SIL talk by Jairo Nunes (University of São Paulo)

Phase Defectivity and Inherent Case in Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese has undergone a series of apparently independent diachronic changes that set it aside within Romance. On the one hand, it has lost its third person possessive pronouns and third person accusative and dative clitics, and its null subjects and null possessors have become severely restricted. On the other hand, it allows hyper-raising constructions, as well as the so-called “topic subject” constructions, where a putative topic controls verbal agreement. Building on Nunes (2022), I argue that these and other seemingly independent properties stem from crosscategorial phase defectivity in Brazilian Portuguese, combined with general resort to inherent Case.