Abstract

Examining postverbal subjects in declarative clauses on a large basis of comparative data from Italian, Romanian, Spanish and European Portuguese, i. e. Romance null-subject languages, we show that the large availability of postverbal subjects is conditioned by pragmatic factors. In the system we propose and which relies on the Minimalist Program, especially the probe and goal mechanism, we claim that the different word order configurations are derived syntactically by information-structural probes in T. We explain the differences between preverbal subjects and other fronted constituents by assuming that the EPP in T is not connected to agreement features, but to a probe related to information structure. However, in the cases where no goal is available for T’s information-structural probe, the closest nominal argument still must be attracted by a last resort mechanism. We argue that, for declarative sentences, T can bear several ISprobes, namely [uAbout], [uC-Given] and [uFocus]. The notion of aboutness, which should be clearly distinguished from givenness or discourse- linking, and the null-adverb stage are crucial in explaining the word order patterns related to IS-structure. We also discuss the position of postverbal subjects with respect to the object.