Mandarin Chinese is said to be a radical pro-drop language, in the sense that verbal arguments in this language can be dropped rather freely. However, in this dissertation, I show that the omission of arguments in Mandarin Chinese is in fact constrained by various conditions. First, I demonstrate that the availability of a discourse topic is insufficient to license empty categories in Mandarin Chinese by showing that subject and object positions cannot be left empty at random. Some empty subject positions are neither true instances of nominal ellipsis nor variables bound by discourse topics; instead, they are a side effect of verb or vP movement followed by TP-ellipsis. Next, I address the issue of when objects can be "dropped" in Mandarin Chinese. I argue that structural parallelism built on verbal identity between sentences plays an important role in licensing `objectless' sentences. I propose that the mechanism responsible for the creation of such sentences is V-stranding VP-ellipsis rather than argument ellipsis. In the last part of this dissertation, I show that, although we cannot rely on the strength of discourse alone to account for empty categories, the concept of topic-hood is nevertheless implicated in the appearance of certain empty argument positions in sentences used in monologues. I claim that subject pro in Mandarin Chinese must have as its antecedent an element located in an A'-position, which can be overt or covert. In addition, I suggest that the differences between Italian, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese with respect to the use of subject pro can be boiled down to the featural properties of the covert topic TOP preceding subject pro: this covert topic has inherently valued phi-features in Italian and Japanese, while its counterpart in Mandarin Chinese does not. / Linguistics

Submitted by Edileide Reis (leyde-landy@hotmail.com) on 2013-05-13T15:27:51Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Silva.pdf: 1245786 bytes, checksum: 47d4412aab645a8affa79e9db5506aad (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Alda Lima da Silva(sivalda@ufba.br) on 2013-06-04T17:28:02Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Silva.pdf: 1245786 bytes, checksum: 47d4412aab645a8affa79e9db5506aad (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-06-04T17:28:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Maria Silva.pdf: 1245786 bytes, checksum: 47d4412aab645a8affa79e9db5506aad (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / Esta dissertação analisa, numa perspectiva sociolingüística, as estratégias de realização do objeto direto anafórico no dialeto rural afro-brasileiro, focalizando as variantes que distanciam o português do Brasil (PB) e o português europeu (PE): a categoria vazia e o uso do pronome lexical (ele/ela). Parte-se do pressuposto de que as diferenças existentes entre o PB e o PE se devem, não só a motivações internas à estrutura da língua, mas, principalmente, a motivações externas (sócio-históricas) decorrentes do contato entre línguas ocorrido, quando no Brasil conviveram os portugueses, os índios e os negros trazidos da África como escravos. Buscando avaliar o quanto o contato entre línguas afetou o desenvolvimento histórico da língua portuguesa no Brasil, o foco da pesquisa dirige-se para as comunidades rurais afrobrasileiras isoladas, do interior do Estado da Bahia. Por terem-se mantido até bem recentemente em relativo isolamento, tais comunidades devem guardar não só costumes culturais bastante antigos, mas também padrões lingüísticos, que permitam encontrar evidências de processos de variação e mudança resultantes do contato entre línguas. Dessa forma, o corpus analisado reuniu quatro comunidades localizadas em regiões diversas do Estado da Bahia, em que houve grande concentração de mão-de-obra escrava, a saber: Helvécia, no extremo-sul da Bahia; Rio de Contas, na Chapada Diamantina; Cinzento, no semi-árido; e Sapé, no Recôncavo Baiano. / Salvador