Experimental study of epithets in sentences with convencer: the case of objects

• Autor(a) principal: Souza Coelho, Claudia
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Fórum Linguístico
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/83771

There is a debate on constructions involving verbs like convencer ‘convince’ in Brazilian Portuguese, which is related to the status of its null subjects (cf. Ferreira, 2000; Rodrigues, 2004; Modesto, 2000, 2011; Nunes, 2008, 2019). This paper presents the results of an experiment on the behavior of epithets in these constructions. Epithets within a finite clause with convencer behave like epithets within adjunct clauses, regarding coreference with the matrix object. These clauses display a contrast between the matrix subject and object as antecedents for the epithet, again patterning like adjunct clauses and unlike infinitival complements of convencer. These results support Rodrigues’ (2004) proposal that these finite clauses are adjunct-like and a null subject in these clauses is an instance of adjunct control (Hornstein, 1999, 2001). The results provide evidence for an analysis of null subjects of Brazilian Portuguese in terms of movement (cf. Ferreira, 2000; Rodrigues, 2004; Nunes, 2008, 2019).