Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon

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Effects of syntactic structure on the comprehension of clefts

Publication . Lobo, Maria; Santos, Ana Lúcia; Soares-Jesel, Carla; Vaz, Stéphanie

The present paper presents an experiment testing Portuguese-speaking children’s comprehension of different types of subject and object clefts – é que clefts, standard clefts and pseudoclefts. We consider previous studies that explain asymmetric difficulties in the comprehension of structures with object A-bar extraction as an effect of featural intervention, and we show that only é que clefts and standard clefts (as opposed to pseudoclefts) involve a configuration justifying intervention along these lines. Featural intervention accounts therefore predict that comprehension asymmetries between subject and object clefts are only found in é que clefts and in standard clefts, but not in pseudoclefts. Our study supports the featural intervention account. In addition, it also supports the claim that different syntactic structures underlie the different types of clefts under analysis: pseudoclefts are distinguished from other clefts for not involving extraction of the clefted constituent in an intervention configuration.

2019Artigo científico

Acesso aberto

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Reduced Parenthetical Clauses and the syntax-discourse interface

Publication . Matos, Gabriela

Reduced parenthetical clauses (RPCs) in European Portuguese have not been systematically studied until recently. Focusing on comment RPCs, a preliminary classification of the most common verbal predicates in this context is set up for this language, and their pragmatic values established. The distribution of comment RPCs, especially their floating status and the blocking of c-command from the host sentences, indicates that they are syntactically related to their hosts by a paratactic link, as parenthetical modifiers. As for the internal structure of the comment clause, island effects reveal that, in European Portuguese, the argument gap of the verb results from movement of a null category to an A-bar position of the parenthetical clause. Also, adverb placement shows that the verb and the subject occupy high discursive projections in the left periphery of the RPC, suggesting that the post- verbal subject is focalized in specifier of FocP. The contrasts between comment RPCs with null and overt subjects shows that in European Portuguese the mitigative value of the RPC is not exclusively drawn from the epistemic, evidential or evaluative predicates, but also relies on the post verbal use of the subject.

2019Artigo científico

Acesso aberto

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Entidade financiadora

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Programa de financiamento

6817 - DCRRNI ID

Número da atribuição

UID/LIN/00214/2019