Topic prominence and null subjects

Abstract

This chapter presents data from Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish and Chinese which show that, at least in these languages, phonologically null subjects may be licensed and identified without the participation of verbal agreement. The analysis proposed treats those cases of null subjects as elided topics (PF-deleted elements) and so it relates the presence of null subjects in these languages to a parameter involving topic prominence. Some implications of the analysis are then discussed, based on Brazilian Portuguese data.

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