb's clausal complement and hence poses a challenge for theories that assume a strictly local relationship for agreement. In this paper we present empirical evidence from Greek and Romanian for the reality of long distance agreement. Specifically, we focus on raising constructions in these two languages and we show that they do not involve movement but rather instantiate long distance agreement. We further argue that subjunctives allowing long distance agreement lack both a CP layer and semantic Tense. However, since the embedded verb also bears phi-features, these constructions pose a further problem for assumptions that view the presence of phi-features as evidence for the presence of a C layer. Finally, we raise the question of the common properties that these languages have that lead to the presence of long distance agreement
Agreement, case and locality in the nominal and verbal domains
No full textThis book explores the Agree operation and its morphological realisations (agreement and case), specifically focusing on the connection between Agree and other syntactic dependencies such as movement, binding and control. The chapters in this volume examine a diverse set of cross-linguistic phenomena involving agreement and case from a variety of theoretical perspectives, with a view to elucidating the nature of the abstract operations that underlie them. The phenomena discussed include backward control, passivisation, progressive aspectual constructions, extraction from nominals, possessives, relative clauses and the phasal status of PPs
No objections to backward control?
No full textThe aim of this paper is to address two main counterarguments raised in Landau (2007) against the movement analysis of Control, and especially against the phenomenon of Backward Control. The paper shows that unlike the situation described in Tsez (Polinsky & Potsdam 2002), Landau's objections do not hold for Greek and Romanian, where all obligatory control verbs exhibit Backward Control. Our results thus provide stronger empirical support for a theoretical approach to Control in terms of Movement, as defended in Hornstein (1999 and subsequent work)
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