Preposition stranding in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

In this work, we present evidence that BP is a language that licenses preposition stranding, contrary to what had been previously argued in the literature. We also demonstrate why this phenomenon is not generalized, with some prepositional items allowing P-stranding, while others completely rule out this possibility. We argue that, at its core, the difference between these two groups lies in the possibility of a syntactic contraction operation being applied, which would be dependent on the lexical/functional value of each preposition. The notion of contraction is not a new theoretical tool to explain the possibility or impossibility of the preposition stranding phenomenon. The distinctive aspect of our analysis is to make it explicit that the contraction preventing the licensing of P-stranding is a purely syntactic process, which would affect only prepositions with a more functional content. Essentially, such prepositions undergo a fusion operation with their complement, which makes the extraction of this element unfeasible. Regarding prepositions with a more lexical nature, our proposal is that they select a null prepositional category that would be responsible for assigning case to the complement DP. This intermediate null item would prevent the syntactic contraction between the complement DP and the phonetically visible preposition. Since there is no contraction, the extraction of the complement DP is licensed, thus explaining the phenomenon of P-stranding.