Pancake sentences do not have definite articles in brazilian portuguese

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss an aspect of nominals in the subject position in pancake sentences in Brazilian Portuguese. Descriptively, pancake sentences have two main characteristics in Portuguese: (i) a noun in the subject position which is smaller than a full DP is interpreted as a situation; (ii) the predicate does not agree with the subject. This can be exemplified by the sentence Panqueca é bom (i.e. Pancake-fem is good-masc). Recent studies on this subject (SIQUEIRA, 2017, SIQUEIRA, SIBALDO & SEDRINS, 2020) argue that a further characteristic should be added to the description of pancake sentences in this language: that a nominal in the subject position allows for a determiner, e.g. A panqueca é bom (i.e. The-fem pancake-fem is good-masc). We show that sentences like A panqueca é bom are actually a case of verbal ellipsis. These sentences are only grammatical when they have an antecedent in a previous clause; they are impossible in out-of-the-blue contexts. By contrast, pancake sentences are possible in a context where only a pragmatic antecedent is present. Thus, pancake sentences contain deep anaphors in their syntactic structure. When the two sentence types, with and without a definite determiner, are inspected in light of the dichotomy between deep and superficial anaphor, it becomes clear that Panqueca é bom has a fundamentally different syntactic structure from A panqueca é bom. We show that only the former is a real pancake sentence.