Differential object marking in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This paper addresses two important aspects related to the problem of differential object marking in Brazilian Portuguese. On the one hand, it demonstrates that this phenomenon is not completely absent from the language, contrary to traditional assumptions. Among the contexts in which differential object marking is still obligatory or possible are types of equatives, animates under coordination, or animate relative pronouns. On the other hand, it shows that these contexts can be unified as involving configurations resulting from sentential ellipsis. More specifically, the relevant structures contain two constituents with clausal nature, out of which the second is subject to a process of deletion. Differential object marking on the nominal signals the presence of a raising operation to the high left periphery in the second clause, which allows the argument to escape the deletion operation at the TP level. Differential object marking based on raising to the high left periphery unites Brazilian Portuguese to (Romance) languages where differential object marking is dependent on topicalization to the left periphery.