Passive-se, impersonal-se, and indefinite null subjects: a minimalist approach to the loss and the emergence of constructions in a language’s grammar

Abstract

Contrary to what has been proposed in most generative approaches which see the loss of passive-se constructions in Brazilian Portuguese as an outcome of the impoverishment of the verbal morphology, in this article, we show empirical evidence that the loss of constructions with the so-called passive-se in the history of Brazilian Portuguese is crucially associated with the loss of a higher functional projection than T, namely: FP. This was the position in which the transitive verb of these constructions established agreement with the internal argument in European Portuguese (RAPOSO; URIAGEREKA, 1996). We link this finding to the changes in Brazilian Portuguese grammar triggered by the loss of FP predicted by Pires (2006). At the same time, we argue that the emergence of constructions with indefinite null subjects in the 3rd person singular, as in “Vende casas” (‘(One) sells houses)’), is also not associated with the loss of agreement in transitive verbs and the disuse of the clitic se (passive or impersonal), as it has been tentatively argued in the literature, but to the loss of the D-feature of T, which allowed Brazilian Portuguese – as well as other partial null-subject languages – to license indefinite null-subjects in the 3rd person singular.