Portuguese Subjects and Extraction

[Luis Casillas]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 04:26:30PM +0200, Tibor Kiss wrote:

> does anybody know whether Portuguese allows the extraction of subjects
> from finite clauses (that-trace violations, Tensed-S-Condition
> Violations)? A Q&D response would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

What's "Q&D"?

Anyway, if it helps you any, my Spanish seems to allow them (assuming
"Juan" below is indeed extracted, and not a topic resumed by a null
subject pronoun in the lower clause):

  Juan creo      que  vió el  concierto
  J.   I-believe that saw the concert

 *Juan creo vió el concierto

Given this, my faux-Portuguese judgements ("Hey, it's just Spanish with
nasal vowels!") would tell me that it's good in Portuguese, though you
may still want to consult with real Portuguese speakers ;).

Actually, many Brazilian Portuguese varieties have stricter constituent
order requirements than Spanish; if I recall correctly, I observed
this in particular with regards to subject placement in main clauses.
Also, Brazilian dialects drop subject pronouns at a much lower rate
than Spanish (enough that I've had teachers mildly advise me not to
drop any!). Thus subjects in Spanish and in Portuguese are indeed
different, and this is one of those cases that my normally quite-useful
faux-Portuguese judgements may be called into question ;).

--
Luis Casillas
Department of Linguistics
Stanford University