On the Status of Preverbal Subjects in Null Subject Languages: Evidence from Acquisition

Abstract

"The results presented in this paper provide evidence against the analysis of preverbal subjects in European Portuguese as left-dislocated for the following reasons: a) Children produce preverbal subjects in a much higher rate than they produce left-dislocation; b) Children comprehend the difference between topic and focus from early on, which challenges an analysis of the production data according to which children would be overusing left-dislocation. This result on European Portuguese data challenges the view that preverbal subjects are left-dislocated in all null subject languages. The behaviour of children described in this paper thus constitutes a case in which acquisition data may be used as a testing ground for comparing and evaluating competing analyses for adult grammar"