European portuguese possessives and the structure of DP

• Autor(es): Brito, Ana Maria Barros de
• Data: 2013
• Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10216/66531
• Origem: Repositório Aberto da Universidade do Porto
• Assunto(s): Gramática portuguesa; Linguística portuguesa
• Tipo de Documento: Artigo
• Idioma: Inglês

Descrição

The main aim of this paper is to analyse, in a comparative perspective, the category of possessives in European Portuguese possessives as for their X and XP nature and to relate their internal to their external syntax within the DP structure, mainly centred on the possibilities of co-ordination and focalisation of possessives. It will be proposed that both pre-nominal and post-nominal possessives can be focalised, that the nature of contrastive focus that affects prenominal possessives does not argue in favour of their X nature and that the focalisation of prenominal and post-nominal possessives does not justify any functional category related with informational structure in the DP.