A Survey on Generic Impersonal Structures in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents a survey on null generic impersonal structures conducted with native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The objective of the survey was (i) to investigate whether null impersonal constructions with the generic reading need to have elements such as fronted adverbials to check the EPP, a hypothesis put forward by Holmberg (2005, 2010a,b); (ii) verify to what extent BP-speakers require an overt marker of genericity (e.g., the generic clitic se and overt necessity deontic modals) in sentences with null generic pronouns, as suggested by Bertolino (2017). The survey consisted of an Acceptability Judgment Test, conducted online. All sentences were presented with a context favoring the generic reading of the null subject. The results of this survey show that (i) the EPP does not need to be satisfied in null impersonal constructions in BP; (ii) although BP-speakers prefer null generic impersonal constructions with overt markers of genericity, they do not require it.

Keywords

• null impersonals
• genericity
• EPP