Raising Issues in Brazilian and European Portuguese

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative investigation contrasting Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese with respect to raising constructions. We provide an account of the attested fluctuation among raising, control, and impersonal constructions based on the Case- and θ-properties of the structures involved in each dialect. We also discuss the pervasive spreading of raising constructions (including cases of overt and "covert" hyper-raising) in Brazilian Portuguese and its relation to the loss of referential null subjects in this dialect.