A preliminary proposal for the formalization of subject doubling in PB
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2024.v20n3a65412Abstract
For at least 50 years, investigations about subject doubling constructions have gained prominence in the linguistic studies agenda of Brazilian Portuguese (PB), substantially motivated by the seminal work by Pontes (1987). These constructions were then labeled by the author as ‘Left Dislocation’ of the subject, following Ross (1967). More recently, theoretical works within the generative framework have revealed that the structures falling under this label do not exhibit uniform behavior. Through the lens of the cartographic approach, Quarezemin (2017, 2019) argues that there are two types of doubling: in one, the initial DP freezes in an A’ position; in the other, however, the DP resides in an A position. In Krieck’s work (2022), which, like Quarezemin (2017, 2019), relies on cartographic assumptions, we find a refined attempt at modeling PB doubling, based on Cardinaletti (2004). In an alternative path to cartography, this paper proposes a preliminary formalization for such constructions in PB, based on Miyagawa’s feature inheritance system (2010, 2017). The conclusions we reach indicate that, while it may have potentially satisfactory empirical coverage, the proposed algorithms also reveal some limitations.
Keywords: Subject doubling. Feature inheritance system. Brazilian Portuguese.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Revista Linguí∫tica

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in the Revista Linguí∫tica agree with the following terms:
The authors maintain their rights, ceding to the journal the right to first publication of the article, simultaneously submitted to a Creative Commons license permitting the sharing with third-parties of published content as long as it mentions the author and its first publication in the Revista Linguí∫tica.
Authors may enter into additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of their published work (for example, posting in online institutional or non-profit repositories, or book chapters) so long as they acknowledge its initial publication in the Revista Linguí∫tica.
The journal Revista Linguí∫tica is published by the Post-Graduate program in Linguistics of UFRJ and employs a Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC).