Restrições de extração de argumentos e adjuntos de nome no português brasileiro

Abstract

The main goal of this thesis is to analyze the syntactic structure of determiner phrases in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), under the Principles and Parameters approach in its minimalist version (CHOMSKY, 1995 and subsequent works), focusing on the extraction of arguments and adjuncts introduced by de (of) preposition (de-phrases). The analysis to be developed takes into account Abney s (1987) DP hypothesis and the theoretical perspective that assumes the nominal construction as the reflex of the architecture of the clause structure. The de-phrases are going to be analyzed into two different groups: those which are true genitive constructions (arguments) and those which we are going to refer to as typical adjuncts. As we will make clear throughout the thesis, the group of genitives is generated in argument positions and the second group is generated in adjunction configuration. In what regards the restrictions imposed on extraction of de-phrases, we are going to propose that it can be captured by the unique constraint of Locality, as discussed in Manzini (1994). We are also going to argue that in BP the locus of phi-features (at least in what concerns number features) is the head D (MAGALHÃES, 2004; COSTA & FIGUEIREDOSILVA, 2006) and, once D is the locus for number in this language, this head is responsible for the Case properties of genitives (following similar analysis showed in AVELAR, 2006). Another crucial point of the proposal is the projection of a category FP, above DP, in BP nominal constructions, which plays similar role of the projection TopP proposed in Haegeman (2004). [Spec, FP] is an escape hatch position, not [Spec, DP], the last one an A position, related to Case properties. In relation to adjunction phenomenon, we will assume Hornstein & Nunes s (2008) proposal that adjunction occurs without obligatory labeling, in a similar way that Avelar (2006) proposes adjunction in DPs of BP. Instead of being adjoined in the DP periphery, as stated in Avelar, true nominal adjuncts are adjoined in a projection below DP, fact that explains why typical adjuncts can t be extracted in this language.