Abstract
Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is known to license anaphoric null objects (ANO), that is, null objects with a linguistic antecedent. It also licenses VP ellipsis (VPE), with auxiliaries, modals and main verbs, the latter a case of V-stranding VPE (V-VPE), the one with which we will be concerned. Although ANOs and V-VPE may have identical surface strings in BP, we propose that they do not have the same structure. We argue that ANOs in BP are cases of DP ellipsis, and they present four properties that have been associated with (VP) ellipsis in the literature: a) availability of strict/sloppy readings (Ross, 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation); b) structural parallelism between the antecedent and the elided string (Fiengo and May 1994. Indices and identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press); c) formal licensing by a functional category immediately c-commanding the elided string (Lobeck 1995. Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing, and identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press); and d) disjunctive E-type readings (Simons 1996. Disjunction and anaphora. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 6. 245–260; Simons 2001. On issues in the semantics and pragmatics of disjunction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University dissertation; Sakamoto 2013. Beyond sloppy identity of elliptic arguments: An interim report. Paper presented at the LingLunch, University of Connecticut. November 5). We then present evidence for an analysis of the ANO as a base-generated empty phrase marker that will be reconstructed in LF. We also propose that ANOs and VPE in BP are licensed by a lexicalized aspectual head, as a consequence of the loss of generalized verb movement in the language.
Funding statement: This research has been funded by the following research grants: Brazilian CNPq – Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (research grant 303742/2013-5) and FAPESP- Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (research grant 2012/06078-9) for the first author, and CNPq (research grant 307476/2013-8) for the second author.
Acknowledgements
Parts of this paper have been presented at the Going Romance Conference 2012, Catholic University of Louvain, KU Leuven, at the 39th Incontro de Grammatica Generativa (IGG39, 2013), University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and at the 44th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, New York University (2014). We thank the audiences as well as two reviewers for their questions and comments that helped improve this work. The remaining problems are our own responsibility.
References
Bošković, Željko. 2008. What will you have, DP or NP? Proceedings for NELS 37(1). 101–114.Search in Google Scholar
Brito, Ana Maria. 2001. Clause structure, subject positions and verb movement. About the position of sempre in European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. In Yves D’Hulst, Johan Rooryck & Jan Schroten (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 1999, 63–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.221.03briSearch in Google Scholar
Campos, Hector. 1986. Indefinite object drop. Linguistic Inquiry 17. 354–359.Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1982. Some concepts and consequences of the theory of government and binding. Cambridge: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Cole, Peter. 1987. Null objects in universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 18. 597–612.Search in Google Scholar
Cyrino, Sonia Maria Lazzarini. 1994. O objeto nulo no português brasileiro – um estudo sintático-diacrônico [The null object in Brazilian Portuguese – a syntactic- diachronic study]. Campinas: University of Campinas dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Cyrino, Sonia Maria Lazzarini. 1997. O objeto nulo no português brasileiro – um estudo sintático-diacrônico. [The null object in Brazilian Portuguese – a syntactic- diachronic study]. Londrina: UEL.Search in Google Scholar
Cyrino, Sonia. 2010. On the loss of verb movement in Brazilian Portuguese. Paper presented at the XII International Conference on Diacronic Generative Syntax (DIGS), University of Cambridge.Search in Google Scholar
Cyrino, Sonia. 2012. On richness of tense and verb movement in Brazilian Portuguese. In María Victoria Camacho-Taboada, Ángel Jiménez-Fernández, Javier Martín-González & Mariano Reyes-Tejedor (eds.), Information structure and agreement, 297–317. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.197.11cyrSearch in Google Scholar
Cyrino, Sonia & Gabriela Matos. 2002. VP Ellipsis in European and Brazilian Portuguese: A comparative analysis. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 1(2). 177–214.10.5334/jpl.41Search in Google Scholar
Cyrino, Sonia & Gabriela Matos. 2005. Local licensers and recovering in VP ellipsis. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 4(2). 79–112.10.5334/jpl.160Search in Google Scholar
Cummings, Sarah & Yves Roberge. 2005. A modular account of null objects in French. Syntax 8(1). 44–64.10.1111/j.1467-9612.2005.00074.xSearch in Google Scholar
Farrell, Peter. 1990. Null objects in Brazilian Portuguese. The Linguistic Review 8. 325–346.10.1007/BF00135617Search in Google Scholar
Fiengo, Robert & Robert May. 1994. Indices and identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Galves, Charlotte Marie Chambelland. 1989. Objet nul et la structure de la proposition en Portugais Brésilien. Revue des Langues Romanes 93. 305–336.Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Lotus. 2002. An elucidation of null direct object structures in Modern Hebrew, ms, McGill University.Search in Google Scholar
Gribanova, Vera. 2013. Verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis and the structure of the Russian verbal complex. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31. 91–136.10.1007/s11049-012-9183-3Search in Google Scholar
Hasegawa, Nobuko. 1985. On the so-called ‘zero pronouns’ in Japanese. The Linguistic Review 4. 289–341.10.1515/tlir.1985.4.4.289Search in Google Scholar
Huang, C-T. James. 1984. On the distribution and reference of the empty categories. Linguistic Inquiry 15. 531–574.Search in Google Scholar
Kato, Mary Aizawa. 1993. The distribution of pronouns and nul elements in object position in Brazilian Portuguese. In William Ashby, Marianne Mithun & Giorgio Perissinotto (eds.), Linguistic perspectives on the Romance languages, 225–236. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.103.23katSearch in Google Scholar
