Postverbal subjects and agreement in unaccusative contexts in European Portuguese

Abstract

This article discusses some cases of partial agreement in colloquial European Portuguese, relating it with different patterns of word order in unmarked contexts. It is shown that postverbal subjects of unaccusative verbs may display partial agreement with the verb. It is proposed that postverbal subjects of unaccusative verbs are not necessarily assigned nominative Case. The contrast in behavior between subjects of intransitive verbs and subjects of unaccusative verbs provides evidence for the traditional claim that preverbal subjects in null-subject languages are in Spec,IP. This challenges recent proposals according to which preverbal subjects in null-subject languages are left-dislocated. An analysis for the difference between the behavior of the subject of unaccusative and intransitive verbs is proposed within the framework of Optimality Theory.