Prepositioned locatives in subject position: a possible contribution from Bantu languages to the syntax of Brazilian Portuguese
Abstract
We observe the existing contrast between Brazilian and European Portuguese in relation to prepositional locatives in embedded sentences, and we argue that those constituents can occupy the grammatical subject position in transitive sentences in Brazilian Portuguese. After examining the so-called locative inversion (in which a non-argumental locative constituent may be in subject position) found in various languages, we focus on the cases of the construction in the Bantu languages, since some of them were spoken by the majority of slaves brought to Brazil between the 16th and 19th centuries. We suggest that the Brazilian Portuguese innovations are the result of the Portuguese used as a second language by Bantu languages native speakers. The possibility for a locative to be pre-verbal and agree with the predicate in those languages combined with the impoverishment of the inflectional paradigm present in the primary linguistic data generated ambiguity for the child acquiring Portuguese as her first language. The pre-verbal locative phrase, which was in a peripheral position in Portuguese, is reanalized as possible in the position of grammatical subject in Brazilian Portuguese.
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