THE PARTIAL PRO-DROP NATURE AND THE RESTRICTED VS ORDER IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE

However, the correlation between NS and free invers ion has been challenged by Safir (1982), who found out that Northern Italian d ialects, while disallowing the former, license the latter. Brazilian Portuguese ( BP), on the other hand, has been exhibiting a change in progress in both properties, a fact that can be used in favor of a single parameter (cf. Tarallo & Kato 1989; Duarte 1993; Roberts 1993b). Curiously, though Duarte’s (1993, 1995) studies sho w a significant decrease in the use of null subjects , they show that the change affected mainly the fir st and second persons, leaving a still reasonably stable use of n ull subjects for the third person. Andrade Berlinck’s (1988, 1995) studies show, on th e other hand, that free inversion is being lost, but that VS is still productive with t e copula and with unaccusative verbs.

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