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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
In this paper we scrutinize a case of concord variation in European Portuguese (EP)
concerning third plural vs. third singular verbal agreement in the co-presence of
an overt plural argument, which in the standard variety agrees with the in! ected
verb. " e paper is focused on the linguistic factors that correlate with singular
concord in this context. Going beyond previous proposals that emphasize the correlation
between agreement variation and particular morphological and phonological
factors, it is shown that the incidence of non-standard singulars in EP may
be straightforwardly explained within a syntactic account. " e empirical basis for
this investigation is CORDIAL-SIN, a dialect corpus of EP (600,000 words). " e
evidence from this corpus leads us to discuss and reconsider the role that di# erent
linguistic factors play in the manifestation of non-standard singulars. It is shown
that this case of third singular agreement occurs in the investigated EP varieties in
correlation with particular syntactic conditions, mainly in unaccusative-like con-
$ gurations. Furthermore, it is suggested that this kind of agreement variation may
be ultimately ascribed to lexical variation concerning the availability and feature
speci$ cation of (null) expletives.
Description
Keywords
Agreement Unaccusativity Syntactic variation Null expletive European portuguese varieties
Citation
Cardoso, A., Carrilho, E. & Pereira, S. (2011). On verbal agreement variation in European Portuguese: syntactic conditions for the 3SG/3PL alternation. Diacrítica, 25(1), 137-159.