A Concordância de número e de gênero entre o DP pronominal a gente e o predicativo: uma comparação entre o português brasileiro e o português europeu

Abstract

This dissertation develops a comparative study between Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and European Portuguese (EP) with the goal of analyzing the number and gender agreement between the pronominal DP a gente and the predicative in copular sentences. Our hypothesis, in relation to the gender, is that the pronominal DP a gente contains an internal feature specified in the lexicon which is not morphologically overt (cf. CHOMSKY, 1995). Thus, this feature yields an agreement relation with the predicate through Agree operation, which explains the overt morphology in this position. In relation to the number feature, it is assumed, contrary to Costa and Figueiredo Silva (2006), that both a dissociated morpheme and a singleton morpheme can occur in BP and in EP. The framework adopted in the analysis is the Minimalist Program, as developed in Chomsky (1995, 2000, 2001). The presented corpus of PB is introspection data and in which concerns the data of EP, they were provided by Pereira (2003).