The Topic Typology in Brazilian Portuguese at the Interface Between Syntax and Information Structure
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17851/2237-2083.34.1.249-270Keywords:
topicalization, topic typology, left periphery, periphery of vPAbstract
This article investigates the syntactic distribution and the licensing conditions of aboutness (-shifting) topics, given topics, and contrastive topics in Brazilian Portuguese, based on the topic typology of Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007) and Bianchi and Frascarelli (2010). The investigation seeks to determine which types of topics can appear in the following syntactic contexts: in canonical position (i.e., without a change in the basic order of the constituents of the sentence), dislocated to the left periphery of the sentence, dislocated to the postverbal position in the periphery of vP, and right-dislocated in a final position. Based on the empirical observations, the text discusses the licensing conditions of each type of topic and argues that only aboutness(-shifting) topics are subject to a bipartition of the clause as topic-comment, whereas given topics and contrastive topics are licensed based on their position relative to the focus of the sentence. In the end, the article proposes a mapping of the marked topic positions in Brazilian Portuguese and defends a contextual view of the phenomenon.
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