The present dissertation discusses relevant linguistic theories in connection with subject positions and predication relations, and presents some issues that have not, in my view, been addressed in the linguistic literature so far. I offer a new approach to sentential structure in light of the most recent developments within the framework of Chomsky's Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1993, 1995 t 2...

This study explored the effects of prosodic boundaries on the comprehension of temporarily and globally ambiguous sentences in Korean. Previous work on English, Japanese, and Korean has demonstrated that prosodic structures can carry critical information about the meaning and/or syntactic structures of spoken sentences (Kjelgaard and Speer 1999; Jun and Oh 1996; Misono et al. 1997; Venditti 199...

This paper presents some facts about the syntax of subject pronouns in contact. We investigate agreement and EPP-checking Brazilian Venetan, a heritage northern Italo-Romance variety spoken southern Brazil contact with Portuguese. Central that constitutes basis is null-subject language presenting agreement-like clitics; Portuguese partial pro-drop language, which null subjects are allowed only ...

Previous studies have suggested that ambiguous null pronouns are biased to co-refer with topical subject antecedents. In Italian, for example, Belletti, Bennati & Sorace (2007) (henceforth BB&S) suggested that null subject pronouns typically co-refer with already established topic antecedents ([topic shift]), whereas overt subject pronouns signal a change in topic ([+topic shift]). This discour...

This paper examines the relationship between headedness and language processing and considers two strategies that potentially ease language comprehension and production. Both strategies allow a language to minimize the number of arguments in a given clause, either by reducing the number of overtly expressed arguments or by reducing the number of structurally required arguments. The first strate...

Object drop constructions are attested in several languages despite the absence of overt verb-object agreement (Cole 1987; Huang 1995). It has been claimed that languages vary crosslinguistically in the conditions licensing object drop: European and Brazilian Portuguese (Farrell 1990; Raposo 1986) and Quiteño Spanish (Suñer and Yépez 1988) license null objects only for definite NPs (cf. (1), (2...