Kato, Mary A. & Eduardo Raposo. 2001. O objecto nulo definido no português europeu e no português brasileiro: convergências e divergências. [The null object in European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese: convergences and divergences]. In Clara Nunes Correia & Anabela Gonçalves (eds.), Actas do XVI Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística. 673–685.Search in Google Scholar
Kertz, Laura. 2010. Ellipsis reconsidered. San Diego, CA: University of California dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Kim, Soowon. 1999. Sloppy/strict identity, empty objects, and NP ellipsis. Journal of East Asia Linguistics 8 (4). 255–284.10.1023/A:1008354600813Search in Google Scholar
Kowaluk, Agniezka. 2009. Null objects in Polish: Pronouns and determiners in second language acquisition. University of Cambridge Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics Working Papers 6. 135–152.Search in Google Scholar
Lobeck, Anne. 1987. VP ellipsis in infinitives: INFL as a proper governor. In Joyce Mc Donough & Bernadette Plunkett (eds.), Proceedings of the 17th Northeastern Linguistics Society Conference, 425–442. Amherst: University of Massachusetts.Search in Google Scholar
Lobeck, Anne. 1995. Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing, and identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195091816.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Lopes, Ruth. 2009. Aspect and the acquisition of null objects in Brazilian Portuguese. In Acrisio Pires & Jason Rothman (eds.), Minimalist inquiries into child and adult language acquisition, 105–128. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110215359.1.105Search in Google Scholar
Matos, Gabriela. 1992. Construções de elipse do predicado em Português – SV nulo e despojamento. [Predicate ellipsis constructions in Portuguese: Null SV and Stripping.] Lisbon: University of Lisbon dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
McShane, Marjorie. 2002. Unexpressed objects in Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 10. 291–328.Search in Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason. 2013. Diagnosing ellipsis. In Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng & Norbert Corver (eds.), Diagnosing syntax, 537–542. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602490.003.0026Search in Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason & Annastasia Giannakidou. 1997. On the interpretation of null indefinite objects in Greek. Studies in Greek Linguistics 18. 141–154.Search in Google Scholar
Miller, Philip. 2011. The choice between verbal anaphors in discourse. In Iris Hendrickx, Soba Lalitha Devi, António Blanco & Ruslan Mitkov (eds.), Anaphora processing and applications, 82–95. Berlin: Springer.10.1007/978-3-642-25917-3_8Search in Google Scholar
Miller, Philip & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2013. Exophoric VP ellipsis. In Philip Hofmeister & Elisabeth Norcliffe (eds.), The core and the periphery: Data-driven perspectives on syntax inspired by Ivan A. Sag, 5–32. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar
Raposo, Eduardo. 1986. On the null object in European Portuguese. In Osvaldo Jaeggli & Carmen Silva-Corvalán (eds.), Studies in romance linguistics, 373–390. Dordrecht: Foris.10.1515/9783110878516-024Search in Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1986. Null objects and the theory of pro. Linguistic Inquiry 17. 501–558.Search in Google Scholar
Ross, John Robert. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Ross, John Robert. 1969. Guess who? In Robert Binnick, Alice Davidson, Georgia M. Green & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Papers from the 5th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 2523–2586. Chicago: CLS publications.Search in Google Scholar
Rouveret, Alan. 2011. VP ellipsis, phases and the syntax of morphology. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 30(3). 897–963.10.4324/9781315112497-7Search in Google Scholar
Runić, Jelena. 2013. A new look at clitics: Evidence from Slavic. In Tracy Holloway King & Irina Sekerina (eds.), Formal approaches to Slavic linguistics: The Third Indiana Meeting, 275–288. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publishers.Search in Google Scholar
Sakamoto, Yuta. 2013. Beyond sloppy identity of elliptic arguments: An interim report. Paper presented at the LingLunch, University of Connecticut. November 5.Search in Google Scholar
Salustri, Manola & Nina Hyams. 2003. Is there an analogue to the RIstage in the null subject languages? In Barbara Beachley, Amanda Brown & Frances Conlin (eds.), Proceedings of Boston University Conference on Language Development 27, 692–703. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Search in Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott. 2006. Null objects across South America. In Timothy L. Face & Carol A. Klee (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 8th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 23–36. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Search in Google Scholar
Simons, Mandy. 1996. Disjunction and anaphora. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 6. 245–260.10.3765/salt.v6i0.2760Search in Google Scholar
Simons, Mandy. 2001. On issues in the semantics and pragmatics of disjunction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Tsimpli, Ianthi Maria & Despina Papadopoulou. 2006. Aspect and argument realization: A study on antecedentless null objects in Greek. Lingua 116. 1595–1615.10.1016/j.lingua.2005.07.011Search in Google Scholar
Zagona, Karen. 1982. Government and proper government of verbal projections. Seattle, WA: University of Washington disseration.Search in Google Scholar
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ellipsis: licensing, structure and identity
- What ellipsis can do for phases and what it can’t, but not how
- Null objects are ellipsis in Brazilian Portuguese
- Gapping also needs vP-coordination: An argument from French NPI licensing
- Case and remnants in sluicing
- Evidence for deletion in as-parentheticals
- Constraints on aspectual complement ellipsis. The view from Romanian
- NP ellipsis (effects) in Polish and Hungarian: FFs on Fs, Agree, and Chain Reduction
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ellipsis: licensing, structure and identity
- What ellipsis can do for phases and what it can’t, but not how
- Null objects are ellipsis in Brazilian Portuguese
- Gapping also needs vP-coordination: An argument from French NPI licensing
- Case and remnants in sluicing
- Evidence for deletion in as-parentheticals
- Constraints on aspectual complement ellipsis. The view from Romanian
- NP ellipsis (effects) in Polish and Hungarian: FFs on Fs, Agree, and Chain Reduction